Death Meditation VIII
Daily Meditation #131 — 7/3/2022
For previous installments — I II III IV V VI VII
We live in the most bourgeois times in history.
Our minds are mostly free of death and suffering.
Now, when we want a hamburger, we just go to McDonald’s.
Our ancestors would, instead, grab their gun, some cartridges and head out to the fields. The cow that they had very likely helped birth and raise, they then had to put a rifle to the temple of their skull, painting the prairie grasses red. Then, they would spend the time gutting and fileting them.
Now, when we have a mortally sick cat or dog, we bring them to the vet and they are gently put to sleep.
Like the cow, our ancestors had to take that animal they may have deeply loved “out back” to shoot and bury it, or in other cases, drown in the river or lake.
Now, when we have a grandparent who is exceptionally old (or not — maybe they’ve just got Alzheimer’s), they get stuck in a home.
Our ancestors lived around them, caring for them until their dying breaths, nostrils filled with the smell of old age and the looming death hanging over them.
We are so, so soft about death and dying, now. There is such a wide gap and disconnect between our lives…
