I became interested in the connection between climate change and death contemplation after going to a public talk at Smith College by Dr. Karin Meyers. The talk was about Buddhism and its perspectives on climate change. One thing Dr. Meyers brought up was how some of the Buddhist practitioners in Extinction Rebellion use death contemplation as a way to work with the strong feelings and difficulties of being an activist facing climate change.
This gave me pause since I used to do a lot of death contemplation, and still do related practices in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I decided to look into the death contemplation traditions I knew and see what could be relevant to climate change — how these ancient practices might contribute meaningfully to the response to this very modern problem. More about Climate Change and Death Contemplation here.
The work I’ve developed has primarily been adapted from the Visuddhimagga, a meditation manual written in Sri Lanka in the 5th century by a scholar monk, Bhadantacariya Buddhaghosa. (You can find a very good English translation here. Death Contemplation starts on page 283 of the pdf, which is page 225 in the book).
There are profound benefits to contemplating death: according to Buddhaghosa, samvega (“right urgency”), perspective, diligence, fearlessness, freedom from greed, hatred, and delusion, beneficial states of concentration, and, ultimately enlightenment. In my experience, death contemplation helps people be more alive. After considering (among other elements of death) one’s limited time and the fragility of life, people appreciate the time they have more, don’t sweat the small stuff, and do the important things (like responding to an urgent global climate crisis).