Fitness, Death and Motivation

I recently wrote on FUCK IT!!!’s. What I didn’t explore in that essay is the meditation that I am using to drive the FUCK IT!!!

I use a meditation on death to drive my personal change. Once you consider it, the choice of a meditation on death is natural when it comes to motivating change. Below is the meditation that I use.

My body is incredibly and undeniably fragile. Death is normal and natural. My own Death is certain. There is no possible way for me to escape, bribe or out run my Death. My lifetime has an absolute limit. Every breath brings me closer to the ending of my life. I will die on a perfectly ordinary day, a day just like today. I will die and the world will not notice. 

The first line states a fact. Whilst we like to think of ourselves as being rather robust and tough, the truth is that as organisms we live within very clear boundaries: deny us oxygen for 10 minutes, we die, cause us to lose 10 litres of blood….., deny us water for 4 days…., place us in an environment much above 50 degrees Celsius or below 0 degrees Celsius without cooling or heating….., cause injury to the brain, the liver, the heart, our bowels, bladder and we tend to…. If death wasn’t normal and natural, we would literally be crowded out. Given that we all know someone who has died, our own death is guaranteed. Most of us make it to about 80 years old. And when you stop and think about it, the number of breaths you will ever take is finite. As surely as you took your first breath on the day you were born, you will take your last breath on the day you die. And no matter how monumental your ego is….the world really doesn’t care about you.

I can be alive one moment planning my days and the next moment I can be dead. The world is utterly unpredictable and random. Accidents can and do happen all the time.  People can and do simply drop dead. I am not excluded from these facts and that this can happen to me.

Car accidents and heart attacks. The people who have them are just like you in that they all have plans for a future. Given that we are all made from the same material and endure common illnesses etc., it is a safe bet that there is a chance you will die in a car accident or drop dead.

It is the simple, ordinary and everyday things that can and do kill. Food, i-Pods’ and cars kill us. Food can kill us through eating the wrong foods, foods we have allergies to, by eating too much food. I-Pods can kill by distracting us from our environment. Our cars by driving them improperly or through the inattention of other drivers.

The obesity epidemic is being driven by the rising amounts of sugar in our diets. Eat a diet made exclusively of refined fats, sugars and carbohydrates and you will end up obese and likely dead within ten years. People are regularly killed by their media devices. They plug in and tune out and as a result get hit by the train, car or bus they would have seen or heard had they been more in touch with their environment. As for cars, see the road toll in your local paper.

It is only the practice of Dhamma that will help me deal with and accept my Death. The clutter of possessions, relationships, careers will not help me when I am dying. Often these things make it harder to die with many things left undone and unsaid. I must have my lifetime in such a place that should I die today, that nothing truly meaningful to me will be left unsaid or undone, especially acts and words of love. I must be ready to leave this lifetime immediately.

In understanding the frailty of our bodies we can see the necessity of having our lives in order. We need to be in the head space where everything really important to us is done.

I must live with great gentleness and kindness, for how I live will determine in a very large degree the state of my mind when I die. I can choose now to live and die without great mental suffering in both myself and those I love. My friends and relatives cannot do my dying for me. I can however lessen their pain at my Death by living and dying well.

People die in character. Rarely does death change people. If you’ve spent your entire life being a toxic piece of shit, then the chances are you will fear death. Conversely there is abundant evidence that if you’ve been a nice person and done everything that was important to you, that death isn’t going to be such a big deal. A life well lived and a death well done are things to be celebrated. Do you want to go to your death loved or loathed? 

 As surely as I came into this lifetime naked and bereft of possessions, I will have to leave it the same way. This body if not treated with proper care will often be the cause of death, so why should I turn to it for help at the time of Death? It was never mine in the first place.

You can’t make a wealth transfer to your next life…assuming there is one. I’ve seen my children being born and I’ve seen people die and we arrive and leave only with whatever attitudes and karma we have made.

When I use this meditation, there is the need to be in the space I want to be in should I die today. There is the acceptance that I have no time to get things right. Whatever time I might have is running out and the end of that time is unknown. So if I want to be utterly toned, gorgeous and to mitigate health risk factors, there is no time like now in which to become it. I may not have a tomorrow and I know I will die seriously ticked off at myself if I’m not at my most physically beautiful should I die today. And this is how I connect fitness, death and motivation.