Let's come into a comfortable position.
Close your eyes.
Feeling your attention inwards towards your breath.
Feeling your breath entering and exiting through your nose.
And feeling that gentle rise in your body on the inhale.
And that sense of release,
Of letting go on the exhale.
And when you notice your mind has wandered off with a thought,
Just gently bring your attention back to the breath.
And in the beginning of each meditation,
Usually there is a lot of going back and forth.
So keep guiding your mind back to the breath,
Back to the peace and the stillness of the breath.
And what you'll notice about your thoughts is that they're impermanent.
They come and they go.
Whether your attention is on them or not,
Each thought is fleeting in nature.
And you might notice a feeling arising.
Maybe there's a little bit of tension,
Some discomfort.
And just notice how it arises and passes away.
That the nature of all of our thoughts,
Our feelings and emotions is impermanence.
And when we consider everything we experience in the world,
What we see is that it's all impermanent.
Some things look a little more solid,
Buildings,
Mountains.
But these two are changing ever so subtly.
And these bodies that we are inhabiting are impermanent too.
They have a beginning,
A middle and an end.
Every person that has ever been born on this planet,
Every being,
Every animal,
Every insect have all passed away or will pass away.
And that includes us.
We contemplate our own mortality,
Not to be morbid,
Not to be sad or frightened.
To stop fooling ourselves that we have endless amounts of time.
We don't.
None of us knows when this is going to end,
But it will end.
The more that we remember this,
That our lives are finite,
We can remember to wake up in this moment to reflect on how we're living our lives.
Can we remember that we do not have an infinite amount of time,
That our lives are limited?
We can ask ourselves honestly,
Are we living the life that we wish to be living?
What have we been putting off thinking we have endless amounts of time?
What would we do differently in this moment?
On this day that you are here and alive right now,
What would you do differently?
What would you do differently?
What would you let go of?
What would you realize suddenly doesn't matter anymore?
What thoughts would you let go of?
What burdens would you unburden yourself with?
What fears would you drop?
Knowing that you were only here for a very short amount of time.
What would you do differently?
What would you do differently?
And in what ways can you make a difference in the world today?
Nothing doesn't have to be anything extraordinary or on a large scale,
But just thinking about the way you interact with other beings,
How your kindness,
Your generosity,
Your compassion,
How that affects each person you meet and that every person we connect with in this way that they then go on to pay that kindness forward,
To pay that generosity forward,
The compassion.
And each small act of kindness has a ripple effect through the entire tapestry of which we are all a part of.
And in this way,
Our small acts become extraordinary.
And each interaction we have gives us the opportunity to make our lives meaningful.
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And the more often that we remember our lives are impermanent.
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The more gratitude we can have in each moment.
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The more we can appreciate the life we have.
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The people that are in our lives.
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The animals,
Our pets,
Our children.
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To remember what's most important and to let the things go that don't matter.
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So by reflecting on our own mortality.
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By remembering this.
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We take our attention off of all the things that we spend most of our time worrying about and fretting about.
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And we put our attention on the things that matter.
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And in this way.
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We live each day to its fullest.
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Because we're not deluding ourselves any longer about our time.
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Each moment is a gift.
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Each day,
Each evening.
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Each morning that we wake up is a beautiful gift to cherish and honor.
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And not waste it.
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Namaste.
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