Death and Life Meditation
January 12, 2009
15 minutes dying before sleep
15 minutes vitality after waking up
In the night before you go to sleep, do this fifteen-minute meditation. It is a death meditation. Lie down and relax your body. Just feel like dying and that you cannot move your body because you are dead. Just create the feeling that you are disappearing from the body. Do it for ten, fifteen minutes, and you will start feeling it within a week. Meditating that way, fall asleep. Don’t break it. Let the meditation turn into sleep, and if sleep overcomes you, go into it.
In the morning, the moment you feel you are awake — don’t open your eyes — do the life meditation. Feel that you are becoming more wholly alive, that life is coming back and the whole body is full of vitality and energy. Start moving, swaying in the bed with eyes closed. Just feel that life is flowing in you. Feel that the body has a great flowing energy — just the opposite of the death meditation. So do the death meditation in the night before falling asleep and the life meditation just before getting up.
With the life meditation you can take deep breaths. Just feel full of energy… life entering with breathing. Feel full and very happy, alive. Then after fifteen minutes, get up. These two — the life and death meditation — are going to help you tremendously.
Osho, excerpts from A Rose is a Rose #12
Osho book recommendations on meditation
Meditation: The First and Last Freedom
Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now
Meditation For Busy People: Stress-Beating Strategies To Calm Your Life
Discover the Buddha: 53 Meditations to Meet the Buddha Within
