Educational Applications of Buddhist Meditations on Death
Religions May 29, 2020 Hyun Gong Moon
Buddhist meditations on death, such as mindfulness of death (maraṇasati) and meditation on impurity (asubhānupassin), may have positive educational applications similar to those of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Terror management theory (TMT) has shown through numerous experiments that contemplating death can trigger psychological changes, such as prioritizing internal values like meaning of life and happiness over external values like wealth and fame, and increasing prosocial behavior. The article argues that these Buddhist meditations can cultivate an acceptance of death and be applied in education either as standalone meditation or combined with death-related education topics like the meaning of death, dying process, near-death experiences, and grief education.