Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace. So given it's Wednesday I thought we'd

have a chat about death and I know for some of you that might sound like an unusual topic

to address in the middle of the week for no particular reason. For others it may even

sound a little bit frightening. I think part of that is our approach to death is often

surrounded by an idea of morbidity. It doesn't feel like something that we want to think about.

Just to be clear this isn't so much about thinking about death and then feeling very sad. This is

about how can we use the fact, the reality of death, to actually enjoy our life that much more.

And I wanted to share a story about one of the monasteries that I lived in and whilst I was there

I learnt about a routine that happened every single night. As a monk you have very few possessions

normally just a handful. One of them typically is a bowl, a bowl in which you eat your food in

and you clean it out after each time and it lives in in your room. And there's one particular tradition

where the monks and nuns every evening they'll take off their robes, they'll fold them up and they'll

put them on the table next to where they sleep. The bowl they'll clean out and they turn the bowl

upside down. Now the bowl being turned upside down signifies typically when somebody dies in that

country, when the body's found they'll turn the bowl upside down to signify that person has passed

away. But in doing this every evening there is the acknowledgement by the monks and nuns

that life is impermanent, that there is no guarantee that we'll wake up in the next morning. Again,

not in a scary way, not in a frightening way, not in a morbid way, but just that is the reality of

our life. We tend to assume that these moments that we experience will go on forever, partly because

we're lost in the thinking of the mind, partly because we're fearful that if we think of that

maybe it somehow brings it closer. But if we are able to open our mind to the fullness of life,

then we kind of have to embrace the fact that at some time it will end. And I remember when I

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