When you hear that somebody is dying, or think about your death, it feels like there is a real, solid person who will be gone soon. If you really examine this idea, you will see that there is no person there to start with, just a body and a mind. The body is not the person, the mind is not the person, and there is no person separating from them. But our mind puts it all together, and voila! There is a real person who is afraid of dying, afraid of losing people, and clings to all these things that cannot possibly be held on to.

The real tragedy of the ignorant mind is that it holds onto things that are impossible to keep, especially our identity, which causes so much suffering. When you meditate on emptiness, the mind relaxes around one’s death and others’ deaths. But it is still good to go back and forth between the nominally existent person who creates causes and experiences karmic results, and the lack of a findable person who has died or is getting reborn. A person is experiencing the ripening of karma at death, but one that is merely labelled. It is not a human being, and it is definitely not the same personality that we knew popping up, out, and down into another body.

Even in this life, our mind and body are constantly changing. Understanding karma this way helps to keep us living as kind, ethical human beings related to the conventionalities of the world. When we think about emptiness, our mind relaxes when we realise there is nothing to hold on to, nothing to be afraid of, and nothing to lose.

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