Stop yourself when your mind wanders away to reflect on your experiences because you are chasing after what are nothing but illusion. If you do not do this you will next undergo pain, sorrow, sadness and despair that results from the evocative nature of what you will perceive from the subjects, namely your aunt Lillie and Leda, the accompanying words of your aunt and your own experiences.
You will find there will be interplay (a vortical interplay) between feelings and perception, one feeding off the other, perceptions being manipulated by feelings and experiences. If you break this cycle at this point you will end the cycle of samsara, at least temporarily for that time. So you have to watch your mind, watch it all the time so you will have control of what you think. This is the mind of mindfulness and concentration, the mind of wise consideration, which is also referred to as yoniso manisakro.
In fact, unbeknownst to you your ego, which most of us will not be able to separate from the other or true self takes over, suffering the pain and in turn offering condolences to the family of the bereaved. This pain arises from being fearful of the misfortune suffered by someone else. This pain that touches someone’s loss is the pity you feel. It is the result of an egocentric view – of me and mine and you and yours –that is to say I know the pain you suffer and I am sorry for you, for your loss. Our inner feelings would betray a sense of comfort in knowing that it is not me or mine or my own and how lucky I am.
Now, instead, examine the nature of life, the life of your aunts and yours. When causes and conditions are present life will manifest and similarly in its attrition and demise. This life is but just one of countless many. It is actually one of four intermediate stages (known as bardo in Tibetan) of the complete cycle of life-death-life, the cycle being: Life, Dharmakaya or the clear light stage, sambogakaya and Nirmanakaya -which stages can last a few seconds or minutes or several years.
Next, examine all the pain your aunts have undergone from the mental afflictions caused by misapprehending as fact (as real) the fallacies (illusions) of the ego self, a self of I and mine and the various thoughts (forms, formations and feelings) that followed, which in fact were experienced only by the ego self. These were just mental constructs, which would seem very real to the person who is experiencing it, like a dream is to each of us, but only real so long as you grasp it, assert it to be real, is tormented by it, cling to it and dwell on it.
Once you do this you will find being effused with compassion for your aunts. This compassion is your love for your aunt in her experience of sorrow in her misfortune, the arising of which pain you can feel like your own.
Having said this, my love goes out to touch all of the aunts’ loved ones for the "pain and suffering" that they are undergoing at this moment on aunt Lillie’s demise.
I hope my words help you to understand life and death better.
So now, what of this life, this life of Aunt Lillie, the little time she spent here of no more than 85 years, was she able to make any use of it? Or did she just get carried away in the mundane, in all of the chores of life, which at the end of it would seem all very meaningless? Do reflect on this.
I shall end this with a quote from Shantideva in his works "The Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life" (8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar at Nalanda University and an adherent of the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna)
"By depending upon the boat-like human form we can cross the great ocean of suffering,
Since such a vessel will be hard to find again there is no time to sleep, you fool"
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