A Radical Buddhist Approach To Making This The Best Year Of Your Life | Vinny Ferraro

1. Contemplate Mortality Daily

Bring the issue of your own death to the forefront of your consciousness as a way to make your day-to-day life more vivid, urgent, and interesting, countering the sleepwalking and autopilot mode.

2. Practice Five Daily Remembrances

Recollect the five daily remembrances (nature to grow old, ill health, die, be separated from loved ones, and actions as true belongings) each morning and night to soften resistance to these truths and normalize reality.

3. Prioritize Intentional Actions

Recognize that your actions are your only true belongings and the ground on which you stand. Focus on how you respond to reality in each moment, as this response determines your experience and conditions the next moment.

4. Utilize Suffering for Growth

Do not waste suffering; instead, use it as an indicator to look closer at what you might not be seeing or where you are deceiving yourself. Suffering can prompt introspection and personal growth.

5. Separate Self from Conditioning

Practice distinguishing your true self from your conditioning, observing your conditioning arise without mistaking it for who you are. This distinction makes it easier to let go of unhelpful patterns.

6. Embrace Uncertainty and Mystery

Actively train your mind to marinate in the mystery and live with uncertainty, embracing the awe and wonder of mortality. This allows you to stop trying to control the uncontrollable and sit with the unknown.

7. Conduct a Life Review

Regularly review your most meaningful relationships, asking what is needed to make peace, offer forgiveness, express gratitude, or communicate what you want them to know, as if you might never speak again. This can be done by writing or speaking into a phone over several months.

8. Complete End-of-Life Housekeeping

Undertake ‘housekeeping’ tasks related to dying, such as completing an advanced medical directive, durable power of attorney, and making decisions about what you want done with your body. This prevents loved ones from having to guess your wishes while grieving.

9. Let Old Selves Die

Reflect on what parts of your personality, behaviors, or old ways of being need to ‘die’ or be let go of. Recognizing and shedding these can lead to a new life and personal rebirth.

10. Question Worth of Suffering

Frequently ask yourself if a particular situation or issue is truly ‘worth suffering over.’ Recognize that while some things are, many are not, allowing for a release of unnecessary tension and resistance.

11. Cultivate Universal Compassion

In moments of awareness, remember that everyone shares the same uncertain journey of life and death. This realization makes it easier to be friendly and compassionate towards others, both internally and externally.

12. Apply Perspective to Worries

Use the perspective gained from contemplating mortality and the impermanence of life as a powerful balm to alleviate worries and anxieties about less significant issues. This helps to recognize that many concerns are ’not that freaking serious’.

13. Resolve Life’s Big Issues Now

Address and resolve significant life issues and affairs while you are healthy, rather than gambling on being able to do so when sick or on medication at the end of life. This proactive approach prevents passing burdens onto loved ones.

14. Systematically Ponder Finitude

Contemplate the fact of your own finitude and that of everybody and everything around you systematically, rather than just episodically. This systematic approach helps to maintain a heightened sense of awareness and urgency.

15. Counter Mind’s Mundane Tendency

Be aware of the mind’s uncanny ability to turn the miraculous into the mundane, leading to a state of ‘same old shit.’ Actively work against this tendency to prevent returning to complacency and to appreciate the present moment.

16. Test Teachings Personally

Do not take spiritual teachings at face value; instead, test them out in the laboratory of your own mind. ‘Come see for yourself’ to personally verify their truth and build your own foundation of understanding.

17. Maintain Physical Well-being

While embracing mortality, continue to take care of your body and physical well-being, as the fifth remembrance emphasizes that ‘it still matters how you do this thing.’ This perspective does not advocate for nihilism or neglecting self-care.

18. Extend Compassion Amidst Loss

In heartbreaking situations, recognize the shared suffering and absence of ‘winners,’ and actively cultivate and extend compassion to everyone involved, even those who have caused pain. This practice can help find refuge and tenderness in difficult moments.

19. Claim Each Day for Dharma

Ask yourself daily, ‘How can I claim this day for the Dharma?’ as a way to dedicate your actions and intentions towards spiritual practice and beneficial living. This sets a purposeful tone for each day.

20. Engage Community for Taboo Topics

Seek out and engage with a supportive community when exploring difficult or taboo topics like death. Shared experience and discussion can provide the resolution and dedication that is hard to maintain alone.

21. Join Big Heart City Sangha

Join Vinny Ferraro’s Big Heart City Sangha for a Friday night group on Zoom, or in-person on the first Friday of the month in San Francisco. This offers a community for mindfulness practices and connection.

22. Use 10% Happier App

Download the ‘10% with Dan Harris’ meditation app for a library of guided meditations, access to weekly live Zoom community sessions, and ad-free podcast episodes. This resource can help with stress, anxiety, sleep, focus, and self-compassion.

23. Utilize Spirit Rock Discounts

Get 10% off two January Spirit Rock events (‘Cultivating the Beautiful Factors of Mind’ and ‘Anxiety as Teacher, a Dharma and Yoga Day Long’) using the code ‘10PERCENT’ (spelled out). Check show notes for links and details.