Cool story:Laughing at death

Several months before my husband and I left Rangoon on March 1, 1960, U Hpe Aung, the director of the International Institute for Advanced Buddhist Studies (I.I.A.B.S.) at Kaba Aye, told us that he would advise us both to take a course in Buddhist meditation because he thought that it would greatly contribute to our better understanding of Buddhism.

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In the early morning of our last day at the centre, I dreamed again; this time I was standing over my own dead body, seeing its greenish look of decay, smelling the odors of decay and feeling my repulsively cold and unresponsive flesh. It was frightful to me; so frightful that I arose from my bed, dressed quickly and was in my meditation-cell at four instead of four-thirty. The door of my cell was open into the shrine room and Sayagyi was there fast asleep. I called to him in the agony of my fright at having come face to face with my own sure-to-come death and decay. Though I did not know it at the time, I had begun now to realize that my grief over my father's death was really and mostly a grief over my own inescapable death and decay.

Sayagyi awoke immediately and sat up to hear me while I told him about my dream. Then he began to laugh! Incredible! (he had a marvelous, deep-throated laugh--indescribably rich and full.) He continued to laugh for some time while I sat there astounded. Then I began to feel a strange comfort. Now I know that I had directly confronted impermanence, my impermanence, for the very first time and had seen it for what it is. Almost imperceptibly my heart stopped its wild beating.

That wonderful laugh is still going on for me! No words could have done what it is still doing.