These Mindfulness of Breathing and Metta Bhavana meditation practices are often described as ‘samatha’ or ‘calming’ practices but both also have a ‘vipassana’ or ‘insight’ aspect too.  They form an indispensible foundation of stability for the subsequent stages of spiritual death and spiritual rebirth.  In order truly to meet the challenge to our being that death of any kind brings, we need to set up the right conditions.  Of course life itself presents us with many deaths and endings, large and small and not in a tidy sequence. But the more we have gathered our energies through integration, so that we are not experiencing an ‘inner war’ between different aspects of ourselves the better able we shall be to step into the ‘letting go’ that death always demands of us.  Likewise with positive emotion – if we have not been able to cultivate a healthy sense of positive relationship to ourselves and other beings, it is much harder to face deaths and endings and far more likely that we will tip into the extremes of eternalism (happy ever after in heaven) or nihilism (there is nothing, what’s the point?).
The earliest Buddhist texts communicate a much more fluid relationship between ‘samatha’ and ‘vipassana’ meditation and this is reflected in our practice of meditation in Triratna.

Read Living With Awareness for more on mindfulness and insight

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