What Other Cultures Can Teach Us About Death and Life Transitions

It’s Halloween! I know because a walk down the streets of our quiet neighbourhood means bumping into a few skeletons, if not some disembodied heads.

While this is a time when we often think about the lighter side of death, our Western attitude toward death is often tinged with fear. As a result, we can miss the opportunity to consider our own mortality or the loss of people we love. A couple of weeks after Halloween, I celebrate my late husband’s and my wedding anniversary, bringing back memories of our life together. So, around this time of year, death is often on my mind.

Learning From Other Cultures

While thinking about death may sound morbid, I believe we can learn from other cultures’ attitudes and traditions around death. Exploring these perspectives can offer insights into life’s transitions, especially as we move through the later chapters of life.

As a keen student of yoga, I have been learning more about South Asian perspectives on these topics, which emphasize the cyclical nature of life and rebirth. There is often an emphasis on finding your purpose and offering selfless service connected to that purpose. In some traditions, this purpose can extend beyond a single lifetime. Death may be understood as a transition rather than an absolute ending, with the body passing away while the essence of a person continues through cycles of birth and rebirth. The ultimate objective in some Hindu traditions is moksha, or spiritual liberation.

A very different but related approach comes from Central America through the celebration of Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, observed on November 1 and 2. This tradition blends Indigenous practices with Catholic influences and honours ancestors. Through these celebrations, death is approached as a natural part of life, and maintaining a connection with those who have died can become part of family life across generations.

This is also a stage of life when many of us face our own mortality as well as the deaths of people close to us. For some, understanding that those who die remain connected to a larger spiritual or cultural tradition can be comforting and may help bring a sense of peace during difficult transitions.

Using Death for Personal Growth

Some practical ways to reflect on these different approaches to death include:

• Explore your ancestral heritage. Learn about the death-related traditions, stories, and wisdom within your family background. This kind of self-discovery can create a deeper connection to your own history and life transitions. I feel that I have come closer to my maternal grandmother as I have explored her life. Honouring her by passing what I have learned about her on to younger members of our family has been very satisfying.
• Write your own obituary. What are the important things you want to be remembered for? How many of those characteristics and actions are true of you today? While this may seem morbid, the exercise can be surprisingly revealing. Try it.
• Practice mindfulness and meditation. Mindfulness can help you stay present and appreciate this moment. Within yoga traditions, meditation can be a way to explore your sense of inner self. At the very least, these practices may create space for greater calm and reflection.

Reflecting on death and mortality can become an opportunity for personal growth and transformation. I wrote about this in a blog from a few years ago called Four Ways to Deal with the Loss of a Loved One.

Thinking about how we want to be remembered and what we want to contribute to the world can help guide us through important transitions and encourage us to live with greater intention.

Originally published on Sixty and Me in October 2023.