Recent Contemplation on Death

One interesting side effect of meditation is that there seem to be a lot of aha! moments. Some of them are terrifying, and some seem like they should be terrifying, but are actually liberating. One such experience (of the latter sort) recently occurred during meditation. I was doing my usual thing, scanning and investigating sensations in consciousness. Sometimes when I am doing this, there is a flash of very visceral intuition: "actually there is no self here, there is an organism, carrying out its chain of conditioning, but actually, wow, there is nobody home." What was different about this particular episode was that the specter of death came up in my consciousness, the recognition that this organism's days are numbered. I imagined my own death, and probably for the first time not one bit of fear came up. Because there was nobody there to die.

For me, this was only a passing insight, but for those who have become "enlightened", this is a permanent and not just intellectual realization. In the words of Kalu Rinpoche:

We live in illusion
And the appearance of things.
There is a reality:
We are that reality.
When you understand this,
You will see that you are nothing.
And being nothing,
You are everything
That is all.