Illness and death are facts of life – Buddhism teaches us to be mindful but not fearful of it | Nadine Levy

The art of developing a healthy relationship with our own mortality lies in neither avoiding the reality of suffering nor obsessing over it

Over the last year, I have spent a lot of time eating pre-packaged sandwiches in hospital cafeterias. I often joke that those of us who are lucky enough to hit 35 will have at least one, if not multiple, serious health scares every year. At some point, however, we will face much more than a simple scare - serious illness can impact anyone, any time, with little notice.

As well as being a source of stress, pain and discomfort, unwanted health diagnoses have the radical potential to upend our lives and ignite burning questions relating to impermanence and human suffering which we may not have considered in the past. We may come face-to-face with our shared vulnerability for the first time - which was present all along - as well as the indisputable fact that we are all but one breath away from a health crisis or poor prognosis.