How is it possible that patients at the terminus of life have been known to say: ‘This last year has been the best year of my life’? Death is a truth we instinctively try to avoid or deny. But when confronted with the reality of it, we can only break down and disintegrate or break through and transcend. Laurence Freeman shows how meditation opens the way to this breakthrough. In meditation, as we drop all immediate concerns and attachments and become silent, we experience loss and separation. We taste death, and our fear of it gradually loses its power over us leaving us free to see life’s ultimate horizon. In that new vision we find meaning and the gift of wisdom.