In the ultimate dimension, we have never been born and we will never die. In the historical dimension, we live in forgetfulness and we are rarely truly alive. We live like dead people.
In Albert Camus' novel The Stranger, the main character, out of despair and rage, shoots and kills someone. He receives the death sentence for his crime. One day, while lying on the bed in his prison cell, he looks up at the square-shaped skylight over him. Suddenly he becomes aware of and deeply in touch with the blue sky above. He has never seen the sky in that way before. Camus called this a moment of consciousness, which is a moment of awareness or of mindfulness. For the condemned man, it was the first time in his life that he really came into touch with the sky and realized what a miracle it was.
From that moment on, he wants to maintain that kind of shining awareness. He believes this was the only kind of energy that can keep him alive. He has only three days before his execution. He practices all alone in the prison to maintain that awareness, to keep his mindfulness alive. He vows to live every minute of the three days left to him fully and in mindfulness. On his final day a priest comes to visit him to perform the last rites. The condemned man does not want to waste his time of awareness in receiving the sacrament. At first he resists, but finally he opens the door for the priest to come in. When the priest departs, the prisoner remarks to himself that the priest lives like a dead person. He has seen no qualities of awareness or mindfulness in the priest.
If you live without awareness it is the same as being dead. You cannot call that kind of existence being alive. Many of us live like dead people because we live without awareness. We carry our dead bodies with us and circulate throughout the world. We are pulled into the past or we are pulled forward into the future or we are caught by our projects or our despair and anger. We are not truly alive; we are not inhabited by awareness of the miracle of being alive. Albert Camus never studied Buddhism, but in his novel he speaks about a core practice of Buddhism, the "moment de conscience," the moment of deep awareness or awakening.
The practice of resurrection, or re-manifestation, is possible for all of us. Our practice is always to resurrect our selves, going back to the mind and the body with the help of mindful breathing and walking. This will produce our true presence in the here and the now. Then we can become alive again. We will be like dead people reborn. We are free from the past, we are free from the future, we are capable of establishing ourselves in the here and now. We are fully present in the here and now, and we are truly alive. That is the practice of Buddhism. Whether you eat or drink or breathe or walk or sit, you can practice resurrection. Always allow yourself to be established in the here and now—fully present, fully alive. That is the real practice of resurrection.