Osho – Remember death, never forget it for a single moment! Because of this insistence, many people have thought Buddha is death-obsessed; he is not. You may be life-obsessed but he is not death-obsessed. He is simply bringing everything to a balance.
He says, as much as you are involved in life you have to remember death too, then there will be a balance, an equilibrium. He used to send his disciples, his sannyasins, to watch whenever a dead body was being burned: “Just go, sit there, meditate and watch and remember this is going to happen to your body too.”
Death has to be meditated upon; otherwise life can go on giving you false hopes. If you remember death, life cannot deceive you anymore. Death will keep you alert. Buddha is not death-obsessed, but he has come to know one thing: that it is only by becoming aware of death that one gets rid of the obsession with the body, the obsession with food, the obsession with sex, the obsession with money, the obsession with the world. You have to live in life, but let there be a consciousness, constantly, that this life is slipping out of your hands and death is coming closer every moment. That will not allow you to be a victim of false desires and false hopes.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 5”