There is certainly a Western philosophical/religious tradition of meditating on death, for what it's worth. It's why I love Lent and the traditions/rituals around it - "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Here's a very contemporary take on it that I came across recently, blending the eremitic nature of the Covid lockdown and the cause of praying for those who have died of it: http://www.stbedeproductions.com/office-of-the-dead-revisite...

You might also enjoy The Slavery of Death by Richard Beck, who blends his training in clinical psychology with his religious background to argue basically what you're arguing - that we try very hard to pretend death doesn't exist and that it works poorly - and from there argues that our fear of death should be understood as the primary problem of humans from a theological perspective, and that sin is a result of that fear, not a root cause. (He does draw on Eastern Orthodox thought to make that point, but I think that's not as far east as you mean by "Eastern," if I understand you right.)

Yeah, I think it's specifically the modern, secular West that has this terrified, anxious relationship with death. The more religious communities seem to think about it much the same way as they always did, and people on social media keep using this to make clever gotcha arguments about how religious people aren't really "pro life" because they're not desperately freaking out about death and trying to stave it off however they can during the pandemic. Somewhere along the line, the idea that death is an inevitable part of life and that sometimes trying to desperately stop it no matter what is a futile act of hubris became so alien to parts of the population that they can't even understand how anyone could think that way.

Nice, will check it out. I’m aware of stoicism but even that is too “out there” for our society.