Introduction to the nine-point death meditation

• Introduction to the teachings on the nine-point death meditation
• In-depth explanation about the first three points regarding the inevitability of death and the second three points regarding the uncertainty of the time of death

MTRS 09: Preliminaries—Death (download)

We’ll start by generating our motivation. We still have our precious human life, for which it’s hard to create the cause. We can see that there aren’t very many precious human lives. It’s hard to attain this rebirth with all the facilities and conducive circumstances for practicing the Dharma. 

Our life goes very quickly, moment by moment, and this body is degenerating, moment by moment. We are approaching death, and while we’re still alive, it’s very important to make good use of our life because at the time of death we can’t press a rewind button and live it again. If we spend some time examining what is valuable to do in our life, it becomes apparent that generating the two bodhicittas is very important: the conventional bodhicitta that seeks enlightenment for the benefit of all beings and the ultimate bodhicitta that realizes reality as it is.

So, let’s develop that intention to obtain full enlightenment through generating the two bodhicittas. Even if we don’t attain enlightenment in this lifetime, know that our life is still very valuable because we’re going in that direction. With the heart that cares about others, and about their wallowing in cyclic existence, let’s generate that bodhicitta before we begin. 

Remembering our precious human life

Did you meditate on the rarity of attaining the precious human life? Is it easy to obtain? Have you created many causes to have another one? Have you created enough so that you can rest assured when you die? And when we look at the world population, are there many beings with precious human lives? There aren’t so many. It’s really hard to have all those conditions. Somebody could be so close and then just they miss one condition and the whole opportunity’s lost. It’s like that turtle coming up once every hundred years. The yoke is floating all over the ocean, and the turtle gets so close, just hitting the edge of the yoke with its nose, and then goes down to the bottom of the ocean again. It’s really quite difficult.

We are trying to develop a sense that this life is important because it provides the facilities for practicing Dharma. The value of this life is not because of the opportunities it provides for sense pleasure and ego advancement. It’s valuable because we can practice the Dharma and aim for either the temporary goal of attaining a good human life or a good upper rebirth, the ultimate goal of attaining liberation and enlightenment, or the momentary goal of making life meaningful by practicing the thought transformation techniques. Seeing that it’s valuable in that way gets us really energized, and we want to practice. 

Then after that, the Buddha reminds us, “Yes, that’s great. You’re energized, and you want to practice.” But we definitely have this mañana mentality, don’t we? It’s like, “I’m kind of busy, so I’ll do my practice later. I want to enjoy some time with my friends and my family, and my worldly work is so meaningful. People will think I’m strange if I’m really extremist and practice Dharma very assiduously.” We experience all these kinds of fears arising in the mind. They’re all very clearly written out in the book of excuses. 

So, after that the Buddha reminds us, well, this life isn’t going to last so long. There is the mind that thinks, “I can practice later,” or even the mind that says, “I don’t need to practice because I’m not going to die. I’ll always have this rebirth, I’m not going to die; and it’s kind of bearable—okay, I have some headaches but, you know, it’s bearable.” That’s what we say, usually, when we’re young and healthy, not when we’re suffering. We don’t realize at that time that death is definite. 

We can also have the mind that says, “I’ll practice later.” That’s what happens when we don’t realize that the time of death is not definite. Then the mind that is kind of lazy and doesn’t really practice very purely kind of mixes worldly concerns in with our Dharma practice. It’s like thinking: “If I practice, I’ll have a good reputation and people will give me things; I’ll get to sit in the front row. I’ll get to wear different clothes and I’ll have a Tibetan name. I’ll have an exotic life”. All sorts of worldly things come into our mind. These worldly motivations prevent us from actually practicing purely. This comes from not understanding that at the time of death, the only thing that comes with us is our karma and our habitual mental attitudes—not our body, our friends and relatives, or our wealth and possessions. You can see how different levels of error correspond with the three major points in the death meditation. 

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): What’s the first major point?

Audience: Death is certain.

VTC: Death is definite. Okay, and what’s the fault we have if we don’t realize that?

Audience: We won’t practice.

VTC: Yes, we won’t practice. What’s the second point?

Audience: The time of death is uncertain.

VTC: Okay, the time of death is indefinite. And what’s the fault if we don’t understand that? 

Audience: We put off practicing.

VTC: We’ll only practice later. And what’s the third point?

Audience: Only Dharma practice helps when dying.

VTC: Yes, so nothing helps at the time of death but our Dharma practice. And what is the fault if we don’t understand that?

Audience: We don’t practice purely.

VTC: Yes, we don’t practice purely. You see that? 

You can see sometimes, when you look at your own mind and assess your practice, if you have one of those three faults, then you can see what it is that you do not understand and you know what you need to focus on. Our author, Nam-kha-Pel lists these three major points, he says:

The actual ways to think about death are to reflect on the inevitability of death, the uncertainty of the time of death, and that only the Dharma can help at the time of death.

Those are the three major outlines. 

The inevitability of death

Now we’re going to discuss the first one, the inevitability of death. The text says:

Death is certain to come, because no one who has a body can avoid dying.

It’s true, isn’t it? But somehow, we think we’re going to be special, don’t we? Isn’t our gut reaction: “It’s not going to happen to me. Everybody else who has a body is going to die, but somehow it’s not going to happen to me”?

In the ‘Special Verses Collected by Topic’ it says:
If Buddhas, Solitary Realizers and Hearers
Have all abandoned their bodies,
What can be said about ordinary beings.

If even all of these holy beings and highly realized beings have all left their bodies, and their lives here have ended, what about us? Why do we think we’re going to avoid death? It’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? If you think about it, you will notice that everybody has died throughout history—the Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, all the great spiritual leaders—they’ve all died. Why do we think we aren’t going to die? All the great political leaders are not immune from death. Everybody you see—it doesn’t matter how rich they are, how many doctors they had, how many insurance policies or anything like that they had—nobody can prevent death because that’s the nature of the body. In whatever land you may live, you can never avoid death. 

The same text says:
Wherever you live you are not immune to death, 
Neither on the earth in any direction,
Nor in space, nor within the ocean,
Nor if you were to hide amidst the mountains.

There’s a story about Maudgalyāyana, one of the Buddha’s foremost disciples. He had great psychic powers, so he went to another universe. But you can still die in another universe. It doesn’t matter if they freeze your body with cryogenics, like they did to Walt Disney—death is still going to come. Even taking rebirth does not avert death. So, for the people who say, “Well, I’ll kill myself, and then I won’t have to get reborn,” that doesn’t work either. One of the people in prison I write to, he suffered so much from depression and he was young when he got incarcerated. He told me for a while that he was suicidal. But when he started reading about Buddhism and realized that we were going to get reborn, he realized that committing suicide doesn’t solve anything. So, he stopped even considering it, because it doesn’t solve anything. The only thing that solves the problem is eliminating ignorance. Because we always hold onto the idea that there is this “out,” if things are really bad there’s always an “out.” The only “out” is eliminating ignorance. That’s it, okay?

The same text says:
The wise have understood that those of the past 
And those who are yet to come have given up this body 
And are subject to destruction. Therefore,
Abide in the Dharma and practice with determination.

Because we’re going to die, it’s very important that we keep our mind in the Dharma and that we practice very diligently. Every moment that goes by, we don’t have that moment to live again. Every moment that goes by, we are that much closer to death; that much of our life is gone. If we didn’t use it to practice, there’s no way to get it back. 

The ‘Sutra of Advice for a King’ says:
Suppose four great mountains in the four directions solid, stable, essential, uncrumbled, uncracked, unblemished, very hard, extremely dense, and touching the sky were to be overturned—the grass, forests, tree-trunks, branches, all fire leaves, all the living beings and creatures would be crushed into the smallest particles. This would not easily be avoided by escaping quickly or with strength, nor by wealth, substances, mantras or medicine.

When there is a great calamity like that, the usual things people take refuge in are things like magical substances, mantras or medicine, or paying somebody a little tip. None of it works. 

O great king, likewise the four great fears cannot easily be avoided by escaping quickly or with strength, nor by substances, mantra, or medicine. What are these four? Old age, sickness, death, and decline. O great king, old age comes with the destruction of youth. 

We all think that we’re still young, don’t we? No matter how old we are, we still feel very young. And the definition of old changes every year. Have you noticed that? We say, “Old age comes with the destruction of youth. Well, I’m still young so I don’t have to face old age.” And we’re still going to be young at eighty or ninety, or whatever, if we live that long. That’s just our fantasy. “Sickness with the destruction of health”: we lose our health with sickness and yet somehow we feel impermeable to illness, don’t we? A few little aches and pains here and there, but cancer, kidney disease, AIDS, pancreatitis, kidney stones, all that other stuff happens to other people, it doesn’t happen to me. All these diseases that we hear about, we somehow feel that we’re immune to all of them. There are so many different diseases. It’s quite amazing the number of diseases there are and the number of things that can go wrong with this body, but you never anticipate it, never. 

“Decline comes with the destruction of your fortune”: Americans have learned that the last month, haven’t we? Decline comes. You have all this wealth and fortune and you think you have so much, and then, all of a sudden, it’s not there. Or we think we have a very strong reputation, we’re never going to lose it. Then one small thing happens and people just trash us and our reputation is destroyed. Or we have a relationship and the other person has pledged never to abandon us, and they die. There are all these things that decline that we can’t control. The ‘I’ inside feels like it should be able to control everything, but actually it can’t. But we still feel like we can, don’t we? It’s just amazing. Death comes with the destruction of life. The life force ends and that’s death. It happens to everybody, and there’s nothing you can do because we start going towards death from the very moment we are conceived in our mother’s womb.

[These four fears] cannot easily be avoided by escaping quickly or with strength, nor with wealth, substances, mantras, or medicine. 

Sometimes we think, the great athletes are in such good shape that they’re going to live long. No! Or the big politicians: they’re so well connected, so they’ll live long. No! Or the people who are very rich: they can fly and get the best surgery and the best doctors in the universe, and they’ll live long. No! It’s very interesting to take examples from our life of people that we know who have died—how old they were when they died, and what they died from. I tend to do this every time I do a retreat. The list gets longer each year because each year, more people I know have died. It’s just amazing to write down who you know or have heard of who has died—sister, brother of a friend of yours, or whatever. How old were they?  The point is that nobody is immune from death. That’s the first sub-point in the main point, that “death is inevitable.” 

Our lifespan is constantly diminishing

The second sub-point of death is inevitable says: 

Secondly, reflect that as you cannot increase your lifespan, it constantly declines, so death is inevitable. Not only is your lifespan brief, but it decreases continually, as years are exhausted by the passing of months, months by the passing of days, and days by the passing of nights.

Do you ever have the feeling when you wake up in the morning? I have this feeling often because every morning I wake up and I generate my motivation: not to harm, to be of benefit, and to hold the bodhicitta. It feels like I’m doing that so often that one day just follows another day, very, very, very quickly. Do you ever have that feeling? In one way, each day seems long, but every morning it seems like you just get up, and another day in our life is gone. With each moment that passes, we’re approaching death. We have a certain amount of karma, and it’s karmic energy that keeps us alive. When that karma is exhausted, the lifespan ends. If another karma, an untimely karma—a very strong karma—ripens, then there is untimely death. Our karmic lifespan may still have more, but there’s an accident or a big calamity, or sudden illness or something, and we die very quickly and unexpectedly because of the ripening of another karma. Every moment that is passing, we’re going towards the time of death.

As Shantideva says in ‘Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life’:
Life is always slipping by
And can never be increased,
Why will death not come to one like me? 

It’s true, isn’t it? Do we really have a sense that our life span is decreasing moment-by-moment? From the time we started this Dharma talk, our lifespan is closer to being over. That time, that twenty-two minutes, is over and gone, and we can’t relive it. We don’t really have that sense, do we? We feel like we have so much time, but with each passing moment death is approaching. 

This should be contemplated by means of examples. ‘Special Verses Collected by Topic’ says:
Just as weaving yarn
Stretched back and forth across a loom 
Finally runs out,
So too does every person’s life.

You have the little card with the yarn on it and it goes back and forth; it’s going to run out.

Just as every step of one condemned
Brings him ever closer
To the executioner,
So too is (it with) every person’s life.

Think of somebody on death row—or we can think of cattle or chickens. Sometimes while driving on the highway, we see animals in the back of a truck being taken to the butcher. With each moment that passes, they’re getting closer to the butcher. Yet, somehow, we feel like we’re not getting closer to death. It’s so stupid, isn’t it? Because in actual fact, with each moment, we are approaching death. 

Just as the flow of a waterfall 
Can never be reversed,
So a person’s life runs on
Without increase and beyond recall.

In a waterfall, the water just comes over and keeps going. It never stops; the water is in constant motion. So, too, our lifespan is, moment by moment, flowing, flowing, flowing and approaching death. 

Hard to find and yet so brief
And giving rise to so much pain, 
Lives are quickly destroyed,
Like the writing of a stick on water.

“Like the writing of a stick on water”: when you write with a stick on water, it doesn’t take much energy, does it? The text says, it’s “Hard to find and yet so brief.” If you write on water with a stick, it’s hard to find the writing and it’s very brief. This lifespan goes by like that, too. When you get into thinking, “Oh but I have a long life,” then think that we’ve had lives since beginningless time. We tend to think maybe seventy or eighty years is a long life, but we’ve been born since beginningless time, and all those previous lives, day by day, day by day, have all ceased. Can we remember any of them? Can we call any of them back? Even when we were born in the god realm with life spans that are for eons, can any of that come back? Even if you have a lifespan of one eon, eventually it’s going to end. By the time it ends, it’s like you never even had it. 

Just as the shepherd with his staff 
Drives his flock into the fold,
So old age and sickness
Deliver people to the Lord of Death.

The Lord of Death is figurative. There’s not an actual Lord of Death. But aging and sickness draws us ever closer to death. 

The ‘Extensive Sport Sutra’ says:
The three realms are as fleeting as autumn clouds, 
The birth and death of beings unfolds like a play, 
Their lives, rushing away like a mountain stream, 
Vanish like a flash of lightning.

This is true, isn’t it? “Birth and death of beings unfolds, like a play”: when a play is being performed, it seems like all the characters are real, and whatever’s happening is so important. You wish that you could stop the play in the middle and have the characters go back and re-enact it. But you can’t; it’s finished, like a flash of lightning. It’s there and it’s gone; you can’t get it back. Every moment is like that. Every moment, we’re hanging out, doing nothing, then it’s gone. Every moment we’re chitchatting, saying nothing important, then it’s gone. Every moment we spend complaining, now it’s gone. Every moment we spend making excuses, it’s gone. So it’s really something to seriously think about. 

We have limited time to practice the Dharma

The third point under the inevitability of death says:

The way to think about the certainty of death and the rarity to be able to practice the Dharma in this life is as follows. The ‘Sutra on Entering into the Womb’ says: Half our lives are spent asleep.

We’re going to say, “Well, not half. I don’t sleep twelve hours a day, maybe only a third of my life. I sleep eight hours a day not twelve.” Whether it’s a third or a half doesn’t really matter. Think about that: a third of my life is spent unconscious in bed, with my mind doing nothing useful at all. It’s astounding, isn’t it? It means that even if you live until you’re seventy-five years old or ninety years old, then you’ve spent between thirty and forty-five years sleeping unconsciously. Isn’t it shocking when you think about it? Thirty to forty-five years totally gone, just sleeping—a third to a half of your life sleeping. 

The old version says:

Until we are ten we are children, and after twenty we grow old. 

It should say, “Until we are 40 we are children.” How much Dharma practice do you do when you’re a kid? Do you even care about Dharma when you’re a kid? No! What are you interested in when you’re a kid? The main thing is having a good time. We’re focused on getting what I want and having a good time. So, all those years when we were a kid are gone. Do a little review and reflect on how much virtue you created during, the first twenty years of your life. Go through the ten negative actions and the ten virtuous actions and take inventory. How many times did I do this one? How many times did I do another one? Can we find many actions that we did as kids and teenagers that created virtue? Going round with our friends, dating, doing all sorts of things that you do as a teenager. Did we create any virtue during that whole time? No!

Then, there are hundreds of other obstructions.

That’s true even when you’re an adult. So, childhood is mostly wasted because kids aren’t interested in Dharma at all, generally. Then for adults there are hundreds of other obstructions, aren’t there? You start your own family. You have a career to support your family and then you’ve got to raise your kids. You have to maintain your relationship with your spouse; you have to have a social life. You have different obligations to your family and your partner’s family. You have to go to PTA meetings. You have to work overtime because that’s how you get the money so your kids can go to a therapist because they feel unloved because you’re never around, and it goes on and on and on like this, doesn’t it? 

Time is used up because most of us met Dharma when we were adults and we think, “I can practice Dharma.” Then you look in your regular life. How much time do you set aside for Dharma practice? Even here at the Abbey where we have such incredible conditions, how many hours a day do we really keep our mind in the Dharma? How many hours in the day are we sitting, saying, “Those rocks that we shoveled today were so heavy. Venerable Joyous Effort made me carry so many rocks, it was like a prison camp.”

Audience: We were actually looking at it very differently today!

VTC: Well, I didn’t hear everybody jumping for joy as they were shoveling the rocks today.

Audience: I tried to jump, but they were so heavy I couldn’t get up.

VTC: So, look at how much time we have, and how much of that time do we really put our mind in the Dharma and have a good motivation? 

[There are so many other] hundreds of obstructions, misery, lamentation, suffering, depression, even quarrelling and various physical ailments, which limit our opportunity to practice.

It’s totally amazing. I’m tempted to say if the Abbey had a dollar for every time somebody registered for a retreat and later decided they couldn’t come, we would be able to fund Gotami house. You have a really good intention and you sign up for a retreat, then something happens and you can’t come. Something happens either in your circumstances or in your mind. We see it so much here at the Abbey. People sign up and say, “I’m definitely going to come for the retreat, and I’m definitely coming to the Abbey.” How many people never make it? Something comes up in their life. Either something major or something in their mind comes up. The resistance factor comes in, and they can’t come. It happens so often. You plan to go to a Dharma teaching in the city, and you can’t make it. How many people maybe even plan to listen tonight to the teachings and aren’t doing it? It’s because we have all these obstacles that come up. So, there’s not really that much time. 

Geshe Che-ka-wa said: ‘Out of sixty years, if you take away the time spent on livelihood and sickness, there is barely five years directed towards the Dharma.’

Normally we spend a long time on livelihood, don’t we? People nowadays spend a third of their life sleeping, and then eight to twelve hours a day working. So, they spend a third to half of their life working. Then you have commuting, shopping for groceries, eating, and showering. Time goes by very quickly. 

Birth Stories says, ‘Alas, the world is filled with disturbing emotions, an unreliable and unpleasant place to live. The glory of this water lily will soon become but a memory, such is the fate of all beings. It is surprising that people still do not feel afraid even though all roads are blocked by the Lord of Death. They are thoughtlessly lost in enjoyment. The destructive enemies, disease, old age and death, are powerful and unavoidable. When they are certainly heading for danger in future lives, how can the wise enjoy any happiness?’

I find it very potent when it says, “All roads are blocked by the Lord of Death.” Whatever you do in your life, you’re always going to come to death at the end of it. There’s no choice you can make where you’re not going to die at the end. All the happiness that we have now becomes a memory, like the water lily. This life is compared to a water lily. It’s beautiful now, then it becomes like a memory. It fades, and it’s gone. We feel that our life is so permanent and so important, but in a hundred years, all of us are going to be gone. A hundred years isn’t so long. Women haven’t even had the power to vote in this country for a hundred years. A hundred years is not so long, and in that time, we’re all going to be gone. 

Then we think, “My memory will live on.” Will it? Is our memory going to live on? Are other people going to spend their whole lives thinking about us? Or you say, “I have a child. My child will live on, so part of me will live on.” Are you and your child the same being? No! Or you say, “My name will live on.” Well, we have the deeds to the property so we know the names of the previous owners. Does that help them? Most of them are in their next lives. Our name lives on—in a couple hundred years that our name is even going to be remembered? Two hundred years is not very long when you consider infinite lifetimes. 

We’ve been so famous in previous lives, and have any of the names that we’ve had in previous lives lived afterwards? Maybe if you were Napoleon. But you don’t even know if you were Napoleon to be able to say now, “My name lived on.” So, it’s gone. What is a name? Who cares about our name? We think, “Well, they’ll write a biography about me.” Somebody’s going to spend their whole life studying my whole life? Do I really want somebody to do that? Do I want to be born and be so interested in this life that I spend my future life studying this life? I’m writing a book about this life, and then I’m famous in my future life for writing a book about this life—and then dying from that life, and then being born again and studying the previous life then, who was the great author who wrote the book about this life? It’s a nightmare, isn’t it? 

I remember when I was traveling through China some years ago, we were in this village, and we stopped at a little place to get tea. It had a dirt floor, and they had pictures on the side of the wall of the Gang of Four. This was after the time when the Gang of Four was disgraced. But there were pictures of them there. I was with two of my Chinese friends, and they made the comment that here are these people’s pictures, they’re still all around China, but all these four people are probably all in the hell realm right now. So, what good does it do to have your picture plastered all  around? People write about you in history books, but you’re in the hell realm. Some very famous political leaders have the karma of many people’s deaths on their mindstream. That’s not going to bring a good life. Their pictures may be there, plastered across the wall so when somebody walks in the room they see it, but so what? 

We were in Missoula a couple of weeks ago at the Chamber of Commerce, and in the room there were all the pictures of the previous directors of the Missoula Chamber of Commerce. The walls were filled with the pictures of all these people from the 1900’s, and we come in there and look at the pictures. What does it do for those people? 

Audience: You laugh at their mustaches.

VTC: Yes, you laugh at their mustache. Does it do anything? All those people who have been director and they’ve died. Even though the pictures are hanging up in the Missoula Chamber of Commerce, does it help them in their future lives? No! 

So, when it says here “How can the wise enjoy happiness,” what it means is that when everything we’re doing is so transitory and disintegrating moment by moment, how can we just kind of sit back and enjoy worldly pleasures that are also disintegrating moment-by-moment and think that we’re going to have something to show for it? Take, for example a scrapbook or a photo album: who in the world is going to look at it? We might think, “Well, my grandchildren will look at my photo album.” Is that going to make you happy when you’re reborn in another life, having wasted this life? Do you know that your grandchildren are even going to look at the photo album? As if they have lots of time to do that—they’re too busy on MySpace and Facebook.

The ‘Letter to King Kanika’ says:
The Lord of Death is merciless,
He kills a skillful person for no purpose.
When death is so fast approaching,
What wise person can live at ease?

Why do we just kind of live confidently like it’s no big deal that we die? 

Eventually the invincible warrior
Will shoot his unbearable arrows,
Before the inevitable occurs
It is in our interest to be prepared.

Eventually, we’re going to die. Knowing that, it’s in our best interest to be prepared. We spend lots of time preparing for old age, and we have no certainty that we’re going to live that long. How much time do we spend preparing for our future life? And yet, that’s certain. It’s amazing, isn’t it? We set up our 401, our IRA, and all these things for retirement. We’re not even sure we’re going to live that long. And yet, do we spend time creating virtue and purifying non virtue for future lives, which are certain? Do we spend any time dedicating the merit that we create? What do we usually pray for: “May there be good weather so the workers can work tomorrow.” Is that what we should be praying for? 

Our lifespan is not fixed   

The second major point is the uncertainty of the time of death.

The Contemplation of the uncertainty of the time of death is also divided into three. Firstly, consider that the lifespan of the people of this world is uncertain, whereas the lifespan of the beings of the northern world is definite. In some other worlds too the lifespan is uncertain, but in most of them it is definite, yet that of the beings of this southern world is extremely uncertain. ‘Treasury of Knowledge’ says, ‘Ultimately [the lifespan of] this [world] is uncertain [whether the average] age is ten years or immeasurable.’

In the traditional Buddhist cosmology, we live in the southern continent, and the lifespan of human beings here is uncertain. There’s also the northern continent where the people also live a certain fixed lifespan. So, in our case, the lifespan is unfixed, and what I find amazing about this point is—and one way to start out thinking it is—that people die at different ages. Sit down and think and make a list of the people that you have known who have died and how old they were. You can include people that you’ve heard of from your friends or are somehow related to personally. How old were they when they died? We just heard when Kevin was talking today, about the person he visited at hospice who had a son who was nine years old who died—this kind of thing happens, think about that. 

Another point that I think is very powerful is that death always comes when we’re in the middle of something. We always feel that death can’t come now because I’m in the middle of doing something. If it’s going to come, it’ll come after I’ve finished this. But if you look, every time somebody dies, they’re always in the middle of something. Say, for example, your mom died earlier this year. She was in the middle of lying in bed breathing in and out, and the breath stopped. People die in all sorts of incredible circumstances. People will be eating a dinner, and they’ll have a heart attack. 

When I was in Bodhgaya in 1998, there was one nun was at the stupa in the morning with a couple of other nuns doing Tara puja. She died under the Bodhi tree—suddenly, just like that. We’re always in the middle of doing something. You’re in the middle of eating a meal, and you get an aneurism or something like that, and you’re gone. Even people that have long lasting diseases are still always in the middle of doing something. We always think, “Well, I can’t die now because my life is vibrant, and I have all these projects, and people are depending on me.” The time of death is not certain, not certain at all. This is very interesting to think about.

When I first learned the Dharma, one of my friends was telling the story of her sister who was learning how to belly dance. This was back in the days when they had records. Her sister was practicing her belly dancing in one room, and her husband was in the other room. The sister was young, in her twenties. The husband heard the record get to the end, and it just kept scratching and scratching. He went in the room, and she was crumpled on the floor dead. I can’t remember what she died of, but she was completely healthy before that and in the middle of practicing her belly dancing. 

Last week, there was this incredible plane accident in Mexico. A government minister was in the plane when it crash-landed in the middle of Reforma, which is the main boulevard in Mexico City. Twelve people in the plane died. They were all in the middle of going somewhere. It’s just amazing the circumstances—people set out to go to work, but they have car accidents and don’t reach work. They set out to go on a holiday, have some kind of accident, and they don’t come back home. They go out to have a good time with their friends, something happens, and they don’t make it back. Again and again, we hear all sorts of amazing stories. 

It’s so amazing that we think, “Oh, that could never happen to me. It could never happen to anyone I know.” But it does, and it can. I find that it is very powerful to think that death comes, even when you are in the middle of doing something—and you’re always in the middle of doing something. When death is coming you can’t say, “Excuse me, I want to finish what I’m doing. We’re in the middle of building a monastic residence; I can’t die yet. Lord of Death, please come back.” You can’t do that. When it’s time to die, there’s no choice; we’re gone. 

‘Special Verses Collected by Topic’ says, ‘Of many people seen in the morning, Some will not be seen in the afternoon.’

People who were alive this morning will be gone by the afternoon. 

‘And of the many seen in the afternoon, Some will not be seen the next morning.’

That’s very true, isn’t it? 

And: ‘Since many men and women 
Have died in the prime of life, 
What guarantee is there that this one 
Will not die because he is young.’

We know this at the Abbey because we get so many requests from people to pray and make dedications for their loved ones. I remember one request we got last year from one of Kat’s friends. Their child was thirteen or fourteen years old and had been skateboarding. Something happened and the teen died—it wasn’t an accident. It was something in the body that happened suddenly and the child was gone. Even very young people can die.

One time when I was at the dentist and I was talking with the hygienist, she said that her son was in a drunk-driving accident. He was still alive, but he could have easily been dead. I talked to another woman once, and she told me about a horrible situation where her son was driving under the influence. He got into an accident and was on life-support, and the parents had to make the determination to take their child off life-support. The father had been a drinker and had proudly collected all of his wine bottles and beer bottles and everything. The son started drinking because the father drank, and the father came home, without knowing that his influence had something to do with his son’s death, to his proud collection of wine bottles. It’s tragic. 

We think that we’re going to live forever. There was one young woman who helped us in Singapore, during one of my public talks, and she came and helped us and made all sorts of small things to sell to benefit of the Abbey. By the next year, she had died of dengue fever. She was in her thirties. It doesn’t matter how old you are or what you’re in the middle of doing, you can die. 

Some die in the womb
And some immediately [after] they’re born. 
Some die when they can crawl 
And some die when they’ve started to walk. 
Some die when they’re old 
Some are young and in the prime of life. 
Everyone passes away by turn 
Like the dropping of ripened fruit. 

Some of us may even have had brothers and sisters or nieces and nephews that never made it out of the womb. I do. So, remember that it doesn’t matter how old you are, death can happen at any time.

Secondly, consider how many factors lead to death, while the conditions for life are few.

We always feel that conditions for living are many, and it’s easy to stay alive. But if you think about it, it’s actually very hard to stay alive. You have to make so much effort to stay alive whereas you don’t have to make any effort at all to die. Think of how many of our daily activities require us to exert effort in order to stay alive. We have to eat. To eat, we have to gather food, which means to gather money, support, or to grow our food. Then you have to protect the body because if it gets too cold, it dies. If it gets too hot, it dies. So, you have to have clothes, then you have to have shelter, and then the body gets sick, so you have to have medicine. 

This afternoon, we were all out carrying rocks, making the driveway. Why? It’s to protect this body, because otherwise, you walk in the driveway, and you could slip. When the driveway ices over, it becomes very dangerous, and you could slip. We have to exert a lot of effort to keep this body alive and to keep it safe. Whereas, if we did nothing, the natural course of the body would be to die of starvation and dehydration. If you think about it, a tremendous amount of time and energy goes into keeping this body alive. This feeling we have that it’s easy to stay alive is not a very accurate feeling. Actually, it’s quite strenuous to stay alive. 

There’s a lot to think about in what was just presented. Really think about it and make examples from your life. I remember when I was first learning the death meditation, in my early years of Dharma practice. I was living in Dharamsala, and there was a person there who had a three-year old son. I used to look at him and think, “He’s only three years old but he, too, is going to die.” We don’t know if he’s going to die when he’s three, or when he’s thirty, or when he’s ninety. Really think about that. 

Think about the people we know, and instead of thinking they’re all going to be around forever, full of life and doing stuff, remember that they’re all going to die. Think about going to their funerals. What  is it going to be like, and how are you going to feel? Think of your own funeral and everybody coming and the fact that you won’t even be there. That’s the one time when they’re all going to, out of obligation, say nice things about you, and you’re not even going to be there. It’s quite sobering. 

It’s very important that we remember that the purpose of doing this meditation is not to develop panic and fear about death. The purpose of doing this meditation is to make us see that Dharma practice is extremely valuable. Our life has great meaning in that we can practice the Dharma, and therefore, we should practice. We should practice it now, and we should practice it purely so as to take the best advantage of our present situation. That’s the purpose of meditating on death.