Death Is The Doorway To Life — Three Ways To Prepare (Part 1 of 3)

Approximately 100 million people die every year.That's a lot of people. Death is a common occurrence, but we hide from death's reality in many ways. In third world countries, there is no funeral director that takes care of everything and neatly makes up the body as if it is asleep. In third world countries, the body is usually cremated in front of the entire village. n There is an interesting story (taken from a talk by Ajahn Jagaro, the abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat in Thailand when Janet and I trained there as a Buddhist monk and nun in 1981) ". . . about Kisagotami, a woman who lived during the time of the Buddha. She had a baby son of whom she was very proud. Now this little boy got very sick and died. Kisagotami was so disturbed, so distressed by his death that she became a little mentally unhinged. She could not accept the fact that her baby had died. "No, it's only sick, I need medicine. I have to have medicine to cure my baby." She went from place to place, from home to home, from friend to friend, but no one could help her. They told her the baby was dead, but she couldn't accept this and kept asking for medicine. "Finally she went to the Buddha because she had heard that he was a spiritual teacher with great psychic powers. She asked the Buddha, "Please give me some medicine to cure my baby." The Buddha said, "Put the baby down here, I will cure your baby provided you can get a few mustard seeds for me. But you must get these mustard seeds from a home where there has never been a death. "So she went running off into the town and went to the first house, where she asked for mustard seeds. Being a common commodity of little value they were promptly offered to her. As she was about to accept the mustard seeds she asked, "Has there ever been a death in this home?" Of course the reply was, "Oh yes, only a few months ago so-and-so died." She went from home to home and the experience was exactly the same. This gradually had an effect on her. "When she came towards the end of the village, realisation finally pushed through her demented state of mind: death is everywhere; in every home there is death. Death is part of life. She was able to recognise this fact and come to terms with reality. She went back to the Buddha who asked her, "Kisagotami, did you get the mustard seeds?" "Enough of mustard seeds, Lord," she replied, and took her baby and cremated it. She came back and became a Buddhist nun and not long afterwards became enlightened." Death, especially one's own, should be contemplated daily. Facing death and discussing death conquers fear, hiding from death empowers it. But we usually avoid the subject. We thrive on life, pleasure, happiness, fun, etc., and anyone mentioning death is seen as morbid, out of step with culture. We say that we are not afraid of death, but the reality is that when we come face to face with it staring into a coffin of our loved one, death can have a tremendous impact. A Buddhist monk, on the other hand, thinks about death with every spoonful of food, sometimes with every in breath and every out breath. I have had many unusual words appear in my mind during meditation. St. John of the Cross calls them: "substantial words" One phrase I remember is, "The only difference between life and death is the breath." That's it! Nothing to be afraid of. But if you are not ready for death, financially, psychologically, spiritually, then your last thoughts might be worrying about temporal things; your wife, children or property; or whether you will continue after death; or if you have been good enough not to go to hell. And these thoughts will affect your destiny. You should be free to go on without lingering attachments. One lingering attachment is your "self." That is the 800 # gorilla. But you can't take yourself with you. You can't take anything other than your karma; not your family, not your body, not your mind, nothing. You have to get ready for death, just as you get ready to compete in a boxing match. You can't wait until the day of the fight and decide to train. To get ready for death means understanding that; what you believe is going to die, never existed in the first place, This is the correct attitude. (Self or ego is a contrived entity manufactured by thought and memory.) Death can come at any time, and the extent of your understanding and level of consciousness at the time of death will determine your destiny. To ignore death is to ignore life and the opportunity life presents regarding understanding life at profound levels. Ajahn Jagaro goes on to mention the three ways we should prepare for death: Being conscious of death, living consciously, and dying peacefully. nn1. Being conscious of death. "In Buddhist monasteries this (death) is considered so important that quite often skeletons are displayed in the meditation hall. In one monastery there was a monk who left instructions that after his death his body, fully robed and sitting in full lotus, was to be put in a glass case. There he sat slowly disintegrating. Written on the front of the glass case was: "I used to be like you; soon you will be like me." Now when you see that, it has quite a powerful impact. It's a fact you just can't escape. "The fact is that every single person is going to die. This is not a predictio I'm making through clairvoyant powers. It's just the inescapable fact that because you're born, you're going to die. All that remains to be known is the time: when is it going to happen? That's the unknown factor. The fact that you are going to die is not questionable, it is reality. "So we contemplate. When there is death it's good to come into contact with it. Someone who was living perhaps ten minutes ago is now dead. Yes, that's what's going to happen to me, too. Even if there is no body, no corpse in sight, one can do this just sitting quietly, just making that thought very clear in one's mind. "I am going to die. I am going to die and I am going to have to leave everything behind, every single thing, every mortal being is going to be left behind. "Now remember the purpose of this. It is to force the mind to come to terms with this reality. Quite often you will feel fear. There is still fear because you haven't accepted it yet. That's the purpose of the contemplation: to allow the fear to arise so that we can learn to transcend it, to get above this fear and to be able to acknowledge death without fear." nn(Next; The second way to prepare for death; Living Consciously) nn