If you don’t remember death, you don’t remember Dharma, so why not take the opportunity to practice and enjoy life with Dharma? This is the safest life, now and in the future.
The categories of teachings are endless. The entrance doors to the vehicles are innumerable. The words to be explained are extensive. Even if you succeed in memorizing millions of volumes of dharma scriptures, unless you are able to practice the essential meaning, you can never be sure that they will help you at the moment of death. And even if your education in studies and reflections is boundless, unless you succeed in being in harmony with the dharma, you will not tame your enemy, negative emotions. Even if you succeed in being the owner of a trillion worlds, unless you can curtail your plans from within with the feeling that nothing more is needed, you will never know contentment. Unless you prepare yourself with the attitude that your death could happen at any time, you cannot achieve the great aim that is surely needed at the time of death.
[𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵’𝘴 𝘜𝘵𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘕𝘦𝘦𝘥 by Pabongka Rinpoche] is the very heart advice or practice from deep inside the heart. This advice about death is something to think about seriously from the bottom of our heart. We are not just doing research on death, like for a university thesis. Here we are seriously thinking about our own death from the bottom of our heart.
We are looking at our own death, mainly to persuade us to practice Dharma; so that we don’t put off our practice for many months or many years or leave it for future lives. We think, “First I will do this (the works for this life), then I will do that later.” In this way, we put off Dharma practice for many months or years.
It persuades us to practice immediately, so in that way, we do the practice and don’t waste our life. Otherwise, there’s the risk that not only will we waste our life, but death might come first, before the practice. There’s the danger that even though we’re wishing and planning to practice, death might come before the practice. If we don’t hurry up, death might come before the practice, and then we will miss out. I think that’s the main point.
Also, it is very useful to see other people dying, especially family members, friends or people that we know. It’s a great teaching, a great reminder to practice Dharma. Practicing Dharma is not so much chanting mantras or doing other external things. Here, seeing the death of people we know, of family members or even people we live with, really makes us look at our life seriously. Our entire life up until now has passed in distraction.
Of course, we recited prayers, chanted mantras and this and that; but the real practice of renunciation didn’t happen. The cutting of desire, of clinging to this life, didn’t happen. The actual practice of Dharma didn’t happen. Here it reminds us to look at our own life up to now, at how we spent it. We have done many activities, but we haven’t really given up the desire clinging to this life. Here it reminds us of that.
When we see even the deaths of others, of family members or people that we know, it brings our attention to the fact that in the past we haven’t seriously practiced. It reminds us that now we have to give up all that distraction or desire, which has no meaning at all. Now we really have to dedicate our life to serious practice, freeing ourselves from desire.
We should practice this continuously, day and night. Other than this, nothing else in life is meaningful. There’s nothing there that will be useful at the time of death. So, it reminds us to really pay attention to our life and to practice seriously. Here seriously has mainly to do with our mind, with the purity of our mind, with its being free from the desire clinging to this life.
So, it’s very useful to see others’ deaths, and, of course, to visualize our own death. Pabongka says that the most effective one is to visualize ourselves as dead, on the bed, and then visualize all the things that usually happen when someone dies. The members of our family will come and cry. Our body will then be put in a coffin and taken to the cemetery. Before that, our breathing will change, and we will know that we’re dying and that everything will have to be left: our family, all our possessions and even our body. Everything will have to be left, and our consciousness alone will go to the next life.
This is like the tantric practice of meditating on the three kayas, in which we meditate on the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya that we’re going to achieve in the future as having happened now. In that way, we purify ordinary death, intermediate state and rebirth, and then use them to achieve enlightenment, the result-time three kayas. So, this effective meditation on impermanence and death is a little like that. We visualize that the whole process that is going to happen later is happening now, and then see what happens to our mind.
However, the main point is to persuade us to practice Dharma.
“Dharma talks aren’t the truth. The true Dharma exists in the mind of the students as seeds and the Dharma talks are just like a little cloud that releases rain and causes the seeds in the mind of the practitioners to sprout and manifest.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh
We may pretend to be Buddhists, but if we do not have a wisdom point of view and the compassion that the Buddha Shakyamuni revealed again and again, then whatever Dharma acts we perform are just Dharma drama for the nihilist audience to senselessly gossip about during intermission.
Already numberless sentient beings, not only Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, have become enlightened. They were the same as us; they all had delusions, difficulties, problems, but they continuously put effort into developing their mind in the path from life to life, just as the Buddha had for eons.
We should plan in the same way, instead of thinking that by doing some meditation we will achieve enlightenment within a few years. Or after a one-month meditation course, we will become enlightened! At the end of his teachings to Tibetans, His Holiness the Dalai Lama specifically often advises Western students that we shouldn’t be shortsighted, thinking that we will achieve enlightenment after practicing for a very short time. We shouldn’t think like that; we must plan for many hundreds of lifetimes. I don’t remember what he said word-for-word, but it is something like if we plan to practice Dharma for a long time, if we put effort in for a long time, then it is possible to achieve enlightenment in a short time, without taking much time. But if we don’t have a plan like that, if we are shortsighted, thinking it is very easy and quick to have realizations and achieve enlightenment, that becomes an obstacle. When we can’t, we get disappointed and we give up. This is more or less what His Holiness said.
Therefore, as Geshe Sopa explained, if the rock is heavy but we push it up little by little, by continuing every day, after some time we will be able to reach the top of the hill.
The essence of the Buddha’s Dharma has always been the same through infinite time and space. No matter what plot of existence it is, no matter what language it is taught, and no matter the culture that stops it, the essence has always been and always will be wisdom (the awakening state) and compassion.
~Chamtrul Rinpoche
If your intention is not clear, if you aren’t really weary of samsara, then going on retreat is just another game. Even if you stayed for your whole life, you would just be wasting time and you would not learn anything. Many animals spend their lives in caves or in the ground like groundhogs, just eating and shitting without practicing Dharma. The Buddha said that people who go on retreat without first understanding real Dharma have the solitude of a demon’s hook.
The same is true for those who understand Dharma but have no intention of benefiting sentient beings, just wanting to go from samsara’s suffering to samsara’s vacation. When people who have spent time in solitude without understanding come out of retreat, only hair, beards, and fingernails are longer; otherwise, everything is the same. When they come out, they have more ego than before and they boast about their accomplishments with saintly pride or siddha arrogance.
The British have this very romantic idea about ancient culture and wisdom, which is reflected in their academia. If an Englishman wants to study Buddhism, he begins by examining the root texts in original Pali or Sanskrit, and he studies the code of conduct Buddha prescribed for Indians twenty-five hundred years ago, and he feels loyal to that ancient atmosphere.
Many of us have these romantic notions, not realizing the contextual nature of these early rules.
When we see a serene Theravada monk begging in the streets of Mandalay at sunrise, it makes our day. But if the same smooth-shaven, maroon-robed man was seen begging for alms on Kensington High Street next to the Hare Krishnas, it would offend the sensibilities of the uptight British. Removed from his romantic setting, the monk is little better than a pest. My English friend seems to have forgotten that after Buddha offered these rules and regulations to his immediate sangha, he said the Vinaya will have to be determined by time and place. Aside from the four root vows — abstaining from sexual misconduct, stealing, killing a human being (born or unborn), and major deceit —, there are no rules that apply across the board. But Trungpa Rinpoche taught that you can be a Buddhist and still be a successful banker or entrepreneur. This was a huge contribution to modern Buddhadharma.
If Trungpa Rinpoche had manifested as a typical monk from Surmang — wearing robes, exuding serenity, begging alms, and behaving perfectly from a Vinaya point of view — at least he would have entertained those romantic, ancient morality–loving British. But would he have been able to reach all the others? Could he have inspired thousands of people to adopt the ancient Vinaya rules of shirtless, dinnerless monastics? It’s well and good to daydream about the glory days of shaved heads and wandering ascetics, but if the venue and the times have changed, the methods must also change.
It is hard to practice charity when one is poor.
It is hard to study the Way when occupying a position of great authority.
It is hard to surrender life at the approach of inevitable death.
It is hard to get an opportunity of reading the sutras.
It is hard to be born directly into Buddhist surroundings.
It is hard to bear lust and desire without yielding to them.
It is hard to see something attractive without desiring it.
It is hard to bear insult without making an angry reply.
It is hard to have power and not pay regard to it.
It is hard to come in contact with things and yet remain unaffected by them.
It is hard to study widely and investigate everything thoroughly.
It is hard to overcome selfishness and sloth.
It is hard to avoid making light without having studied the Way enough.
It is hard to keep the mind evenly balanced.
It is hard to refrain from defining things as being something or not being something.
It is hard to come into contact with clear perception of the Way.
It is hard to perceive one’s own nature and through such perception to study the Way.
It is hard to help others towards Enlightenment according to their various needs.
It is hard to see the end of the Way without being moved.
It is hard to discard successfully the shackles that bind us to the wheel of life and death as opportunities present themselves.”
(From: The Sutra of 42 Sections)
This Sutra is composed of Dharma spoken by the Buddha. When the Buddha disciples were compiling the Sutra Treasury , they selected individual passages and combined them into one work.
You could also say it a Buddha-anthology . The Buddha’s sayings were put together to make one sutra. The forty-two sections are the forty-two selections of the Sutra. This was the first sutra to be transmitted to China.
The two Honorable Elders Kashyapa-matanga and Gobharana brought this Sutra to China from India on a white horse (around a.d. 67). White Horse Monastery was established in Loyang by Han Ming Di , the emperor of that time.
All of the external circumstances and the rude and difficult people we meet, instead of getting angry, upset or frustrated; we see that we can take them all and use them on the path in a way that actually invigorates and strengthens us, rather than defeats us.
It’s all very practical advice, and that’s why I talk a lot about how to make our daily life into Dharma practice, otherwise, it’s easy to feel hopeless and helpless.
This is what the dharma practitioner needs to understand — that the whole of samsara, or nirvana, is as essenceless or untrue as that film.
Until we see this, it will be very difficult for dharma to sink into our minds. We will always be carried away, seduced by the glory and beauty of this world, by all the apparent success and failure. However, once we see, even just for a second, that these appearances are not real, we will gain a certain confidence.
This doesn’t mean that we have to rush off to Nepal or India and become a monk or nun. We can still keep our jobs, wear a suit and tie and go with our briefcase to the office every day. We can still fall in love, offer our loved one flowers, exchange rings. But somewhere inside there is something telling us that all this is essenceless.
It is very important to have such a glimpse. If we have even one glimpse in the whole of our life, we can be happy for the rest of the time with just the memory of that glimpse.
Some people come and ask me whether a person who’s come to realize impermanence, suffering and non-self would want to give up doing things altogether and become lazy. I tell them that’s not so. On the contrary, one becomes more diligent, but does things without attachment, performing only actions that are beneficial.
And then they say, “If everyone practiced the Dhamma, nothing could be done in the world, and there’d be no progress. If everyone became enlightened, nobody would have children, and humanity would become extinct.” But this is like an earthworm worrying that it would run out of dirt, isn’t it?
We should be quite gentle in judging ourselves and remember that the habits we are fighting against come from beginningless time and are very strong. So from time to time there will be some backsliding — though in the long run there is progress and improvement. Furthermore, remember that even having entered the gate of the Dharma, having the intention to reduce our disturbing emotions, or being concerned about disturbing emotions is amazing because most people involved in samsara never even think about this.
– Thrangu Rinpoche
from the book “Luminous Clarity: A Commentary on Karma Chagme’s Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen”
“Do what is right. Live in your heart. Seek the highest consciousness. Let go of winning and losing. Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate. Look within. Be still. Free from fear and attachment, know the sweet joy of the way.”
You never think of old age coming,
But it approaches slow and sure
Like a seed growing underground.
When you are strong and healthy
You never think of sickness coming,
But it descends with sudden force
Like a stroke of lightning.
When involved in worldly things
You never think of death’s approach.
Quick it comes like thunder
Crashing round your head.
Sickness, old age and death
Ever meet each other
As do hands and mouth.
Waiting for his prey in ambush,
Yama is ready for his victim,
When disaster catches him.
Sparrows fly in single file. Like them,
Life, Death and Bardo follow one another.
Never apart from you
Are these three ‘visitors’.
Thus thinking, fear you not
Your sinful deeds?
Like strong arrows in ambush waiting,
Rebirth in Hell, as Hungry Ghost, or Beast
Is (the destiny) waiting to catch you.
If once into their traps you fall,
Hard will you find it to escape.
Do you not fear the miseries
You experienced in the past?
Surely you will feel much pain
If misfortunes attack you?
The woes of life succeed one another
Like the sea’s incessant waves
One has barely passed, before
The next one takes its place.
Until you are liberated, pain
and pleasure come and go at random
Like passers-by encountered in the street.
Pleasures are precarious,
Like bathing in the sun;
Transient, too, as snowstorms
Which come without warning.
Remembering these things,
Why not practice the Dharma?
– Milarepa
from the book “The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, Vol. 2”
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