Mindfulness of Death (2)

Tonight, we’ll continue the discussion of mindfulness of death. We’ll start with the conclusion of the story of Raṭṭhapāla and King Koravya. You may remember that there were four Dhamma summaries that Raṭṭhapāla said inspired his ordination, and the fourth summary was, “The world is lacking, insatiable, a slave to craving.”

The king didn’t like being called a slave, so he asked Raṭṭhapāla, “What do you mean?” Raṭṭhapāla asked him, “Do you already rule over a prosperous country?” The king said, “Yes.” Raṭṭhapāla asked him, “Suppose a trustworthy person were to come from the east and say there’s a kingdom to the east with lots of wealth for the taking, and with your army, you could conquer it. Would you try to conquer it?” The king replied, “Sure.”

Here he is, 80 years old, he can’t put his foot in the right place, he’s been talking about how he can’t share out his pain of his illness with others and that he can’t take anything material with him when he goes, and yet he says, “Sure, I’d try to conquer another country.”

Raṭṭhapāla pushed him further: “Suppose another man were to come from the south with the same news. Would you try to conquer that country, too?” The king said, “Yes.” “How about a man from the west?” “Yes.” “How about someone from the north?” “Of course.” “How about someone from the other side of the ocean?” “Of course.” That’s where Raṭṭhapāla concluded, “This is what I mean when I say, ‘You’re a slave to craving.’”

This is what we have to watch out for. Even though we can think about inconstancy, stress, and not-self, there are times when we still crave to conquer something more, even on the basis of hearsay. This shows the power of craving, and also its blindness. Remember the Buddha’s image of the fire going from one house to another as it clings to the wind. The new house stands for the new destination, the fire stands for being defined by your attachments, and the wind stands for craving. Wind is blind. It tends to go wherever it’s pushed or pulled.

Last night we talked about building a good house next door. Tonight we’ll talk about getting some control over the wind. Going with your craving may sound good—you go where you want to go—but as we noted on the second night of the retreat, it’s still pretty risky.

First of all, there’s the desperation at the moment of death as you’re forced to leave the body: You’re willing to go anywhere. Sometimes because of your past bad kamma, there are no good options available, and you’re forced to take one of the bad options available. Remember also that craving can be very deluded. Your mind can change directions so quickly that even the Buddha couldn’t give an analogy for how fast it changes. You could be overcome with lust, anger, or any of the other mental hindrances at that point, which would lead you to a bad destination.

Now, people are usually not very lucid or alert at death, and you don’t want to drug the mind while passing on. Remember that wind and fire are blind. They don’t know where they’re going. Remember also the complexity of kamma. You may design a nice house with your actions throughout life, but a change of heart at death could delay the good results that should come from those good actions. Unskillful desires could take over, like a tornado coming between you and the good house, sucking you away someplace else. So you need to train your mind to remember not to abandon right view. This is one of the reasons why you train mindfulness: to keep right view in mind. This is also why the Buddha advises the monks to be mindful and alert at the moment of death.

You also need to train discernment so as not to fall for voices in the mind that would lead you astray. The main cause of craving is ignorance. There’s no discernible point in time when ignorance began, but we can discern what keeps it going here in the present moment: the five hindrances. This means that when you’re practicing overcoming the hindrances as you practice mindfulness and concentration, you’re not only learning how to have a better meditation now, but you’re also preparing yourself to deal with the hindrances that, at the time of death, could influence craving and get in the way of your earlier determination to go to a place where you can continue practicing the Dhamma. Also, in overcoming the hindrances, you’re getting practice in the three types of fabrication, so that you can be more skilled in talking to yourself in a helpful way and holding beneficial perceptions in mind at the moment of death.

So tonight, we’re going to talk about the hindrances. There are five of them in all: sensual desire, ill will, sloth and drowsiness, restlessness and anxiety, and doubt.

The Buddha gives two sets of similes to describe these five hindrances, similes that aid in visualizing these hindrances to yourself as genuine obstacles to the mind.

The first set connects with the recurring image in the Buddha’s teachings that Dhamma practice is like looking at yourself in a mirror to find blemishes so that you can remove them. In this case, you’re trying to see your reflection in a bowl of water, but the reflection is distorted and difficult to see for one of five reasons.

The second set of similes compares the hindrances to hardships.

These perceptions are helpful in reminding you to recognize the hindrances as hindrances, for all too often we side with them. For instance, when there’s sensual desire for something, you tend to agree that it really is nice. If you have ill will for somebody, you tend to agree that that person really deserves to suffer. If you side with the hindrances, they’ve won. But if you realize that they are actually getting in the way of your own progress, that’s half the battle right there.

The Buddha mentions four of these five hindrances explicitly in his discussion of what to guard against at the moment of death. The one he doesn’t mention explicitly, sloth and drowsiness, is implicit. To be drowsy gets in the way of being mindful.

Let’s look at what he has to say, taking in order what has to be cleared away first.

• We start with doubt. If you’re going to see the value of overcoming the hindrances and not just give into them, you have to have some conviction in the Buddha’s teachings on kamma and rebirth. Doubt is ended only at stream entry, but you can work on weakening it beforehand. After all, to practice all the way to stream entry, you have to take these teachings as working hypotheses. The Buddha can’t provide empirical proof for these teachings, but he does offer what can be called pragmatic proofs. One such proof is that you’re likely to behave skillfully if you accept the fact that skillful actions give positive results. Another is that the teachings open the possibility for higher attainments, such as the deathless, based on skillful actions, and this possibility would be closed off if you didn’t accept the teachings as possibly true. Because you don’t really know one way or the other whether there really is a deathless, it would be foolish to chose a view that closes off the possibility of attaining it.

The Buddha also presented these hypotheses as wise wagers. If there is rebirth and it is influenced by your actions, you will have kept yourself safe if you’ve acted on these teachings. If there is no rebirth or if there is rebirth but it’s not affected by your actions, you will at least have behaved honorably in a way that frees you from fear, hostility, and ill will in the present life.

To strengthen your conviction that his teachings on skillful action are true, the Buddha advises that you carefully observe skillful and unskillful mental states as they arise in your mind and influence your actions, noting the results that come from acting on them. In particular, he recommends developing thoughts of unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity—the four brahmavihāras—to observe how they have a good impact on your actions and on your life as a whole. As we’ll see, the Buddha also recommends these four brahmavihāras as antidotes to two other hindrances: anxiety over your past mistreatment of others, and any ill will you have toward people who have been or are mistreating you.

When you follow these instructions heedfully, the Buddha notes that there’s no reason to fear what will happen after death. This doesn’t totally overcome doubts about the true Dhamma, but you can gain a measure of reassurance if you pursue the brahmavihāras to the point where they give rise to strong states of concentration. That concentration can be the basis for the development of insight leading to dispassion, and dispassion is what can lead to the arising of the Dhamma eye—the attainment of stream entry. That would put an end to doubt about the true Dhamma once and for all.

• As for drowsiness, the Canon lists several antidotes for drowsiness when you’re doing concentration. The first one is, if you’re focusing on one topic and it’s putting you to sleep, change the topic to something more energizing. For example, you’re sitting here and the breath is so refined that you lose track of it and you fall asleep. In a case like that, if subtle breathing is putting you to sleep, breathe more heavily. I’ve personally found that if you’re focused on one spot and that’s putting you to sleep, focus on many different spots sequentially: three breaths here, three breaths here, three breaths there. Keep moving around. Or you can make the effort to focus on two or three spots at the same time—say, the middle of the head and the base of the spine—with a line connecting them. See if the extra effort wakes you up.

Or if the breath is putting you to sleep no matter how you breathe, you can change to a topic that involves more thinking. Some people like thinking about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha as a means of gaining inspiration. You can think about where all the bones are in your body: We’ll do that for the guided meditation tomorrow morning. Also, you can repeat Dhamma phrases to yourself, out loud if you want to, as long as you’re not disturbing somebody else. One of the recommendations I like is that you rub your limbs and you pull on your ears. If you’re not sick, you can get up and do walking meditation. Ajaan Chah recommends doing walking meditation backwards. If that doesn’t wake you up, then it’s a sign you really need to sleep.

The point is that you have to test the drowsiness to make sure the mind is not just playing games with you. You’ve probably had this experience: You’re sitting and meditating but you keep dozing off, so you tell yourself, “Okay, the meditation isn’t accomplishing anything tonight, I’m too sleepy.” Then you turn on the TV and you watch it until midnight. The mind has tricked you. You have to guard against that.

One problem if you have a long-term illness is that pain medication tends to make you drowsy. So it’s good to practice ahead of time on learning how not to be overcome by pain, so that you won’t need so much pain medication. What this means is that you do accept medication so that the pain doesn’t overcome your mind or deflect your focus, but if you can practice separating the pain from your awareness, you find that you can do without the pain medication. My teacher had a couple of students who had cancer and who were able to deal with the cancer without taking pain medication at all.

In one case, an old woman had cancer of the liver. The doctors did exploratory surgery and saw how far it had advanced. They knew that they could do nothing for her, so they sewed her up and offered her a lot of pain medication because they knew that cancer that far advanced would be very painful. But she said she didn’t want the medication. As it turned out, every morning, doctors and nurses would come into her room, and she would give a little Dhamma talk. She kept this up every day until she died. So, take heart that there are people who can do this. But, if the pain does overcome your mind so that you lose focus, go ahead and take the medicine.

• The next hindrance is restlessness and anxiety. The Canon says that this is the most important hindrance to overcome at death. It cites two cases. In one, the husband of a woman named Nakulamātār appears to be dying. She goes to teach him, saying, “Please put aside your worries about me and about the family. We can take care of ourselves and will continue to practice the Dhamma when you’re gone. Focus on what you have to do to take care of your mind.” It turns out that he doesn’t die—at least not then—so he goes to see the Buddha and tells him what his wife said to him. The Buddha responds, “You’re lucky that you have a wise wife like this who can be your counselor and teacher.”

In the second case, Mahānāma, who we’ve talked about before, asked the Buddha, “If someone is dying when you’re away, what kind of advice should I give him?” The Buddha said the first order of business is to get the person to put aside any worries he may have about his family, any worries about anything that would get in the way of his dying now. First you ask the person, “Are you worried about your family?” If the person says, “Yes,” then you tell him, “Look, you’re dying. There’s nothing you can do about your family right now. Focus on dying well, because no one else can do that for you.”

As for worries about what will happen after death, remember the Buddha says remorse is useless at this point. Recognize your past mistakes as mistakes, resolve not to repeat them, and then practice the brahmavihāras.

• The next hindrance is ill will. The Buddha gives the example of a soldier in battle. As he’s in the midst of trying to kill other beings, thinking, “May these beings die, may they come to a bad end,” and if he happens to get killed at that point, he’s not going to go to a good place. That’s a useful perception to keep in mind. Remember also the image that we gave you of the bandits cutting you up into little pieces with a two-handled saw. You maintain your goodwill toward them first and foremost, and that goodwill will act as your protection. This, too, is a good perception to call to mind when thoughts of ill will come into the mind.

• As for sensual desire, focus on the drawbacks of sensuality. The Buddha gives lots of different perceptions that you could use here. Sensuality, he says, is like a dog chewing on bones that have no meat. Here Ajaan Lee would add, the only taste it gets is the taste of its own saliva. Another image is of a hawk carrying off a piece of meat, and other hawks and raptors come up and fight it for the meat. As the Buddha says, “If it doesn’t let go of the meat, they’re going to kill it.” A third image is a bead of honey on the blade of a knife: Sensuality is sweet, but it has lots of dangers. The whole purpose of these images is to counteract the images we tend to have of sensual desire as being really cool and attractive. It puts you in a very dangerous position but doesn’t really offer you any nourishment.

The most extensive image that the Buddha gives of the drawbacks of sensuality concerns all the different conflicts that can happen because of sensual desire. He starts out with the family. He says sensuality is the reason why husbands fight with wives, wives fight with husbands, why parents fight with children, children fight with parents, why siblings fight with siblings. Then the conflict spreads out into society. This is why we have wars with all the attendant bloodshed, destruction, and loss of life: It’s all because of sensuality.

The Buddha also talks about thinking about the drawbacks of the human body. Every part of your body has illnesses associated with it. Your eyes have eye diseases; your ears have ear diseases; your stomach has stomach diseases. These contemplations help keep you from resenting whichever parts of your own body are subject to illness and causing you pain. It’s the nature of all bodies and of all body parts to be prone to illness. These thoughts also help to prevent you from aspiring to take on another body after death in hopes of continuing to enjoy the sensual pleasures to which having a body would give you access.

Now, there is something ironic in the Buddha’s recommendations about how to think about sensuality at death. Let’s continue with his advice to Mahānāma about how to talk to someone who’s dying. Remember he’s gotten this person to put aside any worries about the family. Then you ask the person, “Do you regret leaving human sensual pleasures?” and the person says, “Yes.” You remind the person that the first level of heaven has even more refined pleasures, so set your mind there. Once you’ve got him focused there, then tell him that the next level up has even better pleasures. In this way, you go up, up, up, up, up the heavenly hierarchy.

Finally you get to the Brahmās. On their level, the Brahmās are not engaged in sensuality, because they’re hooked on the pleasures of concentration. So let the person get his mind focused there. Then you remind him that even Brahmās suffer from self-identification and the trouble it entails. You get all these pleasures, but then you have to let go of them. When you fall from a high level of heaven, you fall hard. So you tell the person who’s dying to work on overcoming self-identification now.

This is where you focus on the perception of not-self with regard to the body and all aspects of the mind. In this way, the Buddha said, it’s possible even for lay people to gain full release even at death. We’ll have more to say on this topic tomorrow night.

You’ll notice how overcoming the hindrances also helps you overcome the four fears of death that we talked about yesterday. If you overcome doubt, that helps you overcome the fear from not knowing the true Dhamma. If you can overcome restlessness and anxiety, that helps overcome fear of punishment after death. If you can overcome sensual desire, that helps you overcome fear of losing sensuality and the human body.

Also notice the prominent role of the brahmavihāra practice in overcoming the hindrances. This is a good reason to practice the brahmavihāras, the sublime attitudes, on a daily basis.

Above all, notice that there are things you can do so that you can minimize suffering as death approaches and that you can make skillful choices that will have long-term benefits. This is why it’s not wise simply to accept death and go with the flow. Remember the flow is blindly carrying your fire to an unpredetermined house. This thought should give rise to compunction, and this provides the basis for the further strengths of persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, seeing them as well worth your while to develop.

You’ll also notice the role of all three fabrications in helping with these strengths, particularly using verbal fabrications and mental fabrications. You use perceptions to see that these hindrances are really not your friends. You can talk yourself out of letting yourself follow along with the hindrances and talk yourself into concentration, which is why you want to keep saying to yourself every night, “When death comes, there is something I can do about it. And I can practice mastering the necessary skills now.”