Mindfulness of Death

When the Buddha talks about the importance of being attentive and alert in the present moment, it’s usually in the context of mindfulness of death—the message being that you don’t know when death is going to come, but you do know there are duties you have to do in the present moment in order to prepare.

This is why mindfulness of death is basically an exercise in heedfulness, focusing you on the spot where you really need to work, which is right here, right now. That’s because the skills you’ll learn as you meditate are precisely the skills you’re going to need when you die.

This is a point the ajaans in Thailand make over and over again. As we meditate, we’re learning how to die well, to die mindfully, alert, and ardent. You don’t just let things run their course. A lot of things are going to come thronging into the mind at that time, and you have to be prepared to choose which things are really worth focusing on and which ones are not. Even though there’s not much strength left in the body, you’ll have to muster as much strength in the mind as you can, because you’ll be making choices, sometimes difficult ones. You want to have as much mindfulness with you as you can.

Some people say, “How can breath meditation help you when you’re dying, because the precise thing you’ve been focusing on is going to be leaving you at that point?”

Well, as you focus on the breath, you’re not seeing only the breath. You’re seeing the different processes of fabrication of the mind: verbal and mental, as well as bodily. The Buddha makes this point in his sixteen steps.

The breath itself is bodily fabrication. That’s going to be very large in your awareness at that point. The breath is the only thing that’s going to keep between you and the actual fact of dying. You’re going to be focused quite strongly there, so it’s good to have other good things right there next to the breath, memories right next to the breath, of what you should do when you stay with the breath. You engage in skillful mental fabrication, i.e., you choose the right feelings to focus on, to whatever extent you can create a sense of well-being. If not in the body, try to create it in the mind. Focus there.

Whatever perceptions are going to be helpful, you focus there. Keep in mind the perception that you’re making some important choices, so you don’t want to drift off.

If you do find that you’re awfully sleepy and drowsy, remember other good topics as well, like goodwill. Remember that image the Buddha gives of the bandits cutting you up. At the moment of death, you want to make sure that you have no ill will for anyone. So if the breath is hard to focus on, try to think thoughts of goodwill as best you can. The fact that these tendencies, these habits, are right next to the breath makes them very present.

Then there’s verbal fabrication. The Buddha doesn’t mention verbal fabrication in his sixteen steps, but the examples he gives of telling yourself to breathe in and out focused on pleasure, focused on rapture, focused on mental fabrication, “I will breathe this way. I will breathe that way”: Those are examples of verbal fabrication, examples of how you should be thinking.

Like breathing in and out focused on inconstancy: Remind yourself that all the pains coming at that point are inconstant. As Ajaan MahaBoowa told one of his students who had cancer, when there’s pain at death, ask yourself, “Which is going to end first? Your awareness or the pain?” The pain is going to end first. So don’t focus there. Focus on your awareness.

These are all skills that you can develop as you meditate.

So, recollection of death is meant to give you a sense of urgency and to develop heedfulness. As the Buddha said, heedfulness is the root of all skillful qualities. So primarily, recollection of death is an exercise in getting you back to your meditation. As you’re out under the trees, out on your own, you have to be the teacher who keeps the students in line. Make sure they do their homework, because the big test is going to come.

There are also times when it’s good to think about death more extensively, just to remember how huge a rupture it is, how huge an erasure it is, to die. So many of the things you remember in life are going to be totally wiped out.

You might stop and think of a relative who has passed away, especially one of a previous generation. When that relative passed away, how much was lost in terms of what you would have access to? They could remember things way back before you were born, things that were relevant to your family life, but now they’re gone, and there’s no way you can access that. They themselves can’t access that either. Who knows where they’ve gone? If they’ve gone to a bad place, they may be focused on one or two things. That’s how people get reborn as hungry ghosts. They’re focused on something negative, and everything else gets forgotten.

Even devas have trouble remembering things from the past because they’re so engrossed in what they’re doing and enjoying in the present moment. All those memories are gone. All the lessons you’ve learned, if you’re not really careful and mindful: They’re going to be gone.

You don’t even have to think about death: Think about things you remember from your past in this lifetime, but then you’ve actually gone back to check the details. You see that some of the details are there and some of them are totally different. Your memories are lying to you.

A few years ago, we went to Rocky Mountain National Park, camping outside of the park to the west, not far from the place where I’d camped when I was ten years old. It was our family’s first camping trip. I have a very strong memory of camping at the large campground near Grand Lake. So one day we drove down there to check it out, and the details were very different.

So even as you’re alive, your mind erases things. Part of it is necessary to how your mind functions. There are stories of people who have incredibly accurate memories, and it drives them crazy. True stories. There’s also that fictional story by Borges about a young man who couldn’t forget anything. He ends up shutting himself down in a basement where it’s dark so he has only a minimum of new stuff coming in. Too many memories can drive you crazy.

So you want to make sure that the things that get erased are unimportant things. Even with the things that don’t get erased, you’ve got to be very careful. This is why you have to be mindful of all the skills you’re going to need, which are all the skills you need right now to get the mind in a concentration, to get it focused, choosing what topic you want to focus on. That way, when bad things come up, you know how to say No to them. Get past them. Focus on things that are actually useful, helpful.

So stop and think every now and then about how much is lost at death. Have a very lively sense that there’s important work that has to be done before the good things are lost. Remember what the Buddha said about losing right view at death. You can do good things all your life, but if all of a sudden there’s a change of heart at the last moment, it’s as if you don’t believe in good things anymore.

After all, you’re sick, you’re in pain. You say, “I don’t see that the good things I’ve done in the past are any help.” That moment of wrong view can take you way down. It doesn’t totally erase the good results of your good actions, but it can certainly delay them.

You don’t want that. You want to maintain right view all the way through. So stop and think about how dangerous it is to die, not only in the sense of the survival of the body. That’s going to happen anyhow. The body’s going to have to go. But you want to make sure that your goodness survives, your wisdom survives. Your mindfulness, your alertness, your ardency: You want them to be right there. You want them to be habitual. The more they become habitual, the more likely you’ll be able to draw on them.

So as you’re sitting down under the trees, walking through the orchard, you don’t want to be just sitting, just walking. You want to be developing good qualities in the mind.

If you find yourself slipping off, remind yourself: “Who knows when death will come?” The people who died today: Very few of them had any sense that they were going to die today. It came. Someday, the day is going to come for you, so you want to be ready.