Lam-rim 12: Six Benefits of Being Mindful of Death

(1) It Makes Us Act Very Meaningfully

The first benefit is that it makes us act very meaningfully. It puts us in the frame of mind of wanting not to waste time but, instead, to take the essence of our precious human lives. The essence of a precious human life is having the ability to further ourselves by creating the causes to have precious human lives in the future so that we can continue working toward liberation and enlightenment. The point here is that if we knew that tomorrow we were going to die, we would not spend today doing something meaningless and trivial. 

A good meditation exercise is to imagine that we are in a prison, a war, or something like that, and that we’re going to be executed tomorrow. How would we spend our last day if we had the freedom and ability to spend it in any way that we wished? Obviously, we wouldn’t spend it doing something meaningless and trivial. But here, of course, the point is that any day could be our last day. If we are mindful of that, we won’t spend our time doing meaningless, trivial things. 

So let’s spend five minutes or so imagining that this is our last day. If we know that we are going to be executed in the morning, how would we spend this day? Would we spend it doing something meaningless and trivial – however we might define meaningless and trivial? Obviously, what this meditation leads to as well is examining just how much of our day is spent doing meaningless and trivial things.

[meditation]

It’s very interesting to explore what we would do on our last day and what we would stop doing. Watching the news was the example that I was thinking of – how many times I distract myself during the day by checking the news. It would be totally meaningless and trivial if I were going to be executed tomorrow. I’m sure that we can all find many things that we engage in every day that, in view of death, would really be pointless.

(2) It Makes All Our Positive Actions Most Powerful and Effective

The second benefit of being mindful of death is that it makes all our positive actions most powerful and effective. If we were ever mindful that death could come at any moment, we would just naturally become unattached to all fleeting things, all the things that perish and go. Our actions wouldn’t be motivated by the three poisonous attitudes because we would see the futility of having disturbing attitudes toward things that we will just have to leave behind. 

If we were to die tomorrow, why would we get angry with somebody today? Why would we cling to somebody, be jealous, or be arrogant toward anybody? We will, in any case, have to leave the persons who are the objects of our anger, attachment, and so on, so what’s the point? It would be the same with our possessions. We would just naturally become more generous with our wealth and possessions and would give away what we could to benefit others. We wouldn’t bother with things that, in the light of death, are trivial and don’t really matter. In this way, with our disturbing emotions of attachments, anger, and so on quieted down, our positive actions become purer and more effective for bringing about results that will be beneficial for our future lives. 

That’s the point: our positive actions become more powerful. We’ll put more time and effort into behaving in positive ways because we’ll see the futility of getting angry with somebody or clinging to our possessions. In other words, our Dharma practice will be much stronger and more effective if we are thinking of death and that this could be our last day. 

Let’s spend another five or more minutes on that.

[meditation]

I think it’s quite obvious that if we were mindful of death and of the fact that it could come at any time, we certainly would put more sincere effort into purification practices – Vajrasattva, for example. We certainly would have much more strength in our bodhichitta practices – “In my future lives, may I continue to work toward enlightenment to be able to benefit others. May I continue to study and learn from the greatest spiritual masters.” All our prayers and efforts would be tremendously stronger and more sincere. 

Then there are the next three points, which go together.

(3) It Is Important at the Beginning 

The first of these is that mindfulness of death is important at the beginning. Becoming aware of death can be a very strong incentive to start us on the path of Dharma. People who have had brain tumors, cancer, or who have been in car accidents or anything like that very often turn to some sort of spiritual practice. So, it can be very helpful for getting us into Dharma practice. I think many of us initially turned to the Dharma because of having had a tremendous amount of suffering in our lives. So, it’s very helpful at the beginning.

(4) It Is Important in the Middle

The next point is that mindfulness of death is important in the middle. If we have mindfulness of death and that it can come at any time, we’ll persevere in our study and practice. We won’t lose interest and give up in the middle. We’ll always be motivated to go on, remembering that our precious human lives can pass in an instant. 

Very often it happens that we reach a point where we no longer have a great deal of energy for practice. Our practice becomes dull and repetitive; it doesn’t have very much feeling to it and so on. Then some disaster happens in life, some serious suffering, and we’re drawn back again to a stronger Dharma practice. But if instead of waiting for something disastrous to happen we were to be mindful of death and that it could happen at any time, we could continue to reinvigorate our practice and go on. 

(5) It Is Important at the End

The third of these three points is that mindfulness of death is very helpful at the end of our study and practice. That awareness keeps our attention focused on the goal, whether it’s continuing to have precious human rebirths or achieving liberation or enlightenment. So, it’s helpful for bringing our practice to its intended goal. 

So, mindfulness of death is helpful in the beginning, helpful in the middle, and helpful to reach the end. What this emphasizes is that, even though awareness of death and impermanence comes fairly early on in the course of the lam-rim and is considered part of what’s known as the ordinary, or common, preliminaries – thinking of the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma and so on – it’s not something that we just leave for the beginning stages of Dharma practice. It’s very important to remain mindful of death and impermanence throughout all stages of our practice, especially when we find that our practice is becoming dull and routine. 

Let’s think about this for a few minutes.

It’s quite interesting how the death of a close friend or relative, especially the death of somebody our own age or younger, can remind us of the fact that death can come at any time.

[meditation]

(6) We Will Die Both Happily and Pleasantly

The last benefit of being mindful of death is that, at the time of our deaths, we’ll die both happily and pleasantly. In other words, we will have thought about it and prepared for it. We will have taken sufficient Dharma measures to be able to die feeling that we’ve made good use of our lives and that we have built up the causes that will enable us to continue on our spiritual paths in future lives. 

What’s said to be an indication of whether we’ve developed a correct realization of our imminent and inevitable deaths is our attitude toward death – namely, if our attitude is the opposite of that of ordinary persons who are concerned only with the transitory things of this life. Ordinary people tend to fear death. But if we have practiced successfully and have a correct understanding, what we would fear instead of death itself would be dying with the regret of having made a terrible waste of a precious human life. If we’ve been mindful of death all along, we won’t die with terrible regret. We’ll die, as it says, both happily and pleasantly. 

So let’s do that meditation.

[meditation]

These meditations on death are very sobering. But, obviously, they’re very important to do in order to have a realistic attitude toward death and to be able to deal with it. It’s a fact that it will happen, that it will happen to us, and that there’s no way of telling when.

Another very useful exercise is to take an inventory of the people who have been very close to us who have died, to think of each of them for a moment, and then to ask ourselves, “Am I any different from them? I could be next. What have I done to prepare for that?” 

Practicing What Can Bring Us the Most Benefit Now and at the Time of Death

Participant: Doing this meditation sometimes leaves me dissatisfied with my practice. I feel, “Wow, what’s going to happen if I’m dissatisfied with my practice when I’m dying?” 

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good point. I think there are two aspects to that. One is: What am I practicing? Is what I’m doing really the most useful thing to be doing at my level of practice and be of most help at the time of death? The other is: If my practice is the proper practice to be doing at my level, how well am I doing it, how sincerely? All Dharma practices, obviously, are proper; it’s just a matter of when a certain practice is most appropriate for us, considering the level we are at. 

I was actually thinking about this myself – how, at the time of death, it will seem so trivial whether or not I can visualize what each figure is holding in these complex tantric visualizations. It will seem so useless to have spent so much time working on that as opposed to working on bodhichitta. In all the Mahayana traditions, what’s always emphasized as the most important thing is bodhichitta – which is more than just love and compassion. Bodhichitta is in addition to love and compassion: I want to actually help everybody, and I want to reach the enlightened state of a Buddha so that I will actually be able to do that. I’m confident that with effort – and given the basis of my Buddha-nature – I can achieve that and will achieve it.

How could one possibly disagree with all the great masters who have said that this is the most important thing? What’s most important is not being able to visualize what that deity over there in that corner of the mandala is holding in their second right hand and what color their left face is. At a certain stage of our practice, sure, keeping in mind so many different details, what they represent, and so on is helpful for expanding our minds. If we’re going to simultaneously benefit all beings, we obviously will have to be able to keep a tremendous amount of information all together and keep it all straight. So, this is a practice that can help with that. But we may not be at a stage where that is a significant thing to focus all our energy on. 

This is why – though it’s a bit unorthodox – I always say to people who are doing, for instance, the ngondro (sngon-’gro) practices, the preliminary practices, or the refuge practice and prostration, to remember what the essence of it is. It’s not having a clear visualization of every figure on the refuge tree and what they’re holding in their hands: it’s the state of mind of putting a safe direction in our lives, working toward what Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha represent, showing them respect, being humble, etc. 

So, yes, thinking of death really makes us ask ourselves, “What am I doing in my practice? What am I focusing on? Is what I’m focusing on really essential and of most benefit to me at this stage of my practice?” Most of us don’t have custom-made Dharma practices given to us by a lama who knows us really well and who is qualified to suggest what we, personally, need to do at this time. We usually follow a standard menu, and in many ways, we have to check for ourselves what is of most benefit. 

Participant: How can I assess my meditation practice? I could be deluded. I could think it’s a good practice when it’s not.

Dr. Berzin: Well, if you have access to a teacher who is well qualified, you could check with a teacher. Or you could just follow the guidelines that are in almost all the texts. You know what the basic practices are and what the later practices are that are supported by those basics. 

If we haven’t fully integrated the basics, then, although we might put effort into learning about the more advanced things so as to gain some familiarity with the later stages of the path, we wouldn’t focus on those advanced things. We would focus on the basics. Without the basics, our practice is not very effective. Then we’re just pretending. It’s like a small child pretending to be an adult, putting on mommy or daddy’s shoes and walking around the house in them. For many of us, our Dharma practice is like that.

Participant: Doing these meditations forces you to be sincere about what your disturbing emotions are and to think about not wanting to have them at the time of death and taking them into future lives.

Dr. Berzin: Definitely. Also, if our disturbing emotions were to be even stronger at death than they are now, what type of rebirth would they engender? We don’t have to think of ghosts, hell creatures, and stuff like that. There are plenty of examples from the animal realm to think of: animals that are just totally aggressive, hunting and eating others; animals that just follow their sexual instincts, jumping on anything that comes their way; animals that don’t understand anything. 

Not Having Expectations Does Not Mean Not Having Goals

Participant: How does this kind of view fit in with not having any expectations of our Dharma practice?

Dr. Berzin: Not having expectations doesn’t mean that one doesn’t work toward a goal – the main goal being enlightenment. It doesn’t negate having bodhichitta. Not having expectations  basically means not making a solid, truly existent thing out of the results or out of the “me” that’s working toward a result – “I’ve got to get this,” as if the result were a reward, something hanging “out there” in the sky. Rather, it’s that “I’m going in this direction, and that’s enough.” 

What goes together with not having expectations is not having any worries of failure. That doesn’t mean that we’re sloppy in our practice; it’s just that we’re not paranoid all the time about whether our practice is going well. The nature of samsara is that it goes up and down. It goes up and down not just in terms of rebirth but also in terms of our moods and our practice. That’s just the way it is – so, nothing special. 

“Without having any hopes, expectations, or worries” is basically an instruction that can be applied on many levels of practice. On one level, it can be to stay focused in the present moment of our practice, to clear the mind of thoughts about the past, the future, and so on. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have a bodhichitta goal: we have that goal. On another level, it can be to maintain perseverance, in other words, to have the attitude that “I don’t care whether my practice is going well or not going well. I’m just going to continue” – which gives us the strength to go on. If we’re successful, we don’t think, “How wonderful I am. Now I don’t have to work any further.” On the other hand, if we have a setback, we don’t get discouraged: “It happens to everybody. Nothing special.”

Any vow, advice, or rule that we find in the Dharma is not established by its own power and from its own side. It’s very important to apply the voidness meditation to advice, to vows, and to ethical practices. If we think that these are established from their own sides and by their own power, we become very, very rigid: “This is the law, and it has to apply in every single situation, no matter what.” Then we become fanatics, fundamentalists. That’s not at all the way that the Dharma is intended to be practiced. 

We have to think in terms of dependent arising – that a particular piece of advice or vow arose for a certain purpose and because of a certain situation. The purpose might be to avoid distraction while we are in retreat trying to gain single-minded concentration. How we would then apply that advice in daily life would be dependent on the circumstances – so, again, dependent arising. 

Also, what always has to be taken into consideration is the motivation. The advice or rule that’s given could be different, depending on the motivation. So, there are certain exceptions, situations or times when it’s more appropriate not to follow what’s advised or specified – like when we’re sick or when we’re busy with something else. For example, if somebody asks for our help with something that’s trivial and we are involved with doing something that is going to be of benefit to many others, we can excuse ourselves. There are so many variables that are involved. Nothing – no piece of advice, vow, or rule – is established by its own power and from its own side. We need to be flexible and to use discriminating awareness when applying it.

So, this point about flexibility fits in well with the instruction not to have hopes or expectations in our practice. We find that instruction within the context of quieting your mind, for example. It’s within the context of mahamudra meditation, for example. It appears within the context of the practices for developing perseverance. 

Also, not having expectations means not having unrealistic expectations – for example, expecting that our computer is going to work forever and never going to crash. Therefore, we don’t take the preventive measure of backing up our data – a classic example. 

Participant: That doesn’t matter at the time of death.

Dr. Berzin: It doesn’t matter at the time of death? I’ll give you a very good example. My brother-in-law, who died some years ago, was a very intelligent and creative chemist, and he had developed a number of new methods for making various products and so on. One product I remember was for cleaning tunnel walls in a way that didn’t require that the whole tunnel be flooded with soapsuds and toxic fumes. That’s a serious thing – how in the world does one clean them? So he had developed that, as well as a number of other things, and had everything locked up in his computer. Everything was encoded with passwords. He never gave these passwords to anybody. Then he died. Nobody could even open up his computer, let alone get the passwords for these individual files. It was all thrown in the garbage, all lost.

Participant: That’s how it goes.

Dr. Berzin: That’s how it goes. But my point is that this could have been of benefit to a lot of people. There are certain things that are not of great benefit and certain things that are. How do we judge whether something is of great benefit or is trivial? That’s hard to say, but I think we know when we’re doing something that could be of great benefit or not.

Participant: But everything is lost, the good and the bad things.

Dr. Berzin: The good and the bad things do get lost. However, one could try to preserve the things that would be of benefit to others. One could take some preventive measure: give the password to somebody else, put it in a safe-deposit box, or something. 

That’s what I proposed at these translator conferences, though I don’t know if anybody has really taken the idea up and pursued it. What I proposed was that each of the Dharma translators have a safe-deposit box at one of these big university computer places where they could put all the gems from their computers, such as their teachings, notes, and manuscripts that they never quite finished or published. The University of Virginia, for instance, has a lot of computer services available for Dharma. That way, these materials could be kept safe in the event that something happened and they died. Otherwise, they’re going to be lost. This would be especially important with those of my generation – people in their fifties and sixties who have studied with the great lamas of the previous generation and who have written these things down. We don’t have the time to get them all in shape for publication, so let’s make Dharma safe-deposit boxes. At first, people thought that was a funny idea, but then they thought that it actually did make a tremendous amount of sense. I wish that it would actually be implemented.

Let’s do this last meditation before we end, and then, next time, we can start the nine-part meditation on death, the classic meditation. 

We review all the people who have been close to us – relatives, friends, pets – and think, “What is the difference between them and me? It could easily be my turn next.”

[meditation]

I’m sixty-four, so obviously I know a lot of people who have died, people from my grandparents’ generation, parents’ generation, the generation of most of my teachers, and so on… some of my friends as well. One way I did this meditation was to imagine them around me. I couldn’t really hold all of them in one vision, but I could take one group at a time – let’s say, family members, then teachers, and so on. Then I visualized each person being deleted one at a time: that person is gone, that person is gone, that person is gone. Then I looked to see who was left – and there I am. I could easily be deleted from the picture next. That’s a very good meditation to do, especially with friends who had been in the army or had had AIDS and died.