Session 13: Nine-Part Death Meditation: First of Three Root Facts

Meditating on the Impermanence of Relationships

There is a classic nine-part death meditation that Tsongkhapa wrote quite elaborately about. But, usually, what comes before that are the meditations on impermanence itself seen in terms of our present lives. This is usually done using our relationships with friends and relatives as objects of meditation. These are the ones to whom many of us have the greatest attachment. Others of us might have attachment to money or material objects, but that type of meditation comes a little bit later in this process. 

Like Leaves Blowing in the Wind

There are many analogies that are used for these meditations. The analogy that Aryadeva, a great Indian master, used was of falling leaves – that the people we are with in this lifetime, or at any time, are like leaves falling from a tree. For a while, they may fly or fall together through the air, but then the wind will carry them to separate places. This is analogous to the winds of karma. This is a very important way of thinking. It enables us to lessen our attachment to our friends and relatives, which can be a great obstacle when we are facing death. 

The time that we have with others, no matter the relationship, is very brief. Aryadeva also said, looking in terms of beginningless and endless mental continuums, “Why do we look just at the very short time that we are together with somebody and not at the unbelievably longer period of time that we’re not?” This is a very helpful way to view the friends and relatives we’re with, however close we might be: “This is just a very temporary thing; it will pass.” Relationships start, and relationships end. Even if we have life partners, one of us is going to die, and one of us will be alone. So this is a helpful thing to think about. 

Also, when there’s a large teaching, His Holiness often uses the image of the whole group of people who have come together, saying, next time we come together, many of those in the audience will have died, and many, even if they haven’t died, will not be able to come again. So, the gathering at a teaching, a festival, a concert, or whatever is very temporary – likewise the relationships in a lifetime. 

So let’s do that type of meditation, looking at the friends and relatives we have, particularly those we are the most attached to, and try to see these relationships in the larger context of beginningless and endless mental continuums – that the time we have together is very brief – and try to lessen our attachment. So we’ll do that for about five minutes. 

Participant: Do we check that they’re impermanent, or do we just imagine them coming, growing old, and leaving?

Dr. Berzin: I think that we don’t need to actually check. It’s quite obvious that they’re impermanent. You could check, but obviously, they’re impermanent. 

I would think that most of us have had different friends – for instance, the people we were very close to when we were at grammar school, those we were close to at college or university, or those we were close to at different jobs. Where are they now? 

Perhaps we have maintained some of these friendships over time. But most of us – I know it’s the case with me – lose contact with these people, even though we were very close at one time. That, I think, is a very good example of the leaves blowing together in the wind for a short time and then blowing apart and going their own way. The point, here, in the meditation is to try to see the various close relationships that we have with others as being analogous to these leaves blowing in the wind – that it’s very rare that they’re together; most of the time they’re apart. 

Participant: Should we try to lower the intensity of the relationships that we do have?

Dr. Berzin: Actually, there’s a second meditation that follows this. I think it’s good to do these meditations separately, but I can give a preview. The second meditation uses the analogy of a wild bird that comes to our window. It’s very rare that wild birds come to our windows. They might stay for a little while, but then, because they are free, they fly off. If we try to capture them and put them in a cage, they’re going to be miserable and perhaps die. So, when a wild bird comes to the window, we enjoy the time that we are together – without trying to put the bird in a cage. When it’s time for the bird to fly off… well, it’s a wild bird; it’s free. That’s the second phase of this meditation. 

It’s not that we shouldn’t have friends, that we shouldn’t have close relationships; it’s just that we don’t have the illusion that they’re going to exist forever. That way, we avoid clinging to others out of insecurity or out of simple naivety about the reality of life. This is very important when we die as well. We don’t want to die clinging to people or possessions, things that we obviously can’t take with us. That will just cause our minds to be very upset at the time of death, which is not helpful at all for future lives. It’s very important to be able to die in a calm state of mind. 

But let’s do the first step of this, which is to use the image of the leaves blowing in the wind. The reality is that we’re together with others for a very short time. We can see that’s true for most relationships in this lifetime, but if we think in terms of past and future lives, we can see that’s especially true. We can analyze, as I said, by thinking of the friends we had when we were children and so on and looking to see how many of those relationships are still there.

[meditation]

I’m sixty-four, so a lot of people have come in and out of my life over all these years. Even if I reestablish a little bit of contact by going, say, to a high school class reunion, the relationships are completely different. People have really grown apart and have had very, very different types of lives. The only things we have in common are our memories. Meeting once every ten years for an evening is not exactly sticking together. 

The focus, then, is on the close relationships that we have right now, looking to see if they are any different from these other relationships. Obviously they’re not any different. The people that we’re close to now are also like leaves blowing in and out of our lives. I think the main point of this type of meditation practice is to lessen our attachment to those we are with now, realizing that they’re going to leave. They will die. We will die. We will leave.

Participant: I like how it’s described by Shantideva. He says we are like travelers going on a long journey. The people we meet are like the quests who stay in a guesthouse and who will have to go their own ways the next day. So, we shouldn’t expect to be with them forever.

Dr. Berzin: We find a similar image in the Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices – seeing ourselves as guests and our bodies as guesthouses or our lives as guesthouses, this type of thing. There are many images that we can use for this. 

Like a Wild Bird That Comes to the Window

Let’s go on to the second phase. This is the image of the wild bird. I must say that I came up with that image. The first meditation is a classic one that we find in many Buddhist texts. But this second one of the bird coming to the window I find quite useful. As I explained before, try to see the people who are close to us – particularly those who are close to us now – as beautiful wild birds that have come to our windows. Try to realize that they are free and that they will go away if we try to hold on to them, to capture them and put them in a cage. Like wild birds in a cage, they’ll be absolutely miserable and perhaps die. They certainly won’t want to stay with us. So, we just enjoy the time that we are with that person – and not cling to them when it’s time for them to leave. It’s just natural that they will leave. That’s what happens. They, too, are free. 

This we can do with close friends. It’s helpful to do with our own children as well – to see that they are with us for just a brief time and that they will go on to lead their own lives. This is something that is especially likely to happen in our Western culture. In Asian cultures, children stay with the family for their whole lives. But in modern times, even in Asia, that’s changing a little bit. 

So let’s look at those who are very close to us, using this image of the wild bird.

[meditation]

Participant: It’s hard to imagine my husband as a little bird.

Dr. Berzin: This isn’t a visualization exercise. The point is to distinguish the person as having this particular characteristic. Although there are no findable characteristic marks (mtshan-nyid) on the side of the object that have, either by themselves or in conjunction with mental labeling, the power to establish the existence of that object, nevertheless, there are conventional characteristic features that can be distinguished (‘du-shes) as having conventional significance (tha-snyad ‘dogs-pa). A characteristic feature is that the person just comes into our lives very briefly and leaves. If we can view that same characteristic mark in a wild bird that comes to our window, it can help us to understand, by analogy, that trying to hold on to the person, clinging to them, being overly protective, smothering them, etc., would be like trying to put them in a cage and that, like the wild bird, they would suffer and just want to leave. So, death awareness – awareness of death and impermanence – helps us to avoid that type of problem. 

Meditating on the Impermanence of the Body

The last preliminary meditation that we do before the nine-part death meditation is to pay attention to our own physical forms, especially if we are older, and to notice that we can no longer do what we could do when we were younger, that we’ve become slower, and that our appearance has changed. Even if we’re young adults, we are, nevertheless, not children anymore. We have grown older. And this aging process will continue further and further. 

This is a very good reminder of impermanence, of the fact that things are continually changing. This is especially so if we’ve started to develop gray hairs, to lose our hair or our teeth, to get the aches and pains that come with age, to have poorer vision, etc. This gets into old-age issues, but we don’t have to limit this to old age. Just the fact that our bodies have changed markedly since we were babies is a very good indication of impermanence. 

So let’s focus on impermanence in terms of our bodies, seeing that, obviously, we’re getting closer and closer to our deaths and that whatever level of fitness we have now is certainly not going to last; it will continue to change.

[meditation]

The way that I approached this meditation was by viewing my body as a fast-motion movie, imagining it, first, as a baby, then, as a child, and, then, as an older person, seeing how it has changed throughout my life, and then realizing that the movie doesn’t end here – unless I were to die right now. If I live longer, the fast-motion movie will continue. It’s very helpful to fast-forward the movie of our lives in terms of our bodies and to see that our bodies are constantly changing and that, up until we die, they will continue to change. 

So, again, it’s about not getting stuck at a particular point in our lives. Some of us get stuck in earlier phases of our lives and continue to cling to them as if things were still the way they were. We can enjoy what was nice about those earlier phases, but we also need to accept the reality of change and impermanence. 

The next meditation is the nine-part sequence of thought concerning death. As I said, this comes from Tsongkhapa himself. It is based on his own personal practice. It’s a practice not found earlier than his writings. In this meditation, there are three root facts or topics, nine reasons (three for each fact), and three conclusions. 

The three roots facts are: 

• Death is inevitable 
• The time of death is uncertain
• Except for the Dharma, nothing else can be of help at the time of death 

In our meditation, we go through the three reasons to convince ourselves of each of these three facts and come to a conclusion each time. Let’s go through these one by one. These are very, very meaningful meditations.

Death Is Inevitable

(1) It Is Definite That Death Will Come

The first reason for contemplating that death is inevitable is because, as they say in the texts, it is definite that the Lord of Death will come and there are no circumstances that can turn him back. In Shantideva’s text, Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior (Bodhisattvacharyavatarai), he uses the image of our lives being on a conveyor belt – that we’re like water buffaloes being led to slaughter, going closer and closer to the mouth of the Lord of Death? Each day, we are getting closer and closer to death. We are one day older; we are one day closer to our deaths. Time is always running out. We can’t stop the clock. We can’t stop the conveyor belt that’s carrying us to the end of our lives. Let’s think about that.

[meditation]

Let me remind you that the whole point of these death meditations is to be aware that this precious human life is short and that we can lose this precious opportunity at any time – because, of course, we’re going to die. Therefore, the conclusion is that, since there are future lives – an assumption that we’ve examined before – and our mental continuums will go on, we need to use this opportunity to try to make some spiritual progress. We want to  progress at least to the point of being able to continue having precious human lives in the future so that we can continue to develop ourselves and, eventually, become free of all suffering, and, beyond even that, to reach the point where we would be of best help to everyone by being able to help them overcome their suffering too. 

We don’t want to waste this golden opportunity that we have. We certainly don’t want to die with regrets. “What have I accomplished in my lifetime? I have watched so many hours of television and have done this or that,” which, in the end, is quite trivial.” 

A thought that is so frequently on my mind is, “How long will I be able to continue doing the type of work that I do?” I have so much that I want to accomplish and time is running out. Whether it’s death that comes first or senility or a severe disease, each day is drawing me closer and closer to the end. Time is very limited when you reach my age. That we’ll come to a little bit later – that we don’t have to be old to die: death can come at any time. But that’s with the uncertainty of the time of death. Here, we’re talking about the inevitability of death.

(2) Our Lifespans Cannot Be Extended and Time Is Running Out

Our lifespans cannot be extended when it’s time for us to die, and the remainder of our lifespans is decreasing unceasingly. This is similar to the first point, that when death comes, there’s no circumstance that can turn it away. 

When it is time for us to die, our lifespans can’t be extended. I always think of the example of a small mouse I saw drowning in a gutter filled with rainwater. This was when I was in Dharamsala. I picked the mouse out and put it on the grass to dry out. As I went away, a big hawk came down, snatched the mouse, and took it away. I’ll never forget that example. So, when it’s time to die, as they say, resistance is futile. Life can’t be extended.

So let’s think in terms of not being able to extend our lifespans and that time is running out. Then connect that with the first one, that there’s nothing that can turn death back. 

Participant: This lifespan cannot be extended in terms of when it’s time to die?

Dr. Berzin: Well, this is an interesting point – how a limited lifespan fits in with doing long-life pujas and initiations. Is that what you’re thinking of?

Participant: Also, doing sports and eating healthy food.

Dr. Berzin: Well, I think of my friend Alan, who died in May. He was healthy. There was nothing particularly wrong with him. He ate healthy food. He worked outdoors and so had exercise every day. He didn’t live in a stressful type of situation. He practiced Dharma and meditated many hours a day. He just had a heart attack and dropped dead. So, no matter how much sport and so on we do, it won’t necessarily extend our lives, even though we might think that it will. This gets into the whole question of karma: that there has to be a reason why we think to do exercise, why we think to eat in a healthier way, and so on, rather than thinking that it’s useless. So, the karmic impulses to think like this are also part of the causes for having the sort of lifespan that we have.

Participant: And you cannot make a deal. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s a very good point. You can’t make a deal with the Lord of Death: “I’ll do exercise every day. Stay away for five years,” or “I will just eat organic food. Stay away for five years.” When it’s time to die, your time is over.

Participant: Well, if you eat a lot of fat and don’t do exercise, then supposedly your lifespan will be shorter. 

Dr. Berzin: Statistics show that if you eat fatty food, smoke, drink alcohol, dont exercise, etc., your lifespan will be shorter. But there has to be a reason why you eat that way and live that lifestyle. This is why I brought in karma. There’s a certain karmic impulse or pattern that causes you to eat and live that way. There’s also a lot of laziness and naivety that is part of all of that. 

But what I had imagined, perhaps incorrectly, was that you were thinking of long-life practices and stuff like that as methods for living longer. This point about not being able to extend the lifetime when the time for death has come has to do with to the fact that we have many different karmic tendencies or legacies from previous lives for the lives we have now to have different lengths. If we lead one type of lifestyle, one sort of karmic seed having to do with one length of life will kick in. If we change that lifestyle, then perhaps another karmic seed having to do with another length of life would kick in. There are calculations for that in Tibetan astrology. Whether they’re accurate or not is another question, but that way of thinking is certainly there. But when whatever karmic seed having to do with a particular lifespan is spent or finished, it’s finished. You can’t make a deal at that time, as Marianna said. 

So, yes, we certainly try to do long-life practices. For example, there’s White Tara practice where you recite a million White Tara mantras and then have a very elaborate fire puja at the end. But we don’t do them with the idea of making a deal: “I’ll do this just so that I live longer.” The point is for us to have the motivation to be able to practice further, make further progress, help others more in this lifetime, and hopefully through our practice, help them more in future lifetimes. It’s the only motivation that really works in this instance. So, it’s like that. Does that answer your question?

Participant: It sounds more like predestination.

Dr. Berzin: Well, it’s not really predestination. That’s a complicated issue. From our point of view, it’s uncertain when the time of death will come. We don’t know because we don’t know all the factors that are going to influence our lifespans. From the point of view of a Buddha, who knows absolutely every single circumstance and condition, it is clear how long our lifespans are. It’s not that Buddha determines it. And it’s not that the lifespan is sitting inside a karmic seed, waiting to pop out, or that our deaths have already happened and that they’re going to manifest at another time. It’s not like that. 

A Buddha would know all the circumstances and karmic instincts that are there that would cause this person to exercise or not to exercise, to do a long-life practice or not. In any case, we could be hit by a car. Or a war could break out and we could be killed. Or we could be shot in the street, robbed, or something like that. Anything can happen, depending on the karma. If we’re hit by a car, it doesn’t matter how much organic food we ate or how much exercise we did. 

We certainly can choose to live healthier lifestyles – which is how we experience it: as having a choice. And hopefully we do make intelligent decisions to lead as healthy a life as possible. But the point is that that’s not going to make any difference at the time of death. That’s the third root fact: nothing can be of help at the time of death except the Dharma practice that we’ve done.

Participant: I might cross the street and get run over by a car.

Dr. Berzin: That’s exactly right. That was what I was saying. But if we have built up positive habits, etc. on our mental continuums through spiritual practice, through Dharma practice, those habits and so on will continue in terms of the instinctive talents and inclinations that we have in future lives. We may have a habit of eating health food again in the future, but that’s not really so significant. 

So let’s focus on not being able to extend our lifespans when it’s time for us to die.

[meditation]

(3) We Will Die Even If We Have Not Had Time to Practice the Dharma

The third reason for contemplating that death is inevitable is to realize that we will die even if we’ve not had the time to practice the Dharma while we were alive. When our time is up, it won’t matter if we haven’t finished the practice that we wanted to do. We can’t say to death, “Hey, wait. I wanted to do a retreat. I wanted to master this practice or that practice.” It doesn’t matter. Death will come regardless. So, again, we can see that this is leading to not wasting the opportunity that we have. 

My friend Alan, who died in May, was going to retire early and then go into long retreat. But then he dropped dead of a heart attack. So, he never had the time to do that retreat. That’s a very good example. We’ll die even if we’ve not had the time to do intensive Dharma practice.

[meditation]

Conclusion: We Need to Practice the Dharma

After considering these three reasons – that death is inevitable, that our lifespans can’t be extended, and that we will die even if we’ve not had time to practice – and having become convinced of the inevitability of death, we come to the conclusion that we must definitely take some preventive measures; we need to practice the Dharma. Remember, when we talk about practicing the Dharma, we’re talking about building up positive habits for future lives. We’ll see that what this primarily entails at the beginning is refraining from destructive behavior in order to prevent or avoid worse rebirths. 

Participant: When you gave the example of Alan, it sounded a little bit like you were saying that he should have retired earlier and started his retreat. 

Dr. Berzin: Perhaps it would have been better for him to look after his pension and so on. Actually, in his particular case, that wouldn’t have been a big problem. He could have sold the house that he owned and lived off that money. That wouldn’t have been a difficulty. But I think the more relevant point is that retiring early and going into retreat would not have prevented him having a heart attack and dying. There was apparently nothing wrong with him. He was taking a shower, and he just dropped dead. This would have happened whether he had still been working or whether he had been in retreat. Nothing could have prevented it. When time is up, time is up. Would it have helped in his future rebirth to have used his time better? I don’t know. This was his choice.

Participant: But at least he practiced in his life.

Dr. Berzin: But he practiced intensively for the vast majority of his lifetime – ever since he was nineteen years old. He died at fifty-five.

Participant: He must have practiced while he was working at some kind of job.

Dr. Berzin: While he worked. He also did several hours of practice every day. He was a very good example. He didn’t have any ambition to have a great career or anything like that. He was a groundskeeper in a criminal psychiatric hospital, which meant that he cut the grass, basically, and trimmed the bushes. He said that he did this primarily because, that way, his mind wasn’t occupied with office work or something like that; instead, he could use his mind to do mantras – he loved doing mantras – and visualizations all day long. So he lived his life like that. In Alan’s case, I’m not worried. He was a very deep practitioner, but he was a very rare example in that regard. But I used his death as an example simply because one never expected he would die so suddenly – and also because it’s a personal example. 

Anyway, let’s do this final step: Death is inevitable; nothing can stop it. The lifespan can’t be extended. We can’t say, “Hey, wait a minute. I haven’t finished what I wanted to do.” When time is up, time is up; therefore, we need to make use of our precious human lives to practice the Dharma to build up the causes to help prevent a downfall to worse situations in future lives.