How to Live If You’re Going to Die

I came to practice because I discovered that I was going to die—me, personally.

I just had never considered it before, but then my best friend, who was my age and had kids the age of my kids, had a headache one night when we were together. It was such a bad headache that she went to the doctor the next morning. She was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, went into a coma, and died. Whoosh! Maybe a month altogether from the first headache.

Well, that could have been me as readily as Pat. Oh, my god! I’m going to die! But the next thought was, “How do you live if you know you’re going to die?” It has been such a gift to me that that question came up. And so I started looking for who could tell me how to live if I know I’m going to die. And I do know I’m going to die. So I’ll just share with you these Five Daily Recollections from the Upajjhatthana Sutraof the Buddha:

• I’m of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
• I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
• I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
• All that is dear to me and everything I have and everything I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape from losing them.
• My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.

These Five Daily Recollections seemed to be, for me, some clue to how to live if you know you’re going to die. Pay attention to how you live. Pay attention to your actions. Are your actions kind? Are your actions honest? Are your actions supported by the desire to help beings, to benefit beings? Are your actions selfish or generous? How are you living this life?

Peaceful Repose

I chant every morning a sutra to the bodhisattva of compassion for the well-being of people in the sangha who are sick or people I know who are sick, and also for, as I say, the calm crossing over and peaceful repose of those who have recently died. Yet I found that when I was chanting just for Lou, my late husband, I was torn about calm crossing over and peaceful repose or many rebirths in which to continue your life, your bodhisattva vow. I wasn’t sure of such things. But his death caused me to pay more attention to those words.

When I’m chanting for him, that’s what comes up for me: the questions of calm, peaceful repose and rebirth. He was quite sincere in his bodhisattva vow to practice for the benefit of all beings, so I imagine that he may experience calm, peaceful repose and rebirth.

Lou and I once rode together with a Tibetan teacher who was giving a workshop on dreams. Lou was very aware of his dreams and felt there was great significance in them. And in the course of driving down to the workshop and back, somewhere in the conversation Lou said something about himself, and Tarab Tulku Rinpoche said, “Oh, well, that’s because you were a monk in a previous life.” Now, Lou was so focused on being a monk—not a teacher, not a scholar, not a priest—just a monk. Perhaps he wanted to go on having many lives being a monk until the bodhisattva vow, of ending the suffering of all beings, was no longer necessary. Anyhow, I really appreciate Shohaku Okumura’s comments on death in his book Realizing Genjokoan:

Firewood becomes ash. Ash cannot become firewood again. However, we should not view ash as after and firewood as before. We should know that firewood dwells in the dharma position of firewood and has its own before and after. Although before and after exist, past and future are cut off. Ash stays in the position of ash with its own before and after. As firewood never becomes firewood again after it has burned to ash, there is no return to living after a person dies. However, in buddha dharma, it is an unchanged tradition not to say that life becomes death. Therefore, we call it “no arising.” It is the established way of Buddha’s turning the dharma wheel not to say that death becomes life. Therefore, we call it “no perishing.” Life is a position in time. Death is also a position in time. This is like winter and spring. We don’t think that winter becomes spring. And we don’t say that spring becomes summer.

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