The great Nyingma lama, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, offered many teachings on the importance of preparing for death. His wife and lineage holder, Chagdud Khadro, now carries on that tradition. Here is an excerpt from his pith instruction, “Life in Relation to Death.”
“Death and dying is a subject that evokes such deep and disturbing emotions that we usually try to live in denial of death. Yet we could die tomorrow, completely unprepared and helpless. The time of death is uncertain but the truth of death is not. All who are born will certainly die.
People often make the mistake of being frivolous about death and think, “Oh, well, death happens to everybody. It’s not a big deal, it’s natural. I’ll be fine.”
This is a nice theory until one is dying. Then experience and theory differ. Then one is powerless and everything familiar is lost. One is overwhelmed by a great turbulence of fear, disorientation and confusion. For this reason it is essential to prepare well in advance for the moment when the mind and body separate.
There are many methods, extraordinary and ordinary, to prepare for the transformation of death. The greatest of these results is enlightenment in one’s lifetime. In enlightenment death has no relevance to one’s state of being. Enlightened realization is deathless, but it requires flawless meditative practice.
If deathless enlightenment is not accomplished during one’s lifetime, the transition of death itself offers another supreme opportunity to attain enlightenment. But again, realizing the potential of this opportunity depends on having mastered certain meditative skills.
Enlightenment is the highest attainment of the death transition, but it is not the only one. If meditative realization is incomplete yet one has developed the power of prayer, there can be liberation into an environment of perfect bliss, free of suffering, by invoking the blessing of enlightened wisdom beings.
To accomplish the meditative skills and power needed to direct our mind at death, we must learn about the relationship of life and death, about the process of dying and about the transitions from the moment of death until rebirth. In this way we become familiar with death and are not caught by surprise as the process begins to unfold.
Warned of a hurricane, we don’t wait until the storm pounds the shore before we start to prepare. Similarly, knowing death is looming offshore, we shouldn’t wait until it overpowers us before developing the meditation skills necessary to achieve the great potential of the mind at the moment of death.” |
