If You Are About to Die

If You Are About to Die

Date Posted:
October 2005

A student asked what practice to do if he knew he were about to die.

Generally speaking, bodhicitta. That’s the safest one. But, for somebody who has good concentration, there’s meditation on emptiness. If they have realized emptiness, then anything that appears real from its own side, and appears not to be merely labeled by the mind, they are able to see as a hallucination, as false. That helps. How? Because whether you try to look at it as empty or not, when you see it as false, and understand that it is false, that makes you realize there is no reason to cling or get angry. That’s how meditation on emptiness protects the mind from delusions and from creating negative karma. You don’t die with anger or attachment, and that ’s how it helps.

But, of course, ultimately, in order not to be reborn in the lower realms, and not to be reborn at all, eventually you have to cut the root of samsara.