One way of thinking about this issue is to not recite mantras to a dying person if it causes the person’s mind to be unhappy, to generate anger, and to be disturbed at the time of death, so that he or she will not be reborn in the lower realms. However, by leaving imprints on the person’s mind, Buddha’s mantras offer the benefit that the person will not be reborn in the lower realms.

Even if a person gets angry from hearing mantras, still, in the long run, they receive benefit, because the mantras leave imprints on the mind and bring them to enlightenment. This comes just through the power of hearing the Buddha’s mantras. Otherwise, although the person who is dying may have a happy mind, if you don’t recite mantras for the person, you have done nothing to cause the person to achieve enlightenment, or to save him or her from the lower realms. Even though the dying person’s mind may be positive, if there is desire in the mind—for example, fear of separation from family and friends—then the person won’t have a peaceful mind when dying.

For a person to have a good rebirth there has to be a positive mind, which means having non-anger, non-attachment, and so forth. Only then will the result be a good rebirth. Even if a person dies with anger, Buddha’s powerful words—mantras, sutras, and especially the tantric method of jangwa—can change the rebirth, because of their power.

You may think that to have a good rebirth, the person has to have a positive mind when dying. But the goal, what you are wishing for, is for the person to achieve enlightenment. This comes from leaving imprints on the person’s mind from the power of Buddha’s mantras, and so on. Even if they are temporarily reborn in the lower realms because they were annoyed by the mantras, for example, nevertheless, because of the imprints left on the mind from the mantras, they will later achieve enlightenment and liberation from samsara.

There is a story about Wusun, who was about to give teachings to 500 monks. They all would have achieved arhatship upon hearing them, but Manjushri arrived before Wusun, and gave them Mahayana teachings first. The 500 monks then developed heretical thoughts toward the Dharma, and were reborn in the lower realms. Wusun went to the Buddha, and said that because Manjushri gave them Mahayana teachings, the 500 monks were reborn in the lower realms. The Buddha answered that this was very good, and that this was an example of Manjushri’s skilful means, because if the 500 monks had just heard teachings on the lesser path from Wusan and achieved arhatship, they would still be there now in the state of arhatship. But because of Manjushri’s skilful means, they had heretical thoughts, and so took rebirth in the lower realms for a shorter time, and then they achieved enlightenment.