Even if you have only one day left to live, you still have an incredible opportunity to make this human life most beneficial. Even if you have only one hour left, there are things you can do.
Our mind continues from life to life
Death is when the mind separates from the body and it happens because we are under the control of delusions and karma. Then, after death, the mind takes another body, according to our past negative or positive actions, as we have discussed.
Sometimes we take a human body, but we can also take a different type of body. Sometimes it can be the body of a happy transmigratory being, besides that of a human, such as a worldly god. Or we can be born in a pure land, such as Amitabha Buddha’s. Sometimes we can take a suffering body such as that of a hell being, hungry ghost or animal. We can also be reborn in the formless realm, where there is no physical body. The big question is: After death, which rebirth will our consciousness take? See chapters 8 and 15.
In reality, death can happen at any time, on any day. Even though you may have a date of execution, you could die before then. Death can happen at any moment, and there are so many things that can cause it.
It is very beneficial to think about this.
Use this punishment
Our experiences of happiness and suffering depend on how our mind interprets them, which label we put on them, as I described in chapter 2. I also talk about it in detail in chapter 11. First, we label them and then we believe the label—it’s then that they actually become suffering or happiness.
Because of this, what you would normally label suffering—such as your execution—can be transformed by you into great happiness, for yourself and others, not just temporal happiness but liberation from samsara and ultimate happiness, full enlightenment.
Training yourself to be able to transform your execution by seeing it as beneficial is such an incredible way of thinking. It is a great challenge, but by doing this you become a champion.
How to get ready for death
Before death comes, I want to tell you how to make this life very meaningful, to ensure that you take at least another perfect human rebirth or rebirth in a pure land. You must prepare for death right now by practicing Dharma. There is no time to waste.
Even if you have only one day left to live, you still have an incredible opportunity to make this human life—which you have received just this one time—most beneficial. Even if you have only one hour left, there are things you can do.
(1) You can take the five lay vows: see chapter 14. In fact, you should do this as soon as possible; you can receive the vows—in person or on the phone—from someone at Liberation Prison Project. It is said in the teachings, “In this degenerate time, to keep even just one vow for one day has great advantage.”
(2) You could also take the eight Mahayana precepts, which are taken for twenty-four hours. In one commentary by a geshe it says, “Even if one has only one hour left to live it is so beneficial, so meaningful, to take the eight precepts.” You can get the practice from the prison project.
(3) In chapter 13 I give details about how to practice the entire path to enlightenment, the lamrim, precisely. The lamrim is the basis for subduing your mind and for receiving correct realizations. Please aim to achieve all four realizations of the lamrim—guru devotion, renunciation of this life, renunciation of the next life and bodhicitta and emptiness—or three realizations, or two or even one. Or aim to achieve close to a realization; then, in your next life you can get the realizations immediately.
(4) You must purify negative karma with the four opponent powers: see chapters 15 and 16.
Please make preparations for death by practicing every day.
What to do on the day of your execution
On the day of your execution, the last thing to do before they execute you is to take complete refuge in the Compassion Buddha, Chenrezig. Think of Chenrezig, visualize him and totally rely on Chenrezig. Put your palms together in the mudra of prostration to Chenrezig and request to be guided by Chenrezig in all future lifetimes until enlightenment. This becomes your main refuge.
See chapter 17 for a meditation on Chenrezig. Or you can use any other buddha that you feel close to.
Then think: “May I experience all the suffering of all the people who have the karma to be executed; and may I experience all the suffering of those who perform the execution. May I experience this by myself, alone. And because of this, may others be free from all sufferings and receive all peerless happiness up to enlightenment.” Continuously think this way, over and over again.
See chapter 18 for the meditation on giving and taking, tonglen. It’s a method of exchanging yourself for others. It is incredibly powerful for you to die with the thought of wanting to experience the suffering of being executed for others—taking upon yourself their suffering—and of giving all your happiness to them.
Have compassion for those who execute you
Especially feel strong compassion for those who have the job of executing you, as well as the people who have been involved in giving you this sentence: the prosecutors, the jury, the judge. By creating this negative karma, which comes from attachment, anger, ignorance and, particularly, the self-cherishing thought, they will have to experience the karma of being executed by others for five hundred lifetimes, just from this one action of killing you.
To die with compassion is incredible
His Holiness the Dalai Lama says that dying with bodhicitta, the thought of benefiting others, is a “self-supporting action” and nobody needs to pray for you; you will be guided by yourself.
You are dying for others, which means you are not dying for yourself. In a previous life, Shakyamuni Buddha offered his body to a starving tigress and her five cubs; he gave up his life because he could not bear their suffering. And Jesus took on the suffering of all sentient beings when he died.
One great holy being, Geshe Chekawa, a Tibetan meditator, always made prayers to be reborn in the hell realms for the benefit of sentient beings—he would rather have the suffering than others have it. But as he was passing away, even though he had made those prayers, he instead had a vision of the pure land of Buddha, which meant he would be reborn there. In pure lands there is no suffering, no old age, no sickness, no death, no thoughts such as anger, jealousy and so forth, and there are the most pure, perfect enjoyments—there is not even the word “suffering” in a pure land, which is why it is called pure. He was reborn there because of his compassion and his prayers to be reborn in the hell realms for the sake of the sentient beings, who are experiencing so much suffering.
If you die with compassion, you will never be reborn in the lower realms. It is so, so beneficial to die with the thought of benefiting other sentient beings. It is the best way to die, the best-quality death.
remember
- Death can come at any time.
- Happy rebirths come from virtuous karma and suffering rebirths come from nonvirtuous karma.
- At the time of death, rely on the Compassion Buddha.
- Dying with compassion is the best way to die.
- If you’re being executed, use this punishment to cultivate compassion for all the others being executed and, especially, for those who are executing you.
