THE HIDDEN LIBERATIVE ASPECT OF DEATH
The kind of consciousness which we cultivate in preparation for the occasion of our death, depends on how you see the opportunities that dying and death can offer.
One of the benefits of ‘A Year to Live’ practice has to do, not just with a better life while living, and not just with a better dying process, but with awakening to a profound level of human consciousness right there in the process of dying.
And, there is a level of preparation that is possible for that. Of course, living a conscious, compassionate life is an excellent preparation; however, one specific practice that we can do is a Tibetan practice called the Dissolution of the Elements.
This practice involves simulating the inner process of death, in nine stages – gradually losing contact with succeeding levels of experience, from gross to subtle. When mastered, it culminates in a very peaceful state of inner freedom.
I have a story about how this has already helped me, before dying physically. One time when practising this, I discovered that, in all my previous meditations of this type, I had been harbouring an unconscious wish that this practice would help me have a non-painful (and, even a pleasurable) death, when death finally came. I was very surprised by my discovery. I was attached to the idea of a non-painful death. This was several years after I had begun Buddhist death and dying practices.
Many deaths are peaceful and painless. However, death can also be attended by considerable pain. We can’t know how we will die. There are no guarantees. The process of a natural death needn’t be pain-free, even if you have done all your preparations for years on end.
So, seeing directly that I had this longing, my motivation for doing the Dissolution of the Elements practice shifted. I began to simply accept whatever experience was presenting itself during the practice. I shifted to remaining peaceful in my attitude toward experience – a peaceful mind, though I might not necessarily have a peaceful body.
So, I knew, then, that being conscious during death means accepting anything that happens, and it means a vast mind of not-knowing; or, openness. The point is to be with what is happening, because it is happening – it is what is happening!
This approach was helped by the fact that, due to a chronic illness, I never have a body free of pain, anyway. It further deepened my open experience of my chronic pain. As it turned out, this shift was also very helpful, when I was diagnosed and treated for cancer in 2014. I had ample opportunity in that period to accept peacefully, and even gratefully, whatever I was experiencing during my treatment.
The mindful death isn’t for everyone, though. Many would prefer not to know what they are experiencing at the time of death – or, at any time, for that matter. I remember a friend saying to me, decades ago, that she’d rather not know what her mind was doing during everyday experiences, so she wasn’t interested in training to be mindful.
So, I study how death lives in me, as a way to keep my own mind aimed toward the certainty of that event – to be ready, and say “Yes” to death, when it arrives. That’s true. However, I also practice this to get to be familiar with everything about my own mental functioning, while I’m living. It simply enhances self-knowledge, which turns out to be liberating. It cleans up the mind!
But, a really marvellous fruit of this practice is that we can realise the subtle and luminous nature of the mind. Contemplating death makes this more likely, both now and at the moment of death. As we become familiar with death, we explore the deepest levels of the mind – what some call the fundamental mind.
This enriches our living, now, of course. But, then: at the moment of death we have an unfettered introduction to this level of awareness, because – as this practice can verify – all that we identify with during life drops away completely.
This is a difficult-to-talk-about territory, this luminous, boundless awareness, and the ‘deathless’ element. I will address this more, though, as we go along in this project.
Knowing the ground state has many benefits for oneself and others. And, yet, it is also just to be tasted, exactly because it has no benefit. It is just so. Personally, I want to be awake and aware of the changes during death, and taste the beauty of the pure ground state – just because it is what it is – not for any other reason than this: it is worth approaching with love. In this sense, death can be a sacrament.