from Lion's Roar (November, 2015)
Advice for someone who is dying
Ajahn Chah’s simple, profound advice to an aging student approaching her death.
Today I have brought nothing material of any substance to offer you, only Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha. Listen well. You should understand that even the Buddha himself, with his great store of accumulated virtue, could not avoid physical death. When he reached old age, he relinquished his body and let go of its heavy burden. Now you too must learn to be satisfied with the many years you’ve already depended on your body. You should feel that it’s enough.
You can compare it to household utensils that you’ve had for a long time—your cups, saucers, plates and so on. When you first had them they were clean and shining, but now after using them for so long, they’re starting to wear out. Some are already broken, some have disappeared, and those that are left are deteriorating: they have no stable form, and it’s their nature to be like that. Your body is the same way. It has been continually changing right from the day you were born, through childhood and youth, until now it has reached old age. You must accept that. The Buddha said that conditions (sankharas), whether they are internal conditions, bodily conditions, or external conditions, are not-self—their nature is to change. Contemplate this truth until you see it clearly.
Keep mind and body separate
This very lump of flesh that lies here in decline is saccadhamma, the truth. The truth of this body issaccadhamma, and it is the unchanging teaching of the Buddha. The Buddha taught us to look at the body, to contemplate it and to come to terms with its nature. We must be able to be at peace with the body, whatever state it is in. The Buddha taught that we should ensure that it is only the body that is locked up in jail, and not let the mind be imprisoned along with it. Now as your body begins to run down and deteriorate with age, don’t resist that, but don’t let your mind deteriorate with it. Keep the mind separate. Give energy to the mind by realizing the truth of the way things are. The Lord Buddha taught that this is the nature of the body. It can’t be any other way. Having been born, it gets old and sick and then it dies. This is a great truth that you are presently encountering. Look at the body with wisdom and realize it.
Even if your house is flooded or burnt to the ground, whatever the danger that threatens it, let it concern only the house. If there’s a flood, don’t let it flood your mind. If there’s a fire, don’t let it burn your heart. Let it be merely the house, that which is external to you, that is flooded and burned. Allow the mind to let go of its attachments. The time is ripe.
You have been alive a long time. Your eyes have seen any number of forms and colors, your ears have heard so many sounds, and you’ve had any number of experiences. And that’s all they were— just experiences. You’ve eaten delicious foods and all the good tastes were just good tastes, nothing more. The unpleasant tastes were just unpleasant tastes, that’s all. If the eye sees a beautiful form, that’s all it is, just a beautiful form. An ugly form is just an ugly form. The ear hears an entrancing, melodious sound, and it’s nothing more than that. A grating, disharmonious sound is simply so.
The Buddha said that rich or poor, young or old, human or animal, no being in this world can maintain itself in any one state for long; everything experiences change and estrangement. This is a fact of life that we can do nothing to remedy. But the Buddha said that what we can do is to contemplate the body and mind so as to see their impersonality, see that neither of them is “me” or “mine.” They have a merely provisional reality. It’s like this house: it’s only nominally yours, you couldn’t take it with you anywhere.
It is the same with your wealth, your possessions, and your family—they are all yours only in name; they don’t really belong to you, they belong to nature. Now this truth doesn’t apply to you alone; everyone is in the same position, even the Lord Buddha and his enlightened disciples. They differed from us in only one respect, and that was in their acceptance of the way things are. They saw that it could be no other way.
Don’t wish it were otherwise
The Buddha taught us to scan and examine this body, from the soles of the feet up to the crown of the head, then back down to the feet again. Just take a look at the body. What sort of things do you see? Is there anything intrinsically clean there? Can you find any abiding essence? This whole body is steadily degenerating and the Buddha taught us to see that it doesn’t belong to us. It is natural for the body to be this way because all conditioned phenomena are subject to change. How else would you have it be? Actually there’s nothing wrong with the way the body is. It’s not the body that causes you suffering, it’s your wrong thinking. When you see the right wrongly, there’s bound to be confusion.
It’s like the water of a river. It naturally flows down the gradient; it never flows against it, and that is its nature. If a person were to go and stand on a river bank and, seeing the water flowing swiftly down its course, foolishly want it to flow back up the gradient, he would suffer. Whatever he was doing, his wrong thinking would allow him no peace of mind. He would be unhappy because of his wrong view, thinking against the stream. If he had right view, he would see that the water must inevitably flow down the gradient, but until he realized and accepted that fact, the man would be agitated and upset.
The river that must flow down the gradient is like your body. Having been young, your body has become old and now it is meandering towards its death. Don’t go wishing it were otherwise; it is not something you have the power to remedy. The Buddha told us to see the way things are and then let go of our clinging to them. Take this feeling of letting go as your refuge. Keep meditating even if you feel tired and exhausted. Let your mind dwell with the breath. Take a few deep breaths and then establish the mind on the breath using the mantra Buddha. Make this practice habitual.
Let go of all externals
The more exhausted you feel, the more subtle and focused your concentration must be, so that you can cope with the painful sensations that arise.
When you start to feel fatigued, then bring all your thinking to a halt, let the mind gather itself together, and then turn to knowing the breath. Just keep up the inner recitation: Bud-dho, Bud-dhu. Let go of all externals. Don’t go grasping at thoughts of your children and relatives, don’t grasp at anything whatsoever. Let go. Let the mind unite in a single point and let that composed mind dwell with the breath. Let the breath be its sole object of knowledge. Concentrate until the mind becomes increasingly subtle, until feelings are insignificant and there is great inner clarity and wakefulness. Then when painful sensations arise, they will gradually cease of their own accord.
Finally you’ll look on the breath as if it were a relative come to visit you. When a relative leaves, we follow him out and see him off. We watch until he’s walked or driven out of sight and then we go back indoors. We watch the breath in the same way. If the breath is coarse, we know that it’s coarse; if it’s subtle, we know that it’s subtle. As it becomes increasingly fine, we keep following it, while simultaneously awakening the mind. Eventually the breath disappears altogether and all that remains is the feeling of wakefulness. This is called meeting the Buddha. We have that clear wakeful awareness that is called Biiddlio, the one who knows, the one who is awake, the radiant one. It is meeting and dwelling with the Buddha, with knowledge and clarity. For it was only the historical flesh-and-blood Buddha that entered Parinibbana. The true Buddha—the Buddha that is clear, radiant, knowing—we can still experience and attain today, and when we do, the heart is one.
Just be still
So let go, put everything down—everything except knowing. Don’t be fooled if visions or sounds arise in your mind during meditation. Put them all down. Don’t take hold of anything at all. Just stay with this non-dual awareness. Don’t worry about the past or the future. Just be still and you will reach the place where there is no advancing, no retreating and no stopping, where there is nothing to grasp at or cling to. Why? Because there’s no self, no “me” or “mine.” It’s all gone.
The Buddha taught us to be emptied of everything in this way, not to carry anything with us. To know, and having known, let go.
Realizing the Dhamma, the path to freedom from the Round of Birth and Death, is a task that we all have to do alone. So keep trying to let go and to understand the teachings. Really put effort into your contemplation. Don’t worry about your family. At the moment they are as they are; in the future they will be like you. There’s no one in the world who can escape this fate. The Buddha told us to put down everything that lacks a real abiding substance. If you put everything down, you will see the truth. If you don’t, you won’t. That’s the way it is and it’s the same for everyone in the world. So don’t worry and don’t grasp at anything.
Even if you find yourself thinking, that’s alright too, as long as you think wisely. Don’t think foolishly. If you think of your children, think of them with wisdom, not with foolishness. Whatever the mind turns to, then think and know that thing with wisdom, aware of its nature. If you know something with wisdom, then you let it go and there’s no suffering. The mind is bright, joyful, and at peace, and turning away from distractions, it is undivided. Right now, what you can look to for help and support is your breath.
This is your own work, nobody else’s. Leave others to do their own work. You have your own duty and responsibility and you don’t have to take on those of your family. Don’t take anything else on; let it all go. That letting go will make your mind calm. Your sole responsibility right now is to focus your mind and bring it to peace. Leave everything else to others. Forms, sounds, odors, tastes—leave them to others to attend to. Put everything behind you and do your own work, fulfill your own responsibility. Whatever arises in your mind—be it fear of pain, fear of death, anxiety about others or whatever—say to it, “Don’t disturb me. You’re not my business any more.” Just keep saying this to yourself when you see those dhammas arise.
The world is the very mental state that is agitating you at this moment. “What will this person do? When I’m dead, who will look after them? How will they manage?” This is all just “the world.” Even the mere arising of a thought fearing death or pain is the world. Throw the world away! The world is the way it is. If you allow it to arise in the mind and dominate consciousness, then the mind becomes obscured and can’t see itself. So whatever appears in the mind, just say “This isn’t my business. It’s impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self.”
ABOUT AJAHN CHAH
Ajahn Chah trained in the Theravada practices of Buddhist meditation under Ajahn Mun, the greatest master of the Thai and Laotian forest tradition in many centuries, and lived the life of a simple forest monk for more than seventy years. His startling wisdom and simplicity attracted many western disciples, and in Thailand, more than a hundred forest monasteries grew up under his guidance.
