A friend of mine gave me The Tibetan Book of LIving and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. At first I didn't like that it forces me to look at death so much. Too depressing. Why would anyone want to look at this all the time? Daily, Sogyal Rinpoche seems to imply! I keep thinking that if I look daily, I'll miss the good things in life. I'll sit sadly one day thinking how much time I wasted dwelling on death.
(artwork from Goran Druskovic (~goran-d - on DeviantART.com)
http://goran-d.deviantart.com/art/Life-After-Death-Collision-21425770
This picture reminds me what Sogyal Rinpoche might be trying to tell me - that this life is an illusion. He seems to be saying that the way we normally look at life and commonly ignore thinking about death, we walk through life in ignorance. Even when he experienced the most bliss (p.46) , his teacher reminded him to be calm and not put any more emphasis on this over any other experience in life. None of it is inherently good or bad. But the way we look at events in life, we give them too much power. They are an illusion. We make these events seem too real.
Journalist Malcolm Browne's photograph of Thích Quảng Đức during his self-immolation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation
If we don't prepare ourselves individually, the illusion will shatter just as we are about to die. At the moment of death all of the things we had thought were real and would last just a bit longer are no longer available to us. We cling to them, but there is nothing to hang on to and nothing to grasp them with anymore.
Imagine you let someone else pack your suitcase for a long journey and you arrive with no underwear. Who can you blame? It's your suitcase. It's your journey. You chose to let someone else pack your suitcase.
I have to ask myself who is packing my suitcase for my final journey? Sogyal Rinpoche seems to be trying to get me to think seriously about how important it is to prepare for this journey -- the one where I say goodbye to this body, this vessel, this vehicle, and jump, walk, run, float into the abyss. I feel he is trying to tell me to use every moment to check my itinerary, my luggage, and my packing list. What have I filled it with? The only thing I can take with me is thoughts, mind, habits of mind, and habits of thought. Did I let my parents and teachers fill my mind with thoughts that have gone unchecked but will come back to haunt me at those critical transitional moments.
Will I see Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, or God and not know what to do or say? Will I scream and cry as if the world has done me wrong because I think I should live just a little bit longer and do it in a way that leaves a scary, useless, helpless, frustrating impression on those around me?
I don't know with any certainty what will happen when I die. I don't know why a monk in Vietnam or Tibet would set him or her self on fire and choose to meet death painfully and suddenly. I do believe that I have to pack my own suitcase. I have to take full responsibility for my journey. It is useless for me to blame anyone. Any thought, idea, or advice others gave me needs to be checked. I need to use the time I have to check and to practice watching how I react habitually to thoughts that I like and those I don't like. It's impossible for me to think that I'll be any more capable of controlling my thoughts at death than I can control them in a moment of anger when I'm seething, in a moment of greed when I'm desiring, a moment of lust or bliss when I'm clinging, a moment of distraction when I'm somewhere else. I can use life to practice what Sogyal Rinpoche is trying to teach me and I can do it in a way that actually allows me to enjoy life by being a bit more aware of what is really going on around me right now.
I feel like I'm grasping at straws here and have a long way to go but thank you for any thoughts or comments...
(Dreams by ~whisperfall at DeviantArt.com)
http://whisperfall.deviantart.com/art/Dreams-144932089
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