Let’s talk about death now. I mean, who wants to think about death? Nobody, you know – but it’s sort of obviously important. The Buddhist approach to death, as we know, is there are sort of two approaches to it: one is the way you lead your life, and the other is the way you actually die
Of course, we need to prepare for the actual death thing –the death time – but the best way to prepare for dying well is to live a life well, you know?
If you live in denial of death, if you live in denial of impermanence – which means you cling to all your possessions, you cling to yourself, and you cling to your loved ones, with the thought of death kind of behind, not in the front, because you can’t bear to think about it – of course life will be very stressful. And then when your time does come – when death will come because it is definite – then of course it’s very fearful, it’s very scary.
We’ve got to be optimistic, and then make the most of our lives. This is the point – every day, every second. When you realize that death will come, then you don’t waste your life: you don’t waste yourself, you don’t waste your resources. You’re on the case: you prioritize, you prioritize.
I like to use the analogy: it’s a bit like if you’ve got a flight, you know? You’ve got a flight tonight at nine o’clock. Think of this. So you’ve got a goal, there’s a deadline – it’s a lovely term, “deadline.” You’ve got a deadline: you’ve got to get to the airport by nine o’clock. So suddenly you realize, don’t you, that everything is focused on what is necessary to do to get you to the airport tonight.
You don’t start, you know, cleaning your windows. You don’t start kind of suing the next-door neighbor for all the noise. You suddenly are galvanized into action, and everything you do – because you know you’ve got to be at the airport tonight – everything you do has to do with the priority of getting you to the airport.
Well, that’s the same with death: suddenly you’re galvanized into action, you’re only going to practice morality. You don’t worry so much about all the fights, you don’t need to get anxious about things – what’s the point, you know? Because now you’re focused on doing and thinking only what will help you at the time of death: in other words, practicing virtue and not practicing nonvirtue: that’s it.
If you want to have a good death, whenever it is – tomorrow or in fifty years’ time – the Buddha’s view is you can make sure it’s a good death by living your life well. You live in good ethics, you don’t harm others, you live in your vows, you’re kind, you’re generous, you practice virtue, then everything will work out for you, you’ll be ready for death.
People worry, “Well, I’ve got no one to take care of me when I’m dying.” But you will have: if you’re kind to people every day and you’re thinking of compassion every day, you will always be taken care of. There’s a saying, you know? They say the meditators in the mountains – the really devoted practitioners – say, “If you’re really practicing goodness and kindness and love and compassion and living every day the best you can, the food will roll up the hill to you.” This is the way karma is, and I have confidence in this.
But we try to plan everything, we try to strangle everything to death and plan it all. Nothing wrong with plans, but the real way to ensure that your tomorrow is good is by living well today. The way to guarantee that the day after tomorrow is good is by living good tomorrow. You go one day at a time.
That’s why I love that saying, you know: we pave the way. Your life is like a journey, and you’ve got to take care of today’s paving stone, and that leads you to the next paving stone, and that leads you to the next one. You literally create your own path.
It’s not as if the goal of your path is some mystery. You create your goal, you create that – you create it! When we realize that, then we know we’re in charge, you know?
This is the idea of karma: there’s no one up there punishing and rewarding us, there’s no one up there kind of working out if we’re good or bad. There’s nothing to fear. There’s no one behind us – that’s like a conspiracy theory. We are the boss.
We ensure that tomorrow is good by making a good job of today. It’s natural, it’s logical. That’s how you build anything, isn’t it: you build the proper foundations, then you build the first floor, then you build the second floor, then you build the third floor. If your foundations aren’t right, the thing will collapse. So you do everything one step at a time, one step at a time, one step at a time.
We hear these words, but it takes time to really hear them because our fears are so strong, you know? We anticipate and imagine all the dramas that might happen in the future – but we create the future!
That’s the thing: the future’s not something set in stone that’s out there already existing. We create it: it’s up to us. His Holiness the Dalai Lama says karma’s like self-creation. When we realize this, we get real confidence, you know? It’s in our hands. We’re in charge!