Throughout our lives we spend various periods of time and various amounts of our attention and various proportions of our daily activities in preparation for things that are important in our life. However, how much is devoted to such preparation is not always proportional to the ultimate importance of that for which we are preparing.
Right now, the first three days of this week are to be devoted to a progressively greater degree to preparation for a colonoscopy on Thursday morning. It is amazing how much such preparations require. First, I only have to start a “ low-residue” diet for Monday and part of Tuesday which really only means that I give up the healthy high fiber diet to which I am accustomed, switching to white bread and white rice and such things. However, this is followed by a large dose of laxatives and a switch to a “clear liquid” diet which will make greater demands on my time and attention, because it will effectively induce something like diarrhea. I will need to spend Tuesday night and all of Wednesday close to the bathroom and very attentive to maintaining good hydration.
I have been assured by those who have had a colonoscopy more recently than my last one that this will be the worst part of the entire process. The actual procedure is supposed to be little more than a minor inconvenience after such a rigorous preparation. Furthermore, viewed from the perspective of an entire lifetime, this is a truly minor episode. Nevertheless, it has a demanding preparation.
When we look at how much more significant an event our death would seem to be out of all the events of a lifetime, why do we do so little to prepare for it? Furthermore, this is not because we have no means to make such preparations, but more likely we avoid them because we prefer to not think about our own mortality. We act as though we shall live forever. This despite all the evidence to the contrary. Have you met anyone who has managed to live into their second or third century of life? Have you met anyone who has had neither an injury nor an illness ever? We have instead seen family, friends and complete strangers fall ill and slowly die or suffer some sort of accident or sudden heart attack and die without warning. Either way they all died. Many of us have had close brushes with death whether an accident that we survive or a serious illness or injury from which we recover.
Despite our denial, we really know that we shall not escape death. Nevertheless, we give little thought to how we may prepare for it. If we ever do, we are likely to make some kind of beginning at a spiritual life. I have had so many potentially fatal experiences from which I have survived. In spite of all of them, I have only recently found out about the kind of preparations that we may make for our own deaths, preparations that can turn it from an end to a beginning. I am not talking about something that promises a life in some kind of paradise, but rather something that promises to open the possibility of enlightenment in the midst that very experience of death.
We in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, particularly in the Drikung Kagyu lineage have a practice called “ Phowa” which offers the opportunity to enable the practitioner to help others pass through the stages of death peacefully and even utilize them to attain enlightenment. Having had such experiences of close calls with death and extensive of medical care and survival accompanied by some more of less rigorous recovery process, I have been able to help others at times when they were hospitalized or faced medical challenges. Therefore, I desire to learn this “Phowa” practice to help others as well as prepare myself for that occasion when I do not survive some injury or illness.
Even without such special training we may still make preparations by striving to practice virtue rather than nonvirtue, thereby avoiding the great Karmic debt that might have us born in some realm other than the human one. Furthermore, we may strive through such practices as Vajrasattva practice to cleanse any negative Karma that we have accumulated. Most importantly we may try to cultivate bodhicitta and compassion in order to benefit all sentient beings which brings us closer to Buddhahood by which we may benefit them the most. That is indeed the most important hing for which we may make preparations!!
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