A Dhamma Bucket List

In English, we have a concept called a “bucket list.” It comes from a slang expression. When someone dies, we say that they “kick the bucket.” A bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket. People sometimes make lists of places they want to go, pieces of art they want to see, different kinds of food they want to eat. In general, the bucket list is a list of things that you want to experience, things you want to take in, in terms of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations.

But when you think about it, say you do go to all those places on your bucket list, what do you have at the end? You have a memory. And we know what happens to memories: They get blurry. Do those memories help you? As you approach the bucket and get ready to kick it, are those memories going to help you at all? Often they’ll get in the way, because, remember what happens when you die: You latch on to craving. You realize you can’t stay in this body any longer. There’s a desire to keep on going, to keep on experiencing things in the senses. And that craving will take you to a new rebirth.

The Buddha’s image is of a fire. It’s burning one house and then it clings to the wind and sets fire to another house. So memories, say, even of having gone to a Buddhist holy spot or having gone to a particular mountain, a particular river, if you latch on to them, won’t necessarily take you to a good place. If you do go to the Buddhist holy spots, for instance, you see people who were born there, who have lived their lives there. For the most part now they’re not Buddhist. For them, it’s just a way to make money off of the tourists who come.

Other places, other things you could be doing, just might keep pulling you back, pulling you back. The ideal bucket list is one that pulls you forward to a good place. In other words, instead of thinking of things you want to experience before you die, it’s better to think about things you want to accomplish, the goodness you want to accomplish, that you want to leave behind in the world before you die. That’s a useful bucket list.

So what good qualities would you like to develop in the mind? Those are the things that will help you. Think about wind going from one house to another, carrying a fire with it. The wind is pretty blind. That wind is craving. We know how blind craving can be. You want to have some control over the cravings that come into the mind. That control comes from developing good qualities in the mind.

The Buddha has several lists of good qualities. One is a list of the things that lead you to a good destination in a future lie. There are four qualities altogether. One is conviction, conviction in the Buddha’s awakening. Think about what that means for you. The Buddha gained his awakening through his own actions, by developing good qualities of the heart: ardency, resolution, heedfulness. And he isn’t the only one who has those qualities. It’s simply that he worked on them. So those are some things you could work at.

Develop your heedfulness. Each day when the sun rises, you can remind yourself: You could go today. Are you ready to go? Part of the mind, of course, will say No. Well, why not? What would pull you back? What would weigh you down if you suddenly found that you had to go? Learn to let go now of that particular thing. Work on letting go of that thing through your meditation, through your contemplation.

Resolution basically means that you see that an activity is really good and you stick with it. It’s very closely related to determination. You may make a vow that every day you want to meditate x number of hours, read Dhamma books, make sure that you’re in touch with the Dhamma every day.

Ardency, of course, is being able to look at your mind to see what skillful and unskillful qualities are there, with the idea that if something unskillful is coming up in the mind, you try to get rid of it right away. The Buddha’s image is of a person with his hair on fire. Sensual desire comes up, anger comes up, greed comes up, jealousy, envy: You want to put these fires out. You don’t let them stay around, because if they get used to staying around, they begin to take over.

Ajaan Chah has a nice image. He says it’s as if your mind is a house with one seat, and whoever’s sitting in the seat is in charge. So you want to make sure you’re in the seat. A thought comes up. Think of it as someone visiting the house with an proposition: “Wouldn’t it be nice to go here? Wouldn’t it be nice to go there? Or to do this, do that?” You have to stay in the seat and ask yourself, “If I actually did that, where would it lead?” Don’t let that person come in and take over the seat. You have to be in charge all the time.

Now, there will be things you do have to think about, but it’s good to have thought about them first before you jump into that particular thought and ride off.

So that’s conviction. Notice that with the Buddha, conviction doesn’t mean simply that you believe in something. It means that you actually act on the belief. Here the belief is that it is possible to gain true happiness through your efforts. You don’t have to depend on anyone else. So every time a decision comes up in the mind to think about this or to do that or to say this, think of it as occurring in a world where the Buddha has gained awakening, where his teachings are still alive, and it is possible to practice those teachings. Always keep your decision in that world. Then you have something good to take with you. At the same time, you’ll be leaving good things behind: a good example to others, a more peaceful environment around you.

The second quality is virtue. You want to make sure that your actions are in line with the five precepts, because you don’t want the kind of kamma that comes from having broken the precepts. This involves a certain amount of pride, a certain sense of self-esteem. This is a healthy pride that goes with observing the precepts. And it builds up a momentum. What you have to watch out for as death approaches are thoughts that are really beneath you. Say in this particular lifetime, you wouldn’t dare do this or that, but here’s an opening in another lifetime where you could get away with that. Sensual desire appears. Something you’re angry about appears. If you have the self-esteem that says, “No, I’m better than that,” you don’t let those thoughts pull you down.

The third quality is generosity. Here you really are leaving good things behind in the world. As the Buddha said, the things you leave behind are really yours. The things you try to hold on to get torn away from your grasp as you die. But the things you’ve given away, the time you’ve given away, the energy you’ve given away: Those are yours. The Buddha’s image is of their being like relatives who are already there on the other side, ready to greet you like relatives would welcome a loved relative who at long last has come home. So as you go into that other world, it’s a good world to go, a place where you have a home and there are people to welcome you—devas to welcome you, ideally.

The last quality is discernment. The Buddha calls this penetrative discernment into arising and passing away that leads to the right ending of stress and suffering. You don’t simply watch things come and go. As you meditate, you try to get a sense of which things are good things to come and which things are good things to go. That’s what’s meant by penetrative.

And you begin to realize there are certain good qualities of mind that you can give rise to. They may not be there yet, but you can give rise to them. Or there may be qualities that are already there that are not so honorable, not so good, but you don’t have to hold on to them. You don’t have to say, “Well, this is just the way I am.” If the Buddha had said, “This is just the way I am,” he would have stayed in his palace. If all the great ajaans when they were young just said, “Well, this is just the way I am,” they would have stayed as farmers. They would have stayed with their greed, aversion, and delusion, and there’d be nothing special there to remember. But they took it upon themselves to say, “There are better things I can give rise to. These are these bad things I can let go of. And here’s my chance.”

This is what’s really good about the Dhamma. It doesn’t make itself available only to people who are wealthy, people with a good education, or people who have lots of free time. It’s open to anybody who has the desire to find a happiness that’s harmless, a happiness that’s secure, a happiness that lifts you up to a higher level. As you develop your discernment through mindfulness and concentration, you begin to realize that, yes, you can develop those good qualities, too. They’re open to you.

So there you are: conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment. There’s another list that the Buddha associates with the qualities that lead you to be a deva, which adds one more quality to the list of four. Sometimes you look at the human world and you say, “This is not a world I’d want to come back to.” But it is possible to practice the Dhamma on the deva level. That one extra quality is learning: reading the Dhamma, memorizing the Dhamma, so that you have good Dhamma phrases in mind.

Think about the moment of death. As you approach death, lots of different thoughts will be pulling you in lots of different directions, and it’s good to have some good Dhamma phrases in mind—“May all beings be happy” “I’m the owner of my actions”: thoughts that will remind you that you have choices you have to make as death approaches, and that you want to make good choices because they’ll make a big difference for a long time to come.

All too many people feel that as death approaches, there’s nothing they can do, and they just give up and go wherever their past kamma may take them. In Thai, this is called yathakam: Whatever your past kamma is, that’s how you go. Usually, you slide down. Whereas if you can remember the Dhamma, it teaches you that even at the moment of death there are great things you can do. Just because the body is wearing out doesn’t mean the mind has to give up.

Think about the Buddha. He was a defiant person, an audacious person, thinking that the deathless could be found. And there are reports that he did find it. So you want your mind to be audacious and dauntless, even as aging comes, as illness comes, even as death comes, because the reports about the Buddha suggest that it is possible for you, too, to find the deathless. That should be number one on your bucket list. And the way to get there is to focus on the causes: conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment, and learning the Dhamma. Make that your bucket list, too. You’ll leave good things behind, you’ll take good things with you, and there will be good things to greet you on the other side.