Mind the Gap

I’m told that in the subways in London, they have a sign on the cars: “Mind the gap.” Basically, it’s telling you, as you step from the platform onto the car or from the car back onto the platform, to step firmly from one to the other. Don’t let your foot slip into the gap in between. Things can get pretty bad if that happens.

I’m reminded of this phrase every time we have someone die. What happens in the gap between this life and the next life? You get a foretaste of that when you look at your own mind as you’re meditating. You’re here with the breath in this world of the body that you’re inhabiting right now, then there’s a gap, and you’re someplace else.

I remember Ajaan Fuang telling me to be very careful to see the steps from one state of mind to the next. I kept thinking, how is that possible when you black out between one state to the next? That’s what people ordinarily do. As they go from one state to the next, they’re hardly aware of when they went at all. The connections from one train of thought to another train of thought are very tenuous. And often there are lots of gaps.

It’s not too bad as you’re still alive. Your body’s still here, your circumstances around you are still here. We live in a community where we rely on one another. We live in a society where things may be breaking down, but at least there’s still some support for survival.

But when you die, it’s a total gap. All the supports are pulled away. I’m reminded of the story of the Benders. When I was small, we lived in the town of Parsons, Kansas, and out west of town there were two burial mounds. They’re called the Bender mounds, named after a family that had owned an inn right next to them. Apparently, during the days when the stagecoaches were going west, this was on one of the trails that people would take.

If you came with a group and were staying at the Bender Inn, you were safe. But if you came alone, they had a table with a trapdoor under the chair. They’d have you sit at the table and have your meal, and then they’d pull the trapdoor open. You’d drop down, they’d kill you, take all your belongings, bury you. Nobody would know. There were no connections.

A lot of people, when they die, are like that. Suddenly, all their supports are taken away, and all they have is the mind clinging to its craving. And craving can be blind. The Buddha’s image is of a fire that spreads. Fires are blind—they just go where the wind pushes them.

If you’re lucky, then you’ve got some merit that you’ve made. As the Buddha said, the good you’ve done in this lifetime is like long-lost relatives waiting for you as you come home. In that case, you’re relatively safe. But it’s a big, wide world out there. The world that the Buddha talked about is wider than the physical world we live in in the modern day. It includes not only the world of human beings, but also the worlds above us, the worlds below us.

When you die, all of a sudden, you’re open to all of that. So thinking about this should make you heedful. You’ve got work to do, to develop the treasures you’ll need. As the Buddha said, the things you need for a happy rebirth are conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. In some cases, he expands that list to the seven treasures: those four plus learning, shame, and compunction.

These are the things that protect you. There are many stories of King Pasenadi coming to see the Buddha. Here was someone who lived his life looking for power and thinking about nothing but power, and all of a sudden he’s got a Buddha living in his vicinity. So he starts thinking about spiritual things. One day he comes to see the Buddha and says, “You know, people who don’t observe the precepts, even though they may have large armies, are not protected. Those who do observe the precepts are protected even if they don’t have large armies.”

And the Buddha says, “Yes, that’s right.” After all, your large armies are some of the things you have to leave behind when the gap opens and all your supports are gone except for the goodness you’ve done in your mind.

So that’s your protection. Those treasures protect you. We’re sometimes told that spiritual materialism is a bad thing, the idea that we’re going to get something out of the practice is a bad thing. But the Buddha was not one of the people who would say that.

He would talk in terms of stocking up: stocking up on your merit, stocking up on your goodness, stocking up on all your good qualities. These are things you build. We’re not here just to let go, let go. There’s a lot we’ve got to build.

Then we have to think further. From this lifetime to the next lifetime, if it’s a good step, if you mind the gap well, keep your wits together as you cross over, you’re still in a precarious position because that lifetime is going to end as well. You should start looking for something that doesn’t die.

This is why the Buddha says that mindfulness of death leads to the deathless, because mindfulness of death means you have to be heedful. You realize, if you think properly about death, you’ve got to prepare. To be really prepared, you have to aim for something higher than just a good rebirth.

How do you prepare? By doing all the good things recommended on the path. Your heedfulness then becomes the basis for developing the five strengths, and the five strengths—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—lead to the deathless. They take you beyond having to amass things and build things up, having to be worried about sudden gaps that open up wide in front of you. They take you to a place of genuine safety.

So be clear about the fact that there are going to be gaps, and all the supports that you depend on will suddenly disappear like a rug pulled out from under you. All you have to depend on when that happens are the qualities of your mind. So build good qualities in there. When you know someone else has passed away, you build good qualities and then you dedicate them to them. That way they benefit, and you benefit, too.

But you have to realize you really have to depend on yourself here, because when the sudden gaps come, your only support will be the goodness of your own mind—the mindfulness you develop that bridges the gap, or the other good qualities you develop that get you to a place where there are no gaps at all. That’s when you’re really safe.

This is why the Buddha said to reflect on death every day, every day. He has that passage where he says to remind yourself every day at sunset: “You could go tonight. Are you ready to go?” If you’re not, work on the qualities you’ll need when you go. Work on those five strengths. Every morning at sunrise: “You could go today. Are you ready to go?” If not, work on those five strengths.

There’s another passage where he says even thinking about death twice a day is heedless. You should remind yourself each time you breathe in that “There are good things I can do with this breath as I breathe in”—not just moving the breath around the body, but developing good qualities in the mind. You want to have that kind of acute heedfulness, because it’s only in this moment, this moment, this moment that the work can be done. Don’t put it off.

After all, there may be a gap between now and the time that you’ve put it off to. So be heedful. Mind the gap. And you’ll be safe.