Four Mountains Moving In

There was a time when King Pasenadi came to see the Buddha in the middle of the day, and the Buddha asked him, “Where are you coming from? What have you been doing?”

The king said, in a burst of real frankness, “Oh the typical things of a king who’s obsessed with power and wants to maintain his rule over the country.”

The Buddha said, “Suppose there was a reliable person coming from the east saying, ‘There’s a mountain moving in from the east, crushing all living beings in its path.’ And suppose another reliable person from the south said, ‘There’s a mountain moving in from the south.’ One from the west. One from the north. In the midst of this horrible destruction of human life, what would you do?”

The king said, “What else could I do but Dhamma practice?”

The Buddha said, “In the same way I warn you that aging, illness, and death are moving in, crushing all living beings in their path. What are you going to do?”

The king said, “Well, what else but Dhamma practice?”

That’s the only thing we have. Our bodies are subject to the elements. Fortunately, the mountains to the east don’t move in on us, although they could shake us up a bit. But fire can come. Floods can come. Winds can come and overpower this little body that we have. What are you going to have left?

You have the good that you’ve done—and also the bad things you’ve done. So why add any more bad things onto your life? Do only the good things that you can see are really skillful. That way, you can prepare so that when the body gets crushed by aging, illness, and death, you have something left over. Something of value left over. Something you really depend on.

This is what it means to have a practice of mindfulness of death. You’re not thinking of “Death, death, death, death, death,” all the time. You think about death and you realize, “I’ve got to do some good. I’ve got this opportunity right here, right now.” So whatever goodness you can do, you do it. When you find yourself getting lazy or getting lax, remind yourself: “I could die at any moment.” That helps to encourage you to keep on practicing.

So mindfulness of death is motivation for doing good. It’s also why we focus on the present moment. The present moment is not necessarily a wonderful moment. Some people say it’s all we have, but we also have the future, and that’s what we’re preparing for. We live in the present moment in a way—making decisions in the present moment in such a way—that we’re preparing well for the future. The past is gone, but we’ve got the present moment. And where the future is going to take us is going to depend on what we do right now.

So. Focus here, for the sake both of the present moment and on into the future. In that way, you can say you’re prepared.