Heedfulness

In Thailand they divide ceremonies like this into two types: those for auspicious occasions and those for unauspicious occasions. In fact, they even call the ceremonies for unauspicious occasions—such as death—“unauspicious ceremonies,” which is a Brahmanical idea and not a Buddhist idea. As the Buddha said, when you become heedful, that’s auspicious.

When someone passes away, it’s good to reflect, on the one hand, that we want to help them by making merit and dedicating it to them. Then we reflect also on the fact that someday we’re going to die—and do we have enough merit to make sure that we’re safe and secure in where we’re going? If you see that you’re lacking anything, now is the time to make up the lack. So in terms of generosity, virtue, meditation, wherever you’re weak, you want to make yourself strong. You survey yourself to see where your strengths are now, because those are the things you’re going to have to rely on.

When we’re born in this world, we’re kind of like those avatars they have in games where the avatar has to have some strengths and some weaknesses. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be born in the human realm. If you had nothing but weaknesses, you’d fall further down. Nothing but strengths? You’d be way up higher. So here you are, with a middling batch of strengths and weaknesses. So try to figure them out.

Where are you strong in terms of conviction? Or weak? Are you strong or weak in terms of your virtue? Strong or weak in terms of your ability to improvise? There are lots of things you could be looking at in yourself. This is called having a sense of yourself. And it’s an important part of the practice. You know what work has to be done, but you also know that you can rely on some strengths. So try to ferret out those strengths, so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by the practice.

When you think about the fact that you don’t have much time, it means you have to do this work now. That’s what’s auspicious about occasions like this. They make you heedful. As the Buddha said, heedfulness is the basis for all skillful qualities, and it’s the path to the deathless. There is a quality in the mind that doesn’t change because it’s outside of space, outside of time. And through heedfulness, we can find it.

So. Don’t let yourself be heedless, because, as the Buddha said, that’s the path to more and more death.

So it’s not that we’re just accepting death. You think about the Buddha—he was pretty defiant. His wisdom wasn’t just to accept things that occur. He realized that there were potentials in the body, in the mind, that you could make the most of so that you could actually go beyond aging, illness, and death. That was a pretty audacious desire on his part. And it was an audacious discovery when he found it. So he’s asking us to be audacious, too, in doing our best—because those possibilities are within us, and it’s a shame if we don’t take advantage of them.