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IV. Mindfulness of Death: Insight Meditation

In other words, keep death in mind. This is where the mind advances to the development of liberating insight, taking death as its theme. ‘Death’ here refers to the death occurring in the present – physical sensations arising and passing away, mental acts arising and passing away, all in a moment of awareness. Only when you’re aware on this level can you be classed as being mindful of death.

Now that we’ve brought up the topic of death, we have to reflect on birth, seeing how many ways sensations are born and how many ways mental acts are born. This is something a person with a quiet mind can know.

A. Sensations have up to five levels of refinement –

All four of these sensations arise and disband by their very nature; and it’s possible to find out where they first appear.

An explanation of this sort of sensation: When the mind is quiet and steadily concentrated, it has the power to create images in the imagination (inner sensations, or sensations within sensations). Whatever images it thinks of will then appear to it; and once they appear, the mind tends to enter into them and take up residence. (It can go great distances.) If the mind fastens onto these sensations, it is said to take birth – simply because it has no sense of death.

These sensations can appear in any of five ways –

Another class of sensation is termed gocara-rūpa – sensations that circle around the physical body. There are five sorts – light, sound, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations – each having five levels. For instance, common light travels slowly; in the flash of an eye it runs for a league and then dies away. The second level, subtle light, goes further; the third level goes further still. The fourth and fifth levels can travel the entire universe. The same holds true for sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations. The relationships between all the potentials in the universe are interacting at every moment, differing only as to whether they’re fast or slow. This is the inequality that has been termed ‘anicca-lakkhaṇa’ – the characteristic of inherent inconstancy. Whoever is ignorant is bound to think that all this is impossible, but actually this is the way things already are by their nature. We’ll come to know this through vijjā – cognitive skill – not through ordinary labels and concepts. This is called true knowing, which meditators who develop the inner eye will realize for themselves: knowing the arising of these sensations, their persisting, and their disbanding, in terms of their primary qualities and basic regularity.

B. As for mental acts that arise and die, their time span is many thousands of times faster than that of sensations. To be able to keep track of their arising and dying away, our awareness has to be still. The four kinds of mental acts are:

One class of these mental acts stays in place, arising and disbanding with reference to the immediate present. Another class is termed gocara vedanā, gocara saññā, etc., which go out to refer to the world. Each of these has five levels, differing as to whether they’re common, refined, or subtle, slow or fast. These five levels connect with one another, running out in stages, and then circling back to their starting point, disbanding and then arising again – all without end.

When we don’t have the skill to discern the primary sensations and mental acts that stay in place, we can’t see into the gocara sensations and mental acts that go flowing around. This is termed ‘avijjā,’ the ignorance that opens the way for connecting consciousness (paṭisandhi viññāṇa), giving rise to the act of fabrication (saṅkhāra), which is the essence of kamma. This gives fruit as sensations and feelings that are followed by craving, and then the act of labeling, which gives rise to another level of consciousness – of sensory objects – and then the cycle goes circling on. This is termed khandha-vaṭṭa, the cycle of the aggregates, circling and changing unevenly and inconsistently. To see this is called aniccānupassanā-ñāṇa, the knowledge that keeps track of inconstancy as it occurs. This is known through the inner eye, i.e., the skill of genuine discernment.

Thus, those who practice the exercises of insight meditation should use their sensitivities and circumspection to the full if they hope to gain release from ignorance. Fabrications, in this context, are like waves on the ocean. If we’re out in a boat on the ocean when the waves are high, our vision is curtailed. Our senses of hearing, smell, taste, touch, and ideation are all curtailed. We won’t be able to perceive far into the distance. What this means is that when our minds are immersed in the hindrances, we won’t be able to perceive death at all. But once we’ve been able to suppress the hindrances, it’s like taking a boat across the ocean when there are no waves. We’ll be able to see objects far in the distance. Our eyes will be clear-seeing, our ears clear-hearing, our senses of smell, taste, touch and ideation will be broad and wide open. The water will be clear, and the light brilliant. We’ll be able to know all around us.

In the same way, those who are to know death clearly have to begin by practicing concentration as a foundation for developing liberating insight. How do the five sorts of above-mentioned sensation arise? What are their causes? How do they disappear? How do physical and mental feelings arise? How do they disappear? What are their causes? How do labels and concepts arise? What are their causes? How do they disappear? How do mental fabrications arise? What are their causes? How do they disappear? How does consciousness arise by way of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and ideation? What are its causes? How does it disappear?

Altogether there are four levels to each of the five aggregates (khandhas): external and internal, staying in place and streaming outward. These can be known at all times, but only people who have the discernment that comes from training the mind in tranquility and insight meditation will be able to know death on this level.

The discernment that arises in this way has been termed pubbenivāsānussati-ñāṇa, i.e., understanding past sensations, future sensations, and sensations in the present. These sensations differ in the way they arise and pass away. To know this is to have mastered one cognitive skill.

Cutūpapāta-ñāṇa: With discernment of this sort, we’re able to keep track of the states of our own mind as they arise and disappear, sometimes good as they arise and good as they disappear, sometimes bad as they arise and bad as they disappear, sometimes good as they arise and bad as they disappear, sometimes bad as they arise and good as they disappear. To be able to keep track in this way is to know states of being and birth.

Āsavakkhaya-ñāṇa: When the discernment of this skill arises, it leads to disenchantment with the way sensations and mental acts arise and disappear and then arise again, simply circling about: coarser sensations going through the cycle slowly, more refined sensations going quickly; coarser mental acts going slowly, more refined mental acts going quickly. When you can keep track of this, you know one form of stress. Now focus attention back on your own mind to see whether or not it’s neutral at that moment. If the mind approves of its knowledge or of the things it knows, that’s kāmasukhallikānuyoga – indulgence in pleasure. If the mind disapproves of its knowledge or of the things it knows, that’s attakilamathānuyoga, indulgence in self-infliction. Once you’ve seen this, make the mind neutral toward whatever it may know: That moment of awareness is the mental state forming the Path. When the Path arises, the causes of stress disband. Try your best to keep that mental state going. Follow that train of awareness as much as you can. The mind when it’s in that state is said to be developing the Path – and at whatever moment the Path stands firm, disbanding and relinquishing occur.

When you can do this, you reach the level where you know death clearly. People who know death in this way are then able to reduce the number of their own deaths. Some of the Noble Ones have seven more deaths ahead of them, some have only one more, others go beyond death entirely. These Noble Ones are people who understand birth and death, and for this reason have only a few deaths left to them. Ordinary people who understand their own birth and death on this level are hard to find. Common, ordinary birth and death aren’t especially necessary; but people who don’t understand the Dhamma have to put up with birth and death as a common thing.

So whoever is to know death on this level will have to develop the cognitive skill that comes from training the mind. The skill, here, is knowing which preoccupations of the mind are in the past, which are in the future, and which are in the present. This is cognitive skill (vijjā). Letting go of the past, letting go of the future, letting go of the present, not latching onto anything at all: This is purity and release.

As for ignorance, it’s the exact opposite, i.e., not knowing what’s past, not knowing what’s future, not knowing what’s present – that is, the arising and falling away of sensations and mental acts, or body and mind – or at most knowing only on the level of labels and concepts remembered from what other people have said, not knowing on the level of awareness that we’ve developed on our own. All of this is classed as avijjā, or ignorance.

No matter how much we may use words of wisdom and discernment, it still won’t gain us release. For instance, we may know that things are inconstant, but we still fall for inconstant things. We may know about things that are stressful, but we still fall for them. We may know that things are not-self, but we still fall for things that are not-self. Our knowledge of inconstancy, stress, and not-self isn’t true. Then how are these things truly known? Like this:

‘Knowing both sides’ means knowing what’s constant and what’s inconstant, what’s stress and what’s ease, what’s not-self and what’s self. ‘Letting go both ways’ means not latching onto things that are constant or inconstant, not latching onto stress or ease, not latching onto self or not-self. ‘Shedding everything’ means not holding onto past, present, or future: Awareness doesn’t head forward or back, and yet you can’t say that it’s taking a stance.

‘Mindful and alert just to the extent of knowledge and remembrance, the mind is independent, not attached to anything in the world.’