Thousands of people die at once in events that seem to occur daily.
In 1992, fifteen minutes before it was due to land at Tribhuvan airport in
Kathmandu, flight TG 218 crashed into Mt. Bhatidhara. All three hundred people
aboard were killed; there were no survivors. None of those three hundred
passengers were aware, previously, that he or she was going to die that day.
Moreover, the parents and relatives who were at the airport to meet them were left
bewildered and incredulous at the news of the crash on the mountain. The
remains of the plane are still there. The bodies could not be found, gone like the
track of a bird vanishing in the sky. This present body cannot be trusted to
continue in its existence indefinitely!
Science may have made it easier for us to travel and to live longer, but it has also
created more ways to die. Such circumstances, for example, machines contrived
from the four elements, have been created by the developed countries—or rather
by greedy people in those countries—for short-term benefits, Through their
manufacture, there is great danger that, by the end of this century, this world will
have become uninhabitable by humans and animals. If we come to such a grave
pass, the ways to die will be even more numerous.
Furthermore, because of subtle chemical reactions, new diseases now kill
people irrespective of their gender, social status, or location on the planet. Rather
than dying of natural karmic causes, people are facing death by these new
diseases, weapons of war, and so on, that every day kill on a large scale. People
who die in these ways are not without parents, relatives, spouse, and friends, but
like us they love and are beloved, and they leave unfinished work behind them.
The time of death is uncertain; death waits for no one. It will not look to see
whether the child can yet stand on its own two feet. Death comes all of sudden,
like a clap of thunder in the sky above our heads. At that time, only our training
can help; wealth, children, fame, and so forth, will be of no avail. All of that must
be left behind. So start now and remember death and the need to engage in
training of the mind. We must know about the nature of death so that in the bardo
of the death process, we can successfully engage in the modes of liberation.
5.4 THE ACTUAL PRACTICE IN THE BARDO OF THE DEATH PROCESS
The bardo of the death process starts when the pain of death attacks us and
finishes with the cessation of our breathing. Its duration is variable.
The best of us, trusting in pure presence, will think to ourselves, “Now is the
time of my certain death, and I pass into nirvana, into the matrix of simplicity,”
and, exhaling long and deeply, we rest in consciousness without any focus. That is
the swiftest way of death, and we should practice the long and deep exhalation
again and again.
When death comes to us during that last exhalation of air, yet release does not
occur, if we have practiced repeatedly beforehand, we visualize pure presence as a
white “A” in the heart center that shoots out from the fontanel, opening out into
space. Articulating twenty-one white “A” syllables one after the other as they shoot
from the heart center up and out of the crown of the head, we rest in unfocussed