and even if we have the power of a king, we are not satisfied. Over time, life
becomes exhausted, our youth is lost, our hair grows grey, our teeth fall out, and
wrinkles line our face. Our eyesight becomes dim, and we can no longer see
clearly; our ears become impaired, and we cannot hear well; our nose grows
unable to distinguish different odors; our tongue no longer savors taste; our sense
of touch diminishes; and our body becomes weak.
But in old age the mind itself does not grow old, and hatred of our enemies may
increase, like a forest fire, while attachment to our children and partner billows
like ocean waves. With neither mind-training nor thought of our next lives, we are
trapped in a circle of delusion. Then one day, bearing a burden of sin, we die as
we were born from our mother’s womb—alone and empty-handed. The moment
of our death is unpredictable; death strikes like lightning falling from the sky. As
we die, we must leave our partner behind, though she is as beautiful as a goddess
in paradise. Likewise, we have no power to take our sons with us, though they
possess the power of kings, and no power to take in hand a penny of the wealth
that we have accumulated, though it be as great as Mt. Meru. Our physical bodies
left behind, our rebirth not yet determined, we find ourselves suddenly in the
intermediate state possessing only a mental “bardo body.” In that body we will
undergo immense suffering out of fear of the bardo, and mentally we will get a
rough and cold feeling. We move like a wave of the ocean with no time to sit for
even a second, or we drift like a feather on the wind, moving here and there,
obsessed by thoughts of how long this fear and suffering will last.
At the time of their death, those great leaders of the world and those scientists,
who, during youth, firmly believed that there was no rebirth and shared that
belief with many thousands of people, become unsure and faint voiced, and
everyone can see them revert from depending upon the science of medicine to
depending on their old religious beliefs. This shows the lack of conviction in their
unbelief and, to the contrary, an acceptance of the greater likelihood of rebirth.
In Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva, the great bodhisattva Shantideva said,
Although we may be surrounded by friends,
The sensations of death
Must be experienced alone.If we examine the sensations of suffering as we experience them, nothing is found
to be real. Certainly particles of subjective (atman) and objective aspect (atoms)
with “pretensions” of being discrete entities are unreal. Insofar as we realize that
what we see is actually unreal, it is reasonable for us to assume that therefore the
inner experiences of elation and pain, too, are the illusory play of the mind.
With that understanding, in considering how to eradicate suffering with finality,
we now know that mind is the sole root of both suffering and happiness. We also
know that there is a distinction between mind and its essential nature. Even if we
have not perfectly understood it, at least we can make the assumption that
everything is merely a figment of the mind. We may free ourselves from gross and
intolerable pain thereby. At the very least, if we understand that desire, anger,
pride, jealousy, and stupidity (for all our emotions are subsumed within these five