of fear at the moment of death.
In August 1985, I went on a pilgrimage to Mt. Kailash. There I met a woman
from Khyungpo Tongchen who was so weak that we felt that she was on the verge
of death. I will tell you her story. She was from a midstatus family in her village.
She had three daughters, but because she had no sons, she had gone to Mt. Kailash
for pilgrimage. It is a Tibetan tradition that women without male children should
go to Mt. Kailash so that their womb-blood could give birth to sons. She had gone
there together with some people from her village, vowing to perform a hundred
circumambulations around Mt. Kailash to obtain the boon of a son. She stayed
behind at Kailash to fulfill her commitment after her party left for home. Later she
gave birth to a healthy son, but after three or four months she contracted serious
dysentery. Day by day she became thinner and thinner, so that within six weeks
she was like a skeleton. She could not even get out of bed to go to the lavatory.
When she was doing her prostrations around Kailash, however, she had met a nun
who took on the task of caring for her and her baby. The gossipy people who knew
her said that, because of the strong attachment she had to her baby, if she died,
she would surely be reborn as an evil spirit.
Then one day the nun came to me crying and told me the story. She told me that
the woman was sure to die, that she had given up hope, that she was constantly
asking the nun to bring the baby to her just to touch his face, and that she was
weeping and moaning that she did not want to die. “This woman is on a wrong
path because of her strong attachment to her son,” the nun complained. “I tell her
that I will take care of her son, but she seems to have no trust in me. She becomes
unconscious several times a day, and then all of a sudden she regains
consciousness with wide open eyes.” She asked me to visit the dying woman.
Touched by this story, I went to see her and found her in a pitiful state, her
complexion pale, her eyes sunken, her nose just skin and bone, and her mouth
wizened. Her thin skin hung loosely on her body, she had lost her hair, and an
unpleasant smell of sickness moved in the air. She could speak only a few words. I
taught her some buddha-dharma, but she was just looking at her baby and
moaning, “I cannot die!” I told her that attachment to her son brought no benefit to
anybody and that moreover her attachment was a hindrance on the buddha-
dharma path. I reminded her that the nun had promised that she would take good
care of her son and that she should trust her, and I gave her this sermon.
Death is for all, from celebrities to beggars. Sooner or later we all have to die,
like sheep slaughtered by the butcher. At the time of death, even great leaders
with a retinue of a thousand people have no power to take even a single
person with them. If we have a pile of wealth as large as a mountain, we
cannot take even so little a thing as a needle with us. We leave behind our
children and our beloved spouse at the time of death. Death occurs to
everyone, including you. So you need not worry too much about it.
Buddha taught that all things are without substantial existence, like a
dream. This is true regardless of the realm into which we are born, and we
must sustain that feeling of illusion and trust in it. In this illusion, we
differentiate friend and foe and distinguish between what is to be rejected and