have to do. These slogans tell us to practice the five
strengths: strong determination, familiarization, seed
of virtue, reproach, and aspiration. The five strengths
are five sources of inspiration to trust that we’ve got
all that we need in the palm of our hand.
These are the heart instructions on how to live and
how to die. Last year I spent some time with two peo-
ple who were dying. Jack and Jill were both old
friends; they each had a very different relationship
with their death. They each had the privilege of
knowing quite a few months in advance that they
were going to die, which is a great gift. Both of them
began to fade away. When things began to slip away
on Jack, when his body stopped working well for him,
he was angry at the beginning, but then something
started to shift, and he began to relax. When it was
clear that everything was dissolving and slipping
away, he seemed to get happier and happier. It felt as
if he were letting go of all the things that had kept
him separate from his basic goodness, letting every-
thing go. He would say things like, “There’s nothing
to do, there’s nothing to want,” and he would start to
laugh. Day by day he wasted away more, but that was
not a fundamental problem; this dissolving was very
liberating for him.
The external situation was the same for Jill, but
she got scared, and she began to struggle against the
whole process. As her body started to waste away and
116 Teachings for Life and Death