http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an06/an06.019.than.html
Last May I had a close encounter with a moose, with death, and viscerally revisited the genius of the Buddha's teaching on mindfulness of death which you can read by clicking the above link.
As I was driving south along Route 12A in Roxbury, Vermont, late at night, a voluminous male moose, (not yet an adult because he did not have full grown antlers), leaped from the ditch to my right, to smack in front of my small Toyota. By the time I hit the brakes it was too late, and the moose had bounced with an enormous thud from the front to the roof of the car, sliding down the left side to the street, leaving the car smeared with his excrement, excreted no doubt through the force of terror and shock. The moose died on impact. It was a devastating scene, and I wailed a tormented apology to that yearling in the stillness of that unforgettable night.
In those seconds from the time the raw data hit my eyeballs and bounced through my mental faculty as "moose ahead" to the ensuing impact I could easily have died. But I did not. What I survived death to tell you is: you could die with your last words being: OH SHIT or F&*^ instead of something more useful like, Lama-la kyabsu chio or Namo Buddhaya or I am sorry or Love Conquers All.
What the Buddha in the Maranassati Sutta or Mindfulness of Death Sutta teaches us is how incredibly cavalier we are about the fact of our mortality. I mean, we could die at any time, that is a fact. And since we have no clue whatsoever when that will happen or how, we somehow assume that it won't be today or this minute or even this month or this year. We think death is such a long way off due to ossified delusion. We think death is for The Other. Any Other but us. We always think we will somehow be able to hide at the back of the class and not be called on to answer.
Imagine you are about to hang up the phone during a heated argument and you hurl your last scathing insult into someone's ear and suddenly you drop dead. That is the legacy you leave behind and that second might eclipse every good thing you have ever done as you transition because it is the last moment of your sojourn here on planet Earth. In other words, the force of dying in a state of anger might powerfully determine the subsequent experience you could have. I do not believe that consciousness dies. To say nothing of the energetic bilgewater you leave in the mind of the one who was on the phone with you when you kicked off in the midst of a hissy fit.
Or, you have your pants down while watching a questionable video on the net and you drop dead just then. It's possible you know. Mindfulness of death, from moment to moment, not merely day to day, is, then, a useful thing to reflect on.
The Buddha called those who are mindful of death daily "heedless" and those who are mindful of death moment to moment "heedful". And in our culture we are subheedless due to the fact that we do everything we can to avoid reflecting on death because we can't seem to understand that contemplating death has the edifying purpose of enriching the precious gift of life. Mindfulness of death is the key to unlocking the incredible opportunities your life holds out to you.
Perhaps extreme examples like dying while pulling the trigger of a gun or while writing a computer virus or scamming someone are incomprehensible to most of us. What about dying with a grudge toward someone who is at that moment coursing through your mind? Anyone? Or dying just after turning down a beggar who has asked you for a bit of change? Or dying while looking at yourself in the rearview mirror and applying lipstick? What texts were being messaged in the hundreds of car accidents that happen every year while people are texting? Who in their last breath has time for gossip? What are we doing with the moments that make up our lives?
People consider birth a momentous event, prepare tenderly and joyfully for it, and yet death, another vastly important transition, is not met with the same enthusiasm or concern. That seems a bit naive from my perspective. Even if you think death consists of a mere cessation of existence, still, don't you care about what you leave in memory and atmosphere with the image of you slamming a door in someone's face and one of you dies just then? Some may think, "I could care less." If you knew anything at all about death that you could teach me, I would say bravo, more power to you. But the truth is you don't know about death because most likely you were never taught, and that ignorance makes cowards of the careless when the moment comes.
Each moment you meet with another could be your last. Doesn't that evoke some hesitation within? Some poignant gratitude or at least tolerance? Look at the faces and remember: this could be the last time I see these people.
We've gotten so blithely accustomed to spending time on all manner of unconscious activities that we don't question their fundamental purpose, impact, or implications in terms of whether they conduce to peace, personal evolution, deepened understanding, sustainability, or good communication. Among the most advanced Dharma practitioners I know, there is little time for so many activities that masquerade as "skillful means" among those claiming this or that lineage as theirs. I am absolutely guilty as charged, finding insidious and self-rationalizing justifications for things I have no business spending time on if I hope to leave here a better person. But more and more I am eliminating from my life activities that serve no other purpose than to waste the precious time and energy I could be devoting to something more meaningful.
