Slogan #18

The mahayana instruction for the ejection of consciousness at death is the five strengths: how you conduct yourself is important. When you are dying, practice the five strengths (based on becoming very familiar with them while you are alive).

The five strengths are instructions on how to live and how to die; we learn how to live by learning how to die and we learn how to die by learning how to live. We wake up to this moment of life or this moment of death by practicing Tonglen.

Even in the last moments of life, you can breathe in and you can breathe out. You can breathe in the suffering and breathe out healing and relief. And when your selfishness pops up with fear and despair, you can turn around and say to it: ‘Ah, there you are again. I’ve been telling you to get out of here for a long time and this time I really mean it…’

Norman Fischer

Meditation is the continued practice of not holding on to things, including life itself. Perhaps the purpose of life is to free the mind from clinging, to undo our identification with our bodies and the deeply conditioned patterns of ego attachment that favors ‘I, me, and mine’. The following is an excerpt from a piece that Laurie Anderson wrote after Lou Reed’s passing. Here she describes his last morning, outside and looking at the trees: "As meditators, we had prepared for this – how to move the energy up from the belly and into the heart and out through the head. I have never seen an expression as full of wonder as Lou's as he died. His hands were doing the water-flowing 21-form of tai chi. His eyes were wide open. I was holding in my arms the person I loved the most in the world, and talking to him as he died. His heart stopped. He wasn't afraid. I had gotten to walk with him to the end of the world. Life – so beautiful, painful and dazzling – does not get better than that. And death? I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love. "

Attachment closes the heart, whereas compassion opens it. The only security we have in life is love. Let’s end our practice, our day with the 5 Remembrances: I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old. I am of the nature to have ill-health. There is no way to escape having ill-health. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death. All that is dear to me and everyone I love is of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.