Die Before You Die
a summarized transcription
by Ajahn Nyanamoli Thero
Q: How can one be free from suffering?
Ajahn Nyanamoli: The first step is to acknowledge your suffering. If you constantly try to avoid that fact, you won’t be able to free yourself from it.
You need to “suffer”, you need to recognize the liability to suffering as suffering, and you are the one who must make the effort to understand the nature of it because that’s the only way freedom will arise. You won’t miraculously get cured of suffering without taking responsibility for it.
Enduring the suffering that gets revealed on account of sense restraint is the first step. But, that in itself will not result in cessation of suffering. If that was so, that’s what the Buddha would have said. But instead, he taught that it’s the understanding of the suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the escape from it, that’s what frees you.
If you are only concerned about trying to avoid suffering or maintaining the attitude that suffering is bad, you are never going to acknowledge it. And acknowledging it is a necessary basis for your liberation.
You don’t need to go seek out suffering, because you are already in the position of suffering. All you need to do is stop distracting yourself from it and stop ignoring it. How to suffer, or how to recognize that you are already within the domain of suffering? Well, you do so by recognizing the fact that your life, health, youth, people around you, investments, house, your possessions, can be taken away and lost forever. From that reflection see whether you are emotionally disturbed.
That disturbance even with the thought of the prospect of loss is in itself already suffering.
And that’s exactly one of the ways in which people try to avoid suffering, by refusing to think about it, “Oh you must not think about it, because it’s depressing!” And, because of that way of thinking, that’s exactly why you can’t liberate yourself from what you are liable to, because you’re refusing to acknowledge that you are liable to it.
Q: Also, everything we do involves and requires maintenance - taking care of yourself, supporting your family, and upholding your job. If you were to cease your efforts to maintain these aspects of your life, those things would fall apart…
Nm: Why are you doing that maintenance? Because the thought, the notion of not having those things, makes you suffer. So, all you’re doing is trying to manage your suffering, but at the same time you’re denying it’s affecting you, “Nothing bothers me in my life, I’m happy!” Okay, well, if you don’t do anything tomorrow, if there is no burden on you to keep performing those maintenance duties, to keep providing, to keep doing, to keep living, are you still going to remain happy? Or, are you going to start drowning in boredom that’s then going to become anxiety and dread that will overwhelm you and make you go mad?
Everything you do is to avoid suffering, including denial of suffering. Which is done only because you already suffer.
Q: One is already immersed in suffering and somehow not quite drowning yet. That’s how we all begin.
Nm: You are already overwhelmed, and you’re not learning how to swim across to the safe shore. All you’re doing is learning how to keep your mouth above the water, and you can sustain that only for so long. Sooner or later you will drown.
Q: In a way, ignorance of this liability to suffering is blissful.
Nm: Exactly. Ignorance is an act of ignoring your suffering which feels better than facing it. And you ignore your suffering by distracting yourself with sensuality. The pleasure found in distraction/sensuality makes your act of ignoring seem effortless.
Ignorance and procrastination, perpetuate the attitude of fundamental avijjā, of not acknowledging certain truths, refusing to look at it, pretending it’s not there, or sometimes you can’t pretend it’s not there, but then you say to yourself, “I’ll deal with it later.” Or “Everybody dies, I’ll deal with it when my time comes…”, and so on. But if you stop and reflect for a minute, “My whole life is about avoiding this, yet here I am holding a magical belief that after 50 - 60 years on this earth, I’ll be able to deal with it, yet while I could deal with it, I was refusing to deal with it, because it was too unpleasant!?” So, it’s too unpleasant to think about death when you’re alive, and somehow you maintain a notion that you’ll be able to deal with it when it’s occurring? If it’s unpleasant to think about it now, you can only imagine how unpleasant it’s going to be when it’s present.
Q: Here is a quote from Ajahn Chah that I found quite interesting:
If we speak the subtle Dhamma, most people will be frightened by it. They won’t dare to enter it. Even saying, ‘Don’t do evil,’ most people can’t follow this. That’s how it is. So I’ve sought all kinds of means to get this across. One thing I often say is, no matter if we are delighted or upset, happy or suffering, shedding tears or singing songs, never mind - living in this world we are in a cage. We don’t get beyond this condition of being in a cage. Even if you are rich, you are living in a cage. If you are poor, you are living in a cage. If you sing and dance, you’re singing and dancing in a cage. If you watch a movie, you’re watching it in a cage.
What is this cage? It is the cage of birth, the cage of aging, the cage of illness, the cage of death. In this way, we are imprisoned in the world. ‘This is mine.’ ‘That belongs to me.’ We don’t know what we really are or what we’re doing. Actually all we are doing is accumulating suffering for ourselves. It’s not something far away that causes our suffering, but we don’t look at ourselves. However much happiness and comfort we may have, having been born we can not avoid aging, we must fall ill and we must die. This is dukkha itself, here and now.
Nm: Exactly. You have to realize that your happiness, family, successful business, etc, are all within the burden of suffering. You are caged by it. That’s exactly that. So, it’s not that there’s no happiness, and that everything is depressing. No, there is, but you have to look at the bigger picture. Happiness or grief, it’s within the burden and liability of suffering. And, that’s the problem. But, you maintain the attitude of ignoring that problem by taking that happiness for granted, which then means you will be taking any grief and suffering for granted as well.
Q: So, the message here is to simply aim at nibbāna. Go for it. Try to understand what that is and then that will free me from suffering.
Nm: Exactly. To aim at something you need to know what it is. You must at least know where to look for it. You must have some degree of understanding. And, that’s a problem for most people especially when they start the practice. You start with a non-understanding of what nibbāna is of course, but then you start making some efforts, however for the most part none of those efforts are aimed at clarifying what nibbana is. You need to get the idea at least what nibbāna is. Because, through getting the idea you get to know what it is and what you can do about it. But, most people expect nibbāna to happen on account of their commitment to meditation technique or some other magical action. They expect nibbāna to bless them, and then all their problems will be gone. But, nibbāna is about undoing things that make you liable to problems, that make you liable to suffering. Nibbāna is not just a novelty replacement pleasure that overrides everything else. Nibbāna is the experience in the sense of when you are undone when you have undone all the unwholesome, all your desire, all your ill will, all your attitude of distraction and delusion. Then that negative experience that’s left as a result of that undoing, that’s what nibbāna is. That’s why nibbāna is also a dhamma, a phenomenon, but it’s asaṅkhātadhamma, it’s undetermined by any greed, aversion, or delusion. So, people will be better off spending their time thinking about what dhamma and nibbāna are, than practicing their notion of mindfulness of breathing or similar, which is going to be some mechanical physical technique underlaid with wishful thinking. You need to reflect on what the Buddha says nibbāna is. It’s a cessation. What is another thing that you could say is a cessation? It’s death. So, is nibbāna closer, based on the Buddha’s description, to the idea of death, or is it closer to some kind of transcendental astral projection realm where you are abiding in infinite love? No, it’s closer to death because nibbāna is against the grain of life. What’s the other thing that’s against the grain of life? It’s death…
And that’s why people would freak out in the suttas when they would understand nibbāna when the Buddha would teach, and they would say, “Oh, that will kill me, that will destroy me,” and they would fall in despair and start pulling their hair, going through existential dread. Because they realized what nibbāna is.
The only reason you fear death, fear nibbāna, is because you refuse to give up your possession of your life. That’s it. You don’t have to give up your life, as in you don’t have to kill yourself to attain nibbāna, that’s nonsense. But you must give away the possession of your life, which for most people equates to death, which is why it’s so frightening.
Q: “Die before you die.”, as many holy people of the past have suggested.
Nm: Exactly. Nibbāna is closer to death from a puthujjana’s point of view than anything else is. Hence the Buddha himself was teaching maraṇassati as the quickest, sharpest, way for enlightenment. Yes, it’s a bit too sharp for some people, so he mellowed it out a bit, but fundamentally that’s exactly why it directly results in liberation if you do it rightly.
That’s also why it said in the suttas, somebody delights in the right view, but they haven’t reached the fruits of it yet, however, they develop it at the time of death, and so on. In other words, they reach the fruits of their right view, for example, or arahantship at the time of death, because that’s where nibbāna is so to speak. Their right view has already understood it, whatever has been preventing them, maybe they were not as diligent as they should have been, but once they’re going through the experience of dying, what they’re going through is only their right view. But if you haven’t developed the right view during this life, then when death comes, it’s too late to do anything about it, and you will be going through it with the wrong view, fully attached to life and so on, and that is not going to be pleasant.
By clarifying the right view while you have the opportunity to do so, you can die before you die. If you fully remove any possessiveness, in the sense of not going around destroying things, but you destroy your emotional dependence upon things, because that emulates death. Then when death comes, you can’t even conceive a second longer holding onto these things.
If the destruction of things or throwing away your possessions frees you from possessions, then all you have to do is take away this life to get nibbāna. But, it doesn’t work like that. Quite the opposite. You need this life to understand nibbāna. So, you might be throwing away your possessions to simplify your life to an extent, but if you think that throwing away your possessions is bringing you to nibbāna, well, you’re seriously deluded, still.
Possession is not in things, it’s your attitude towards the things, and that’s something you can’t throw away but only undo.
“Die before you die” means you make sure you have removed any appropriation, any sense of ownership in regards to your experience as a whole, whatever the content of that experience is. Then, when the experience of death comes, well, there’s nothing there that contradicts it. There is no assumption of possession, appropriation, or control, that will be directly at odds with the experience of death which denies it. So, you’re at peace, even in death. Hence, it’s not your death. You’re not the one being destroyed by that death, because you’re not there to be destroyed.
You don’t die because your aggregates break apart. You die because the aggregates break apart and you’re appropriating them. That’s why you die.
An arahant cannot prevent the five aggregates from breaking apart, and cannot prevent the body from withering away and dying. If that’s truly what death is, as in the mere destruction of the body, then nobody can be free from death. But it isn’t. It’s the appropriation of that which will be destroyed by death or an accident or old age or sickness. That appropriation makes it death, aging, and sickness for you. Without ownership, it isn’t for you anymore.
Q: Death is just a falling apart.
Nm: You can designate it whichever way you want. It’s a change, a cessation of this, something else, but if there is no appropriation, it means none of it will be yours, which means you are done in regards to the five aggregates. But, the problem is, this is obviously a much harder thing to see, and it’s much easier to just either deny your life, deny your possessions, throw everything away, burn your house, thinking, ” I must not own anything, I must not help anyone because everything is attachment!” However, it’s your attitude that is the attachment, not the things you attach to.
You must change your mind from being a mind of attachment to a mind of non-attachment, everything else can stay the same, except, of course, for any unwholesome actions or intentions that you have, those you must thoroughly renounce if you want to develop such a mind. Basic virtue must be developed and kept. That needs to be done.
Q: So, nibbāna being non-greed, non-hatred, non-delusion we can develop this.
Nm: Through clarifying what greed is you get to discern what non-greed is, and so on.
Q: So, if I’m greedy for something, I can acknowledge it, and not engage in it.
Nm: First, your body needs to be restrained. You’re not habitually just giving into it, even before you recognize the intention towards those things being present. Once you’re physically restrained, then, yes, you can start noticing it on the level of your mind, and then you can realize, “Ok, these thoughts have arisen on their own, but I’m not obliged to say yes to the desire that has arisen. I don’t have to try and get rid of it either, because it wasn’t my doing in the first place. I didn’t create this desire in my mind. It has arisen. It manifested. But, I am certainly responsible if I choose to welcome it, if I choose to entertain it if I choose to engage with it and thus fuel it.” Same with ill will and distraction.
Better than sitting and trying to get experiences from meditation, sit quietly and make a meditation about the experience of understanding what these things are, because that’s where the peace is when you’re not affected by your thoughts changing when you’re not affected by desire arising, or disagreeable displeasure arising, or boredom arising. It doesn’t affect you means you don’t have to act out of it. If you don’t act out of it, you stop perpetuating the very things that prevent you from experiencing nibbāna—greed, aversion, delusion.
Try to clarify the meaning of these mental states, so that even when you’re not actively meditating in the right way that I just mentioned then, when you go about your life, in the back of your mind, those themes are still going to be present. That’s how you start to meditate, regardless of your posture.
Establish your mind, upon the perception of the non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion, perception of renunciation, and so on. All of those are meditations that the Buddha talks about in the suttas which are themes upon which you can establish your mind if you spend long enough time dwelling on it.
By turning your mind towards those themes, it inclines towards them and turns away from their opposites.
The absence of greed, aversion, and delusion, that’s what nibbāna is. Just start looking at how much percentage of your daily life you spent cultivating desire, welcoming it, being careless about it, ill will, distraction, “Oh I’m bored, I’m going to do this, I’m going to read this, I’m going to watch that, I’m going to go and talk to these people…” And, you can realize, “If I were to stop doing these things, rooted in desire, rooted in ill will, rooted in delusion and distraction, that brings me closer to nibbāna. That’s closer to what nibbāna is than anything else I do on top of these things.”
Your mind will then be inclining towards things such as seclusion, non-company, renunciation, release, finding joy in that solitude, in that non-engagement. Not because you’re afraid of engagement or you don’t know how to deal with the world. No, it’s because you’re contemplating the theme of nibbāna which naturally results in disengagement. So, then when engagements appear, it won’t bother you. But, you will certainly not try to encourage activity out of boredom.
Q: You’ve just got to be honest with yourself, is this causing more greed? Am I acting out of the pain of boredom?
Nm: Exactly, you have to realize that the responsibility for your suffering is on you, which means the responsibility for liberation of your suffering is also on you. Circumstances do not make you suffer. It’s your attitude regarding circumstances that suffering is there.