Two weeks ago, I went to the monastery (Karma
Triyana Dharmachakra, at Woodstock, New York) to participate in a birthday party
for our venerable Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche who is the Abbot of the monastery and
have been my spiritual teacher for more than 10 years. Every year, when he gives
the 10-day teachings on mahamudra, many of his disciples come from all over the
world to listen to his teaching. Among other things, one of the highlights of
this 10-day event, is a birthday party for Rinpoche. This year is his 82nd birthday
(we were told that Rinpoche was born in 1924). It was quite a scene to observe
this event usually given outdoors with people waiting in lines holding flowers,
white scarves, all kinds of "goodies" to make offerings to Rinpoche
and received his blessing. Rinpoche used his Tibetan tradition to hold our head
with his two hands and touched our forehead with his. I always think that has
been one of most wonderful gifts I can ever receive from Rinpoche, my dearest
spiritual guide. His hands were very warm. When his forehead touched mine, I felt
in my heart that I was receiving Buddha's blessing like the nectar pouring into
my head.
I remembered two years ago, when he was just past 80 years old, I
saw him in one occasion. That day, he looked pretty tired and his face was a little
swollen. I greeted him with my usual concern, but more worry that time. Usually
Rinpoche's response to my concern was some comforting words, such as "not
to worry, I am all right, etc." But not that time. He looked very serious
and said, "May Lein, do you know I am already an 80-year-old old man? So
you need to prepare that every time you see me, I will be different. You will
see me aged day by day. Do not put too much thought on how I look, whether I am
healthy or not, or how my body changes its shape. This is all natural process.
As a Buddhist practitioner, this should not affect your mind. You need to let
go your concern about me. I know you care about me. However, you do need to learn
to live with this natural process of my being older and older every day and not
to worry about it." What Rinpoche said was very thought provoking and it
helped later on when I accompanied my Mom to experience her last breath. I've
learned not to worry about things not happening yet. I've learn to accept that
it is simply a natural process that every single breath in our life is a little
step toward the so-called end of our life - death (maybe it's a little step closer
to something wonderful after this life?) I also learn to focus on all the admiring
qualities of my spiritual guide - his teaching, his overwhelming compassion towards
all the sentient beings, the demonstration of his triumph in the six perfections,
his diligence in his own practice, etc. Day by day, if I can learn just a little
of these qualities, my life will be enriched, my practice will be improved, hopefully
I will be a little step closer towards recognizing the nature of my mind.
In
the process of my Mom closer to the end of her life, day-by-day she gradually
found she could not move her legs freely, then her body, and then her hands. She
wanted to sit up, but she couldn't. She wanted to come down from her sick bed,
but she was so heavy (too much water in her body) that we could not even raise
her to sit up. It was a very scary situation for her. She simply just could not
understand why and how her body could degenerate so quickly in a very short time.
For the first time in her life she came to the point that she was losing control
of her body, her legs, her hands, etc. She cried bitterly couple nights asking
why she did not feel the existence of her legs or hands. She had no choice but
started thinking that she would not get well any more - she always hoped she would
recover from her illness and that hope was diminishing. I comforted her that it
was alright that she could not move her legs or hands and it was alright that
she would never recover from her sickness. But it had to be the time she should
learn to focus not on her body but on her mind since the strength and power from
one's mind will be the ultimate. I calmed her down by doing massage on her almost
all night long. I touched her all over her body. She told me she could feel my
hands that were very warm to her. So for many long hours day and night, we were
in silence - I focused on the massage with mantra recitation (usually the six-syllable
mantra) and she would be very peaceful knowing I was there and she should try
to get familiar with using the mind power. Watching her losing her life one breath
by one breath, strangely enough, I did not feel sad because I was too concentrated
on helping her go through the process. I did not have any thought on what would
happen when she died, how much loss it would be to me when she died. That was
the first time in my life I tried to do something with all the attention and concentration
I could put together. I felt the strength of my mind was supporting me to go through
the difficult time with her. My only thought at the time was how to guide her
so that this natural process of so-called "death" could be a smooth
one, even better, a very positive, constructive one because only with a positive
process, one would be able to accumulate more merits even to the last moment.
These merits will serve as the necessities in our suitcases when we need to travel
long in many future lives until we reach the enlightenment and escape from this
cyclic existence. Any negative thinking will only bring more karmic obscurations
to the person who is dying and to the people who surround him/her. Before one
loses his/her last breath, even at the last fraction of second, the mind can still
be in control to accumulate merits and remove obscurations by simply thinking
positively, praying for the blessing from our guru or Buddhas, and visualizing
the Amitabha's Pure Land. At the time when body becomes useless, it's the power
of mind that will surface to serve as the Captain of the ship to sail on. I am
grateful, even to this date, Mom, at her final moment, had a chance to learn that
it was the mind, not the body, that would make the differences and it did.