Lama Zopa Rinpoche

We must prepare for the next life
To be able to practice Dharma we must decide we want to practice Dharma, and to do that
we must think about death. Otherwise, we might feel that practicing Dharma is good but put
it off until the “right” moment, until next year or the year after that or the year after that. We
postpone it until we think we will have some free time or until we have earned our first
billion dollars. I’m joking! But life becomes like that. We delay practicing Dharma until next
year, and then it is the next year and then the year after that and so on. We think, “When I’m
free,” or “When I’m well,” or something like that.
By thinking like this our fortune, our good luck to practice Dharma stops. We delay and
delay and delay and then it is gone. We either have problems to deal with or else we are sick
or there is some other hindrance and then…death! Then our opportunity has gone.
This sense that we have plenty of time before we need to think about death is common to all
of us. We plan on living for many more years—forever, in fact. People are still thinking like
that on the day they die, even five minutes before their death. For most people, death
happens while they are planning on living for many more years.
Now our life is so good. However, it is like a dream. We are unbelievably fortunate that we
have not died yet. We are so fortunate but, while we have yet to start practicing Dharma, our
life is passing by in distraction. In order to persuade our mind to practice Dharma we need
to think that we are constantly coming closer to death, all the time, day and night, morning,
afternoon, evening and night, closer and closer and closer to death.
The Buddha mentioned this in the Dhammapada.
Like a condemned criminal,
With each step you come closer and closer
To your executioner.
A human being’s life is like that. 101
We are like a convict who is about to be executed. We are in the custody of the police, being
led to the place of execution, and each step we take is a step closer to death. All human
beings are like this. This is a human’s life. There are only a certain number of breaths left, a
certain number of seconds left until death. Life is constantly diminishing, constantly
finishing; we are rushing so quickly to death.
We must not cheat ourselves. We really need to practice Dharma, to integrate the lam-rim
into our life and practice the root of the path to enlightenment, correctly following the guru,
and on that basis cultivate renunciation, bodhicitta and the right view of emptiness as a
preparation for tantra. Then, when death happens, there will be no regrets; we will be happy.
If we can live with a good heart, living our life for other sentient beings, we will experience
great joy and happiness when we die. Then, in our next life, we will be of even greater
benefit to sentient beings. In that way, we go to enlightenment.
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