Spiritual Articles - Your Last Moment - Are You Ready?
You can't put a spin on the last moment. You can't rationalize it by saying it doesn't matter. It's real. I have been with people when they are dying and can say that the last moments can be very traumatic, or very peaceful, depending upon how that person lived their lives. They glimpse their destiny when death approaches, which can be horrifying with the person struggling to sit up and run away, or peaceful to the extreme with utterings such as, "I see beautiful people, wonderful gardens, I hear beautiful music."
Are you straight with your relationships; right now, today? Is there anything left undone that you feel impelled to do? Are you extremely attached to any possessions, such as your home that will tug at your heart in that last moment? Can you let all your loved ones go? Have you thought about these things?
Is your financial life in order? Is your spouse ready to take over? Do you have more than you need right now? Can you help others that need just the basics of life? All of these things are extremely important during that last moment when time compresses and you can view your entire lifetime in a flash. The bias of ego is then rendered helpless, and the view is with untinted glasses of how you have lived your life.
This is all so very important in the last moment - no regrets, no last minute adjustments, no loose ends. Have you lived a life without blame, or has it been all about you? Was there room in your heart for others; your family, your friends, those less fortunate? If not, why not? If not now, when? This is important, too, at the last moment.
Have you prepared your mind so that there will be no fear of pain when your time comes? Have you experimented with pain and defeated it, or have you run for the medicine cabinet or doctor as soon as the slightest pain occurs? Will there be no loneliness at the last moment? No fear of the unknown? No? Then what have you been doing with your life, just having fun and entertaining yourself as if you are immortal? This is all very important, and will determine if you die courageously or very afraid.
You can't wait until the last moment to get all of this done. If you are unprepared there will only be mass confusion and panic at the end when it hits you that there is no escape this time, and you know for certain that death is imminent. This kind of behavior is not of a warrior, it is very unbecoming for anyone. This kind of terrible trepidation does not bode well in propelling you into your next existence.
How you go out matters immensely. Will praying fervently make up for a lifetime of selfishness and override your destiny? Do your actions in life count, or can you do as you please and then be saved? You will find out when your last moment arrives. Your last moment is a compression, the sum and substance of this lifetime which is very short, just a flash of lightening. You can't put a spin on your life now; it is what it is, and there is no kidding oneself any longer. This is it. This is what you are.
If we could just preview this incredible last moment while we were healthy and alive, we would immediately sell everything and give it to the poor and live our lives in utter goodness and poverty, dedicating ourselves to helping others, just as Jesus recommended, so that we have no baggage, no attachments, no regrets when our time comes. But few understand this, and go about their lives without any awareness at all.
Anagarika eddie is a meditation teacher at the Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation Retreat Sanctuary www.dhammarocksprings.org and author of "A Year to Enlightenment." His 30 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Thervada Buddhist monk.
He lived at Wat Pah Nanachat under Ajahn Chah, at Wat Pah Baan Taad under Ajahn Maha Boowa, and at Wat Pah Daan Wi Weg under Ajahn Tui. He had been a postulant at Shasta Abbey, a Zen Buddhist monastery in northern California under Roshi Kennett; and a Theravada Buddhist anagarika at both Amaravati Monastery in the UK and Bodhinyanarama Monastery in New Zealand, both under Ajahn Sumedho. The author has meditated with the Korean Master Sueng Sahn Sunim; with Bhante Gunaratana at the Bhavana Society in West Virginia; and with the Tibetan Master Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Colorado. He has also practiced at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Zen Center in San Francisco.
So don't put it off one more minute. Like a bubble in a stream that can burst suddenly at any moment, such is life. Get ready, you may face your last moment next week, or next month.
When we don't face our last moment, when we put it off and think that there is plenty of time, we get careless about life, get involved in frivolous things that mean nothing in our last moment, even to the point of hurting others for the sake of our own selfish pleasure. We get reckless and overconfident; this is called ignorance and delusion.
The amazing thing is that a life lived in abject poverty, as a choice, and a life lived dedicated to others, becomes a joy unmatched by any pleasures we can think of, a release, a relief, a life so full that we wonder how we ever could have done the things that we previously did. It's true. It's what Jesus taught.
Related Tags: week, next life, lived life, lived dedicated, moment next
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