Question: What is the most effective way to practice maranānusati, both in formal meditation and during daily life?
Than Ajahn: Maranānusati. Do you mean the contemplation of death?
M: Yes.
Than Ajahn: You can do it while you are developing mindfulness. You can do it all the time, from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep, except when you are doing meditation. When you do meditation, you want to stop your mind, you want to rest your mind. That’s not a good time to contemplate on death.
The purpose of contemplating on death is to remind you not to forget about death, so that you know how to cope with death when it comes. You don’t have to be hurt by death if you know how to cope with it. But if you don’t know how to cope with it, when you face death, you will be hurt by it. So, the purpose is to raise your awareness towards death, that eventually, you’re gonna have to meet death. You learn to know how to cope with it in a way that death will not hurt you.
The way not to hurt yourself is firstly, to calm your mind. If your mind is calm, your mind won’t be disturbed by whatever happens. Then, the next thing is to teach your mind the reason why your mind is hurt. It is because your mind is being deceived by the mind’s own delusion. The mind thinks that the body is the mind itself. So, you want to teach the mind that the body is not the mind. The body is the servant of the mind. The mind has access to this servant at the time of birth and it will have to lose this servant at the time of death. You have to teach your mind in this manner.
You also teach your mind that there is nothing you can do to prevent death from happening. This is the process that the body has to go through. Once it is born, it will start to get old, get sick and die. But you don’t have to worry or be hurt by whatever happens to the body because the body is not you. You are the mind. You are the one who thinks, the one who tells the body what to do. The body is just like an automobile. You are like the driver. The mind is like a driver. Whatever happens to the automobile doesn’t happen to the driver. So, this is what you have to teach your mind, to have the right view about the body and the mind. They are two separate entities. They are not one or the same entity. When one dies, it doesn’t mean the other one will also die.
And by the nature of the mind itself, it never dies. Once it loses this body, it will go to look for a new body. As long as the mind has cravings for sensual pleasures and still wants to have happiness from seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching, the mind will still need a body. The reason why the mind is hurt by the death of the body is because the mind doesn’t want to lose the body. The mind depends on the body to make it happy. It needs the body to hear and to see things. But if you can meditate, you can stop your desires. When you meditate, you can stop your desires from seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching things. Then, you don’t need the body because you have meditation as the means to make you happy.
So, first you have to meditate to make yourself happy. Once you’re happy, then you know that you don’t need the body. Once you know that you don’t need the body, whatever happens to the body will not hurt you or bother you. This is basically what you have to do besides contemplating on death. It’s to let you know that the body isn’t reliable. It isn’t dependable. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to lose it. So, you have to find something that is more dependable and more reliable. And the only thing that is more dependable and reliable is the happiness that you will get from meditating. In that way, it will motivate you to concentrate more on meditation practice, to develop jhāna. Once you have jhāna, you have happiness. Then, you don’t need to use the body.
Dhamma in English, Jul 4, 2018.
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
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