This is how I saw the situation initially: Here I am, going about my normal life, doing my everyday things, feeling basically healthy and safe and secure in pretty much every way. Then along comes COVID-19, and suddenly, all the places outside my house I used to spend time in or even just pass through, are potential vectors of deadly disease. The same goes for all the people I was used to hanging out with regularly, or even in close proximity to, in a coffee shop or yoga studio. I was feeling anxious about the situation, but self-isolating at home helped me feel more at ease – until I developed COVID-19 symptoms, that is.  That was when the fear that I really might die surfaced in me. And I’m grateful for that, because, according to the Buddhist teachings, this awareness of death is what really kicks our Buddhist practice into high gear.  

            When it comes to explaining why we need to be mindful of death, the Tibetan Buddhist teachings get right down to the nitty gritty. We’re told to meditate on three main points: 1) We’ll definitely die. 2) The time of death is uncertain. This second point is considered the most important one to meditate on: that maybe we’ll die in twenty years. Or maybe we’ll die today. As Lama Tsong-kha-pa * wrote in his Lam Rim Chen Mo, “[…] you must assume that you will die and should think, ‘I will die today.’” Evidently he realized that this can be a tremendously hard practice to adopt, for a few lines later we read, “If you think every day, ‘I will die today’, or at least, ‘I will probably die today’, you will act for the benefit of whatever next life you will go to, and you will not make preparations to remain in this life.”  And this leads right into the third point to meditate on: 3) At the time of death, nothing helps except religious practice.

            It’s the second point I’ve been reflecting on quite a bit lately. This morning, while I was out on my walk, I sat in the woods for a while and contemplated impermanence. All of the new leaves popping out on the trees, and the multitudes of blossoms on the fruit trees clearly illustrate the cycle of death and rebirth. We humans go through this process, too, I reminded myself.  Just like the leaves, we all die. And even though I think about the death of leaves in terms of the cycle of seasons, I know full well that leaves on trees can die at any time of year. At any moment, even. For example, if a tornado rips through and uproots a tree. So, I can contemplate a maple tree and admit that the concept of the uncertainty of the time of death applies to it, too.

            But trees are one thing, and our own human lives are quite another. Sitting in the woods this morning, amidst infinite proofs of the cycle of death and rebirth, I found myself unable to utter the phrase, “I will die today.” Even, “I will probably die today,” was beyond me. What I was able to manage was this: “I might die today.” That felt challenging enough right then. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe it was possible for me to die today. No. It was precisely the fact that I did believe it that brought the lump into my throat when I contemplated saying that phrase out loud. I recalled the list Lama Tsong-kha-pa provides of so many of the things that can kill us. I won’t enumerate them here. You can imagine lots of them yourself, I think. I sure can. The point is, that, as Tsong-kha-pa says, “the causes of death are very many and the causes of life few”. Yikes. Tsong-kha-pa goes on to quote a couplet from Nagarguna’s “Precious Garland”, that sums up the situation quite succinctly: “You dwell among the causes of death/Like a butter lamp standing in a strong breeze.”  As much as I feel a deep-down resistance to accepting this fact, it’s true.  I’m going to die, and my death can happen at any moment, brought about by one of a nearly infinite number of causes. A nearly infinite number. Not just COVID-19. This last point is what I’ve been contemplating most the past couple of days.

            I started out, back in February, thinking that this COVID-19 situation was so unusual, an anomaly within the “normal” flow of my life.  Then I came to see it this way: Unexpected and awful events occur all the time, just the way unexpected and wonderful events do. Both exist within the “normal” flow of life. And any one of the infinite number of “awful” events could serve as the cause of my death, at any moment. (“The time of death is uncertain.”) Despite this fact, I have tended to forget about the little, ever-present dangers. I worry about dying only when a really big, obvious threat to my life materializes – such as my COVID-19 symptoms. So it’s no wonder that I saw the pandemic as an anomaly, instead of saying, “Yes. Here’s another one of the million threats to my life.”  

            I can see now that I adopted this approach because I was unable to accept the fact that I could die any day. And since I rejected this fact, there’s no way I was going to be able to sit in the woods and say, “I will die today.” Why, exactly, couldn’t I accept Tsong-kha-pa’s assertion that death can come at any moment? It’s because my spiritual practice and skills aren’t strong enough to enable me to calmly face the prospect of losing my “self” at the moment of death. That’s where point 3) comes in: “At the time of death, nothing helps except religious practice.” Yep. Got it now.  I had to experience a giant, obvious threat – COVID-19 –  before I could finally begin acknowledging the inevitability and unpredictability of death, as well as the millions of tiny threats to our fragile lives. That’s what it took to motivate me to engage in my Buddhist practice in a truly intensive way. I’m hoping that, if I practice more deeply now, it’ll be at least a bit easier for me to release my grip on my “self” when death comes to take me. And that I’ll won’t be so taken by surprise when that moment arrives, whether that’s tomorrow, or in ten years, or today.

            So, hey, COVID-19, thanks. I needed that kick in the butt.  

* Lama Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419) completed the Lam Rim Chen Mo (The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment), a classic text of Tibetan Buddhism, in 1402. Citations are from Volume 1, Chapter 9, “Mindfulness of Death”.