The following material has been taken from the book entitled The Zen of Living and Dying: A Practical and Spiritual Guide by Philip Kapleau.

---

During a life-threatening illness it is vital that you maintain warm and intimate relations with friends and family members. At the very least, you need a trusted friend in whom you can confide your fears and hopes. Such warm and abiding relationships help stave off the sense of isolation that is strongly felt at this time and help establish an appropriate atmosphere whether you are at home, in a hospital, or in a nursing home. 

The Value of Repentance 

Through repentance you can empty your mind of guilt feelings, which often come up with great force at this time, ease your worries and fears, and find peace of mind. Try repeating the following verse: 

All evil actions committed by me 

since time immemorial, 

stemming from greed, anger, and ignorance, 

arising from body, speech, and mind, 

I now repent having committed.

Repentance is not simply a way of expressing regret for past transgressions. If done earnestly, it is a way of casting out forever the residue of feelings still weighing on the heart. It is unlikely, however, that one recital will eliminate all guilt feelings. The verse, therefore, should be repeated again and again. As an old Jewish saying has it, “You have only to repent the last day of your life, and since you don’t know what day that is, you must repent every day.” 

Keeping Your Mind Clear 

If you are suffering intense pain, it is well to ask your doctor or nurse to ease it with drugs that do not render you unconscious or semiconscious. 

Those who are not used to taking drugs and are sensitive to them should beware of heavy drugs—especially painkillers, most of which contain narcotics. Such drugs can induce a respiratory arrest or affect one’s mental condition. 

A patient should not hesitate to ask his nurse whether a painkiller about to be administered could trigger an adverse reaction. Or else a family member can ask. 

It is common knowledge that in most American hospitals the experience of death is clouded by drugs. When drugs are necessary to relieve pain, there is no alternative, but heavy sedatives, tranquilizers, and painkilling drugs are also used for purposes of patient management. Therefore make every effort to avoid them. 

Breathing to Dispel Anxiety

Should you find yourself becoming anxious or tense, the following breathing exercise can bring relief:

An effective way to arrest the rise of anxiety is to take three long, deep, full breaths, relaxing with each breath, and concentrating only on the breath. In this breathing, expand the abdomen, allowing it to naturally rise with the in-breath and fall with the out-breath. Your eyes may be open or closed. 

The Mind at the Moment of Death 

Your mind state at the time you draw your last breath is crucial, for upon this hinges the subsequent direction and embodiment of the life force. 

Only with a disciplined and spiritually prepared mind can you hope to resist the pull of old patterns of craving and clinging as your final energies are slipping away. The impulses of thought, feeling, and perception all gather together in this last breath with great potency and can thwart the attainment of a higher level of consciousness and even enlightenment itself.  

Verses on the Faith Mind 

To prepare yourself for the culminating moment, you would do well to read, or have read to you, a sacred text or favorite prayer. 

Among spiritual literature, the Verses on the Faith Mind has been handed down as one of the most efficacious texts for the liberation of mind from painful bondage to birth and death. It contains the wisdom taught by all fully enlightened ones. The following is the substance of these verses: 

The Way is perfect like vast space, 

where there’s no lack and no excess. 

Awakening is to go beyond 

both emptiness as well as form. 

All changes in this empty world 

seem real because of ignorance. 

The Great Way is without limit, 

beyond the easy and the hard. 

Just let go now of clinging mind, 

and all things are just as they are. 

In essence nothing goes or stays. 

To seek Great Mind with thinking mind 

is certainly a grave mistake. 

If mind does not discriminate, 

all things are as they are, as One. 

When all is seen with “equal mind,” 

to our Self-nature we return. 

With single mind one with the Way, 

all ego-centered strivings cease; 

doubts and confusion disappear, 

and so true faith pervades our life. 

There is no thing that clings to us, 

and nothing that is left behind. 

In this true world of emptiness 

both self and other are no more. 

The Way’s beyond all space, all time, 

one instant is ten thousand years.

Not only here, not only there, 

truth’s right before your very eyes. 

One thing is all, all things are one— 

know this and all’s whole and complete. 

When faith and mind are not separate, 

and not separate are mind and faith, 

this is beyond all words, all thought. 

For here there is no yesterday, 

no tomorrow, 

no today. 

Note: The Verses on the Faith Mind is one of the most admired of Zen writings, written by the Third Zen Patriarch, Seng Tsan. This English translation was done by members of The Zen Center, Rochester, N.Y.

To prepare yourself through the Verses on the Faith Mind means to reflect upon them daily and to try to perceive their inner meaning with your intuitive consciousness. 

At the time of sinking into the death coma, intellect ceases to function; thus if the truths of these verses have penetrated the deepest strata of consciousness, they will be available as a guide. 

Biblical Prayers 

Should you feel more comfortable with a prayer directed toward God, try reading, or having read to you, either the Twenty-Third Psalm or the following prayer: 

Our bodily senses fail us, yea mislead us, when we seek 

to grasp the abiding realities of life and its deeper meanings; 

Teach us, O God, to trust the promptings of our heart 

which strive to wrest from death its prey. 

Make keen that inner-sense, which reveals us to ourselves, 

To glimpse that in ourselves which is beyond death’s reach. 

Grant us the intuition to discern in the complexities of our being 

that innermost self, of which the body is only the instrument and outward symbol; 

And the insight to realize that, as the melody survives the lute 

and the meaning the written symbol, 

so the soul survives the body.

Note: Quoted in High Holiday Prayer Book, ed. Morris Silverman, Prayer Book Press, Hartford, Conn., 1939. 

The Twenty-Third Psalm 

The Lord is my shepherd, 

I shall not want; 

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. 

He leadeth me beside still waters, 

He restoreth my soul. 

He leadeth me in paths of righteousness 

For his name’s sake. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley 

Of the shadow of death, 

I shall fear no evil. 

For thou art with me; 

Thy rod and thy staff, 

They comfort me. 

Thou preparest a table before me 

In the presence of mine enemies; 

Thou anointest my head with oil, 

My cup runneth over. 

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

All the days of my life;

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord 

Forever.

Reflections on Death 

While your mind is unclouded and you are relatively free of pain, reflect on what the spiritually enlightened masters teach about preparation for the process of dying. 

Understand that just as you were born into this world at your karmic hour, so will you die when your karma decrees it. 

You have passed through these same shadows many times, though you may not remember, and have experienced many rebirths. 

While you must enter the kingdom of death alone with your karma of good and evil, there is no cause for trembling. 

Enlightened ones in all realms of existence wait to guide you. They will not abandon you. They have no other purpose than to release you from the sufferings of recurring birth and death. 

Who Are the Great Enlightened Ones? 

Who are these fully awakened ones and why should you believe in them? 

They are those exalted beings who through complete awakening are able to manifest their innate perfection and love; they are those “in whom all spiritual and psychic faculties have come to a state of perfect harmony, and whose consciousness encompasses the infinity of the universe.” (Lama Anagarika Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1960.) 

Although we all possess the seeds of great love and compassion, without the light of the enlightened ones’ wisdom and the waters of their compassion these seeds would never sprout. 

Or, to change the metaphor, just as a receiver tuned to a specific wavelength can pick up broadcasts thousands of miles distant, so can we receive the boundless aid of the fully enlightened ones if only we open ourselves to their compassion. This is the basis of the responsive communion between these supremely awakened ones and ordinary human beings. 

For the deepest level of communication is not communication but communion, as Thomas Merton pointed out. Such communion is beyond words and concepts. 

This might sound like channeling or communicating with spirits of the dead. The two, however, are not at all the same. Receiving aid from enlightened ones does not mean having some long-dead entity take over the body, speaking and acting through it in order to give guidance to oneself and others. That sort of thing has nothing to do with the world of true spirituality; it belongs to the occult. 

In what manner, then, do we open ourselves to the compassion of the enlightened? By having faith in their existence, by grasping the hand being offered us. Unless we cry out for help we can’t be heard. In William James’ penetrating sentence, “All religion begins with the cry ‘Help!’” 

Is this hard to accept? Ask yourself, “What happens to the unique consciousness force of the Buddhas and Christs after the disintegration of their bodies?” Science tells us that no energy is destroyed, and the qualities that these saviors embodied—overwhelming love and compassion—are therefore still available to us. 

The reality of life is far more complex and all-encompassing than we dare to imagine. As the Eastern religions have long held, and as such scientists as David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram (both of whom see the universe as a hologram in which each of the components contains the whole) confirm, the material world is an illusion fabricated by our limited senses, which give us an incomplete, and therefore a false, picture of the true nature of reality. 

From the Buddha’s teaching, each one of us is not simply a part of the universe; we are each the whole. Our faith, then, is this: that we can awaken to our intrinsic wholeness. 

Meditations for the Dying Person 

“Dying . . . can be awful,” says Dr. Derek Doyle, medical director of St. Columbus hospice in England, “but the death itself . . . in 99.9% of patients—is peaceful, so tranquil—I’m tempted to say, so beautiful—that one can hardly believe it . . . The tension in the face disappears, labored breathing becomes easy, the tautness of somebody who’s suffered a lot and had to be uncannily brave seems to ease away. A lot of the suffering just seems to vanish, yet life is still going on. And for that last few hours or day . . . you have somebody who honestly looks happy and relaxed.

While this may be the case for most patients near death, nonetheless, at some stage of dying certain patients do become tense or agitated. Perhaps this is what Dr. Doyle is referring to when he says dying can be awful. 

Breathing Exercises to Calm the Mind

The moment our body-mind is not actively engaged—that is, completely involved—we fall prey to a whirl of thoughts or fantasies. 

A valuable exercise for calming the body-mind and inducing a feeling of deep relaxation, and even bliss, is concentration on the breath by counting the inhalations and exhalations, or simply the exhalations. 

Since ancient times, breath counting has been considered by spiritual masters the foundation of body-mind discipline. 

Breath is thus the force unifying body and mind and providing a link between the conscious and the subconscious, the volitional and the nonvolitional functions. 

In fact, breath can be said to be the most perfect expression of the nature of all life. Asked, “What is the length of a person’s life?” Buddha replied, “The interval between an inhalation and an exhalation.” Each exhalation, it can be said, is a dying; each inhalation a rebirth. 

The exercise is performed as follows: Lie on your back with knees slightly raised, the feet and back flat, and a pillow under your bent knees. Lightly clasp your hands, or place them one over the other, on top of the abdomen. If this is not comfortable, your hands can be placed at your sides. Take a deep breath, hold it momentarily, then slowly exhale. Do this once or twice, then breathe naturally.

When you inhale quietly, count “One,” and when you exhale, count “Two,” and so on until you come to ten. Then return to one and repeat. If you lose the count or go beyond ten, as soon as you become aware of this, return again to one and continue again to ten, counting slowly. If you are by yourself, you may count audibly; if you are with others, count silently. 

Another way to perform breath counting is to count only on the exhalation. As you exhale, feel your agitated mind state and negative thoughts evaporating. 

Visualization Exercises 

Another useful exercise—and this can be done sitting up as well as lying down—is to imagine an elixir slowly descending through the throat, the lungs, the heart, and other vital parts of the body. As it slides through each organ, feel that organ being relaxed, cleansed, and rejuvenated. Simultaneously visualize yourself pleasantly warm and well. 

As a further aid in calming your mind, try visualizing the serene countenance of Christ or a saint or the Virgin Mary (if you are a Christian); Buddha or a bodhisattva such as Kwan-yin (if you are a Buddhist); Krishna (if you are a Hindu). Those who follow a religion that does not sanction visualization, or those who have no formal religious affiliation, might find that a certain object, picture, or piece of music instills calmness. Or perhaps a certain prayer. 

Should feelings of anger or hatred toward any persons arise, mentally embrace that person and radiate thoughts of loving-kindness toward him or her. This may be easier said than done, but if you work at it conscientiously, what seems at first intolerable will gradually become easy. 

These exercises are not just for the dying. Don’t wait until you have a fatal illness to undertake them. Performed each day for about half an hour, they will do more than simply relax your body or calm your mind; they will transform your whole personality, making it easier for you to live with yourself and others. 

Embracing Your Death 

Reflect on these words of a Zen master: 

Your Mind-essence is not subject to birth or death. It is neither being nor nothingness, neither emptiness nor form and color. Nor is it something that feels pain or joy. However much you try to know [with your rational mind] that which is now sick, you cannot. Yet if you think of nothing, wish for nothing, want to understand nothing, cling to nothing, and only ask yourself, “What is the true substance of the mind of this one who is now suffering?” ending your days like clouds fading in the sky, you will eventually be freed of your painful bondage to endless change. (Zen master Bassui)

Imagine yourself, then, fading away, slowly, very slowly, until you remember less and less. Now allow a peaceful, relaxed feeling to take over—not in a hurry but slowly.

Source: Based on Kapleau, Philip. The Zen of Living and Dying: A Practical and Spiritual Guide. Boston: Shambhala, 1998.

---

---