A Few Words to Keep Near

These are the reminders that are spoken to a person who is dying, in plain language. Read them now, while you are well enough to read, so that they are familiar. Then keep them by the bed.

[Name], listen. You are dying, and that is all right. You do not have to hold on for anyone. You do not have to do anything now.

What is happening is the body settling. It knows how to do this. Let it.

Whatever you feel, you do not have to fix it or fight it. Let it be, and rest.

The awareness that knows all of this is not the body. It was never born, and it is not dying. It is what you are.

This clear awareness, present right now, is your own. Rest in it without altering anything.

Whatever appears, light or sound or anything else, it is your own appearance, the way a dream is. Nothing is coming from outside to hurt you. If something frightening appears, it is yours too. If something beautiful appears, do not chase it. Recognize it as your own, and rest.

Like meeting someone you have long known, trust what appears. Like an arrow already flying, do not turn back. Rest, and you are free.

You are not going somewhere unknown. You are going home, and what is there has been waiting for you the whole time.

You are loved. Thank you for everything. You can go now. Rest.

If you want a single line and nothing else:

This is your own awareness. Rest in it. Everything that appears is your own.

How to use them

Keep them short. When the time comes, one or two of these, said slowly, is enough. In the long hours, when nothing else is possible, one line remembered is a whole practice.

Do not add to them. Longchenpa’s own instructions to the dying say the reminder three times, slowly, and then stop. No explanation, no encouragement, no argument. The words are a hand on the shoulder, not a lecture. He addresses the person as a child of a good family: not a patient, not a sinner, but someone of noble birth who has only forgotten it for a while.

They are not a test. If nothing seems to happen when they are read, nothing has gone wrong. They are planting a reminder in a mind that will very soon find itself in exactly the situation the words describe.

For the person reading

If you have been handed this page by someone who is dying, or you are sitting with someone and want to give them something, you do not need to believe anything to read these words. You only need to say them gently.

Read slowly, slower than feels natural, near the ear, at the level of the bed, in a low, even voice. A dying person is not following an argument. They are receiving a tone, and a few words at a time. Do not test whether they have heard; “Can you hear me?” demands a response they may have no way to give. Assume they can hear. The dying hear far more than they can answer.

Read more than once. The same short passage, three or four times over an hour or a day, does more than a long passage read once. Read when the room is quiet and the person is resting, especially in the last hours, and again in the hour after the breath stops. If you stumble, it does not matter. If you weep, pause, breathe out, and go on when you can.

If the person had a faith of their own, and there are words from that faith they loved, read those instead. The words that will reach a person are the ones that already live in them.

Then be quiet together. The quiet is part of it.