So when you meditate, you should leave everything behind. Leave your body, leave your friends, leave everything. Not think of anything. Just think of greatness of the gods that I told you. And at least you’ll be born into at least one of these regions. And then the Master continues to help you. If you think of anything else, then God help you.
And then the old monk was thinking to himself, “OK. This time if I ask him ... he looks very relaxed, if I ask him about what happened before, he probably would tell me.” So then he said, “OK. Listen here, I will tell you all the reasons behind all these scenes that you’ve seen before. OK. The first girl who died on the beach, she was the wife of Takbak. He was a Sravasti citizen. She was very beautiful, so her husband loved her dearly. But Takbak went out to do business. And because he was too much in love with his wife, so he took his wife together with him on the trip. And there were another 500 people, 500 merchants, together out at sea.” In the old times, they went out to the sea in the deep area to find the jewels, precious stones, pearls and that stuff, or some wood that was floating on the water, precious wood, like teak and sandalwood and all that.
“So over there, she was always making herself beautiful, and always behaving kind of very self grandiosely. She felt very proud, very ... Not just proud, but arrogant about her beauty, very attached to her own beauty as well. In the middle of the sea, there suddenly appeared a turtle, a big one. And somehow he punctured the ship so then everybody died. So all the yaksa and the vampires made a big, big, big wind to blow all the dead bodies onto the beach, because the sea wouldn’t accept dead bodies.” You see, so sometimes when there’s a typhoon and all that on the ocean, on the sea, that is because some of the devils and the ghosts and the ghostlings, they make the wind to do something. Maybe they push all the dead bodies onto the beach or something like that, or to clean the sea surface. “So all of these people, it depends on their desire when they died, or what they thought when they died, would be reborn into different areas. But this girl, because she loved herself, her beauty so much, she felt sorry to have left her body so she was reborn as this maggot. Therefore, kept running all over to see her own face, and cannot be liberated.
If somebody asks, ‘OK, if it depends on your own desires, your own attachment, then you are born into a place like that, or a position or a being like that to satisfy your desire, then how can anybody be born in hell because nobody would be attached to hell, nobody would love hell? How come someone would be born in hell?’” Logical, huh? Logical. “And then they would say that when these people were alive, if you steal the money or the possession of the Three Jewels, like the Buddha and the Sangha, or steal things from your parents, or you kill others, this kind of sin is very, very big. You have to be going down to hell, forever this kind of fire burning you. But that person, before he dies, he will contract a kind of cold sickness. He feels very, very cold, maybe flu or something like that, before he dies. So he feels very, very cold all the time. And when he is having sickness thus, with the coldness so cold like that, then he always thinks of heat. He always prefers to be in the heated area or the fire or something like that. When he thinks like that, then he’ll be drawn to the fire hell.”
Wow! What a mechanism! Incredible! If you catch a flu, or cold or something, don’t think of fire. Think of ice. Then you’ll be born in the hell of ice at least. Sorry. Don’t think of anything! Just think of Buddha. Think of the Master. Think of Heaven. Recite the Five Great Kings of Heaven. Then you’ll be born there.
The time of death is very important. Whatever you think at that time, you will attract suitable position or places to be born in. That’s why when you’re alive, you must practice dying. Practice. So when you meditate, you should leave everything behind. Leave your body, leave your friends, leave everything. Not think of anything. Just think of greatness of the gods that I told you. And at least you’ll be born into at least one of these regions. And then the Master continues to help you. If you think of anything else, then God help you.
So it’s a very clever mechanism. Incredible! Make you sick, cold, freezing like that. Then you have to think of fire, of heat, and then you will attract yourself to that, to the heated hell fire. So don’t be so scared. I mean even if you committed anything wrong, after initiation you already knew what’s right, what’s wrong. And the Master tried to help you regulate the karma already. Just don’t do it again. Then when you die, you will not think of that. You will not be made to draw yourself, to put yourself in a position that you have to think of suffering.
“If anyone steals the lamp from the people who make offering to the Buddha ...” You know, to worship the Buddha, they put a lamp. In the old times, it was very dark, no electricity, so people who came to see the Buddha, they’d bring light. They’d bring candles or a lamp, so that at night the Sangha, the Buddha could use to light the street and could walk. Or they’d bring things that were useful. They’d bring clothes and all that to make offering to the Buddha and the Sangha, because the Buddha and the Sangha, they didn’t have money. They didn’t earn money. They just taught people and relied on others to survive, to do the teaching. They could do things, it’s just they were monks. They just wanted to save all their time for the teaching of others, and meditate or learning with the Buddha. So when the lay people came, they’d bring all kinds of things. They maybe bring bowls, begging bowls, some clothes, or the lamp, or medicine, something that was necessary. And also they might bring something like sandalwood incense, frankincense, all that, because that will ward off the mosquitoes and insects, you see? That’s why you see the Buddha had incense. And then after the Buddha died, they’d light the incense in front of the Buddha statue. I wonder if the mosquito can bite the stone statue or not. Have you seen the mosquito bite the stone Buddha? No. I guess not. But it’s a good tradition. And it helps the incense merchants make money, so it’s OK. No harm.
“So if even some people just steal something like a lamp, or some wood for warming, for lighting a fire, and any of the torch, or even grass, dried grass or anything that the Buddha and Sangha need to use sometimes, or if you go in and demolish the Sangha’s room or mess it up, making trouble, or the lecture hall, you damage the lecture hall, all kinds of vandalism. And then even to other people, not just the Buddha and Sangha ... In the winter time, if by any reason you take off the clothes of someone, making him freeze, or because you have power, even if it’s already cold and you throw cold water at them and things like that, and make them die of cold or heat or stealing their clothes, all these kinds of actions will bring that person to hell, but to the ice hell, freezing hell. In the beginning, this person will have fever, high fever, and like burning in his body, feeling very, very hot. So he’s also thinking of coldness, ice and all that. And when he is thinking like that, he dies. It just makes him to think like that and die. That’s the only purpose of the fever. At that time, it’s like that. And then of course after he left the body, the soul left the body, he goes to the ice, freezing hell.” And the Buddha named many, many, like Utpala, Padma, Kumada, Pundarika, etc., etc. These are the names of these freezing hells, probably in Sanskrit. I don’t remember all these, sorry.
“In these kinds of freezing hells, the criminal feels cold all the time, feels freezing all the time. And his body becomes shrunken. It’s like some dried prune, or something like that. And then his brain is very fragile inside, easy to break, everything, everything ... And then all his skull in his head becomes broken into a thousand pieces. And then all his bones in the body, broken and become arrow-like. And then he comes back again, and then suffers the same again, and again and again, but he won’t die.” Of course, at that time he’s in his astral body, he won’t die. And he feels all the suffering all the same. He cannot hide anywhere and he cannot stop the process until his sin has been cleansed.
“If anyone, because of greed, robs other people of their possessions so that that person will die of hunger and thirst, then that person will become a hungry ghost when he dies, the robber. First, he will contract a kind of gassy disease that his stomach becomes very swollen, bloated. And he couldn’t eat. He couldn’t digest his food. And then the medicine man will bring some good food in and coax him to eat, ‘Oh, this is a good one. This is beautiful. This is sweet. This is easy to digest, etc., etc. You please try to eat and then your sickness will be cured.’ Then, the sick person becomes angry and says to the medicine man, ‘Ugh! I hate all this. I’m frightened of it. Don’t ever let my eyes see these foods again.’ At that time when he thinks like that, he dies. And then of course he will become, because of his thinking before he dies, he becomes a hungry ghost.
There are other people who are so arrogant and stupid, do not believe in the Three Jewels, meaning the enlightened Master, the teaching and the Sangha, and the assembly, or maybe slander the Buddha, or look down upon the Buddha, and also don’t live according to human standard, like morally enough, are not filial to their parents, do not help their siblings or others in their clans when they need, and they are very indulgent in sensual pleasure all the time. He doesn’t discriminate, this is the relative or this is a stranger, having all kinds of incest or things like that. Also, he doesn’t believe that there is cause and retribution. He doesn’t believe that. And when he’s sick, he’s lying there clutching his own body together. He cannot stretch himself because when he was well he didn’t want to hear the correct words, he didn’t want to hear the moral words. And then at that time, the parents and the family members knew that this patient is going to die soon. So they tried to tell him, ‘OK, we’re going to recite the sutra for you. Try to take refuge in the Buddha in your heart. And then you look at the picture of the Buddha with respect. And then you try to recite the name of the Buddha. So your sin will become lessened, and you have more and more merit. All right? And all these things that you have now, you’re going to die soon, we’re going to give them to other people, poor people.’ Even though they talk in a gentle voice and try to comfort him and bring him to the right, the correct view like that, but he doesn’t like it. He’s very angry. He says, ‘I vow never to want to hear all this talk again. This is nonsense to me, means nothing. When I die, there’s nothing, no merit, no sin, nothing. When I die it’s all finished.’ When he thinks like that, he dies. And because of his wrong view that he thinks before he died, he’s born in a lower level of bad animals. Because animals have no chance to learn culture, morals; there’s no respect for parents, elderly, nothing. That kind of animal they are born into. So it is all because of the thinking of this patient before he dies.
But if anyone loves to cultivate moral standards, and sows the seeds of human quality, keeps the Five Precepts, and then during his life, he never has any sickness to tear his body and mind apart like that, feeling very agitated like that. And when he dies his heart is very peaceful, his thought is very happy and normal. He will not become confused and torn like the other above-mentioned patients. He knows that he’s dying. So then when the family asks him if he wants to hear the Buddha’s teaching, if he wants to see the Buddha’s picture, if he wants to hear any of the Sangha talking the Truth, ‘Would you like to be a vegan? Would you like to make offering to the Three Jewels?’ Then the patient this time says, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah! Excellent, excellent! I like all this. Do it for me.’ And then, so the family members continue to say, ‘OK. If you listen, if you read the Dharma, the sutras, and you’re looking at the Buddha then you will enter the Buddha’s path. If you offer to print any of the sutras, the teaching, then wherever you go you will have intelligence and wisdom, I mean for many lives. And you will understand many things, meaning the teaching. If you make offering to the Sangha, meaning the monks and the nuns, wherever you will be born you will be rich and happy; whatever you need, you will always have.’ So after the patient, the dying person heard that, he was very happy and he vowed that, ‘OK, wherever I will be born in the future, please let me meet the Buddha, the Sangha, and the teaching.’ So after that person died, he was reborn as a human again.
If anyone keeps the Ten... the Ten Precepts, a little bit further than the Five, and then uses that merit to wish to be born in Heaven, being a god, a high god in Heaven, or if any person keeps the precepts very, very diligently, correctly and then always does the charity work, and then he keeps all these good precepts, at least the five I give you, or the Eight Ways of Purification, and then when he dies he will feel peaceful. He can lie down like this and look at the Buddha’s picture, and he suddenly will hear the Music of the spheres, of Heaven. And you can see his body, his face is very, very brightened. And then he will put his hands up like that. And then he will go up to Heaven.
