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The Five Remembrances - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 24, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

The Five Remembrances

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to IMC. Hearing the idea that it is Thanksgiving week, I suppose the right theme would be thanksgiving or gratitude. However, that is not what I have on my mind. I will amusingly defend myself by telling you a story about Joseph Goldstein¹, one of the founding teachers of this Western Insight movement. He said that the first time he was asked to officiate a wedding, he was asked to give a little Dharma talk. The talk he gave was on death.

That gives me a little bit of license for what you are about to hear. The topic is the Five Remembrances.

Encounters with Mortality

I will start with a personal anecdote. When I was eleven, I was visiting Nepal with my parents. I visited again twenty years later and was amazed at how radically it had changed; back then, I don't think there were any asphalt roads in Kathmandu. It was almost like a small town.

One day, we were walking around near a river, and we saw some people carrying a stretcher with a body wrapped in blankets. The body was small enough that it was certainly that of a small child. They were bringing it down to the river to cremate it. That was my first encounter with someone who had died. I couldn't actually see the person because of the blanket. It made an impression on me, not an unfavorable or frightening one, but in retrospect, I think I was witnessing something that had been going on in the ancient Indian subcontinent for thousands of years.

Twenty years later, I went to Varanasi, where they have the famous burning pyres. But with that child, there was something almost natural about what they were doing, as unnatural as we might see the death of a child. It seemed like a timeless event.

When I came to Buddhism, I learned about the Buddha before he was enlightened. He also grew up in what is now Nepal, in the foothills of the Himalayas. The story Buddhists tell is that it had been predicted at his birth that he might become a renunciant—a religious wanderer with no possessions engaged in spiritual practice. This was not to the liking of his father, the King, who wanted his son to follow in the family business. The father did what he could to prevent his son from encountering suffering, keeping him distracted with education, entertainment, sports, and warrior training.

The young Buddha-to-be lived inside royal compounds, reportedly moving between three different palaces for different seasons, kept distracted from fundamental human experiences of suffering. He wasn't like that eleven-year-old in Kathmandu seeing the child carried to the pyres. It was not until he was twenty-seven that he began getting restless—a bit like The Truman Show, for those who know the movie. At some point, he felt he had to go beyond the walls.

The Four Heavenly Messengers

He went out with his charioteer, driving through the town. The first time they went, they saw an old person. Somehow, the Buddha had never seen a really old person before. He asked the charioteer, "What is that?" The charioteer said, "That is an old person. It is the nature of all of us to become old."

The next day they went out again, and this time they saw a sick person. The Buddha asked, "What is that?" The charioteer said, "That is a sick person. It is the nature of all of us to become ill."

The third time they went out, they saw a dead person—perhaps a scene similar to what I saw in Nepal. The Buddha asked, "What is this?" The charioteer said, "It is a dead person. We all have the nature to die."

The Buddha went out a fourth time, and this time they saw a renunciant—a religious mendicant walking through the streets in a calm, stately, self-possessed way. Everyone else was running around, but this person was peaceful and mindful. The Buddha asked, "What is that?" The charioteer explained, "That is a religious mendicant. That is someone who has left the home life to find out what is true and to become free."

These four sights made a big impression on him. The very thing his father feared then came to pass: the Buddha jumped over the walls, went to the border of the country, gave all his royal garb and jewels to the charioteer, and crossed the river into the woods to live a renunciant life. It took seven years for him to find his awakening.

That act of leaving the home life is one of the conditions for all of us to be here today. It set in motion something that supports people in seeking their own discovery of freedom and contending with the fundamental human sufferings we all approach.

Transforming Violence into Peace

There is a famous story related to this theme. A few hundred years after the Buddha, King Ashoka² became the first emperor to conquer all of India. Before he became a Buddhist dedicated to non-violence, he was a cruel king with a vast army. After one battle, he walked by himself across the battlefield through the carcasses of thousands of soldiers. We don't know what impact it had on him to walk through that carnage he was responsible for.

Lo and behold, walking through the field was a Buddhist monk. The monk was walking calmly, with self-possession and peace. The contrast between the carnage and the peacefulness of this monk made a big impression on the King. He went to talk to him and asked what his teacher taught. The monk responded with a verse:

"Hatred never ends through hatred. By love alone does hatred end. This is the ancient truth."³

With that, the King renounced violence and war. He remained Emperor, but that was the turning point for him to become dedicated to non-violence.

Mindfulness and Autonomy

We practice mindfulness here. Mindfulness is something only you can do for yourself. You cannot farm it out or call up a local "Uber Mindfulness" service to handle it for you. It must be done out of free will, with your own capacity to decide to engage.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu⁴ has a teaching that likens the mind to a corporate board. At a board meeting, the chair has no control over what the members say; they say all kinds of crazy things. However, the chair has one thing the others don't have: veto power.

The mind is like that. You don't have control over what your mind thinks, but you do have veto power. You have the ability to choose not to participate, not to invest in, and not to grant authority to those thoughts. That difference is huge. A lot of the practice is learning how to better self-monitor, self-regulate, and find freedom in doing so.

We find our freedom to choose to be independent—not the servant of our compulsions or the victim of our feelings. It is a remarkable journey to become free of greed, hatred, and delusion because we choose to exercise that veto power.

Part of this journey is one of growing autonomy. Just as a child learns to eat, walk, and live independently, as adults, that process of maturation becomes increasingly internal. We learn to track ourselves well enough to know our impulses and biases so we are not caught by them. If we get angry, we don't have to act angrily. If we feel shy, we don't have to act shy.

The Five Remembrances

This lesson of learning autonomy comes to a culmination when we die. I think of it as the last time we have a chance to learn this lesson. No one can die for us.

The Buddha said that all people, whether lay or monastic, should regularly reflect on these Five Remembrances:

1. I am subject to aging. I am not free from aging.
2. I am subject to illness. I am not free from illness.
3. I am subject to death. I have not gone beyond death.
4. I will become different and separate from all that is dear and appealing to me.
5. I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born from my actions, related to my actions, and have my actions as my refuge. Whatever deeds I do, whether beautiful or bad, I shall be the heir.

These are the fundamental truths of human life. The Buddha taught this because it is easy to get enamored with youth and lose perspective. We get so enthused by our loved ones that we forget that sooner or later, we will be separated. Perhaps that is why Joseph Goldstein talked about death at a wedding; if you stay married, chances are one of you will die before the other.

Does this evoke horror? Does it evoke protest? The Buddha is suggesting we keep this in mind so we are not surprised. It means we should prepare. It is hard to practice freedom, non-clinging, and compassion in times of crisis unless we have built up the strength of mindfulness.

Finding the Middle Way

Can we find autonomy and freedom in relation to health and sickness, youth and old age, living and dying? Can we turn inward so we are not on autopilot?

The veto power has an amazing capacity. It can say "no" to rejecting something, and "no" to accepting it. What is the third option? Where is that place of neither accepting nor rejecting? I suggest that is where freedom is found. If you have to accept something, you are not really free.

Is there a place in the mind—a place of awareness, stillness, quiet, and peace—that does not need to accept or reject anything? It can allow it to be. That still, quiet place within is not battered by the conditions of the world. There is no clinging associated with it.

The Final Autonomy

What happens when we go to our deathbed? There was a woman here at IMC who died some years ago. In the last weeks of her life, she became amazingly equanimous. It was like being with a saint; she had a contagious darshan⁵ almost.

I was with her a few hours before she died, and she was agitated. After weeks of peace, she said to me, "The practice is no longer working." She was having hallucinations and didn't know how to deal with them. I told her, "You don't have to practice anymore. All you have to do is don't believe them. Don't believe those delusions."

She calmed down immediately. The agitation went away. She used the veto power; she didn't have to believe them. A couple of hours later, she passed away.

It is possible to become so present that we no longer participate in the normal course of thinking, judging, and commentary. There is a place where the past and future disappear—not from existence, but from our active engagement. In that place of awareness, there is no "dying" in terms of concepts. Thoughts like "I only have two minutes left" become irrelevant. In the mind that is aware and awake, there is a place of no aging and no sickness, even while you are sick.

Conclusion

I hope that finding that capacity for freedom is one of the last things you do before you die. I hope none of us die afraid, angry, or confused. I hope we die peacefully.

That is what the Buddha did. He learned it, taught it, and then did it. The tradition says he was walking back to his home country across Northern India. He knew he was dying and laid himself down between two flowering Sal trees⁶. He asked the monks, "Are you sure you don't have any more questions?" They said no. He then closed his eyes and went into deep states of meditation where past, future, life, and death do not exist in terms of concepts. From there, he passed away.

The last remembrance is that we are the heir to our actions. This represents that what we do makes a difference. What we do creates habits and shapes who we are. Be careful with what you do, what you say, and how you live. That care is exercising your capacity for autonomy—your capacity to make a decision to live a good life, free of clinging, craving, and conceit.