Powa is about transitioning, transcending, transferring or changing from one state into another state. Po means that you shift, you transition. And if you look at our life, you can see how in every single moment we are transitioning. Every single moment we are changing. Have you recognized that? And shifting from one place to a different place can be difficult. One of the most important shifts in life is obviously when we die. And just as there is a process to one’s being born, there is likewise a particular process to one’s dying. Similarly, there is a process that you go through every night when you go to sleep which resembles dying.

We can say that every night as you go through the process of falling asleep, in a sense you die, because you’re losing contact with family, with your work, your activity, your calendar, and all of your relations. You’re even saying goodbye to your partner who is sleeping right next to you. And at some point, even your own sense of identity dissolves, and you don’t know who you are. This kind of dissolution of all of your contacts is happening throughout the process of going to sleep until you’ve actually fallen asleep.

When you fall into deep sleep, you don’t know who you are there. There’s no one worrying about anything there. That’s the nice thing about deep sleep, right? There’s just this really juicy, restful energy during the night while you are in the experience of deep, or slow wave sleep. Then in the dream, or in the early morning sleep, there is a lot more activity. It’s not the same juicy sleep, rather it’s more alert. There’s rapid eye movement (REM), and there’s lucidity and a lot of other things happening. And the reason why deep sleep is so beautiful is probably because the sense of self is somehow almost non-existent; in fact, it is reduced down to the barest minimum that it can ever be, there in the deep sleep. And that’s why deep sleep is the most fun. At least I look at it in that way. It’s so restorative and so recovering. Even taking a short power nap allows you to slow down, and in that slowing down there’s less and less self there. And even if the nap is for only a short moment, when you wake up you feel restored.

But most of the time, the problem is that we have to carry this sense of self. And it’s heavy. Some people’s sense of self is heavier than others. Regardless though, it’s heavy. But every night when you are going to sleep you are dissolving that sense of self. And the whole practice of dream yoga and sleep yoga is about how much awareness you are able to maintain throughout this process. At some point in the process, are you being this awareness and watching this process of dissolution? Or, are you continuing to make different stories in the process of going to sleep? You know you have a lot of stories in the daytime, right? And now in the nighttime you are still making stories – night stories. Or, have you experienced yet being completely the observer, and rather than making any more stories, you’re dissolving as much as possible the stories that you have created? Every night you have the opportunity to practice dissolving that sense of self, and becoming better and better at doing that.

And with regard to your going to sleep, at some point you have to say the day’s schedule is finished and now it’s time for bed. Nothing is more important than your scheduled time for bed, whatever the time is that you have decided on, because you respect your body, right? And that means not giving in when challenged by particular situations. Oh, there’s a show that I must watch, because last night I almost finished it, and I really want to finish it tonight. That’s really not that important. Or, my friend is coming again tonight and we are planning to just have dinner and chat into the night…It’s not important. Sure the friend is important, but not having it interfere with your sleep schedule is the key. Or maybe it’s working into the night that tempts you. Or it could be doing any number of things.

I usually try to do everything that I have to do before noon. Of course, at retreat it’s a different story due to the schedule there. But otherwise I try to schedule everything important before noon. In the evening I’m free. This idea of making your evenings free and keeping yourself free, and valuing that freedom and prioritizing your sleep, they are all part of the process of not creating more stories.

Imagine the last moment of your death. Would you have a Zoom meeting then? Would you want to try to finish your Netflix series that you had started earlier? No, nothing matters! And that’s how it should be; nothing should matter. Every night as well, nothing should matter. For me, I do that. Of course, sometimes I make an exception and then afterwards I see the error and forgive myself. So the process of prioritizing in that way requires some discipline and it’s important to do that.

And being free in the time prior to our death is important. We all have the hope of having a peaceful death. And there are many examples of that, but one that is very, very clear is that of Yongdzin Rinpoche. The degree of peacefulness that he showed us and the few words that he said are amazing. He did not ask to do some more rituals, or some more long-life mantras. He did not say anything like that. He was ready. In fact, he had begun saying long ago that he was ready. He had begun saying that about ten years ago. We were the ones though who were grasping on to him. But he was ready. So in the last moments he said, don’t worry about it, I am inseparable with the natural state of mind. The word in Tibetan is rang jung yeshe, self-arising wisdom. I am inseparable with self-arising wisdom. So just don’t worry about it. And he truly did not worry about anything. But that does not mean that he didn’t care about all of the people who love him, who respect him, and who care about him. He cared for everybody. But there’s a moment when you see that nothing is important.

What is important is only that when you are with those people, not to hurt them, to take care of them. Every moment in life that you’re with someone, you’re with someone fully and you choose the right things, you say the right thing, you act in the right way, take care of someone, love someone. If you have the opportunity to forgive or not to forgive, and you can do either one, then why not forgive? Logically it doesn’t make any sense not to do it. If you can love and not hate then why not love, why hate? It doesn’t make any sense to hate. The choice is always there. And it seems like, if you keep these choices every day in your life, then there is no real reason to worry about the death. When people like Yongdzin Rinpoche are very peaceful at death, it’s probably the reason. They are living in the moment all of the time. So there’s nothing in that particular moment that is a problem for them as they shift their attention from one form to another. That’s how their whole lifestyle was. That’s how every single present moment was for them.

We have had some wonderful conversations here about the idea of the closeness of life and death. And clearly it makes a lot of sense that bringing death closer to our life seems so important. It’s absolutely true. Not only because it’s so important for the preparation for the death, but also because it’s very important for living fully in the moment. Generally, it is people who have had that awakening to the closeness of life and death that find they are being more present and having a better perspective of life, and being more kind. And scientific research also shows that people who have had a near death experience are more spiritual afterward than they were before. It makes sense. You may have had that experience yourself. Or you might have gotten the results of a diagnostic test which showed that you have some possibly terminal disease, and then you recovered. And after that, you are a different person. And all of those years of doing practices did not help as much as that one event did in changing you.

So going through such difficult moments like those is not bad. In fact, for some people it’s absolutely necessary for the truth to really hit home of how close their death is to life. Of course, I prefer to wake upto that closeness of my death without going through the process of getting the diagnosis and then having treatment and finally overcoming the illness. But if you don’t wake up to the closeness of your own death on your own, then there’s no other solution than going through that process before actually dying.

So, wake up and go closer to your death before actually dying! Because it really changes you when you are actually able to get closer to that. As a teenager I remember finishing the impermanence practices as part of my ngondro. They were hard then, because it didn’t make much sense to my younger self. I would do as instructed to think and imagine that all of the rivers constantly flowing along are impermanent – okay, I could do that. And I would also visualize the trees in autumn, and all of the leaves falling down, seeing how there is constant change happening around us all of the time – okay, I could visualize and imagine that back then. However, as a teenager it’s not easy to fully make sense of that and have the deep impact on your transformation that comes with truly knowing impermanence. Now it makes sense. But sometimes even little children can have a moment of deep insight into this because somehow the experience of death is present deep inside of us all. It’s just a question of how strongly, how genuinely, you have a connection or a relationship with it.

The main point is to find a way to support our really being closer to our death. Not only when you do tests. Not only when you are diagnosed, but rather, every moment in your life. Feeling as close as possible to your death seems so, so important. Because it makes you feel really present in your life. You don’t have to think about it many times, you just come to know what the priority is. For instance, if you can love someone, then you will just love someone and not get angry at them. There’s more tolerance that you will have naturally, more forgiveness that you will naturally generate. And you will know what matters more in those moments: simply be kind to someone; love someone; give to someone; help someone. Because when those opportunities are gone, then they are truly gone. So, you want to live in the moment, and make better choices in the moment. And the only way that allows you to powerfully do that is with your true remembering of the closeness of death. Because in actuality, you do not know for sure whether you will even have the next year or not; you just don’t know for sure.

And please recognize that our truly remembering the closeness of death is not just a matter of thinking like that; but rather it’s when we truly feel like that; when we act out of that; when we are able to witness that I am acting as if it’s my last day, my last week, my last month or my last year. Because then your awareness of death is close enough for you to naturally do those things. And then you’ll also find that you’re living a much happier life.