As I understand, all Buddhist practices teach that your thoughts at the moment of death will influence your next rebirth. Now what you have is more or less two different things that can push you into your next rebirth. One is your basic overall Kamma. If you've got lots of good Kamma and a bit of bad Kamma, fine, you're going to be propelled to a good rebirth. If you've got it the other way, then you're going to be propelled to a rebirth that's not so good. However, the actual thoughts at the moment of death can shift that. If you've got lots of good Kamma, little bit of bad Kamma, but as you're dying you think of the bad Kamma, you may have regret, you may have grief and so on. Then that actually affects you so that you get reborn in an unhappy place, according to that Kamma. Now, if you have only done a little bit of bad Kamma though, you're life span in that place will be very short.
There is a cute story in the scriptures. There was a Queen who was a very good follower of the Buddha. She wasn't enlightened but she was an extremely good follower. She had only done one bad thing in her whole life, one thing she regretted. When she died, that thought came up. Even though she had done tons of good stuff, thoughts about that one bad thing came up and she got reborn in Hell. The King came to the Buddha, and he was a bit upset as his wife had died, but she had done so much good he felt she must have been reborn in a Heaven realm, or as a good human. He asked the Buddha where she was reborn, because the Buddha would explain sometimes where people were reborn. The Buddha knew that she was reborn in Hell. He didn't want to tell the King as it would disappoint the King greatly. He also knew though, that she was only going to stay in Hell for seven days. It was going to be very short because she only did one bad thing. So instead of answering the King, the Buddha changed the subject and gave the King a real nice Dhamma talk. The King went away happy, and when he left, he thought, "Hey wait a minute, the Buddha forgot to answer my question about my wife. I'll have to come back tomorrow." So he did, he came back the next day. The Buddha did exactly the same thing. For seven days straight, he did exactly the same thing. After seven days, the wife was reborn in a heaven realm, because of all her good Kamma. The King came and asked the same question, the Buddha told the King where his wife was reborn. He was so happy.
This story is an example of the thoughts at the moment of death interfering with our basic Kamma movement, as to rebirth. So this is why thoughts at the moment of death are stressed within Buddhism as being extremely important. Now, if you're worried or concerned that you just aren't going to get those thoughts right, and you're going to die with all this fear and grief and everything else, one of the first things to do is to make it a habit, a really strong habit, to reflect on confidence inspiring objects.
Some of them are: to reflect on How Fortunate You Are, Sympathetic Joy with your own practice and other good people's practices, reflection on your good Kamma, your good morality, your good generosity, times in your life when you did something that was really good. Also reflecting on the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. Those are typical confidence inspiring objects. They uplift us, they make us feel strong, they make us feel happier inside. Use them regularly so that they become a habit. Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation is another one as well if you can do it in a balanced way. The more you make these types of thoughts habits, then they come up by themselves. And they may come up at a time when you least expect it, but when you most need it, which could be at the moment of death.
Now, some of you have experienced having a dream in which your Dhamma practice seems to manifest. Now dreams, as you may know, are often times when the thoughts just go bizarre. They can think up anything, memories from here, memories from there go together, and all of a sudden this person is doing something but it was actually somebody else. Dreams can be bizarre, right? And we really have little control over them, but Rosemary and I and some of you have experienced times when your Dhamma practice actually fruits in a dream.
To give you an example of what we are talking about here: the moment of death, the thoughts at death, being able to have a habitual thought come up to help us not have fear, not have anger, grief etc. at the moment of death. This is just one of quite a few dreams that I have had. I was in a building that had glass windows around it. In the distance I saw an airplane coming, and it was slightly similar to what actually did happen in New York, this airplane was actually firing, bombs, rockets or whatever. In the dream I realized, "I'm going to die soon". I sat down in meditation, I started doing Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation. When I woke up from that dream, I was so happy. I didn't yell, I didn't scream, it wasn't a nightmare, as it would be for so many other people. I was thrilled. Now that is one little one.
I had a double one once. Fancy dying twice in the same dream! But a similar thing happened again. I was in a truck, in the front seat, and there were three of us (I have no idea who), and we went off a cliff: "This is it". Because it is a habit for me, again Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation came up. I started wishing the world Compassion/Lovingkindness, knowing I'm going to die soon. The truck hit water, and we were underneath it. I wasn't dead yet, but now I was going to drown. Immediately I started doing the same thing. Now I give this to you as an example of habitual thoughts coming up when, for somebody else in a dream they are just going to scream, wake up sweating and everything else.
This is why we encourage very much to develop confidence inspiring reflections. Do a lot of Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation, do Sympathetic Joy, reflect on your good Kamma, think of How Fortunate You Are, reflect on the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. These are all designed to give your mind more peace, contentment and happiness. If you've got it as a habit, it's likely to come up at the moment of death.