I would certainly hope that all of you here at the time of death, if you don't have the ability to be reborn human or an animal, I hope you go to one of those heaven realms, because the other five possibilities are very unpleasant. If you want to read about those 5 unpleasant ones it is in one of the Suttas in the Majjhima Nikaya or in the 20 Suttas that I have made as an email attachment for anyone. It describes the Hell Realms very vividly, and it is unpleasant.
If you want to avoid going that way, do a lot of good in your life, be a good person, be a loving person. Make sure that you train your thoughts so that your thoughts at the moment of death don't create a problem for you, so that you will have a good rebirth. Because even if you have 90% or even 99% lots of goodness in this life, according to Buddhism, if at the moment of death you think of the one thing that you did that was bad, that can take you down to the hell realms. Interesting. So, according to the teachings, that last thought at the moment of death does affect a person quite strongly. Yet if a person has only done 1% something bad, 99% good, then life in hell realms is only going to be short. That's a little extra bonus in case you miss that moment of death. But as I mentioned the other day, if you train your mind so that your habitual thought is always going to something confidence-inspiring, then you have a better chance with that last thought at the moment of death.
Now as to whether we can help somebody who is dying to get a good rebirth even if his Kamma is not so good, and can we influence his or her mind in a beneficial way? Yes. The thing that we encourage people to do if you are with someone who is dying, is to encourage them to think about the good things they have done in their life. Get them to tell their stories about happy moments, good generous moments, about their morality levels and so on. Try to get them to go into those stories, but you have got to be careful that they don't swing into the negative stories. Because a lot of people, who are having a lot of self-pity when they are dying, are just going to go into those negative stories.
So, try to guide them back to thinking about their goodness. It helps to know something about them, but quite frankly most of you won't be with someone who is dying unless you do know them fairly well. Anyhow, if you don't know them fairly well, say you are working in a hospice or something, find out some information beforehand so that you can actually encourage their thoughts to go into a positive way. If you can get them to be thinking about their goodness, what is going to happen to them is that they are going to feel good and be happy. If you are ever with a person who is dying, who is full of anger and hatred, and they start talking about how they hate somebody and this and that, it just takes them more and more down, more and more down. So trying to help them change their thoughts is a way you can help someone who is dying.