This is not going to be something that you are going to have a big decision to make. Crashing plane, okay, you are going along and all of a sudden the plane's going, "Phh," straight down. Now, first of all, as this is the example, think of the sound you are going to hear. There are maybe two hundred people on that plane. You are going to hear screaming to a level that you've never, ever heard before ever in your life. This is going to effect you. It's going to freak you out a bit. When the mind starts to get freaked out, it's not going to be able to make a big choice as to what you are going to do. You are going to have to train your mind beforehand so that something automatically comes up.
Personally, I have the experience of watching my mind get affected by someone's screaming because I was bitten by a snake once in Thailand. We were not sure how poisonous it was. It bit my foot, I was observing the sensations, the painful sensations moved up my leg. I was waiting for Rosemary to run and get a car. It was at night after an evening meditation in a monastery. I was sitting at the women's dormitory, had my leg bandaged up tight. Some of the people were concerned but no big deal. Yet one woman, in particular, started screaming, "He's going to die, he's going to die, he's going to die!".
I'm sitting there trying to stay calm, understanding from snake bite history I had learned that you must keep calm, keep the heart beating slowly so that it doesn't pump the poison too fast. So I am trying to stay calm and this woman is freaking out. All of a sudden I saw my heart start beating faster. It was nothing I was trying to do but this woman's screaming entered my subconscious; affecting me so that all of a sudden my heart is starting to beat faster. I told the other women, "Get rid of her, get her out of here". They did and immediately when she was gone I calmed down a little.
So when I talk about an airplane with all of the screaming, it's going to affect you. But if you've trained your mind so that it will go automatically into a wise reflection then chances are it will.
Now, I have more stories, that relate to dreams for me where I am supposed to die. Remember back to when the planes crashed into the New York buildings. 10 or so years ago I had a dream where I am in a building and I see out of glass windows that an airplane is coming and shooting straight at the buildings. It was obvious that I am going to be dead soon. I sat down and started doing Compassion/Lovingkindness Meditation automatically in my dream.
I had another dream where I am in a truck and the truck went off a cliff and it's got about, I don't know, a fifty, sixty metre fall to the water. I realized, "Well, this is it, I am going to be dead", the same thing happened again, I started doing Compassion/Lovingkindness Meditation. This dream had a double. The truck hit the water, the truck went underneath the water, now I am going to drown. My mind again went into Compassion/Lovingkindness Meditation. It was automatic. That's because I've done it for so long, it's an automatic coming up in my mind when in dreams, at least, I thought I was going to die. This is why I say that you may not have much of a choice as to what you are going to do, but it's going to have to be something that you've practiced a lot that can come up automatically.
Rosemary has a different reflection that automatically comes up for her because she had an experience where she thought she was almost going to die. She fainted in a bathroom full of concrete. She could have easily knocked her head bad and when she fainted she went into thinking of the Triple Gem, as I mentioned before, the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. That comes up more automatically for her because that's a personality sort of thing, she leans towards thinking of that whenever she is in a type of dangerous situation.
So as to what you are going to do at the moment of death, if you've trained your mind to go into one of these good Meditation subjects, Compassion/Lovingkindness, Triple Gem, reflecting on your good Kamma, any one of these or other good strong reflections, if you've trained it well enough, hopefully it will come up at that moment of death, and then you will have an anchor. If you've trained well enough, then you will have something you can grab on to real quick without even trying to grab onto it. It will just come up automatically so that if those two hundred people on the plane are screaming their heads off when you are going down, you are holding onto something. And then it can be okay. Okay, we are going to die, but I've got something holding onto and I'm not going to scream like everyone else and freak out. That can be something to help you at the moment of death.