One thing that we encourage old students to do when they come back for their second retreat or more is to develop what we call a short form of the Five Reflections. We encourage them to begin every meditation period, with the short form. If you can remember, there are the Five Reflections: How Fortunate you are, Death and Impermanence, Actions and Results of Actions, Dukkha or Unsatisfactoriness, and the Relationship between Compassion and Equanimity.
Now, in the morning talks on Day Eight and Day Nine of the regular retreat, Rosemary and I each did a little bit of a short form. Hers was more detailed. They're both pretty good short forms. One or two sentences for each of the different Five Reflections is what we call a short form. We encourage old students to keep the same basic sentences; it could be the same five, same ten, seven or eight, whatever it is, but keep it the same.
Now, on appearance that ends up looking like a mantra - if you use the same phrases every time. With the Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation we advise you to keep the same phrase also. It can look a bit like a mantra; the way that it ends up not being a mantra is going to depend on your Wisdom growth.
When you look at a Buddha statue. It's like a picture. Everybody who looks at it is going to look at it in a different way. When I look at it I do not just see the Buddha, but I actually know what the hand posture means. I know more of the story. I know more of that person as a human being. Why do I know this? I didn't learn it just by looking at that statue. I learned it by reading more about the Buddha, by more investigation, by more reflection. That's all behind that statue.
Now, in English we say, "A picture tells a thousand words." Whenever you look at picture, and whenever you look at a statue, there are a thousand words behind it; but only if you know what those words are, only if you've been there and understood them. If you reflect on death once a month, reflect on death for an entire half-hour, or whatever; if you do it over and over, then after a few years, you will have done quite a few hours of death reflection. Then if somebody says to you, "Are you going to die?", you will think to yourself "Yes", and you will know it, and you will know it could happen today or tomorrow, you will know it might be the next car that comes down the street, you will know it might be all sorts of things and you will have all this information --
[RW interjects]: Definitely in seven days.
[SW continues]: Rosemary wants me to sidetrack here. You are going to die in seven days - every one of you is going to die in seven days. Do you believe me? Most of you, are shaking your head, "No". You don't really believe me when I say this and that's what we thought when a Thai friend of ours said this to us. This is one of the few times we've ever experienced a joke from a Thai because our Thai is not super. So we didn't believe this Thai friend of ours either. Our response was something like, "There's no... what do you mean? We're both going to die in seven days?" He even added that he's going to die in seven days, too. Now I just said that all twenty-five of us are going to die in seven days. And it is likely that all of you don't believe that all of us will die in seven days. However, these seven days are: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; and we are all going to die in these seven days. Ha.
That we are going to die in seven days is very interesting, and something actually to hold on to because you don't know when you're going to die, you really don't know; but you actually do know it's going to be happen during a week of your life. So it's very interesting.
Now, back to the picture telling a thousand words. I was talking about death reflection. After a few years, if you've done quite a few hours of death reflection and somebody says to you, "Are you going to die?" What comes into your mind? - Just a simple "Yes"? - No, it doesn't, it really doesn't come out a simple "Yes."
Go on the street. Stop people as they walk by. Ask them "Are you going to die, sir? Are you going to die, ma'am?" They will most likely look at you and go, "Of course," and then walk by. And that's all they're going to say. They're not going to say much more and they're not going think about it, not usually, the average person will do just that.
But for each of you here, hopefully you're going to have a deeper understanding, you're going to say "Yes!" - and you're going to know it - because of all that reflection that you've done. This is what makes it different. This is what makes the reflections for the short form valuable - if you use the same sentences.
Let's assume your short form begins with, "I'm very fortunate. I don't know when it's going to end. I might die today." Now, how deep did that go into you all? It was just a few simple sentences, anyone can say it, but depending on how deep it went for you just then depended on how much you've taken it deeper in your reflection. So, if you've done many, many hours of death reflection, then when you say to yourself, "I could die today," you will actually understand that: it could be a car, it could be an airplane, it could be another way, it could be an active earthquake here in Germany. Do you ever have earthquakes here? You do, OKay. The centre where we teach at Wat Kow Tahm is on an island; if you don't know, all islands are actually mountains and mountains sometimes turn into volcanoes. And very few people tend to think that could be the way they could die at Wat Kow Tahm, on Koh Pah-ngan island, it could turn into a volcano. Airplanes fly over every once in awhile - crash. That is another way people could die at Wat Kow Tahm that many people don't ever think of.
All this extra information hopefully will come into your thoughts when you say, "Yes, I could die today." This is what changes the reflections that we do, it takes them away from being just a mantra, that you just repeat something over and over and get concentrated on the words. We're going to get to a deeper level of Wisdom behind the words.