If Someone Dies on a Holy Day, Does Yama's Realm Still Come to Collect Them? Someone asked: if a person dies on a Buddhist holy day, which is treated as a holiday, would there be no officials in Yama's realm to come collect the departed spirit — and what would happen to it?

The teacher answered that collection happens every day without exception; only the meting out of punishment pauses for a brief moment. Time runs differently in each realm of existence. A single moment in Yama's realm, or in the intermediate hell-realms, may pass in a mere flash, nothing like the length of a human day and night — much as one day and night in the Cātumahārājika heaven equals fifty years of human time, since a larger body corresponds to a longer day and night. The same principle holds in Yama's realm. There is no need to worry that no one will come.

Don't Watch for Others' Faults — Observe Your Own Progress The teacher advised against watching and judging others' mistakes, since it serves no purpose. Turn instead to observing yourself: have I got this right yet, or right but not yet complete, or fully complete? Observing this way brings joy and a quiet sense of pride. Even if you sometimes lapse and skip practice for two or three days, don't be discouraged — no matter how long you have trained, whether days, months, or many years, you remain, in a real sense, a beginner still not yet skilled.

To observe at all requires that the sphere of knowing first be established; without it, there is nothing to observe. One must keep the mind focused and absorbed in the dhamma, staying with one's chosen meditation object — whatever arises, simply know it, because dhamma arises in only one place: the heart. It cannot arise anywhere else. Observe the changes that occur: when dhamma stirs the heart, the heart perceives whatever has appeared.

The Principle of Determining Awareness, According to the Buddha's Words The Fully Enlightened Buddha taught, in the discourse on the foundations of mindfulness, that monks should clearly discern the body, feelings, mind, and dhamma, in order to remove covetousness and displeasure toward the world. Determining awareness in this way is not optional — if we do not determine it ourselves, some other nature will step in and force that determination upon us instead. We must be the one who determines: determining awareness itself, where "aware" means mindfulness, and "clearly" means full comprehension — aware of body and mind, bringing the mind to rest with the body, perceiving a meditation object with a clear, continuous signal, remaining aware at all times, never lapsing. The great teacher Luang Pu taught: "lapse, and it vanishes." The instant awareness is established, the sphere of ignorance falls away; if awareness vanishes, that means ignorance has taken hold again.

Covetousness and Displeasure Toward the World The purpose of determining awareness is to eliminate covetousness and displeasure — delight and grief toward "the world." Here, "the world" means the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, or their objects: forms, tastes, smells, sounds, and touch. Delighting in or being averse to these gives rise to elation and grief, which the unwholesome side uses as bait to win our consent, confining us within its own dimension, shaping us into speaking or acting in ways we shouldn't. Once we do, demerit arises, bringing with it a stream of misfortune.

Equanimity: The Path to Balance When practice brings on delight and aversion, elation one moment and grief the next, we must settle the mind into equanimity, which keeps it in balance, neither falling into elation nor grief. If we give in to that agitation, the mind stirs all the more, and balance becomes hard to find. We must therefore abide in equanimity together with contentment — being satisfied with what we presently have — which makes it far easier for the mind to grow still and stop.

Equanimity has another name: the mental factor of even-mindedness (tatramajjhattatā), which arises together with mindfulness, faith, and a wholesome mind — the same underlying state under a different name, because it is the mental factor free of delight and aversion, preserving the mind's balance. Only a refined, subtle mind can perceive this mental factor, the same way it perceives a light body and a light heart, a refined body and a refined mind — all mental factors that likewise arise together with a wholesome mind. But if the mind remains coarse, none of this can be perceived. We must determine awareness, cultivate right mindfulness, and refine the mind further and further, until we come to perceive equanimity and this gentleness and subtlety for ourselves — because these qualities already exist within us, simply obscured by underlying elements that make them hard to notice. Only by refining the mind and staying focused and absorbed can we come to observe and perceive them.