There are many different kinds of meditation you can do before going to sleep. There are the profound meditations of tantra, but generally, you can generate the motivation of bodhicitta by thinking, ‘‘The purpose of my life is to free all sentient beings from suffering and lead them to happiness, especially the peerless happiness of enlightenment. I have this universal responsibility. To succeed in this, I must first attain enlightenment myself, therefore, I am going to practice the yoga of sleeping.’’ With this bodhicitta motivation, go to sleep.
Another common meditation is to visualize your guru on your pillow, and when you lie down, your head rests in his lap. Then, in the presence of your guru, who with devotion you visualize as one with the buddha, generate compassion for all sentient beings and go to sleep. If you do this, your entire night’s sleep will be virtuous, the cause of happiness. Thus, you can go to bed with devotion to your guru, with devotion to the buddha and with compassion for all sentient beings by reflecting on their suffering.
You can also think that as you go to sleep you are in the pure land of the deity you practice. This leaves positive imprints on your mind and you create the karma to be reborn in that pure land when you die.
You can also go to sleep with the thought of renunciation, reflecting on the suffering nature of samsara, impermanence and death and so forth, or by meditating on emptiness or dependent arising, looking at everything as a dream or an illusion, as merely labeled by the mind. If you go to bed mindful that everything that appears to you as not merely labeled by the mind is a dream, an hallucination, it can help you recognize your dreams as dreams and to practice virtue while you are dreaming. No matter which of these techniques you practice, your sleep becomes Dharma, virtue.
In tantra, there are two sleeping yogas: that of conventional truth and that of absolute truth. If you have received a great initiation, you can learn the details of these practices from the commentaries on the practice of that deity.
In the lam-rim there’s some advice on how to get up early in the morning without being overwhelmed by sleep. Before getting into bed the night before, wash your feet while thinking of light. Try it; it works.
As I mentioned above, you can also go to sleep visualizing whichever pure land in which you’d like to be reborn. This can also help should you die suddenly. If you have trained your mind in this practice and generated the strong wish to be reborn in that pure land, during the death process you may be able to direct your consciousness to be reborn there.
Experiencing illness and death with bodhicitta The very heart of Dharma practice, the best of all, the ultimate thought transformation, the supreme psychology, is to experience your problems on behalf of others.
Perhaps you have AIDS or cancer. Maybe you’re having problems in your relationship or suffering from depression. Possibly you’re dying. Whatever trouble you’re experiencing, think, ‘‘I’m experiencing this problem on behalf of all sentient beings, to bring them happiness. I am taking on the AIDS [or cancer, relationship problems, depression, whatever] of all those who are suffering from AIDS at the moment and for all those who have the karma to get it. I take it all upon myself. I am experiencing this disease on behalf of all sentient beings who either have it or will get it.’’ No matter what has happened to you—asthma, depression, business failure, being raped—you can dedicate it in the same way.
Throughout the day, as soon as the thought ‘‘I have AIDS’’ arises, immediately think, ‘‘I am experiencing this for the sake of all sentient beings.’’
When you are dying, think, ‘‘I am experiencing death for the numberless sentient beings who are also experiencing the suffering of dying at this very moment. I take it all upon myself. May they be free from the suffering of death and receive ultimate happiness right now.’’ Try to die with this thought.
Each time you think this way, you purify unbelievable eons of negative karma and create merit as limitless as the sky. Each time you practice taking the suffering of others upon yourself, you come much closer to enlightenment, which means you come much closer to bringing all sentient beings to enlightenment. There is no more beneficial way to die than to die with this bodhicitta thought.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama calls people who can die like this completely self-supporting, because through familiarity with the various death meditations, at the most critical time of their lives, death, they can guide themselves skillfully to the next life.