About This Teaching
Responding to a questioner who had heard a monk say that someone may keep the five precepts all their life, yet if the mind is in a bad state at the moment of death, that will decide where it goes, Ajahn Dtun says both points are correct. Doing a lot of good is like always taking a few steps ahead. Yet if someone has kept the five precepts but the mind is in a negative state at the moment of death, that will determine where the mind goes.
However, he does not want people thinking about what their mind might be like at death one, ten, twenty, thirty or forty years from now. Worrying whether the mind will be in good or bad condition at the last moment is too much worry. Do the best you can today. If you make the present moment good, the future will be good. As you sow, so shall you reap: if you plant apple trees, it is very hard to get oranges from them. Create good causes and the results will be good.
What the monk said is not wrong. But for someone who has kept the precepts all their life and cultivated the mind, the chance that unwholesome thoughts connected with past kamma find a way in at that time is very slim, so do not worry about the future like that. He adds that this kind of talk does not support people who try to keep the precepts all their lives, and it is better not to say it.