Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Christele guides students through death preparation and the six realms of rebirth, opening with a meditation on the dissolution of the four elements at death and the mind’s experiences during that transition. She then explains how karma—virtuous and non-virtuous actions—determines whether one takes rebirth in the three lower realms (hell, hungry ghost, animal) or higher ones, emphasizing that the mind at the moment of death is crucial: a virtuous mind can lead to good rebirth even after harmful actions, while a non-virtuous mind can send someone to lower realms despite a virtuous life. She provides stark, detailed descriptions of each lower realm—extreme heat and fighting in hells, desperate hunger and thirst as hungry ghosts, and dumbness and exploitation as animals—to cultivate renunciation and urgency about practice. She then addresses how to prepare for death during life through moral discipline, merit accumulation via service and offerings, bodhicitta motivation, and practices like Tonglen (taking and giving), closing with a guided Tonglen meditation using a personal problem as a vehicle for developing compassion for all who suffer similarly. The teaching is practical and visceral, aiming to motivate genuine behavioral change rather than intellectual belief.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Christele – Track 14.mp3
UUID: 6d807cf9-b22f-48f8-a89b-679c79c76537
Teacher: Christele
Collection: Death & Rebirth (Christele)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~12,664
Sorry. Maybe I should turn it. Yes. So I’m going to first to tell you what’s going to happen next week because tonight we’re going to Is that working? Yep.
Okay. Where? Oh yeah, the death and dying. There’s a folder. It’s a bit too loud.
Is that okay? And then next week I had the pastoral care group to come along, so that would be speak to you: Jan Vaughan and Judy Wagner. So they both have experience with people dying or helping people who are very sick. They will talk to you about, on a more practical level, how can we help people who are dying or are sick. So, they will be very informal and any questions.
Is that okay? Also, thought tonight to do the at the time of death because it’s a very important meditation. Thought it would be good to go through it one more time. Basically, up to now in the fourth session we had so far, we try to cultivate an awareness of death and impermanence before it is too late. To do it before die on our deathbed.
Also to become familiar with the aspects of death, so what’s going to happen to our mind and our body when we’re dying. So we talked last week about the second way of remembering death. The first one was the nine point meditation on death, and the second one was the two meditations we did on the aspect of death, which was the exoteric way and the esoteric way. So the first one is that you imagine that you’re dying and you’re lying down and do your meditation lying down, and the other one is more what’s happening in your mind and your body. Basically Geshe-la said that from contemplating on this topic you should reach three conclusions.
I definitely must practice the Dharma, I must do it immediately now and not postpone it, and the Dharma is the only thing that is useful at the time of death. So, those should be the three conclusions that you should reach after doing all that. Tonight we’re going to talk about what kind of life will come next after we die and went to the Bardo state and where we’re going to take rebirth. There are six realms of existence and I’m going to in the lamrim concentrate on the three lower ones, which is a nice one, so we’re going to talk about this one tonight. So, The condition we will meet over there.
Is that okay? First we’re going to do this meditation on the dissolution at the time of death, and of course you’ve been doing it every night before going to sleep. I need to find it, sorry I had it ready two seconds ago. Oh, it’s here. Sorry.
So just sit in the seven point posture if you can. Otherwise just sit comfortably but make sure your back is straight. The back is the most important point of the posture. Relax your shoulder and relax your back but keep it straight. And bring your attention to your breath.
So you can concentrate on the sensation that you feel on your nostril of the cold air coming in and the warm air coming out. Or you can count your breath. So let’s just spend a few moments just doing that and bringing our mind here, what Buddha House, And to let go of what happened today and what will happen tonight. Now bring your motivation motivation for being here tonight in your mind. Think about why why you are here tonight and what you’re trying to achieve.
The highest of the motivation that you can have is the bodhicitta motivation, is to think that I must reach enlightenment for the sake of all mother sentient beings. In order to do this, I must complete the study and practice of the teachings on the path to enlightenment. Therefore, I’m going to do this meditation on impermanence and death and listen to the teaching. We We are all going to die. We are all going to close our eyes one day for the last time.
So just try to think that, yes, this is going to happen to me. Therefore, I must become familiar with this process in life so that I can handle it constructively when it actually happens. Now think and visualize as follows. As my earth element dissolves, my body becomes thin. My limbs are uncontrolled.
And it feels like I’m being buried under a great weight of earth. My limbs seems to shrivel, and my body becomes weak and powerless. My eyesight becomes unclear and I can no longer open or close my eyes. Radiance of my body diminishes, my strength weakens, and to my mind there appears a vision like a mirage. As my water element dissolves, my saliva, sweat, and other fluids dry up.
I can no longer experience pleasant and unpleasant or neutral feelings. I am no longer mindful of the feelings that accompany my mental consciousness. I no longer hear external or internal sounds. Even the inner buzzing in my ears disappears, and to my mind, there appear a vision of smoke. As my fire element dissolves, I can no longer digest food or drink.
I lose mindfulness of the affairs of those close to me, and I can no longer remember their names. My inhalation becomes weak. And my exhalation labored and long. I can no longer smell things. Onto my mind, there appears a vision of sparks of fire.
As my wind element dissolve, my inhalation and exhalation cease altogether. I can now no longer perform any physical actions. I cannot move at all. I am no longer mindful of external activities, their purposes and so forth. My tongue becomes thick and short and its throat turns blue.
I can no longer experience tears or fish things with my body. To my mind, there appears a vision like the last flickering of a candle. As my eighty gross conceptions dissolve, there appears to my mind the white vision, a clear emptiness filled with white light. Then there appears to my mind the red vision, a clear emptiness filled with red light. Then there appears to my mind the black vision, an emptiness filled with thick darkness.
Finally, there appears to my mind a clear light vision, complete emptiness and clarity. At this point, try to concentrate on the appearance of this clear light mind and think, all things are empty of inherent existence. Nothing exists under its own power, from its own side. All phenomena are interdependent and exist by being merely labeled by the mind. And let your mind become one with infinite space in nature of clear light, and concentrate as long as you can on that.
Is that getting easier the more you do it? Or have you done it during the week? Or who did it during the week? Yeah, okay. If we become very familiar with that, we’ll be able to notice not all signs, but when somebody else died we could notice a physical sign, and also when we die hopefully we will be aware of what is happening.
I forgot to say the refuge prayer, so maybe we should do it now. I go for refuge till I’m enlightened. To the Buddha, the Dharma is the supreme assembly. For my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings? I go for refuge till I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly.
For my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings? I go for refuge till I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly. For my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all sentient beings be inseparable from the happiness that is free from suffering. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for friends and hatred from enemies. I did find some interesting information I wanted to share with you, but I can’t find them. That was about the battle state. But I asked Lindy, the ABC, to ask Geshe-la to do a short teaching or explanation on the Bardo State and also on the dissolution at the time of death to give you more information.
The Bardo state I was reading, this is not really a physical body that you’ve got. It’s another kind of body that can go through matter. And I also read somewhere that if you’re going to be reborn as a man, actually the Bardo being has got the body of a young boy, but it’s pretty complicated. We can talk to you a bit later, what can we do to help the dying process, to help us die. We’ll do that later.
Okay. So let’s talk about the lower realm of existence. Do you know what they are? All of them? Yeah, no.
So that’s three lower realms. Somebody can tell me what they are, the three lower one? L. L, yep. Yep.
And the three higher realm? human one. Demigod. I’m going to talk about this one, but Briefly, the human one is actually the one where you’ve got more chance of getting enlightenment because you do have suffering, so you can use the suffering as a teacher, basically, to reach enlightenment. The demigod and the god are in a state of happiness all the time, so they don’t have time to think about suffering.
It’s only at the time of death that they’re going to experience suffering, but at this time it’s too late for them. So it’s actually not that good to be a demigod or a god. It’s better to be born as a human. We’re going talk about this one and they are not good. Especially when you go in detail, in the lamrim it’s very graphic, the description.
I’m going to go through the three of them but I’m going to spend more time on the hell one just to give you a brief insight of what it is. I’m going to go quickly through the hungry ghost and the animal one. And in the hell realm there’s actually, there’s not only one hell realm, there’s more, there’s plenty of hell realms. But let’s start from the beginning. Okay, so as we know, after death we are not going to disappear.
We are going to take rebirth and we have got no choice until we reach enlightenment. So the next rebirth can only be in one of the two states: the lower migration or bad rebirth or the higher migration or good rebirth. That’s the only choice that you’ve got. Well, actually you do not have the freedom to choose where you’ll be reborn. Basically, you will go to a lower or higher rebirth migration as a result of the karma that you have created in this life but also the previous life.
It’s very difficult, as you will see in the next module, to understand fully karma. There’s lots of subtleties and only when you’re Buddha that you can fully comprehend what karma is and what action is going to create which cause and when and how. I’m not going to get into that tonight. Basically, as a result of virtuous action, or we call that white karma, you will go to a higher rebirth. The result of black karma, or non-virtuous actions will bring you to a lower rebirth.
Just here quickly, the mind that you’re going to have at the time of death is very important. You could have done lots of virtuous actions all your life, but if at the time of death you’ve got a non virtuous mind, it’s called a propelling karma, and that could propel you into the lower realms. If you’ve done lots of non virtuous actions but at the time of death you manage to generate a virtuous mind, you can go into the higher rebirth. That’s a propelling karma. Of course, the non virtuous action is going to follow you.
You might have a human rebirth but you might encounter lots of difficulties in this life. At the end it’s kind of fair. Basically, I’m going to go through the realm, really try to imagine and try experience what these sentient beings are experiencing in the lower realm. Think about what will happen to you if you are born in one of these lower realms of existence. The point is not merely to imagine this but to actually relate to the experience of these realms to yourself because that could happen to you and that could also happen to your loved one.
We might think, Oh, you know, it’s very far away, but there’s only actually one breath that separates you from this realm. Geshe la says that on a Thursday night and I went, oh wow, that’s true. Only one breath separates you from this realm. I think it was pretty strong when you basically also today you might be a beautiful, healthy woman or man but you don’t know what body you’re going to get tomorrow or in a few seconds. The lamas often say that we have one foot in this life and the other foot is at the edge of hell.
Therefore, during our life we have to be aware of our actions and make sure that we engage in virtuous actions and try to avoid the non virtuous ones. Do you want me to tell you what the tense ones are? I’m not going to get into details but basically the non virtuous actions are killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh words, idle talk, gossip, that’s a hard one, covetousness, harmful intent, wrong view. It gets much more complicated because you can have completed actions and non completed actions because you need to have three elements for the action to be completed. So anyway, I’m not going to get into details but maybe when you do the karma one you might get into that.
So yes, the more severe degree of suffering you can experience is in the hell realms. So you’ve got extreme physical pain but also extreme mental pain and anguish and fear. The hungry ghosts, they suffer greatly from hunger and thirst. The animals suffer from physical pain and hunger and fear. But it says in the lamrim that the greatest torment is actually the lack of intelligence, the animals.
Because they have no idea about how to change the situation, cannot study the Dharma, they cannot engage into practice, and so they cannot attain any kind of realisation. So if you end up in the you can never get out of it then, you can never ever get to the higher world again? Well, can. You can’t study the Dharma. No, but you might have action that you’ve created in the past that’s going to ripen.
Maybe some virtuous action that you’ve created in the past that’s going to ripen at one point. Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. When you’re stuck in one of these realms, it’s forever. It might be for eons but one time your karma is going to be exhausted.
There are lots of things you can do to help animals too. So then one time your karma is going to be all exhausted so we all go into good? No, because some karma is going to be exhausted but in the meantime you keep on creating negative karma. So the Buddhist concept of hell is different from the Catholic concept of hell and in many other religions. So, as I said, nothing exists absolutely or permanently.
The Hells and other realms are impermanent and are conditioned. They entirely depend on our previous deed. Here we’re sharing one karma, which is the environmental karma, to be here and in Australia. There’s a lot of different kinds of karma you can experience. Why do we have to contemplate the lower realm of existence and why is it important to reflect on this future life.
Basically, the more that we are going to contemplate the suffering of the hell realm, the hungry ghosts and the animals, the more we are going to want to avoid them. You will understand very soon why. You might feel miserable just by hearing about them but really how would it be to really experience them? That would be pretty terrible. Basically, they might help you to practice and stop postponing your practice.
It’s an antidote to procrastination. A very hard word for me to say. It might also help you to practice pure Dharma that are not mixed with the eight worldly concerns and we went through that to talked about in session two. So that might help you to engage into virtuous actions. That might also help you to consider how to spend your time and see what’s most beneficial and to set your priorities.
It might help us to prepare for death in the sense that we won’t die with regret. It will help us to open up our mind and see the big picture for ourselves. What I mean is that it’s not finished after this. We can’t get away with things. It might also help us to develop compassion for others, thinking that we’re all in the same boat here.
It might also help us to let go of our self-cherishing attitude, the poor me attitude, because the suffering of these realms compared to our suffering is nothing. As I said, thinking about the suffering of other sentient beings helps to develop compassion and the suffering of the lower realms might also happen to those we love or we don’t like. It helps us to see that life is impermanent, that things, relationships are impermanent, which is an antidote to clinging, which is a cause of all our suffering. It might also help us to not identify with this body because we know we’re going to change bodies, this one is not permanent. We had many bodies before and we’re going to have many bodies in the future.
It might be a body of a dog or not identifying that much with our body, that should decrease the suffering and the pain. And we should get less emotional reactions too. And will really help us also to appreciate our human life and how lucky we are. And especially to appreciate this life with all the opportunities that we have. It might also help us to lessen our arrogance and counteract our pride.
And it could help us to generate renunciation, the wish to free ourselves from suffering. So there’s lots of benefits just by doing that. If fear arises, you need to use it as your teacher because that can lead you to the proper direction. It’s like the example here of wearing now that you’re old age can stimulate you to prepare to prevent potential disaster when you’re older. And this is the same here by worrying about where you’re going to be reborn, you might try to prevent not to be reborn in one of these realms.
Does it make sense? Okay. So, let’s start with the suffering of the animals. Let’s start gradually. Any questions so far?
That what can I do about these things I’ve done in the past, with respect to them? It’s never too late. There’s this story, I think his name was Milarepa, and he was a killer at time of the Buddha. He killed so many people by black magic but also killing us. Think he even killed his mother.
I’m sure that’s much more non virtuous action that you did and he managed to purify all that and attain enlightenment enlightenment in the same life. So it is possible, there’s practices, there’s purification practices, it’s never too late. I was just gonna make a comment about the whole world. I mean, we read about it, we hear about it, they sound absolutely terrible. Yes.
Having said that, being born in the human realm, finding yourself in or being burnt at the stake because of your beliefs in the human realm That’s pretty hell too. Yeah. Can’t imagine an existence worse waking up in a death I think they said it’s ten thousand wolves in the hell realm. Like being in a gas chamber. Yes.
And you see why. But the human realm has also got some horrible suffering. I’m not going to talk too much about that, but that could be also what they call the, there’s different realms and we’re going to go through that, the hot realm, the cold realm, and the occasional, how do you say it? I don’t know how to pronounce it. Yeah, occasional realms.
And they say that this rhymes doesn’t have a place of existence, it’s actually that could be among us. So that could be neighboring realm. Yeah, by your previous actions. I was just wondering whether clearly understanding that I’m born in this human realm. But I think there are it’s not just a thought.
There’s there’s experiences and work situations I’ve been in and such like where it’s like we have these slight and then diluted diluted diluted. Diluted. This is my sense, and I don’t know if this is correct. It might be delusional. That we have these traces of those realms that we remember now, that some of us remember now.
Okay. I can’t do that, but maybe, yeah. Mean Not that yeah. Like there are situations in war or for example human wars, we’re clearly humans, it’s not that, but where people behave in a way that’s not we are human, but also particularly that one around lack of intelligence, like around particularly dogs, for example. We all have karmic imprints.
It’s like habituation of doing something and I can come up. If you’ve got the right condition, that could totally come up. So it does traces and it does. Was it this weekend? Was it this weekend?
Last weekend? Oh, okay. Oh, good. Were put in, and about half the scenes were very impressive, like, scenes of torture, mixed in amongst religious pictures. Sorry.
I can’t I had a very long banner that was drawn out between a number of trees. Okay. And I don’t really know the significance of it all, but about half the scenes, the pictures that were drawn along this panel were scenes I suspected torture. Oh, okay. The Okay.
Cartoon was drawn, and then there were religious scenes in between. Oh okay. So I was trying to work out what the message of this man made. Well that could have been the wheels of life or that could have been the lower realms. The wheel of life.
Because you’ve got all the realms, you don’t have only the human one on the wheels of life, no? So there might have been that. The suffering of the animals. The animals live in the same place as humans and gods. Most animals live in the ocean.
I’m not only talking about the fish, but it’s a small organism too, so there’s much more in the ocean than there is on earth. The general suffering of being an animal are usually they are exploited for their bodies and also for their work, the labor, and they are seen as existing to fulfill their owners’ needs. They hunt each other, they kill each other, they eat each other alive, and they live in constant fear of being killed. It’s easy to see when you look at some documentary in Africa. They have no freedom or control over their own lives.
Some are used to carry heavy loads while tormented by hunger and thirst, the sun or the cold wind. And when their load is too heavy and they don’t want to move, they beaten up. In the lamrim it’s all said that the animals are dumb. By stupid we mean that no matter how they walk or suffer, they cannot do any practice to benefit their future life. They don’t have the intelligence to think of their future life.
That’s not all animals though, is it still? My mom is thinking of my cat. She think of herself? I mean, she doesn’t get beaten, she does her own I have no control over it whatsoever. She’s a cat.
I know, I’ve got one too. She just goes off and does, she comes home when she wants to eat, she sleeps all day, so she has a good animal existence I would think. I think it’s a good one and I think it’s because she must have done something wonderful to be reborn. So that’s what I’m saying, not all the animals are suffering? But most of them.
I mean the majority of when you look at the big picture, your cat is not even one percent of the animals that are But it’s not like No, but still not good to be reborn as a cat like that. But yeah, you’re right, this one’s got a pretty good life for this one. So the hungry ghost. Basically this is a being that suffers terribly from hunger and thirst. So their mouths are completely dry and they constantly lick their lips.
They are covered with hair. Their blood is so dry that they look like burnt tree stumps. Basically the hungry ghosts have external obstacles for obtaining food or drink. They cannot find anything to eat or drink and if they do find food and drink they’ve got obstacles to get it, to prevent them from getting the substance they crave for. Also says in the lamrim that even if they find something they are not able to get any satisfaction from it.
So they’re always craving. Sometimes the food turns into something filthy and it’s not eatable, like pus or blood, or it catches fire. They’re also hungry ghosts to internal obstacles for obtaining food and drinks, so they’ve got certain physical conditions that prevent them from eating or drinking. For example, the mouth and throat have openings no bigger than a needle or flames shoot out of the mouth. They have goiters.
G O I T E R S. Thank you. Don’t know how to pronounce it. And they can only drink from the pus that drains from this growth. Nice description.
Others find food but their stomachs are so huge they never feel satisfied. There’s also hungry ghosts who have obstacles within the food and drink. They are incapable of eating anything pure or healthy. Some experience a problem that any food they eat burns them from the inside. Some are only able to eat or disgustingly dirty substances.
Some of them cut off chunks of their own flesh to eat. So, hungry ghosts live in many different places, including the worlds of humans and gods. So, their walls seem so dry as if it is ready to catch fire, reddish colored with nothing fresh or green to be found. Living in such an environment, they feel an overwhelming thirst but there is nothing to be found. So you could wonder if some of the human beings are actually not hungry ghosts.
That would be an interesting question to ask Geshe la. Because when you look in Africa and there’s famine, that’s what happened to them. They can’t find anything to drink or eat. Rob talks about just that craving, that junkie mindset, it’s for the heroin, the chocolate whatever, or the the whatever it is. That craving, that constant craving is a trace.
It’s an active trace that we have to deal with in the human realm. Okay. Substance craving. That’s interesting. Little theory about that.
It could be ideas that we never never satisfy, but we crave when when it’s craving. You’re living in such an environment they feel an overwhelming thirst but there is nothing to be found. hungry ghosts are always exhausted because of their constant search for food. They are terrified by many fearful sights that come from them, which are the result of their own karma. They see frightening beings with swords, spears, and other weapons standing guard over any food they come across.
Sometimes they are so hungry and thirsty that they attack each other. This terror is on top of the pervasive anguish produced by their inability to satisfy their overwhelming hunger and thirst. I had a discussion with about a minute ago. Yeah. She said that she firmly believes that they can, in some form, attach themselves to a human Oh, okay.
And try and drain energy from the human, like an entity. Okay. And those are the clairvoyants that can sort of see entities, that that’s where she believed that came from. Okay. They were actually those that were, like, attached to.
Yeah. Try and consistence. Wow. And maybe drain energy. That’s pretty scary.
And again thinking of it even as a mental condition, even if there’s not clairvoyant around it, sort of, see, but just that, yeah, craving. Yeah. Yeah. Or constant tiredness because something’s being pulled out of you. As a human being drained all the time, would be attached to a human’s mind.
Or it could be kids too. Okay, so now let’s go to the hell realms. There is the suffering of the great hell, of the surrounding hell, the cold hell, and the occasional hell. It’s even more than what I told you. Isn’t there a hot hell?
I think it’s in the great hell, the cold and the hot hell. I’m going to go through that. So many. Oh yeah, that’s right. There’s eight of hot hells.
The worst pain, torture, misery are found in the eight great hot hells. The primary suffering is from extreme heat and fire. Each hot hell has four surrounding hells that are encountered after being freed from the great hot hells. So, you go from one to another. So there are eight great hot hells.
Do want me to go into details? No, actually got to give you a few so you can use that as your teacher. I’m going to give you a small snapshot of it. There’s lots of text on it. If you want to know more, that’s no problem.
Misery in the first level of hell, called the reviving hell, is measureless. Thank you. As soon as the sentient beings hear and see each other, they feel intense hatred and a powerful urge to destroy. So this anger all the time. Immediately all kinds of weapons appear and they attack one another.
They warn each other until they drop unconscious. Then, to the power of karma, they revive and start fighting again. They fight all the time and they die all the time. The next level is a black line hell. These hell beings have enormous bodies which are very delicate.
Their sensitivity results in an extremely high degree of pain when they are physically assaulted. Hail guardians draw black lines on their bodies and they cut, saw and chop along these lines. Hell guardians appear in a wrathful and terrifying aspect. I remember, I think I asked or somebody asked in the class, know, these hell guardians, much negative karma are they creating? But actually, they don’t really exist.
It’s just the creation of your mind. So that’s your karma that makes them appear. The next hell is a crushing together hell. So this is similar to an earthquake or building collapse crushing many people to death. But the suffering is much worse.
It’s worser. They experience pain in each drop of blood, bit of flesh and bone. Furthermore, they don’t die, even though their bodies are destroyed, so the pain just continues on and on. There’s the Wailing Hell, W A I L I N G. That Wailing?
Wailing. Yep. Sentient beings here look for a decent place to live and find what looks like a nice house. But as soon as they go inside the house, it’s locked up and there is nowhere to escape. Then the house, which is made out of metal, catches on fire and roasts all the beings trapped inside.
There is a great wailing hell. The suffering is similar as in the last one but it’s worse. The suffering is worse. The hot hell. Here you’ve got large pots.
They’re filled with boiling, molten, melted metal. The guardians drag each being with a special hook and cast them into the flaming pot where they are deep fried like fish. No, no, The Buddha is an enlightened being, so basically his mind is present everywhere so he can see everything. This is from the teachings, so now you don’t have to believe that. It’s hard for us to believe in that, but what you can do is actually, and I think we talked about that, way that, you know when you study the teachings, might go like, Oh yeah, you know, what the Buddha say here actually, this is right, I agree with that.
So build your trust in the Buddha and in the teachings and then you come to a point like if I tell you the earth is round, why would you believe me? Have you seen it? Have you experienced it? So you trust the people who actually are telling you that it is round and a long time ago we saw it was flat and everybody believed it was flat because you trust the people, you check who they are and what they did. So this is the same thing here.
You might not be able to experience it but because some of the parts of the teachings you’ve got confidence in this part of the teaching, that this part is correct. You don’t get It’s Buddha that saw these realms. Well, I guess so. It’s from the Lamrim, which is a teaching of the Buddha. Mean, there’s only one Buddha, there’s lots of Buddhas.
And some people might be able to also remember. If you’re not comfortable with it, leave it aside. It’s hard to imagine, you just go and I shouldn’t say that but Can you walk me a point of view that brought her compassion and that sort of thing that then such an extreme opposite? It didn’t create this. It’s a thing and it’s very hard to go and help the being in the realms because they don’t have the even if you look at the human being who’s got so much anger and hatred, you go and talk to them about the Dharma and compassion, irregular.
What are you talking about? If the Buddha could really help them, I think he would go and help them. Yeah. You’ll be totally absorbed by the side that you’ve got. Yeah.
Now I’ve read somewhere or heard something that if you can find a spark of compassion from someone else who’s in that particular scenario, you go a long way to actually live this out about that particular situation. That’s the challenge if you find yourself here. That would be almost impossible. Well, yeah, that’s what they say it’s very hard to get out of that. Very, very hard.
That’s why you need to try to do everything when you’ve got this precious human rebirth to actually not to get into that. I think that the fear really helps us to act and start doing something now. The first time I heard this teaching, I was terrifying. I was like, what the hell do not want to hear about that? This is terrible.
I have the same question as you. How do they know that, where it comes from? You can see on a more practical level, you can see all these realms, as you say, on a different level in the human realms. You can associate with that first. And some of that stuff is terrifying.
Most people don’t want to know about all sorts of things that human beings experience. No, thatis right. Let alone if it’s hundreds of thousands of times worse in realms. Yeah. But most mostly, we and we don’t mind seeing a bit of it on TV, but, you know, to actually sit next to someone who No.
No. Describes to you and That’s right. In detail what somebody’s done to them. Heavy religion that I know has a similar situation where there’s a consequence of good or bad behavior. I mean, when you talk about Buddhism or Christianity or Islam, yes, it’s a different way of putting it. The reasoning is different. That’s the whole motivation, I think, about human beings to behave in a decent way. Yeah, but also you can see if you behave in a bad way, won’t have good results. So it’s easy to experience.
So on a larger scale, you can imagine that. I am nearly finished with the hell realms. Did I talk to you about the very hot hell? So it’s worse than the flaming pot, it’s actually more suffering. So, there’s the Unrelenting Can I spell it?
The Avici hell, which is U N R E L E N T I N G. Oh, the Avici hell. In the previous hells there were interruptions from extreme pain, but here there is no pose. It’s pain all the time. Beings are born with huge bodies.
When they look around, they see great flames closing in on them from many miles away. It is as if they are standing in the middle of a vast vast porous fire. Finally, their bodies catch fire and the skin, organs, and bones get consumed by the fire. These suffering beings can hear each other scream but this is the only sign of life, so they can’t see the other being. They can hear screaming.
But the hells are not permanent as the negative karma is exhausted, the being dies. That’s what we’re talking about. When you exhaust your negative karma, you get out of it. Usually we talk about eons in the hells, we’re not talking about years. There’s the surrounding hells also, and There’s eight surrounding hells.
I’m not going to get into more detail, but you can be born here directly or come in after having been into the other hell realms. Realm. cold hell. The same thing, there are eight cold hells. I’m not going to go into details, but basically the suffering is worse than the hot hell realm.
cold hell looks like it’s very high ice covered mountains. There is no sun, there is no moon, there is no light, it’s dark, it is cold and a strong sharp wind blows constantly. In some of them your body just, you know, when you have got ice it breaks into millions of pieces. It’s a different level like the hot hells in the suffering, and it’s all in the lamrim if you want to know more. The occasional hell.
As I said, they’ve got no definite location. They can occur almost everywhere, in the hot hell, cold hell, human realms. As I if you want to know more, you can read about it, but I’m going to think that gives you a good introduction on the lower realms anyway. Basically, what is important is to recognize that such experiences are possible. It is possible that you’re going to go over there and I’m sure we all went lots of time in these realms before and it’s also possible that our loved ones are going to go over there and even the people we don’t like.
I don’t think anybody wants to go and suffer in the hot realm. So you need to think if you will be able to bear it if such situation became reality for you. Put yourself in that position. Pretend that you are really there. You can imagine that you place your hand on a hot fire and hold it there the whole day.
So imagine the suffering that’s going to be and that’s nothing compared to suffering of the hot hell. Or imagine that you would stand naked outside in icy water for all cold winter days. And same thing, that’s nothing compared to cold hell. Or that you would go for a week without food or water. That’s what I said.
Things that you experience in the lower realms are one thousand times greater. So it’s one thousand times, not ten thousand. But karma at the time of death, your mind at the time of death. You can throw you directly over there. But you’re right, you will hope that you will need to have very bad karma to get over there.
I’d say that me or my loved ones might end up in the hell realm. I assume that to end up in hell realm one would have to do more than tell a blind lie. Well I read a story, think it’s in this book, it was a long time ago so I might be wrong, but there was this woman, her son died, and she went to see a Lama to check where he went. And she was worried because the son was fishing and so that’s killing which is a black karma, black action. And the Lama told her that he was in hell realms.
So she started crying and being totally overwhelmed, and the Lama said something like, what do you say? Well, that it wasn’t the first time he went over there or there was plenty of other people over there. There’s millions, billions of people over there, so he wasn’t the only one over there. So there’s lots of people suffering, not only her son. But, so fishing could, I don’t know.
But yeah, I don’t know. Mean, karma is so, what I said, it’s so difficult to comprehend karma. Most of Western society is based on killing of one sort or another. Most people in Western societies are non vegetarians and Yeah, because it depends if your action is completed or not. If you rejoice in the act of killing, that’s a completed karma, especially if you had intention to kill.
So first you’ve got the salt and then you kill and then you rejoice, that’s a completing karma, if I’m correct. So it’s like people who go sort of deer hunting and then get their head and stick it on the wall and Then they rejoice, yeah. That’s not good, yes. Yep. So the main purpose of this teaching is to show us the causes of these experiences and how we can free ourselves from them.
So yeah, we have the power to block ourselves from this kind of suffering so we can learn what kind of action will produce this suffering and what type of behavior will prevent it. And you can study the effects of virtuous and non virtuous karma. You will talk more about that the next subject. So if fear arises, this moves you to seek protection and you will look for refuge. Refuge in the Buddha and the triple gem which is the best refuge.
And it can motivate you to practice strongly and effectively. So feeling that you have nothing to worry about will lead to this suffering state. If you recognize that your next body might look different than this one, you can take action now. Shall we start on how to prepare for death and how to help others who are dying? Yeah, you want to have a little break?
Do we keep on here? Just going to look if I Preparing for death during life. His Holiness the Dalai Lama says that it is very difficult at a time of death to really meditate as you did in life. So if during your life you couldn’t meditate well, then you can’t at death. So you won’t be able to hold your concentration.
Basically it’s very important to meditate as much as you can during your life because as you say it’s going to be harder at the time of death. I’m only giving you a summary here. There’s so much literature on how to prepare for death during life. The main thing or the essence is to have accumulated merit and purification in everyday life. That’s why we’re talking about purification and engaging in virtuous actions.
So in your relationship with sentient beings, to accumulate merit in relation with sentient beings, it is good to have served others with a sincere heart, loving kindness and compassion, and to have done the hard work to benefit them with the highest motivation, which is the bodhicitta. Motivation. Also you can accumulate merit by making offering to the guru and the triple gem. So that could be mandala offering, just imagining that you are offering all your when you do a virtuous action, just dedicate it quickly. You can offer your food before eating, you can offer water bowls, you can offer light.
There are plenty of things you can offer during your day to day life to the guru and the Triple Gem and to offer the benefit of all sentient beings. Practicing the good heart during life, which is bodhicitta, purifies so much negative karma, even very heavy karma. And it will stop you from creating more negative karma. It is a negative karma that usually will make your mind experience fear at the time of death. The bodhicitta mind especially will stop the suffering rebirth that arise from negative actions.
Basically living in morality, morality, stop harming sentient beings, taking precepts from a spiritual master or in front of holy object is also very important in preventing one to be reborn in the lower realms. Do you want me to repeat, Paula? Which one? Taking precepts. So from a spiritual master, think first time you need to do it from a spiritual master and then you can do it at home whenever you want.
So, in front of all the objects. So, that will prevent you to be reborn in the lower realms. In the lamrim it explains four ways to accumulate powerful extensive merit. Do you want me to go slowly or do you want me to write them on the board? Is it getting too hot?
The virtuous action that we can do is with an attitude of not looking after one’s body, resources and existence. So it’s renunciation. Not looking after own body. Okay, it doesn’t mean that We talked about that too. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take care of your own body.
You need to because it’s a very precious human rebirth. So you need to take care of it but in order to benefit all the sentient beings. With deep compassion and helpfulness towards sentient beings. Towards sentient beings with an attitude of deep faith and belief in the guru and the Three Jewels. That’s a Buddha, Dharma and a Sangha.
The Three Jewels? The Buddha, the Dharma, which is a teaching, and the Sangha, which is a community of the bodhisattva, also the Geshe, the Lamas, monks and the nuns. Usually here for refuge it’s more the bodhicitta, bodhisattva, bodhisattva, the Sangha, and all the highly realized being. And with a strong attitude attitude of wishing to repay those who have helped you. And the two biggest object of refuge I mean, you’ve got the guru and Triple Jewels, but your parents, your own parents, are very powerful object of refuge.
Repairing the kindness of your parents, you’re creating extensive merits. Yeah, but the teaching will tell you that Yeah, I agree with you, but they will tell that they have given you life. Your mother has given you birth, especially your mother. Buddhism uses mother a lot to generate compassion and to repair the kindness, but I guess they might have another society as us, you know. So it wouldn’t be with those kids that are abused by their mothers or fathers that They will ask you to counsel around the fact that she carried you for nine months and she gave birth to you.
We’re not going to get into this subject tonight. So let’s say with a loving mother wishing to repair the kindness. Can I just say something about that one? Yes. I think that’s a really good point.
And I also think that there’s practices of when I was pouring water bottles one day, I had a very strong positive image of my mother that I was such a shock. Yeah? It was such a shock for me to have it wasn’t it wasn’t fanciful. It wasn’t pretend. But when I was doing water bowl here, it was here in this room.
Experience of know, things weren’t real good in my family, right? So for me, the act of pouring the water from one bowl to the next, I have this sudden image of my mother trying to make food for eight kids, get it all in the bowls. Just that. That. Doesn’t deny anything, she what I think she did.
Right? But that act of her trying to make ends meet. Right? I would never have had that image if I hadn’t done those. Wow.
And it opened me in a way I’d never been opened before towards some heartfelt sense of genuine heartfelt sense of I’ve no idea what her life was like. Wow, that’s great. From doing that. Wow, very powerful. Would never have thought that if someone had said that to me.
So it isn’t about, it’s not fluffy stuffy stuff. Practice isn’t fluffy stuff with the lights down low and a bit of incense on and that it’s going to make everything fine. It’s not about that, is it? It’s actually about not pretending, but it’s also about when you’re because there’s some stuff, it’s like they’re everything. Might be punishing.
And there might be other things as well. And it’s about that for me. It’s actually about trying to imagine. Just trying to get food on the table for eight kids. Nothing else.
Nothing. Even just the hell. And I think we’re having no money in trying to feed eight kids. Because I was trying to get the water in the bulbs, and I was going, oh god. There’s not enough of it.
I think I’ve and I think that was was happening. Wow. And then just going, oh, oh. That’s great. There’s nice CD, a two CD from a lama Chödron about reconnecting with one’s parents.
And that is great, that’s a very good CD. I’ve got it if you want, you can borrow it. You go through all that. Like I say, it’s not pretending that other stuff didn’t happen. It’s never about pretending.
Anyway, okay. It’s about think it’s also about the opportunity, being grateful to your parents for giving me personally the opportunity to practice forgiveness. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, again, like you said, it’s not denying what what happened happened or making it into something that it wasn’t or whatever.
But it’s being able to come to terms with it and to exercise compassion for how they were doing what they could do at that time. You know? It wasn’t necessarily good or nice, but that’s just how it was. And they taught me that violence isn’t the way. Yeah.
So we’ve probably learned a huge amount from the way our parents acted. Yeah. And we can be really grateful for that. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
See them as your teachers. Yeah, that’s right. Okay, so basically you should try to do to generate this attitude and do this action in everyday life while doing Thank you. In this book, it tells you how to do that during your normal day life. This way, how to transform your actions, normally done out of worldly desire and suffering attachment, into causes for enlightenment.
So just by walking, just by going to walk, just by going to the toilet, you’re actually going to generate the causes for your enlightenment. Just by having this motivation and transforming your thoughts and having the right attitude. There are certain practices that can help you to achieve enlightenment quickly and also help you at the time of death. And one is Phowa or transference of consciousness at the time of death. And here we’re going to have to ask Geshe la or the pastoral care group because in some of the texts it’s actually a tantric practice.
But Sogyal Rinpoche, he makes it accessible for everybody. Maybe not to transform the consciousness but to use the power practice to actually help you at the time of death but also to help other people. We can talk about that next week. Basically Phowa practice is the transference of consciousness at the time of death into a pure land. In a pure land, all you do, you receive teachings.
You’re able to achieve enlightenment in one life in the pure land. You’ve got all the right conditions. There’s different pure land. There’s Amitābha, it’s got a pure land. There’s Vajrasattva.
There’s some more Buddhas, it’s got pure land. So it’s said that you can do these practices during your life and it depends on how well you have done these practices, what you can do at the time of death. The Phowa practice. I think I’ve seen it written with a H, but I think it’s like that. So you can train in your life to do that and at the time of death you can just shift your consciousness into this pure land.
And I’ve got more information if we have time I can read through that, otherwise we’ll do that next week. Yes, Sogyal Rinpoche, it’s very good what he says. He does it on different level. He does it if you’re Buddhist. He does it if you believe into something, a god or another power.
And he does it also for somebody who believes into nothing. So he’s got three levels of this simplified practice, I think it is, that we can use for helping other people to die or also for us at the time of death. At work, well, work every day I deal with people who are either dying or looking at the possibility of dying. And usually, I would say, in close to a hundred percent of the cases that we deal with towards the last few days, we we usually use massive amounts of morphine and the people die, they’re unconscious because of the morphine that we give them for two or three days before they actually die. I always wonder about the use of things like that.
Yeah. I mean they probably die from the It says, and I think the Dalai Lama and Sogyal Rinpoche say that, and especially when I read that the other day, Sogyal Rinpoche, and I’m sure the other one was saying the same thing, He said that pain medications, we should use it. We should use it if it doesn’t affect your mind. What doesn’t? I mean But some of them might not or to do it to the limit that doesn’t affect your mind.
But he said that no medication that makes you unconscious is not a good idea. I would say that where I work is very typical of any Western society. And I mean we use massive and massive morphine. Yes. And it does.
It makes the person unconscious and makes them totally unaware as far as I’m concerned. But maybe they don’t have any religious belief or maybe they I don’t know. Maybe they won’t be able to do anything anyway instead of suffering at the time of death. I’m not sure. I don’t know.
I’m sure I had some other about that in my notes, about medication. But yeah, it’s better to avoid it. But the pain one, I think it’s better to take it, to control the pain. It’s interesting, when my mother was dying it was actually Karunā, the Buddhist hospice, Bristol. Was after her, and they gave her morphine to the point where she didn’t know what was happening and they gave it to her.
Because she was in a lot of pain and she was suffering a lot and she was in so much pain and suffering that she probably wasn’t being able to think clearly because pain was so bad. You know what it’s like when you’re overtaken with pain, you can’t think of anything but the pain. So they gave her morphine. And I guess if you didn’t train during your life for the time of death, you don’t know what to do at this time. I was in an interesting situation.
In two thousand and one, I was going to work Queensland to the hospital, got run over and this leg was almost ripped off. Thought they were going to chop it off but they didn’t. Your lying? You’re talking about? Yeah.
Oh, wow. Mistake. It was almost ripped off. Okay. And I and I had to sign when I went in because we got this major trauma, I had to sign for above knee amputation for them to put it back together.
But the situation was when I was hit and run over, it was it was quite painful. But, you know, for me, it was bearable. The ambulance came, mastered my leg, and they didn’t actually even ask me if I wanted anything because gave me morphine. They said, we’re giving you some morphine. Don’t know.
It’s like I hadn’t asked for it. You’ve probably got Well, no. I wasn’t. I was I was fully aware of what was going on until they announced that we’re giving you some morphine. I I it struck me interesting that They didn’t ask you.
They didn’t ask me. But it totally changed my perspective. Yes. Once I was given the morphine, I could have got wonderful stuff. You know, I couldn’t care.
That’s how I thought. But it was interesting that I hadn’t asked for it. The pain up until then was bearable. It was bad, but not bearable. But these guys gave me something that I hadn’t asked for and I particularly didn’t want.
Want. That’s interesting. And I suspect that health professionals see that quite a bit. You know? Think in the old days, we used to I’m I’m really interested in whether, you know, like, with the high birth movement or with we used to drug women and lay them out cold before they burst.
That’s how my grandmother gave birth to all four children, completely drugged out of her head. Really? Yeah. Yeah. At the point of crowning, were drugged out of their heads and their babies were dragged out of her.
And it was called in twilight not zone, but something. Treating home death like home birth or or getting, you know, that sense of women saying and men too or family saying. Mhmm. We want this to be as for the person to be as lucid and as active as possible. But get to a point, like my father-in-law died at home in February and we were looking, there was four of us who looked after him whilst he died.
And the last day of his life he was in so much pain that we just went nuts with the morphine because we wanted him out of pain. And he was in so much pain that he was not lucid because of the pain as well so we just pumped the morphine into it. And it shouldn’t be like people in it. Shouldn’t have suffer because Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. We just didn’t want to we do women, you know, so sorry. Yeah. It’s just interesting. My situation the pain was severe, but I didn’t particularly want anything, but I was given it anyway.
I’m just trying to find his passage about the the medication. I’ll find it for next week. Think it was the Dalai Lama who I was reading one of his books, it probably was. But he basically said that if we don’t experience the pain at death, then we will carry that pain over into the next life because we have to experience it anyway. Yeah.
Which is a new location for relatives that are bugging your situation. You Do you give them the morphine, and do you relieve their pain there and then knowing that they’ve been going to experience it somewhere else? Or do you live in there screaming and, you know, you don’t. It’s how we feel about seeing that close relative, not about where they’re at. The doctor had told us three days before him to start giving him morphine, but we chose not to because felt he was managing okay and we were able to manage him.
But that last sort of twenty four hours where as soon as we just touched him and tried to turn him, he was screaming in pain. So that’s when we thought, no, He’s gonna have it now. So it’s a real pet peeve. No. It’s not easy.
It’s it’s that whole thing about when you have your pet peeve. Am I doing the right thing? Kill. Yeah. Or am I actually postponing what they should be experiencing?
It’s a hard one. Yeah. Think it’s hard when you haven’t prepared for death and then you encounter all these problems and people around you don’t know how to deal with death, also doesn’t know anything about the process of dying, and I think our society doesn’t support the Buddhist practice. You see, my father-in-law was just a good Protestant, and none of this mumbo jumbo karmic stuff that he is. So you know?
And he thought he was gonna that was it. Like I said to him, what do you think? It’s happy. So I’ll be dead. Why not?
Oh, yeah. But what about another life? No. When you’re dead, you’re dead. Like my father-in-law.
Yeah. But there’s still things that you can do to help these people, and we’ll talk about that next week. If I read you all that, or if we stop here and we keep on next week and we do a Tonglen meditation. Everybody is familiar with the Tonglen meditation? Okay, so it’s a practice of giving, taking and giving.
So is useful during this life at the time of death also for you when you’re dying. It’s a very useful practice to do. Also if somebody else is dying because it helps you to generate a very strong compassion and also a brave mind. What you do in the Tonglen practice is that you take the suffering of one person, but it’s better if you can take the suffering of all sentient beings and you imagine that you breathe in this suffering in the form of dark smoke. And at your heart you’ve got your ego.
Basically it’s your ego and you can imagine it as a black stone. When you breathe this black smoke, it destroys your ego and light happiness comes out, and you give it to one person or all sentient beings. So it helps you to generate compassion. Of course, you’ve got to be convinced that you are taking the suffering and giving all your happiness up to the happiness that the other people need from the basic needs up to the enlightenment of the other people. So you have to convince yourself you’re doing it but you are not actually doing it.
So there’s no risk. You are not taking the suffering on board but still you need to be convinced that you are doing it. But there’s no risk in this practice. For some people it’s very hard to actually take the suffering of all sentient beings, so you can start by taking your own suffering of today and giving you all your happiness. And you can take your suffering tomorrow, mean tomorrow the next day and take that on.
Then you can extend it to your family, your relative, and then extend it to your friends, and then gradually to the people that you don’t know, the people you don’t like, and then everybody. Can you do it with past suffering? Can do it for past suffering. You can breathe on the suffering of your past life if you want. I guess, yeah, you can.
And it’s only done at No, can do it any day. Any time. Any time. It’s a very powerful practice. Usually it comes after meditation when you equalize everybody.
You must have done this one with equanimity, you’ve got your friend. Equanimity. Economity, so everybody wants to be happy, nobody wants to have suffering. Then you think that you’ve been taken rebirth since immemorial time, so everybody’s been your mother. It’s where you remember the kindness of your mother and if really your mother doesn’t work, can text somebody else.
You want to repair this kindness because everybody’s been your mother, you want to repair this kindness. You generate the wish for them to be happy and the wish for them to be free from suffering. At the moment you cannot do it, so you want to become a bodhisattva or a buddha to be able to do that. Then usually you do the Tonglen because it helps. If you see everybody as your mother and everybody wants to be happy and nobody wants to suffer, it actually helps to do the tonglen because everybody is your mother.
So it’s a very, very powerful practice, Tonglen practice. I wonder where you could find some more information about this practice. T O N G L E N. In two. And Pema Chödrön writes about it in one of her books? If you go to the FPMT website and type it, Tonglen.
It’s in the LAMRIM, that’s for shell. L E N. Into what? It’s taking and giving. Is that the same as exchanging self for others?
Yes, yes. Or exchanging self for others. Others, yeah. Geshe la is about to teach on that this coming Tuesday night. Here you go, good timing.
The next, I don’t know how long. Four Four weeks. If a person can do this meditation it is the best way of dying because a person dies with bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment. Let’s say you’ve got pain, you’ve a headache, you can do this practice. You say ‘Okay, I’m taking the suffering off everybody who’s got a headache and may I suffer and may they be free from this suffering, may they be happy.
It works very well because that will lessen your pain. When you have a sensation it will lessen your pain. It might stop your headache, it could happen. But you don’t do it to stop your headache, use it to generate bodhicitta from it. Actually that would be really hard too, because I would do it to try to stop my headache.
Do you know what I That might not happen. That can be a by product. If I had a headache I think, oh okay, I’ll do that meditation to stop everyone else’s suffering. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. You’re saying it myself and it might stop your headache.
So that’d You need to think of your motivation before doing it, yes. Or imagine that you’ll it. You can include yourself in everyone though, all sentient beings. Usually the royal we. Just at the bottom of the list, not at the top.
Start with yourself and you imagine, you know, so you give all your happiness and use pure happiness, so it’s easier after to take on the suffering of everybody else because you’re already in this state of enlightenment. His Holiness Dalai Lama calls this a self-supporting death when you do Tonglen at the time of death. For those who have this capacity of mind or who don’t think that others are more important than themselves, a loving kindness meditation is more suitable. I’ve started the other topic here, but yes. Or a meditation where one wishes other happiness and to be free of suffering.
The Tonglen practice we’re going to do tonight is a simple one. It’s using a personal problem, this one. It’s a simple one. Do you want to do it? It’s ten past nine, so it’s up to you.
Hold on, me check if I finish first. Okay, I keep the other one. I have to help the dying for next week and did I have a conclusion? Yes as I said next week we’ll have Jan and Judy coming over and I think I will go through that before they start talking just to give you a theory, or anyway I’ll talk to them before and we’ll see how we do it. So adopt your meditation posture. Relax your body and relax your mind by letting go of or putting aside any other thought that might be in your mind.
Thought of the past or future, people, activities, and decide to keep your attention focused on the meditation and to bring it back anytime it wanders away. So just spend a few moments just breathing in and out. As we already talked about, the most positive motivation is wishing to benefit others. So open your heart to others with the understanding that they wish to be happy and free from suffering just as you do. You think that you are going to do this meditation in order to work on your own mind, decreasing the self centered and negative aspect of the mind, and developing the positive aspect of your mind, so that you can become more and more able to be of benefit to other beings.
Now bring to your mind a problem you currently have in your life Allow yourself to feel the pain, the discomfort of the problem. See if you can notice how your mind doesn’t like the problem and wants to push it away, to get rid of it. Then think, I am not the only person experiencing a problem like this. There are many others. Think of other people who may be experiencing the same or similar problem.
You may actually know some people who have the same problem. Or you can use your imagination to think of others around the world. Also, can probably think of some people who have this problem to an even greater degree than yourself. For example, if you have lost a loved one, think of people who have lost many loved ones, such as in war or famine. Then generate compassion.
Thinking how wonderful it would be if all those people could be free from their suffering. Because you have your own first hand direct experience of this problem, you are in a good position to be able to understand and empathise with what they are experiencing. Generate as strong and purely as you can the compassionate wish for them to be free and think of your problem. Then decide that you will accept and take on your own experience of this problem, in order that all those other people could be free from theirs. The simplest way to do this is to reverse the attitude that wants to push the problem away I don’t want this problem and to voluntarily accept it with a thought, by my accepting and experiencing this problem, may all those other people be free from theirs.
I will experience this problem on behalf of them. Just contemplate that for a few moments. If you wish and are comfortable to do so, you can also do the following visualization of taking on the suffering of the other people. First, imagine your self-cherishing attitude, which is a selfish attitude of caring more for yourself than for others. So imagine this attitude in your heart, in the form of a solid dark spot or rock.
Then you imagine the suffering of others coming out of their bodies in the form of dark smoke or fog. You breathe in this dark smoke and it comes into your heart and absorbs into the self-cherishing attitude and destroys it. You can also imagine others suffering turning into a bomb or missile, which blows up the solid rock of self-cherishing. So just breathe in the dark smoke and let it destroy your ego, your selfish attitude. Visualise as a dark spot at your heart.
Following that, imagine that all your goodness, good qualities, positive energy, and happiness. Imagine that in the form of a radiant sphere of light or wish fulfilling jewel in your heart. Visualise rays of light emanating from this light or jewel, going to all the people suffering you just took away. The light rays transform into whatever they need to happy. Food for those who are hungry, money for those who are poor, home for those who are homeless, friends for those who are lonely, courage and strength for those who are frightened and helpless and so on.
Feel that you are really giving them what they need and they become happy and satisfied. All the needs and wishes fulfilled. You can also imagine sending them spiritual teachers who teach them the path and help them to progress along the path all the way to enlightenment Feel joy in what you are doing, taking away all their suffering and giving them happiness. Even if it is just on the level of imagination, it is still extremely beneficial to purify your own mind and cultivate loving kindness, compassion and other positive qualities. In this way, you help yourself to become more beneficial for others now and bring yourself closer to enlightenment, at which time it can be of the greatest benefit to all beings.
So how did you go? I mean there’s different ways you can do it. First you can take all the suffering, so you just breathe in the suffering and it destroys, and then you give your happiness, so you can breathe in the suffering, and it kind of pierces some holes, that’s how I imagine it, in self-cherishing attitude, and then you’re able to shoot some white light, so breathe in suffering, sending happiness. You can do it like that or you can do all the suffering in one go, more than one time, and then send happiness after. So it’s up to you.
And it’s extremely beneficial, if you’ve somebody who’s angry in front of you, you know, breathe in the anger, whatever, suffering, because if somebody’s angry, they’re suffering anyway. Give them happiness, and it does calm your mind straight away. Was it okay doing this practice yet? Okay. So we just have to dedicate the merit now.
So let’s dedicate the merit or the positive energy that we have created tonight by listening to the teachings and doing the two meditations that we did. And let’s remember our motivation at the beginning, which is a wish to benefit others and to lead them to enlightenment. May this, by us listening to the teaching and doing the meditation, may that be a cause for them to be free from suffering, to enjoy greater peace and happiness, and to quickly reach their highest potential, the Buddha nature. Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into an enlightened state. May the supreme jewel bodhicitta that has not arisen, arise and grow, and may that which has arisen not diminish, but increase more and more.