Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Diana Taylor guides practitioners in this 44-minute workshop on how to care for dying people within a Buddhist framework. She opens by stressing the spiritual dimension of death: reinforcing the dying person’s existing faith, helping them let go of attachments and unfinished business, and avoiding advice or contact that might generate anger or fear. She illustrates with a personal story of her aunt’s near-death and recovery, then outlines eighteen key qualities for being present at death, including respecting religious traditions (Christian, Buddhist, or otherwise), maintaining physical comfort, and understanding that morality and compassion amplify any healing practice. She then introduces the eight stages of dissolution—the four dissolution stages followed by four subtle lights—using Buddhist tantra meditation as a framework. She walks through how to support a dying person during these processes, explains why consciousness may linger in the body after breathing stops, and addresses common concerns about touching a deceased person and preserving the conditions for a peaceful death. Finally, she distinguishes meditation from hypnosis and clarifies how the dissolution stages can happen simultaneously rather than sequentially. Suitable for both experienced Buddhist practitioners and those new to Buddhist approaches to death care.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 Ws 1997 03 09.mp3
UUID: 36d84fe0-3e37-4f72-80e1-dfe00fdf28cd
Teacher: Diana Taylor
Collection: Workshop (Diana Taylor)
Date: 1997-03-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.5 minutes
Words: ~4,946
The person who’s dying. I think by this stage it’s very evident that it’s the spiritual aspect of dying which is critically important. And regardless of the belief system and regardless of the religious faith, if we reinforce anything that a person has, this enables them to have a mind which then is based on that quality of faith that they’ve developed during their lifetime. And then even though there’s virtually no control over the rest of the body, there is still that ability to abide in that faith. So we need to reinforce whatever faith and belief is there.
There. Encouraging a person to let go attachments, which I think is pretty self evident too by this stage, and encouraging a person to finish off unfinished business. Now obviously those two were a key part of the meditation that you did before lunch. Do not give advice that might generate anger or fear, Even if you think it’s worthwhile advice. I’m talking at this stage when we’re in the last stages of dying where death is imminent within say a few hours or a few days.
Particularly do not give advice that might generate anger or fear. So don’t bring in your own belief system if that’s going to disturb the person who’s dying. Don’t try and finish off your unfinished business with somebody who’s dying if that’s going to disturb that person’s mind and they can’t handle it at that time. Give permission to die and very especially if you are close to that person, give that person permission to die. I went through a funny experience with my aunt talking about aunts who keep on dying and then recovering.
I’ve got one as well. This was a couple of years ago and she had broken her hip for the second time and went into septic shock and we were called into the hospital and the doctor said well we think she’s not going to pull through and my brother got there by that stage and he and I got together and said no we don’t want any major intervention it’s not worth it. She’s eighty one years old it’s better to let things happen the way they are. Malcolm and I were saying oh it’s like dad’s death all over again which had only been eighteen months previously and so we go back to my aunt and we say the things we wanted to say and told that we loved her and it was okay and she was safe and we’d stay there with her etc etc etc. Then the doctor said well it might be worth putting her on a drip just to maintain body fluids.
They said it may work or it may not work so they put her on a drip and half an hour later she’s sitting up in bed having a cup of tea. But the funny part about it was that she’s not the sort of person who speaks about herself very much and certainly not about emotional things. She was the headmistress of a primary school for a lot of her adult life and a typical headmistress into the bargain. But while we’re sitting there saying that we love her and it’s time to let go and she’s having a bit of a weep and saying that she loved us and it’s the first time I think she’s ever said that she loved us and half an hour later when she’s sitting up having a cup of tea she said, I got very sloppy and sentimental then, didn’t I? But nevertheless, it is important to give permission to people to die even if they do recuperate.
And to reassure the dying person that all will be well after they die. Again, that’s particularly if you happen to be family or close friend. Everybody will be able to manage even though that person is gone. Try to maintain quietness, minimise any intrusive medical treatment. We’ve covered that one.
And keeping the person as physically comfortable as possible. And again Robina gave lots of hints on how to do that. Another aspect about healing as well that pure morality is the basis for healing. And here we’re not talking about healing in the sense of preventing death, but healing in the sense of enabling a person’s mind to be whole as they go through the passage of death. And with that morality then it gives us more power to heal and to invoke holy beings or protectors or to use mantras or any sort of practice which that we might be doing.
With a pure morality those practices become stronger. And the next one I think I said yesterday a person with bodhicitta is the best healer. bodhicitta. That’s the person with the Buddha mind. Bodhi is Buddha.
Chitta is mind. We haven’t got that far yet but by practicing compassion we’re setting ourselves along the path path to achieving that. And the next best healer is somebody with the realization of the ultimate nature of I which goes with the bodhicitta. So we need to keep on studying on our spiritual spiritual path. We need to keep on doing our Dharma practice to be coming to teachings to be developing more and more skillful awareness of the spiritual path.
It’s possible to use mantras, meditations and relaxations. Sometimes the patient can do the meditation or mantra if they’re not too close to death. Sometimes it can be done by yourself but especially when the patient is very sick when death is imminent and if the patient is very young. Silently doing mantras someone is dying can be very powerful. Silently doing meditations.
In that context you can be doing your own practice even though the person might be a different tradition. So when my father was dying he comes from the Christian tradition which is the way I was brought up. But a lot of the time I was doing Chenrezig practice because that’s the one that I identify with well. I wasn’t saying it out loud, I was simply saying it in my mind. But allowing that quality of energy to be present for him.
And it certainly helped me. I think it helped my father too. If we have compassion, then other people receive peace from us and do not receive harm. So this development of compassion is very strong. Trying to find a definition of compassion is critically important.
Don’t get upset if people get angry with you. This is sometimes an effect of the illness. We covered that one yesterday. If possible, first do retreat with a lot of mantras because this generates power. Again, we don’t need to necessarily talk about this specifically from a Buddhist approach, but the more we have developed our own spiritual practice, then the more power that practice has.
And a very potent way to develop that practice is by going and doing retreat. So we set ourselves up so we have a specific time whether it’s one week or three months or twelve months or twelve years would be blissful wouldn’t it? To just focus on that spiritual practice and developing our minds so that when we’re working we can use it very potently. Use one’s own practices and develop new ones when they’re appropriate. So if you have the opportunity to do initiations initiations and to be involved in those practices.
Then take the opportunity to do that. White Tārā is another deity which is about long life and illness and things like that. Use all the opportunities you can to do that because that again develops our own mind and when our own mind is strongly developed then our ability to help and to heal becomes more profound. And finally dedicating the merit to all sentient all beings is very important. So after that long list, was there anything which came up in the groups about the qualities needed for being present which I haven’t covered in that list of eighteen?
Yes, yes. Or Christ, yes. I mean we wouldn’t use the word refuge in that context for a start. But to simply allow themselves to be comforted or to be within the presence of what they conceive as God or Christ or whatever. Words from the Bible like In my father’s house there are many mansions.
If there is not a place there I would have told you. Quotes like that if you happen to know them more. Referring people back to the profundity of their own religious tradition enables them then to take refuge, to reside within that sort of power. Well, the the reason for that is because the consciousness leaves the body and can leave through various outlets in the body preferably through the crown of the head. If you disturb the body then it can disturb consciousness leaving the body.
It doesn’t apply very strongly to somebody who hasn’t done the right sort of meditation practice or doesn’t have a strong spiritual tradition. But if you know that this person has a very strong spiritual tradition and is likely to be residing their mind is likely to be in a state of prayer or a state of meditation then it’s important to then to leave the body as long as possible. If it was a highly realized yogi, body might be left two or three weeks which would freak out the doctors in an acute care hospital. And the other aspect is that even though the and the breathing are stopped, there’s still a quality of consciousness in the body for some time. That time will depend partly on the mind of that person and on the nature of that person’s death.
If we disturb the body, if we do anything rough to it at that particular time, then we can generate anger in the mind which is present or generate fear. Even though they are not feeling things in the physical way that we would normally feel it, the fact that the body has been disturbed can then disturb that mind. So even if a person doesn’t have a lot of religious faith, nevertheless it’s important to leave them for a space of time, maybe half an hour if you can, several hours if it’s possible, just so that the consciousness can quietly leave the body without any disturbance. If the body has to be disturbed, because my father died in an acute care hospital and it was the same sort of thing that you were saying, it’s going to disturb other people if the body is left here and we need the bed for another patient. I managed to put them off for some three hours on the basis that my brother was driving down from Melbourne and he wouldn’t know where to find me or my father if we took the body and could they please wait until Malcolm arrived.
So they very kindly did that for me. But sometimes the body has to be moved. If that happens then you do that again with a great deal of respect and with care and with gentleness. If the body needs to be washed for example and made clean, again it’s done with the same sort of respect and care and attention to dignity that you would do if the person was fully alive. And that way then you’re not disturbing any consciousness that may still be residing in the body.
Another example of that when they wanted to wash my father’s body down and I was about to say to them, Look, I’d rather do this myself. And then I thought, No, because when my father was alive I never saw him naked. He was very careful about his nudity in front of us. Therefore if there was consciousness there it would disturb him if I washed him down. So I let the hospital staff do that context.
And that felt right for me to do. I mean in another context with a daughter and a father it might be important to do the washing down. So again we look at it, you know, what is it that is going to be most beneficial for this particular person? What is going to be least disturbing to this person’s mind, whatever aspect of mind is still there? Yes, yes.
And also particularly if a Lama is present and the Lama is guiding that person’s consciousness too, the process of the Lama’s prayers and practices, makes it even more potent within that context. Yes, is. But the question at issue then is when has the consciousness actually left the body? There are ways, there are signs in which you know that the consciousness has left the body. They are very subtle signs and unless you are actually looking for them you wouldn’t see them.
But there is also again just from being with my parents death which is the only death I have actually witnessed fully there was just a sense that there is no more consciousness in this particular body. It wasn’t so much that their heart had stopped and the breathing had stopped which it had by that stage. But there was a sense that this is now just a body. It’s no longer my father, it’s no longer my mother. If you have that awareness, if you see it in that sense then you can be fairly certain that consciousness has left the body.
That might be over a very short period of time and might take a much longer period of time. If you’re in doubt, don’t. If you know what you’re doing then you wouldn’t ask the question. So keep on learning. I haven’t specifically had teachings on that so I couldn’t give you a specific answer from my side.
So if you’re in doubt, don’t do it. Unless, I suppose the only time when you would do that is if you have a very strong intuition that this is something which is important to do. Sometimes it’s important to act on those intuitions. Her there and I was holding her and then I thought oh, well then not hold her just in case. As she started to, you know, sort of breathing started to get big gaps and then you know made sure that nobody touched her there and then felt very strongly that I just needed to touch her right on the head and right.
I felt completely clear that that’s what I felt to do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is. Definitely, there’s no problem with that, particularly if you’re doing it mentally.
And physically as well. Well again, you see it’s going to vary. If you’re doing it just before person dies where that sense of touch is something which is painful for them then it may not be beneficial. Okay. So which was the lama that taught you that?
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah that’s right they’re different customs and it’s important to realize that at this stage after death we’re with the mind not so much with the body and that even though a person might have to be moved, even though the body might be put in the fridge, we can still influence the mind in a very powerful way by continuing with the practices, by continuing with the mantras.
And in that way bring a quality of peacefulness and a quality of empowering that particular mind. Yeah. So when we do these practices, mean the reason why compassion is important, reason why morality is important, the reason why understanding emptiness is important is because then we are more able to use these more subtle aspects of mind. And we’re not conscious in the ordinary way that we’re doing it at the particular time because it’s not part of the gross mind. But it nevertheless happens.
And it’s this more subtle aspect which is the powerful aspect of it. And the more we study these things, more power that we have to utilize these subtle aspects of mind. Right. Yes. That that’s an act of great compassion.
Pardon? Well, my my view is that I’ve heard Lama Zopa say that. I don’t know where it was. It might have been here. Oh, I see.
You can’t be heard. Right. Should I receive Yes. The donor’s life, yes. If you agreed as a relative for somebody’s body to be donated and it went against the wishes of the person who just died.
It might be a terrible thing to do under that context. But if you’ve made that wish yourself and that you’ve put it into your will and you allow your relatives to know then that’s an act of compassion. I don’t know anything about that. Right. Yes.
Right. Yes. So I I haven’t heard those stories. Okay. Let’s get on with the business of dying.
Yes. Is this an avoidance response? Things like the neurotransmitters, the hormones which might be in that particular body, which can have an influence of course on the central nervous system and on the brain. So it’s theoretically possible that some aspects of a person’s mind not mind so much in terms of specific cognitions perhaps but certainly in terms of emotions could be transferred to the other person. I can see that as being a medical possibility.
But I haven’t actually heard of it. It’s not the mind, it’s not the wind consciousness which is being transferred. Okay. So now we’re going to go through the process of dying. Which means what I’m going to do is to take you through the stages of dissolution, the eight cycles of dissolution which take place.
This is a meditation for anybody who’s done tantric initiation and does tantric practices can do this particular meditation as part of their tantra but even without that it’s a very helpful meditation to do on a regular basis so that we become familiar with the whole process of dying so that when we’re going through the process then we understand what it is that’s happening. When I was talking to Robin after we broke up for morning tea, she was saying to me how many of the patients talk to her about experiences which are similar, effect describe the first four stages of dissolution. So this is before a person’s heart and lungs are stopped. Given that, that gives some sort of affirmation affirmation to this whole process. There’s the four stages of dissolution and then there’s the four stages of the lights.
The book that I’m working from is Jeffrey Hopkins’ book on death, intermediate states and rebirth. You’ll also find it in Sogyal Rinpoche’s book and in Lama Yeshe’s book Life, Death, and After Death, if you find something about it. But Sogyal Rinpoche is probably the easiest one to access out of those. This is a much more technical book for those who want to get into more of the technicalities of it. So we do this as a meditation again.
So setting yourself into the meditation posture. When we are familiar with that particular practice, then the experiences that we have when we die become something which are not strange. If we have no familiarity with the practice then experiences in these things can become very fearful. So it’s important from our own side to develop familiarity with this particular practice. It’s also important from our own side in dealing with people who are dying to be able to say at least this is what the Buddhists talk about when they talk about death.
These are the experiences which you’re likely to go through. And even for somebody who doesn’t want to hear about these different stages, If you tell them stories about people who have had out of the body experiences, people who have been resuscitated after death and what their experiences have been like, this can also be very comforting because it helps people to see that what they are likely to experience is not necessarily going to be terrifying. Their mind is peaceful, it won’t be terrifying. Any questions? Yes?
There’s a sort of big cognitive leap between black and imagining white. So that if I’m doing this practice at home, I actually imagine it is of muting from one to the other rather than a sudden change. I don’t know if that’s valid or not but it certainly helps me. When you’re looking at going from mirage to smoke to the fireflies and the butter lamp you can in fact visualise that as being a gradual change, not a jumping type change. Well I spent a long time talking to Khensur Rinpoche about that particular question when I was in New Zealand.
It’s very difficult to find out because Tibetan lamas don’t know what hypnosis is and it’s hard to explain to them what hypnosis is because there’s no good theoretical framework for discussing hypnosis in any case. When we’re meditating, we’re trying to attain a mind which has got great clarity. When we’re in the state of hypnosis there’s not necessarily that quality of clarity. It seems to be that under hypnosis the mind is taken to what’s called mental dullness within the framework of meditation. Mental dullness refers to, and this is subtle mental dullness, coarse mental dullness is when you just fall asleep.
Subtle mental dullness is where you have an awareness but it’s not necessarily an awareness of the object of concentration or one loses focus of the object of concentration but there is still an awareness, you are still in a trance state. When we are under hypnosis, particularly if it is hypnosis led by somebody else, then our awareness object is something which is guided by the person who is doing hypnosis. That’s one thing. We can do self-hypnosis where that doesn’t occur. Second point is the motivation for doing hypnosis is quite different usually but under hypnosis it’s an attempt to relieve the suffering of pain either physical pain or emotional pain or loss which is, mean after all, is either physical or emotional So that the object, the intention of the hypnosis is different to the intention of meditation.
Thirdly, there’s not necessarily a sense of clarity which arises out of the meditation process. But in being in that particular state of mind, it becomes very easy for the mind to be for the memory, I should say, not the mind for the memory to be influenced by suggestions coming from the hypnotherapist, which can be good, which can be bad. This is where you hear the stories about the false memory syndrome. A hypnotherapist is not necessarily deliberately implanting a false memory but in the way in which the hypnotherapist talks. That quality takes place.
Then when the person comes out of hypnosis, because of the quality of the state of mind they’ve been in, understand that as actually being a real memory. This happens with post hypnotic suggestion and I can tell you a first hand story of this one too. When I was doing the training in hypnosis, I was the guinea pig for a demonstration on the use of hypnosis with nitrous oxide which is used in dental treatment. So I’m sitting up in this dentist chair in the lecture theatre and having nitrous oxide put in and being put under a trance state at the same time. In the process of the trance state, the therapist suggested, gave me a post hypnotic suggestion that I’d scratch my nose when he tapped his pencil on the table.
I was aware at the time that he actually made this suggestion. Then it on into some sort of relaxation technique and so on and so forth and then I was pulled out of the hypnosis and we were chatting about it and the people in the lecture theatre were asking me what the experience is like and so forth and he just sort of quietly tapping like this and of course I scratched my nose on cue because everybody fell about laughing I couldn’t work out why they were laughing right so the lecturer then said well why did you scratch your nose? I said well I scratched my nose because it was itchy and of course everybody laughed even more as soon as I said that. So what was it that had happened to my mind then? By that stage I’d forgotten that I’d had this thing implanted in my mind.
I couldn’t understand why people were laughing and this thing that I’m scratching my nose because it’s itchy was the way in which my mind had interpreted the events and it felt like a genuine experience on my part. My awareness at that time was the itchiness had actually preceded the tapping on the table. But because I’d been through all the lectures in any case and I knew about post hypnotic trances, it was about three days later when I could actually piece it all together that in fact I could then remember that I’d been given this post hypnotic suggestion, that I’d acted on cue but what shocked me was how easy it was to see that as something which had come purely from my own mind. This is one reason why we need to be very careful with hypnosis. It’s not that all hypnotherapists are out deceive everybody and plant false memories and things like that, please don’t get me wrong.
A hypnotherapist who understands the process, who has developed a quality of compassion and the qualities of morality and so on that we were talking about before can use it very effectively. But it’s not the same as meditation. Certainly it’s a trance state, certainly it’s very similar to meditation but it’s not the same as meditation. It has many similarities to single pointed concentration but it’s not single pointed concentration. So it can’t by itself lead us towards enlightenment.
But if you are able to go into a hypnotic trance easily, then it’s likely that you can develop single pointed concentration quite quick. I would think that would be possible, though I’ve got no evidence one way or another but it would make sense. But it would also be very easy to slip into this quality of mental dullness which seems to be single pointed concentration very easily. So you know, bounce one against the other. But that’s as close as an answer as I can give at this stage.
Pardon? At that particular point, yes. Mental dullness doesn’t mean to say you’re being stupid. Gross mental dullness means that you’re falling asleep. The subtle mental dullness is simply that the mind is not staying on the object of concentration.
So even if it slips out to visualising a deity, it’s still classified as mental dullness because that’s not the object of your concentration in that particular point of time. Other mental images that come up, they might be psychologically important, they might be therapeutically important but again they’re not single point of concentration. So you can make use of the images and you can understand them say from that psychotherapeutic point of view but then you’re not practising single point of concentration. So it’s not to say that you should never get into this state but to be aware, okay, that’s what I’m doing at this particular time, that’s the way I want to use my mind at this particular time. Okay?
So if you want to use hypnosis, then you use it but you use it with that sort of awareness. This is what I’m doing with my mind at this particular time. I guess it’s possible if you have tantric practices then you go through that meditation. Is it possible presumably it’s also possible to do that meditation just as you stand as you did? Oh yes, of course you can.
You don’t have to have a tantric initiation to do that practice. It’s just that it’s part of tantric practices. So many people have met it first through that particular route. Oh, sorry. I thought she had a profound question to ask.
Losing their breath the first two. She talked about aspects of the first four. Whilst we go through these in stages and there’s one follows the other, what seems to happen more is that the four stages are happening often in parallel with each other. So let’s say there’s a dissolution of the earth element where the limbs become thinner. If you know walk through a nursing home for example you see how people can become incredibly thin and be incredibly frail and don’t want to get out of bed, want to sleep a lot of things like that because the earth element is dissolving.
But also say the when the water element is dissolving the fluids are drying up that can happen start to happen before the breath stops too. So there’s this I mean when they’re in the text it takes it one by one but I think probably it’s more likely that the things are happening simultaneously And given the fact that our bodies are not perfectly balanced in any case so some of us have got say a deficiency in the water element before we even start to die so there might be indications of the water element dissolving before we’ve got to this third stage of dissolution. So I mean I’m not skilled in Tibetan medicine to know exactly the right answer to that.