Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 37-minute talk, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen guides a three-part meditation on death grounded in Tsongkhapa’s teaching: that death is definite, its time unpredictable, and only the mind’s development benefits us at that moment. The first contemplation surveys family, friends, colleagues—all dead within a hundred years—to establish inevitability. The second explores three reasons why death can come anytime: uncertain life expectancy, innumerable causes, and bodily fragility, supported by examples from an ancient Persian tale to a stark Tibetan account of the dying process. The third addresses what cannot help us at death: possessions, loved ones, our body. Geshe Dhawa frames this not as morbid but as life-enhancing—a direct confrontation with reality that transforms how we invest our time now.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 H and M of A.mp3
UUID: adb38971-c8af-4162-a9d5-e3c7fe49e7c8
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996 Jul-Sep (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1996 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 37.8 minutes
Words: ~4,184
Meditation that death is inevitable. Death is definite. Certainly. Let’s begin by looking through, first, your family members. Just the fact that — can you be assured that any of them will be alive a hundred years from now?
Just going through all your family members and noting that that is the case. That is a fact. None of them are going to be alive one hundred years from now. And your various relatives — just going through one after another. Just to assure yourself, just to check it out.
And when that’s completed, go through all your various friends, close friends, distant friends, one after another, just checking out whether they’ll be alive one hundred years from now or not. Are they definitely going to die? Maybe your work colleagues, the people that you work with, tradespeople, the people that you come in contact with in your daily life, going through those in your mind and noting — this person will die within a hundred years, definitely, for sure. Maybe the people in this room — have you ever noticed anyone in this room that’s present here that you felt might never die? Is everyone in this room going to be dead a hundred years from now?
Can you think of anyone in South Australia that you know to be an exception? I’ve been in all of Australia. Is there anybody? Prime minister, general of the army, someone who’s very saintly, athletes. Can you think of anyone in the entire world?
However strong, however powerful — it’s not going to — they’re not going to die? All the possibilities. Are you essentially any different than all of these people? All of these many, many people that you’ve investigated in terms of the fact that they’re definitely going to die. Are you any different than them?
Is there something special about you? Even as we sit here, our lifespan is decreasing. We’re just trying to get a general sense that the seconds are ticking away. Seconds become minutes. Minutes become hours.
Slowly, life creeps on and at its petty pace, eventually, it’s going to come to an end. As a definite border, a definite stop, end point to it all, and we’re gradually approaching that end point. Even as we sit here now, we’re moving towards it. And look at how you spent yesterday. How many hours did you sleep?
How many hours did you work? Either in the home or outside the home? How many hours did you spend traveling? How much time did you spend eating? Cooking, cleaning, socializing, watching television, entertaining.
Just laying around feeling lazy or depressed. How much time did you spend purposely developing your mind, developing your wisdom, cultivating compassion, benefiting others? So see if you can, in terms of your feeling, come to a conclusion that I have to use my life wisely and mindfully to make a quality of life that’s not going to last forever. And then bring your mind back. And slowly become aware of your body, your posture, physical feeling sensations.
Slowly become aware of your surroundings, what’s going on about you. Just take your time. There’s no hurry. So we’re looking at the verse Tsongkhapa’s three principal aspects of the path. Leisure and fortune are difficult to find and life has no duration.
Life has no duration. So again, you know, the path is to help us to overcome — help us to gain realization. Here, the realization that life has no duration — to overcome our misconceptions about it. The disempowering misconception that we’re immortal — we’ve got plenty of time to live the life as we would like it.
Sometime in the far distant future, we’ll get around to doing what we want, to lead the quality of life, the way of life that we would want for ourselves. And there’s a Tibetan saying that today of your death may come before the tomorrow when you are going to begin your practice, when you are going to begin to live your life. And then we can always be putting off what it is that we want for ourselves — the type of life and the quality of life that we might like to live — till sometime in the future. And that future — now death may come before that time.
And it’s not certain. So this is the second root of the nine-round death meditation. The first root is death is definite, inevitable. And the second root is that the time of death — though we’re sure that we’re going to die, it’s not certain when we’re going to die. The time of death is unpredictable.
And again, there are three reasons supporting this fact. In talking about death — men come and they go and they trot and they dance and never worried about death, all well and good. But when death does come to them, their wives, their children, their friends, catching them unawares and unprepared — then what storms of passion overwhelm them? What cries? What fury?
What despair? To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one. Let us deprive death of its strangeness. Let us frequent it. Let us get used to it.
Let us have nothing more often in mind than death. We do not know where death awaits us, so let’s wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. So looking at the second of these two roots — that the time of our death is unpredictable, it’s uncertain, we simply don’t know when.
And the first of the reasons supporting this root is that human life expectancy is uncertain. Again, we may acknowledge the fact — okay, I’m going to die. It’s said that it doesn’t take too long to gain this realization, that death is definite. But it’s quite another matter to gain the realization that the time of our death is indefinite, uncertain. Now we may acknowledge the fact of the inevitability of our death — we place enough veils between ourselves and its definite coming — of the time of our death — to have a notion, a vague notion, an unfounded notion that it’s going to be some time in the far distant future.
And then most of the people who are going to die within the next month probably never thought that they weren’t going to live a long, long life from today forward. And they have the same conception that we do. The people who are going to die in the month of July — they too are going to — they lead a long, long life, they think, sometime into the future — they will die eventually, perhaps, in the far and distant future. But the fact is, the reality of our situation is that we simply don’t know how long we’re going to live. You know, beginning to look again and again at the facts, the reality of our situation, to overcome our misconception about it.
It is a disempowering misconception. The misconception that causes us to relate inappropriately and unskillfully, which brings about suffering in some way or another. You know, fetuses die in the womb. Babies die at birth. Infants die before they learn how to crawl.
Children die at the age of five, eight, nine. You know, maybe perhaps these are not very nice things to think about and therefore we really avoid them. But it’s simply a matter — this avoidance — which causes us to maintain these misconceptions about the time of our death and the fact of our death. At least, it’s an uncomfortableness. But it’s not — at least — morbid.
It’s meant to be life-enhancing. So to take the time and perhaps confront some of these issues and facts about our life and living which might be uncomfortable. It’s like a legitimate suffering. It actually has some benefit, something worthwhile about it. Most of our suffering leads us nowhere.
It doesn’t even bring us any temporal pleasure, let alone any kind of ultimate pleasure. You know, there’s within the teachings on moral discipline of Buddhism a verse which says that happiness which leads us to suffering is to be thought of as suffering. That suffering which leads us to happiness is to be thought of as happiness. So though talking about children dying is very — it’s not a pleasant thought. No one would rather — no one would want to be preoccupied with such ways of thinking.
But it is useful from time to time to think about these actual facts of life as a means of deriving some advantage, some benefit in terms of our present ways of thinking. You know, teenagers die at the age of thirteen and fifteen, nineteen — young adults at the age of twenty-two, twenty-five. You know, middle age, thirty-two. People die at the age of twenty-one, twenty-three, twenty-six, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-four, thirty-nine, forty-two, forty-four, forty-eight, fifty-one. You know, we’ll stop there.
You know, people die at any age. There’s no age at which people do not die. You know, you can ask a life insurance salesperson. They’ll give you the statistical probabilities on you dying tomorrow. You know, they’ll give you a policy, and they know it — sometimes they’re going to lose on it, that somebody will die tomorrow — and they’ve got the odds on it.
Sometime, in fact, they will die. You know, the fact that we presently are young, or you might be presently young and healthy — there’s no guarantee that next week or tomorrow, even today, before you get home, that you are not going to become terminally ill, that you’re not going to die. You know, there’s no guarantee because there’s no certainty. And the vast majority of people who will be dead next month never thought they were going to be dead next month. You know?
And, you know, we may — just because we don’t think about it or we irrationally reject the idea — that does not mean it cannot happen. People can die, and they do die at any age. This is kinda — you know — it’s like the truth shall make you free. Buddhism places a great emphasis on getting in touch with the way things are. I mean, the Dalai Lama said, for example, that if scientific evidence leads us to — is so obviously obvious in the facts that it presents — then we have to set aside any type of Buddhist belief, and we have to adopt what is in fact the truth.
Because Buddhism places emphasis on the liberative quality of the truth. That the closer, the more you approach truth, the more obvious it becomes. On the other hand, as you approach falsity, the more you investigate it, the more obscure, the less distinct it becomes until finally it disappears altogether. So there’s something about reality and getting in touch with it, going beyond falsity, gaining realization, which is liberative. That means our approach to the way that we’re living our life — how we’re living with the world — becomes more effective, efficient, functional, more adequate to what it is that we want from the world and what it’s able to give us.
So the first of these three reasons is that human life expectancy is uncertain. The second reason is that there are many causes of death. You know, beginning to enumerate — I don’t — I hope this isn’t designed to make us paranoid, but it is designed to make us aware of the world about us. And what what could happen — to help us overcome the sense that we’re invulnerable.
You know, sometimes we take a surprise when we get ill. Sometimes, as if we shouldn’t be ill. You know? As if things shouldn’t be like this. I should be able to control reality such that it doesn’t have these effects on me.
But if we look about us, we hear of disasters all the time if you look on the news. You know, earthquakes, TWA airliners being blown up in midair, landslides, floods in Canada. You know, there are wars, there are famines, there is terrorism. But we may feel safe, secure from all those types of violent deaths. But still for us, there are heart attacks, there is cancer, there are various diseases, there are car crashes, there are various types of accidents, there are violent deaths, and then there’s always old age.
Something is gonna get you. Yeah. People die in their sleep. They die coming home from work. They die going to school.
They die playing sports. They die cooking dinner. They die watching television. They die listening to Dharma talks. They die while staying in hospital.
They die — there’s death occurs in any manner, at any place, at any time. You know, death is going to find a way to find you. You know, it’s almost as if you’re going to find a way to find death when the time is ripe. Little story about that. A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants.
The servant cried that he had just encountered death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Turan, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented, and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to the house, the master himself met death and questioned him. Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?
I did not threaten him. I only showed surprise in still finding him here, when I planned to meet him in Turan tonight, said death. So the second reason is that — beginning to, I guess, again, not become paranoid — but simply become aware of the fact of many possibilities, of the ways that we could die. There are many causes of our death. And then thirdly, the human body is very fragile.
We need to overcome our sense of invulnerability and invincibility that we might have about ourselves in some way. Within minutes, this body which can change from being strong and active to being full of pain and helplessly weak, just within a matter of an accident. Catching a disease, a sliver of glass, a sharp piece of metal, a tiny blood clot in your bloodstream, a virus which you can’t even see — it can all take your life in one way or another. You know, I sometimes think, when you pass an accident on the highway and you see all that twisted metal and you see all that glass.
You have a sense — people shouldn’t be riding around in such hard things. You know, when you appreciate how soft and delicate this skin which holds our life inside of ourselves — we should ride around with very soft things, like sponges. So we sort of bounce off things instead — it doesn’t seem quite appropriate, all that glass and metal, hard surfaces. When you consider how soft and delicate we in fact are.
All it takes is a prick, and our life spills out of it. So beginning to appreciate the fact of our fragility — that the human body is very fragile. If we contemplate in this way — looking at the fact that there are many causes of death, that people die at any time, there’s no certainty in terms of human life expectancy — and then finally, the human body is very fragile. Coming to the conclusion, developing the second of these three determinations — to begin the practice of developing our minds right now as the future is uncertain.
You know, we can have a sense — we can have a sense that I’m not mortal — I’m going to die. If we can begin to work through our sense that it’s going to happen sometime in the far distant future, then imagine the degree of intensity that we would add to our life now. How would you live your life differently?
You know, this is maybe a worthwhile question to ask yourself at some time — in terms of if you knew where you are and you’re going to live one year. You know, it’s not to say we aren’t to make a long-distance plan. We’re talking about the intensity, the quality of our life. You know, however you might want to live your life, to begin to live it now because you don’t know how long you’re going to have. Maybe those who have been transformed by near-death experiences — not in terms of what they might have experienced during the course of the death process and the lights and the benevolent figures that they might have met — but just the fact of realizing that they could die at any time, and how transformative that realization is in terms of what they do with their life.
And then finally, the third root of these three roots is the fact that at the time of our death, only the development of our minds and what is imprinted within our minds is going to be of benefit at that time. You know, what can help us at the time of our death? And again, we can translate this to some degree into terms of these little deaths which occur over the course of our lives, and not necessarily that big death which occurs at the end of this life. Is it that takes you through these transitions? You know, when something has come to an end and everything is thrown into question — everything that you’ve held, that you believed in, that you felt, that you found security in, that you held on to as valuable, gave you some stability, purpose — has been called — has been taken away from you one way or another.
And there’s a transition, and the new is yet to begin. Well, what gives you the confidence that you’re going to land on your feet on the other side of that change? What gives some people the self-confidence to enter into change voluntarily, to cultivate change, to invite change into their life? Beginning to look at what is it that actually is of any benefit during these gaps — at the moment of death, whether the small death in the course of our life or the big death at the end of our life. So the reasons which support this fact — the necessity to develop our minds, to imprint some positive imprints on our minds.
First reason is our possessions and enjoyments cannot help us. Begin to look — even in our life experiences when you are, perhaps, going through a separation or a divorce, you’re going through someone’s death. Now, at that moment, how much better was your money or your material possessions? Could they somehow soothe the sorrow of your heart, lift from your heart the burden of this hurt, this pain that you’re feeling? Anything that you require over the course of your life in terms of your car, your house, your VCR, your computer.
You know, could they somehow ease your pain that you’re feeling at these moments? You know, these are just even over the course of these little deaths, these difficulties which we experience over the course of our lives. And here we’re talking about that big death at the end of our life. You know, think of all the material things which you’ve traded your life for, almost literally. That you spent a lifetime acquiring — your home, your car, your furniture, your television, your computer, maybe a camera.
You know? And think about all the enjoyments which you have spent most of your life pursuing, running after in one way or another. Whether it be entertainment, sports, hobbies, sex, food, whatever. At the moment when you are lying there dying. When everything is growing dark, when you’re confused and afraid — can any of that be of any benefit to you?
Can you take any of it with you? Can you take one cassette with you? In reality, not only can they not help you, but attachment to them will be a hindrance, will make dying all the more difficult for you. So trying to get some kind of perspective, putting things in perspective — material possessions — on our — it is not to say — okay, Buddhism would never try — Buddhism takes a middle path between indulgence and asceticism and self-oppression.
We’d never say you shouldn’t have a house, you shouldn’t have a car, you shouldn’t have material possessions. All the goodies of life. No question. That’s not the problem. The goodies of life are not the problem. It’s our opinions about those possessions, our attachments to them, magnifying their capacity to bring about the quality of our life that we want for ourselves, their ability to help us during these difficulties over the course of our life and at the time of our death. Putting them in some kind of proper perspective. That’s all.
So we don’t — things are in the saddle and they’re riding us. So trying to reverse this relationship between things — our sources of entertainment, our sources of enjoyment, and material possessions — such that we’re in control of them, they’re not in control of ourselves. They can’t be of any benefit at the time of our death. And the second reason supporting what can be of benefit at the time of our death is that your loved ones can’t help you. And as the bond between your mind and body begins to break, begins to weaken, and your mind begins to slip away from the body.
You’re totally alone in this experience. Though those who sincerely loved you are near, and you’re crying — you’re maybe even holding on to your hand. They can’t stop your mind. They can hold on to your body, but they can’t hold on to your mind.
That’s simply not a reality. Not possible. None of them can hold on to your mind. None of them can go with you even if they would want to, even if they were willing to die with you and hold your hand as you both go. It’s not a possibility. It’s not a reality.
And moreover, their clinging and grasping to you, and your clinging and grasping to them at the time of your death, is going to make death all the more difficult. So even those who sincerely love you — who care the most — who want the best for you. At the time of your death, there’s nothing they can do. It’s not in their power. Then the third reason is that your own body cannot be of help at the time of your death.
Now this lovely body which — this constant companion that we’ve had over the course of our life that we’ve shared in all the ups and downs, all the goods and bads of our life, all the various pleasures and pains — it’s been our constant friend, our constant companion. It’s going to weaken. And finally, it’s going to become useless to our life.
You know? This cherished lovely body that’s given us so much — we’ve given it the best food. We’ve given it the best clothes that we could. We’ve kept it warm, as comfortable as possible. We’ve given it vitamins.
We’ve put lotions on it. We put perfume on it. And we’ve spent a great deal of our life dedicated to its welfare. At the time of our death, it’s going to become like a — an inert slab of meat in a butcher’s shop. It’s not going to be of any help to you.
And your attachment to it will only compound your suffering when you’re forced to separate from it. They try all different kinds of treatments and holy rituals, but your condition gets worse and worse. Doctors start lying to you. Your friends and relatives say all sorts of things to your face, but behind your back they start wrapping up your affairs because everyone can see that you’re going to die.
This is written by a Tibetan account. Your body starts to lose its familiar warmth. It’s hard to breathe. The nostrils collapse. The lips curl back.
The color starts to drain from your face. All sorts of repulsive signs begin to show inside and outside of you. You think of all the wrong things that you did in your life and wish so badly that you had never done them. You can’t quite be sure if you ever really got rid of them when you confessed or that you ever really did any good deed. Then comes the final pain.