Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute workshop session, Khensur Rinpoche opens with a guided loving-kindness meditation — from self-forgiveness through a loved one, a stranger, and a difficult person, then radiating outward to all beings. He then turns to the psychology of death-avoidance: why we act as though immortal even when we intellectually know otherwise. He draws on Shakespeare’s lines about dying, a Katherine Mansfield dialogue in which a grandmother and grandchild end up tickling each other to escape the subject, and a Tibetan story in which a cave meditator’s teacher sends four silent messages — the deaths of nearby villagers. The central argument: possessions, loved ones, even the body cannot accompany us at death; only cultivated mental qualities can. He closes by leading a death meditation, framing mortality not as morbid but as the surest route to a fully lived life. Accessible to anyone, no prior Buddhist background needed.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 A of D 1993 08 07.mp3
UUID: 09909a2c-cf31-4a99-877a-90bb9bfba679
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Art of Dying Workshop (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-08-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~5,691
Ourselves. Whatever mistakes you have made in the past, whatever negativities you may feel you have created, you can simply regret them. And as best you can, determine not to repeat them again in the future. You can begin again. And whatever identity you may hold to, however you may conceive of yourself, can change.
You can become anything that you want to be. But just for this present moment, we want to set aside the past and the future and simply try to make friends with ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, even perhaps as parts we don’t like very much. Be kind to ourselves and wish ourselves well. So generate some kind, caring feelings towards yourself, wishing yourself all the good things of life, all that you’ve ever wanted, all the happinesses. May I be happy.
May I grow. May I may I not have any problems. Wish yourself well. Wish yourself happiness. And think of someone that you like, that you love, someone you’re close to, and imagine that person in front of you.
If you if you can’t see you see them, it doesn’t matter. Just feel that that person is there. And remember all the good times that you shared together, all the various kindnesses that this person has shown you. And begin to direct out, radiate out, kind, caring feelings which naturally arise when you think of this person in this way, feelings of wishing of happiness, that they not have any problems, that they have all the good things of life. May you be happy.
May all your desires be fulfilled. Wish them well. Wish them happiness. And think of someone you neither like nor dislike, someone you feel indifferent towards, a stranger. And imagine that person in front of you.
And we want to try to go beneath the superficial appearances by which we judge people by, which we cling to, whether they’re they’re male or female, young or old, attractive or unattractive, educated or uneducated, poor or rich. Try to go beneath all of that and try to see if there’s someone there who wants to be happy, who doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself, exactly alike, essentially. And wish them happiness just as you wish for yourself. Now think of someone that you’re having some problems with, someone you don’t like, someone who disturbs your mind, and imagine that person in front of you. This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself.
And perhaps their methods of finding their happiness, eliminating their own problems, have become a conflict with your methods of solving your problems, finding your own happiness. It’s just a conflict of self interest. You’ve hurt either others, either intentionally or unintentionally in the past, to find a happiness that you were looking for. Perhaps this person has done the same to you. And just as you have to forgive yourself for the various mistakes that you have made, you have to begin to forgive this person.
So just for this present moment, set aside your hurt, your anger, your grudge, and try to see someone very much like yourself, someone who’s doing the best they can to get some happiness out of life, oftentimes being very confused about how to go about it and making many mistakes along the way. And out of the richness of your heart, forgive them and wish them well. And now imagine these four people together, yourself and these three others, and though you have different feelings for each one, though they appear very differently to you. Try to see that from the point of view of wanting happiness, not wanting to suffer. They’re all exactly alike.
Behind their eyes is a being who wants to be happy, doesn’t want to suffer. No difference. And without any bias is radiating our wish of well-being and happiness to all four equally. And all the people in this room trying to grow, trying to learn, understand, taking responsibility for their lives and their deaths. I wish everyone in the room that they find whatever it is they’re looking for, whatever would bring them peace would make them happy.
Love, companions, freedom from fear. Wish that they had it, wish that they were happy and experience well-being. And begin to extend to radiate out this wish further and further. People in Fullerton, in their homes, reading, cooking, eating, sleeping. People in the cars and buses, shops and offices, on the streets, in their homes, all over Adelaide, Extending this wish out further and further to all of South Australia, people, animals, insects, Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, the entire country.
And southward to New Zealand, northward, extending this wish out to the entire southern hemisphere. Taking the entire world into your heart, all the people, black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, all the insects, everything that lives on the earth is touched by your wish that to be happy, that they not suffer. Radiating out in all the directions of space further and further without any limits or sense of limitation. Till finally, without any center, without any boundaries pervading all of infinite space, I wish may all things be happy. May all be happy.
And bring your mind back to the breath, a gentle, easy, in and out flow of the breath. Slowly becoming aware of your body, your surroundings, just in your own good time. I recently read an interview with a person with a woman who was confronting a life challenging illness. And and the interviewer asked, what what is it that you regret most about your life? And she said that, I had never thought about death until now.
And if death There’s a quote I’d like to read. Death is not the last taboo at all, but a very modern one. In this era of demystification, death becomes perverse and more mysterious, more terrible than ever before. We need to have death back. Its transcendence puts banalities, emptiness, frustrations, vanities, and some kinds of love in their in their place.
Contemplation of terminal issues is not the least morbid but life enhancing. For for I think for most of us, death is something dark and and unknown, something to be feared. Fear is is fundamentally a state of unawareness supported by irrational beliefs. We have you know, the the undercurrent of our anxiety, which permeates our life, are built upon various core assumptions, ideas and beliefs that we have. Through those surrounding depths, we have certain assumptions and grandiose beliefs about ourselves that that somehow I shouldn’t have to die, that, I must have one hundred percent guarantee that I’m not going to die tomorrow, I should be able to control things so that so that I don’t I don’t have to die.
Death should not be like this for me or for those who I love. It should be some way other than this. I’m not going to allow it to happen because, you know, it may it seems so very unfair. It’s terribly sad and makes me scared. It makes me feel alone.
So in in on the way to developing an awareness of death, we have to begin to challenge our grandiose ideas surrounding death, that our beliefs around death. You know, we have to ask ourselves, what’s the what’s so special about ourselves that somehow the universe should, ourselves that somehow the universe should select us for a special treatment when it comes to death? You know, death is unfortunate and it’s terribly sad, but it’s also terribly normal. Our our irrational beliefs around death very much go unchallenged because they go unnoticed, and they go unnoticed because we’re unaware. And we have cultivated an unaware an unawareness to some extent because we’re cowards.
You know, we want to forget death. Of course, you know, perhaps we cannot one cannot help but admit that it it is there. But if we can we place enough veils between ourselves and our impending death where we can have a sense it’s going to be in some vague and distant future, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. And therefore, it it goes unconfronted. You know, this fear and if we look at it, it’s almost seems a reasonable fear.
This fear around losing everything and everyone. Everything that we’ve cherished, all that we’ve worked so hard to gain, all our possessions, all our achievements gone, and we we go we not know where. Everything that we do that we that we base our identity upon, who we conceive of ourselves to be, even if we, in fact, are our very being. Those things we that we identify with which constitute our our sense of worth, sense of identity are gone. I think many of you are are familiar with this this verse by Shakespeare.
But to die and we go we go we not know where. To lie in cold obstruction and to rot. That sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod and the delighted spirit to bathe in fiery floods or to reside in thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice, to be imprisoned in the viewless winds and be blown with restless violence around the pendant world. So I think the the essence of, cowardliness is not to admit our fears and to cultivate some kind of unawareness. Each of us, at some level, has a dread, has some anxiety about death.
We would we would like to pretend it does simply doesn’t exist. You know, the we would like to turn the channel to an to another station, another program. Let’s not talk about it. There’s a short dialogue between written by Katherine Mansfield, which kind of gives this idea about let’s not talk about it, which is the, you know, the the usual mindset that people bring to the subject of death. Have you ever You know, this this article that was given out by the Thai master, Ajahn Buddhadasa, he he emphasizes that it should be, you know, since death is an integral part of life, it should be an integral part of our daily conversations.
It’s that we should be educated into death. But how many times do you hear about death at a cocktail party? And and if if someone were to bring up the subject, people tend to they tend to move on to to to other subjects, other groups of people, and the the person finds themselves isolated and alone. So the the this is just a dialogue between a grandmother and her young child. The little girl’s name is Kesia.
And the grandmother’s name is missus Fairfield. And little girl is speaking to her grandmother. Does everybody have to die? Everybody. Me?
Kessia sound fearfully incredulous. Someday my darling. But grandma, Kessia has waved her left leg and waggled her toes. They fell sandy. What if I won’t?
We’re not asked Kezius, she said sadly. It happens to all of us sooner or later. Kezius lay still thinking this over. She didn’t want to die. It meant she would have to leave here, leave everywhere, forever.
Leave leave her grandma. She rolled over quickly. Grandma, she said in a startled voice, what my pet. You’re not to die. Kesia was very decided.
Ah, Kesia, her grandmother looked up and smiled and shook her head. Don’t let’s talk about it. But you’re not too. You couldn’t leave me. You couldn’t not be here.
This was awful. Promise me you won’t ever do it, grandma, pleaded Kezia. The old woman went on knitting. Promise me. Say never.
But still her grandma was silent. Kesia rolled off the bed, she couldn’t bear it any longer. And lightly she leapt upon her grandmother’s knees, clasped her hands around the old woman’s throat, and began kissing her under the chin, behind the ear, blowing down her neck. Say never, say never, say never, she gasped between kisses. And then she began very softly and lightly to tickle her grandmother.
Kesya, the old woman, dropped her knitting. She swung back in a rocker. She began to tickle Kesya. Say never, say never, say never, gurgled Kezia, while they lay there laughing in each other’s arms. Come, that’s enough my squirrel.
That’s enough my wild pony, said old missus Fairfield, setting her cap straight. Pick up my knitting. Both of them had forgotten what they never was about. But, you know, the the significance of of becoming aware of and mindful of death is not just simply to to become, overcome our fears surrounding death. The significance of contemplating death, terminal issues, is to begin to appreciate our life while we still possess it, to ensure that we do not live we do not waste our lives while we still possess it, that we do not that we don’t we are not one of those cowards who who dies many times before their death.
In the living depths of of banality or vanities or of emptiness or inauthenticity, of meaningless purpose purposeless hollow events which constitute most people’s lives. Not only are we preparing ourselves for death, but as was mentioned in in the dialogue between the Zen master and the student, it is a means by which we can learn how to live. You know, for those who look death squarely in the eye while life is still flowing strongly through their veins, As was mentioned, a great paradox, I think, begins to take place. That if we can learn to live and die gracefully, we can learn to live gracefully. And in fact, they’re one and the same thing.
You know, to to to face and take control of our death means to take control of our life. And begin to accept our death is to begin to appreciate our life. And to always keep death in front of our mind’s eye, to be mindful of death, to be is always to be remembered what is uniquely important to myself. What has great meaning? What are the guidelines and principles and values that I want to live by?
You know, the Buddha said that amongst all the various mindfulness, all the things that we could keep hold of during the course of our everyday life, mindfulness of death was the most important in developing as a means of developing an awareness of death. You know, I think we have to admit that we’re we have some, you know, we, at some level, we we we don’t want to deal with this problem of death. We’d rather not hear about it. And I think it’s very courageous that that you’re here and and voluntarily seeking to understand and become aware of death. But there is a a layer of a sense of at some level of some level of our cognitive being, we have a belief in our own immortality.
And we can have different beliefs at different levels of a cognitive awareness. At one level intellectually, we may say, yes, I’m going to die. At another level, we act as if we’re immortal. There’s some belief working at that up at that level. Moreover, you know, we have at some some level of belief that, okay, I’m going to die in some far distant, vague future when I’m very, very old.
But the real Is that the reality of our situation? In effect, the time of death is is uncertain. So there’s a means beginning to to confront and cult We have to actually, as it were, cultivate awareness of death, the fact of our own mortality. Cultivate an awareness of the uncertainty of the time of death to overcome this conception that death is going to occur in some vague distant future. And cultivate of what is of value at the time of our death to become aware and to make well, and to to pray prepare ourselves for that moment, but also as a means to prepare us for the small deaths which occur over the course of our lives, and to help us to enhance our life, to appreciate our life and make use of it and not waste it.
And so the fact is death is inevitable. It’s indefinite. Everyone is going to die, no matter who they may be, kings, queens, musicians, philosophers, saints, criminals, ordinary people, teachers, caregivers, Buddhist monks, nuns, everyone must die. They’re they’re no matter how powerful, no matter how rich, no matter whether they’re dictators of with great military armies, whether they’re been lived lived completely holy lives, whether they’re they’re ruthless. All of these individuals, they experienced all their various experiences of their life.
They they had happiness and joys. They had sorrows and sadness, and they all will die. Everyone must die. And it is a story of a meditator in the in the lived in a cave in Tibet. And he was quite concerned about his death.
And he he went to his teacher one day and he said, please please inform me when you, when you come to understand that my death is impending, that it’s that it’s coming. And his teacher agreed. So a few weeks later, the the meditator received a note, a message from his teacher saying that a villager to the east had just died. And the meditators, well, I’m sorry to hear that, but that doesn’t have any relevance to me. And a few days later, another message came, a villager to the west died.
Okay. Death happens. And then another message, a few days later, the villager to the north. And then a few days later, the villager to the south. And finally, a few days later after that, the the meditator himself became deathly ill.
And he called his teacher to his deathbed, and he he exclaimed to his teacher, why didn’t you let me know? I asked you to inform me when when you were aware that my death was impending. And he said nothing. And the teacher replied, I did not say nothing. I sent you four messages.
You know, the very fact that we other people die around us should serve as a message of our own impending death. You know, it’s, if we can show see begin to see how it’s relevant to us, everybody has to die. You know, our our lifespan is continually decreasing. Moment by seconds become moments. Seconds become minutes.
Minutes become hours. Hours become days. Days become weeks. Weeks become months, months become years, and years become lifetime. Moment by moment, even as we sit here, we’re we’re approaching the end of our lives.
It’s continually decreasing. It’s it is as if we were on on a on a train, you know, we carry on our all our various activities while we’re while we’re on that train, you know, having moments of happiness, having moments of sadness, eating, going to the toilet, talking. Even as we sleep, the the train inexorably moving day and night, moment by moment, to its destination. And once it gets to its destination, we have to get off. We have no choice.
And even as we sit here, we’re approaching that moment by death, inexorably. And when it arrives, we have no choice. We have to leave. And how much time do we actually spend in preparing our minds, in learning about our life, learning about ourselves. You know, how much time do we do we In an average day, how many hours do we do we sleep?
How many hours do we work? How many hours do we do we spend socializing, eating, feeling bored, feeling depressed, frustrated, angry, whatever, feeling lazy? And how many times do we actually how much time of our life do we actually spend living? The quality of life that we we feel we can, that that we experience from time to time. And how much of our life is going by unexperienced and unlived?
You know, losing the the the potential for a quality way of being. But also, we have to become aware of the uncertainty at the time of death in the sense of that a human life expectancy we’re going to have time. Now. Uh-huh. Okay.
See, when the time’s up, you have to you have to give it up whether you want to or not. Just a few more minutes. You can’t do that when you die. Do as I say, not as I do. Okay.
So, you know, the Okay. Unlike our schedule, death the time of our death is uncertain. You know, there’s, we we simply don’t know when it is that we’re going to die. You know, the that’s the reality. You know, we’re we’re trying to get in touch with the reality of our situation to overcome our our our preconceptions, biases, our mis misassumptions, our wrong ideas that we have, that we harbor at some level of our being around death.
And one of them you know, we it’s it’s not too difficult to come to grips with the fact that we’re going to die. I I don’t think we have to cut through too many layers of misbelief around that or, grandiose ideas. But the time of our death as being uncertain is quite a challenge, think. We, you know, we have to begin to cut through that. We have to begin to look at the reality of our situation in the sense that that fetuses, they die in the womb.
Babies die at birth. They die at the age of two and three. Children die at the age of seven and eight. four tenetsrs die at the age of of thirteen and fifteen and eighteen. Young adults die at the age of twenty, twenty three, twenty five, twenty eight.
Middle-aged adults at the age of thirty one, thirty four, thirty seven, thirty nine. Older adults at the age of forty three and forty six, forty nine and fifty two, and older people die at the age of fifty seven, fifty nine. The elderly die at the age of sixty three, sixty nine, seventy two. That is to say, there’s no age that people do not die at. You know, the fact that that you may be young and healthy at this very moment is no guarantee that you will not die tomorrow, That you will die next week or today.
And there’s no guarantee that because there’s no certainty. There’s simply you know, no one can give you that guarantee. You know, the vast majority of people who are going to die within the next month harbored the belief that they were going to live and live a long, long time. Though they’re going to die this month. Perhaps even the you know, all the people who are going to die today, before today, harbor the conception, the belief that they were going to live a long, long time.
Just like we have that harbor that same conception that we’re going to live a long, long time. But simply having that conception does not make it so. You know, just because we do not think about it or rationally reject the idea does not mean it cannot happen. You know, ask you can ask any life insurance salesperson, and they’ll give you the statistical statistical probabilities on your chances of dying today or tomorrow or the next day. They’ll even give you a policy on it if you’re interested.
You know, there there are the fact is that we can die at any time, and there are innumerable causes of death. There are as many causes of death as there are, in fact, people or living beings. There you know, every day we hear about, some kinds of disasters, some, earthquakes or or landslides, forest fires, storms, floods, wars, terrorism, famines. But but we feel but perhaps we feel, very cozy and safe from such types of violent deaths. But still for us, there there are there are heart attacks, there’s cancer, there are all the various diseases.
There’s plane crashes, car crashes, there’s fires and drownings and murders. And then, of course, there’s old age, which is going to catch us all one day or another. If it’s nothing goes before that. So, you know, people die in their sleep. People die coming home from work.
People die working in their homes. They people die going to school. They die playing. They die engaging in sports. They die cooking dinner and watching television.
They die attending dining courses. There’s no place, there’s no time that people do not die. That’s the reality of the situation. Our beliefs are probably contrary to that reality of the situation. Somehow we have to break through these misconceptions because it’s pragmatically useful for quality way of life.
We will live our life with a greater intensity, with a greater vitality according to what we feel is important as very unique actualizing individuals. We’ll get in touch with some deeper held values, and we’ll we won’t waste our lives living other people’s lives and other people’s values. But we’ll our life will become an expression of what it is that works for us. And beginning to look at the the fact of our human body that we feel is so we have a conception that it’s almost invulnerable, but that’s not the reality of what it consists of. You know, the within within a minute, our body can change from being strong and active to being helpless and full of pain.
You know, a a piece of glass, a sliver of metal, a virus which we can’t even see can cause our death, can take our life from us. So, you know, trying to, you know, when, this is the re trying to get in touch with the reality of our situation. And the very fact of what is going to be of any benefit at the time of our death? In all of your all of your possessions that you work so hard to gather together, all the enjoyments that you pursue. And, you know, at the time of your death, you know, your your car, your house, your VCR, all your you can lie.
You know, you can while you’re while you’re going through the death process, clutching onto all your credit cards. You know? And so they they will they they helped me before. Why aren’t they helping me now? You know, I’ve got my visa card.
That should that and it’s paid up. That’s you know, that should be worth something. But it’s all can it be of any benefit? Can you take one, Mastercard with you into your future life, into future states of existence? Or what can be what can make your death that much better?
Or even the even those people who who sincerely love us and we love them. And though they may be, you know, holding onto your hand trying to prevent you to stop process of death. Can they actually prevent it? Can they actually accompany you in the course of your death? Can anything go with you?
What even our own bodies, which we take the best care of, which we which we wash and give it the nice the best stylish clothing that we can. We we we give it vitamins. We put perfume on it. We shave it. Make it make it appear nice.
Even that simply becomes an inert piece of flesh like like a piece of meat in a butcher market. Even our own body is of no use at the time of death. So what is it that can benefit us at this moment? And beginning to look at in fact, these are the various skillful attitudes of mind that we’ve built up. How we’ve developed our mind.
That’s the only recourse that we have at that moment when the elements of our body are dissolving and and the mind is beginning to separate from the body. You know, all our friends, we can’t they can’t hold our hand. They can’t go with us. All the money and all the possessions that we built up over our lifetime, we can’t take even one cassette, one disc with us, one cent, one credit card. And even this body will be have to be left behind.
So the the attitude that one is developing out of this is beginning to determine is that that how much how very alone is our responsibility. Because in in the course of it is ourselves who will have to go through the death process of death. So it is our responsibility to, over the course of our life, to learn how to die and to learn how to live, which is shown by the fact of our death. Because it is only our our own selves and the quality of our own minds and the attitudes and the skillful patterns of thought that we’ve developed, which are going to benefit us at the moment of our death. So death is definite.
It’s going to happen to everyone in this room and everyone not in this room. And the time of our death is uncertain. We simply don’t know when. And the only thing which can help us at the moment of our death, and also the small deaths which occur over the course of our life, those transitions, those coming to an end, and the new is yet to begin, are the core qualities of our own mind, attitudes that we build up in beginning to use our life in a meaningful way. So I’m going to stop there.
Death meditation. I’m sure you’re all dying to meditate on. As I mentioned, our lives are based upon sets of ideas, systems of beliefs, core assumptions, premises. And quite often our beliefs and the premises upon which we operate our lives are aren’t in, accordance with the reality of our situations. And this disparity between our beliefs and the actuality experiences some degree of tension, anxiety, dread.
So it’s very incumbent upon us to begin to bring to conscious awareness these mistaken, erroneous premises in which we’re basing our life, wrong beliefs, and begin to accord them with the way things are. If we’re ever going to be healthy, it’s quite a necessary task. And, especially with respect I mean, this this permeates our lives, these mistaken ideas, wrong assumptions that we continually operate every day of our life. But here, in with respect to death, and, you know, I talked about I mentioned a few of these ideas. You know, it seems as if we don’t, then, if we don’t begin to accord our thinking and our ways of being and our systems of belief with the way things are, then we’re either going to experience a sense of power powerlessness because we can’t do the impossible, or a sense of rage because the universe simply doesn’t act according to, our wishes.
Either way, it’s not a very satisfactory situation. So we’re going to And I think at some level we have feelings of immortality. We have sensibility that we’re going to live a long time. And additionally, the moment of our death, okay, something’s going to come along. I’m not quite sure what it is at this moment.
So we are overcoming these wrong assumptions that perhaps we’re we’re laboring under, and, not only to to facilitate an acceptance an acceptance of change and therefore death, but also to help us to enhance our life. The advertising blurb for the course was a quotation by Montaigne. It was quite beautiful. There is no place on earth where death cannot find us, even if we constantly twist our heads about in all the directions as in a dubious and suspect land. If there were any way of sheltering from death’s blows, I am not the man to recoil from it.
But it is madness to think that you can succeed. Men come and they go, said women. And they trot and they dance and never worried about death, all well and good. Yet when death comes 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 our mind than death. We do not know where death awaits us, so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man or a woman who has learned how to die has unlearned to be a slave.
Our lives are very much constituted on the basis of our hopes and fears. To grow, to a large extent, is to begin to realign our allegiance from a life which is based passively on hopes and fears to one which is based upon actively choosing one’s preferred outcome, the story that one would like to live by in the course of one’s life, one’s own values and guidelines, and to live rationally and in accordance with way things are. This is, I think, an intelligent way of going about this, what this this thing we call life. So we’re going to meditate for a few minutes together. We’ll begin with mindfulness of breathing.
And then I will meditate on death, and I’ll lead you through that. So if you’ll take a comfortable but firm posture and developing some determination that the moment I become aware that my mind has wandered, that I’ve been distracted in a very gentle but disciplined manner, I’m going to bring my mind back to the breath. Continually bringing the mind to rest upon that single object of the breath. And then I’ll lead you through med