Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with the declaration “we’re going to talk about death tonight,” Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 45-minute session to argue that honest engagement with mortality makes life genuinely meaningful. He outlines the qualities of an awakened person — wisdom, compassion, personal power — and insists these seeds are already present in every human being, not reserved for exceptional figures like the Dalai Lama. A personal story about discovering a moss-covered Buddha image in a Sri Lankan forest, linked to Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, illustrates how Buddha-nature waits within us, concealed by ignorance and self-concern. He then frames the Three Principal Aspects of the path — wisdom and compassion as two wings for crossing saṃsāra — as the means to uproot those patterns, before guiding a meditation on extending love toward a neutral stranger.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 23 HMA 1996 07 17.mp3
UUID: 34bf557d-e7da-4e6e-9c5b-c89aab19f184
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-07-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~6,124
We begin as we usually do in terms of adjusting our motivation, and this is an ongoing process of reorientating ourselves, redirecting ourselves, trying to get back in touch with what is uniquely important to each of us, what makes us feel good about ourselves, and this thing called life, what gives meaning to our life? Gives us a sense of purpose, a sense of connectedness with others. And how how are we going to go about living the good life? Where does it lie for ourselves? Some of the very difficult questions that seems that it’s quite necessary to be continually putting to ourselves and listening very closely to the answers that we may be able to give ourselves.
You know, I think we can live an entire life in distraction, in unawareness, and never having lived what is uniquely important to each of ourselves. You know, we’re going to talk about death tonight And the and one of the main functions of considering death and its implications in our life is that to help us to live with an intensity of life in terms of, you know, what is uniquely important. You know, why live other people’s values? You know, it is only ourselves who can each die our death, and it’s only ourselves who can live our life. And it’s you know, however, you know, it requires some degree of courage to live out one’s own beliefs, actually come to understand what do in fact I believe, to begin to deconstruct some of the many beliefs which we’ve taken for granted, we assume would indeed false or lead us to poor imitation of what life could hold for ourselves.
You know Buddhism is trying to hold out for the best that we can possibly be as human beings in terms of the quality of our life, in terms of its coherence and adequacy, the meaning that we can bring to life. And then life doesn’t automatically have meaning. We have to bring meaning to our life, to give it meaning, to continually being questioned, well, what is the meaning in my life? And where do you go for refuge? Where is your treasure?
You know, we’ve been talking about the qualities of the refuge in terms of the direction of our lives and where we can begin to perhaps begin to actualize the good life in terms of actualizing our potentials and all that human potential can hold for us. And, you know, the the Buddha as someone who’s simply awake. Whatever. You know, it doesn’t have to be someone in in the sky, someone something abstract, disconnected from ourselves, something which is relevant to ourselves, we can feel connected with connectedness with. You know, simply a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being.
You know, the the what we would most like to see ourselves be. You know, the model of some kind of paradigm of sanity in our lives. You know, maybe it’s very unclear to ourselves, but maybe it’s necessary to begin to clarify for oneself, you know, to begin to take these these our dreams of who we could be, who we have always aspired to be, our finest of dreams that we’ve all dreamed in our most noblest of moments, and begin to take them out of our hearts and begin to try them on for size so they don’t rot dead and they aren’t lost to us. You know, our dreams are terribly important, and we shouldn’t allow them to be lost of who we could be. But more than that, to actually begin to to find some means, some space, create the opportunity to express them in our daily life so that we actually begin to put foundations beneath these castles of the dreamed of life that we’ve built in the air and begin to actually express them in our daily life.
And in terms of what it means might mean to be this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being which we’re continually orientating ourselves toward the best that we could hope to be in terms of the quality of our life. We call it awakened one or Buddha. You know, however each of us might entitle or narrate that quality of being, that story. You know, someone who has tremendous wisdom, you know, and understanding the way things actually are in their true nature without obscuration, without prejudice, without misconception. Someone who’s tremendously compassionate and loving, a burning desire that others be free of suffering, that, you know, wish that they be happy, and moreover a determination to make them so, taking that responsibility, you know, expressing one’s love and compassion in very practical terms.
A quality of personal power, you know, a physical and mental spiritual vitality as this, an intensity of being, a present, spiritual vitality, zest, an intensity of being, a presence, a quality of creative activity, you know, the transformations of wisdom and love and compassion and personal power and altruistic activity in everyday life responding to the needs of the world, the needs of everyone about you. And you know this is what this is the outcome of the Buddhist story, you know, as finest type of being that we could ever hope to imagine for ourselves in the context of Buddhism. And if that appeals to you, then perhaps the Buddhist path might appeal to you because that’s the direction it’s hoping or it’s seeking to take us. And we began to question what that sounds all well and good, but maybe this is just another Hollywood production, you know, something which is make believe like a Walt Disney movie. It really it sounds nice but it’s something that we can it’s just a matter of escapism or some kind of religious dogma, something to make us feel better about our difficult life.
It’s just to not it doesn’t really have anything to do with the hardcore realities of the world, my life, the way it actually is and who I actually am. So begin to see if perhaps the direction of Buddhism and its goal. It has some actual relevance to ourselves in fact. You know, and beginning to look at our own experience of who we are. Now we all have some wisdom no matter how faint and no matter how obscure that wisdom might be.
We all have that to some degree. We all have some love and compassion no matter how exclusive, how limited that love and compassion might be. We all have that to some degree. We all have some personal power no matter how weak, how unrefined that intensity of our being, that power, that vitality that might be. We all have it to some degree.
We all have some creative expressions of these in our everyday life. However, unspontaneous, however, imprecisely directed, applied our wisdom and compassion and our personal power might be in altruistically benefiting others. But nevertheless, it’s there to some degree. So Buddhism is simply saying that to some degree we’re we’re already there to the goal. It’s not something unbridgeable.
It’s not something disconnected from who we are at present. And it’s not something that we have to pray for, to ask divine intervention for, that the seeds of awakening, of becoming the hero of this Buddhist story, this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being are within us right now. But, you know, we might go on to questions. Lots of questions. The question there was once said by a Tibetan Buddhist master, Answers are easy.
It’s the questions which are difficult. The good questions. You know, the burning questions. The burning questions bring burning answers, the types of answers that transform ourselves. So in my question, given that this state of awakening does in fact exist, you know, we’ll take it we’ll we’ll give you that much for now.
And that it potentially exists for all of ourselves, We’ll we’ll for the time being for the time being, we’ll work on that hypothesis. We’ll give you that, grant you that, just for discussion sake maybe, just for questioning. From where does the idea of its actual human attainment come from? And and is it achievable by only an extraordinary few? So beginning to look at this question and beginning to find some answers for it.
You know, the idea of awakening, of enlightenment or Buddhahood or whatever you want to call it, the final outcome of the Buddhist story, realization of, from the Buddhist point of view at least, the fulfillment of human potential. The idea of awakening comes from human life itself, that from the actual lived history of humankind, that there have been people who actually achieved awakening in fact. Not in theory, but practically speaking. Who have gone beyond ignorance, who have gone beyond self centeredness, and have realized the totality of their being. You know, these supremely loving, wise human beings, sane human beings.
Buddha Śākyamūni is one of them and only one amongst many, many others who, like him, actualize all of those qualities, all of those, you know, the optimum ways of being in the world which are potential for all of us. You know, these people were not born as extraordinary human beings. You know, somehow we have to overcome this sense of intrinsic identity that we have about ourselves. Know that we look to the Dalai Lama’s, that we look to the Mother Teresa’s and we think to ourselves at some perhaps unconscious level that it’s just their genes or it’s just they have some kind of loving molecules in their brains or compassionate electrons, that somehow they’re organically, by their very nature, different than ourselves, that they didn’t have to struggle, they didn’t have to make effort, they didn’t have moments of discouragement and tragedies in their lives, that they didn’t have to overcome obstacles on the course of their evolution, becoming the people who they are. We would like to think that.
That in that way we can perhaps avoid the responsibility of making something of ourselves and making use of our potential and actualizing who in fact we can become. But that way doesn’t work. It doesn’t take us anywhere, just to more of the same. You know these people who have actualized the totality of being, who became awakened, They were not born as they were. They become extraordinary human beings.
They were not always such as they became. They became extraordinary humans because through their own human effort to make actual in them what is potential in ourselves. You know, what was potential in Śākyamūni Buddha, which is potential in all of us. You know, there’s no difference. You know, this is the historical nature of Buddhism, is that even the the founder of our present teaching system of Buddhism was not always such as he was.
That he was very much like ourselves, full of ignorance, full of attachment, full of desire, full of all the difficulties, with all the obstacles that we too experience. But he and many like them worked through them. We have yet to do that. You know a number of years ago I was traveling through Sri Lanka and this was when before the present difficulties, the civil war that’s now going on in Sri Lanka. It was a very idyllic country, like something of a paradise.
And I remember in the central part of the country traveling through visiting some Buddhist ruins there. And I remember wandering through the woods, through the forest, and coming along an old dilapidated stone wall and coming around to the other side of the stone wall. And there on what was the remains of an altar or the fragmentary remains of an image of a Buddha. You know, this was very recognizable. And at the time it seemed to me when I saw that stone image of a Buddha as if that Buddha had been sitting there since infinite time, you know, waiting with infinite patience, waiting to be rediscovered.
And later on I recalled that Arthur C. Clarke, who you may know of, he was the author of the movie two thousand and one: A Space Odyssey. He wrote that was back in about nineteen seventy one, I think when it came out. He wrote that the screenplay for that movie when he was living in Sri Lanka. And you know in my fantasies, you know if you remember the movie two thousand and one, it chronicled the evolutionary journey of humankind from ape like creatures up to a child of the cosmos.
In the movie, all of the great evolutionary leaps of humankind were depicted with were always associated with the presence of some kind of huge monolith, you know, an artifact of some extraterrestrial beings. It appeared to be like a polished black marble column. These were left by these extraterrestrial beings to look over the evolving life on the earth. And the thought occurred to me that perhaps, you know, Arthur C. Clarke, you know, while he was living in Sri Lanka and perhaps being inspired to write the script for the movie two thousand and one, maybe he had a similar experience to my myself.
And that he perhaps he was wandering aimlessly one day as I was, you know, through a similar forest. And like myself came upon seemingly by accident, a similar image of a Buddha. You know, an image of a Buddha which is not unlike the image of the Buddha which resides in all of ourselves within the force of all of our own hearts. You know, similarly waiting with infinite patience, with an infinite calm, an infinite deliberateness of purpose to be rediscovered. You know, the Buddha which resides within all of our hearts, but is presently obscured, you know, from our you know, covered over by the vines of our obscurations by hidden by the weeds of our afflictive emotions of attachment and hatred and jealousy and pride and ignorance.
You know, the concealed beneath our mind’s obscurations, you know, the curtains over our eyes. You know, our we can’t see the Buddha within our own hearts because of our self limiting preconceptions about who we are and who we can ever be. This self subjugating, self impoverishing story that we’re continually telling ourselves about ourselves. You know, this this sacred image of ourselves of who we can all someday be, who from the point of view of Buddhism, who we will all in fact be someday. You know, not known because not looked for but but heard, have heard between the two waves of the sea.
This preexistent monolithic reminder calling down to ourselves through the ages with a voice that does not come in a thunderstorm which threatens man’s existence. It is a still small voice and easy to drown. So long as this is done, man’s life will not become away. Whatever success and enjoyment he may achieve, whatever power he may attain, whatever deeds he may do, his life will remain way less so long as he does not face the voice. You know, perhaps I’m becoming a bit abstract and poetic.
But perhaps religion is a matter of poetry and becoming getting in touch with other ways of being and other ways of thinking than the pragmatic approach, this rational approach that we’ve somehow become stuck with. You know, beginning to listen to these almost inarticulate whisperings of our own heart, you know, asking of ourselves to be all that we can be, all that we should be, you know, all that we in fact shall all someday be. To find a way for ourselves, know, some kind of faint signal of the mind which has been circling within our mind from beginningless time. You know, waiting for that moment outside of time to leap into conscious awareness. You know, life as it presents itself must change.
Something must give way. Tomorrow and tomorrow is a tale told by an idiot. You know, the pattern has to come to a complete stop. You have to change. You have to change.
There’s this whispering going on somewhere deep in our own heart. You have to change. You have to change. You know, on and on and on, endlessly on. Basically, Buddhism is saying that we have to change.
And what fundamentally must change if we are to change our lives, what has to come to a stop if we’re going to stop the pain in our lives. The meaninglessness in our lives, the aimless repetition of the same mistakes in our lives are the patterns of ignorance and self centeredness. You know, this is why we’re talking about the Three Principal Aspects of the path in order to bring these patterns to an end, to bring these patterns to a stop and thereby stop the pain in our lives and begin to actualize our potential. And what changes these and brings them to a stop and therefore, you know, bringing stops the pain and changes our lives are the awakened heart and the awakened mind. You know, through the power of the wisdom of the awakened mind, we go beyond we move the superimposing superimposition of independent existence by removing the misconception of ignorance which projects it.
And thereby all the various afflictive emotions, by that I mean hatred, desire, attachment, pride, whatever, of themselves cease. And we experience unremitting peace within inside of ourselves. And by going beyond our own self centeredness, we able we shift the center of gravity in our lives. We become our lives become other centered. We begin to lead an altruistic way of life and we find some experience of outer harmony with the world about us.
We find inner peace, inner harmony, interintegration and integration with the world and cessation of the conflict with the world. This is the Buddhist goal. You know most simply we’re discussing the development of wisdom and compassion, knowledge and altruistic activity. You know, these are like the two wings of a bird by wings in which we can fly over like a sea of all our troubles, all the dysfunctional patterns of our mind, you know, all the self imposed limits of our life and begin to realize the fullest potential of what we can be, of what human life is in fact about, and begin to consciously participate in the purpose of evolution of life, you know, on a cosmic scale, on its grandest scale. And this is what we call awakening.
And this is where we continue reorientating, redirecting ourselves. You know, a journey of a thousand miles has to begin with the first footstep. We have to at least be going in the correct direction if we’re able to arrive where we want to be to achieve our goal. You know, we have to perhaps At least point ourselves in that direction. At least consider where it is we want to go.
You know the path is, as I mentioned in terms of the word for it, it simply means putting one foot in front of the next. Putting one foot of wisdom, one foot of compassion, one foot of wisdom, one foot of compassion. And that way we journey and we change. We can become the person that we’ve ever always hoped to be. We live out this final story that we could ever hope to tell ourselves about ourselves.
So this becomes our direction. The inner focus of our life becomes Buddha and the Buddha withinside of ourselves which we seek to manifest. We’re trying to actualize, give expression to by means of the Dharma, in the techniques, the methods, the truth. And this occurs within the social context of a spiritual community, the Sangha, those who assist us, who validate our Buddhist story for ourselves is to support us as we support them. And again and again trying to raise the level of motivation why we’re involved in this process such that we don’t allow it simply to become a part of our present problem, that we don’t allow what could be a solution to extend, to support, to maintain our ego problem.
We, through raising our level of motivation such that we’re doing it not just for ourselves, then it can become it’s not allowed simply to become a way of maintaining these self defeating patterns of our self centeredness, exaggerated self concern. It becomes a real way of solving our problems. We’re breaking out of a habitual self defeating way of approaching what the good life is about. We can begin to go beyond our parochial vision and open our our our our perception about what we can be, you know, about what happiness is in fact, what the good life is in fact about. We we have a lot of methods in Buddhism.
There’s a lot of technique. Methods or means of meditation. There’s a lot of profound wisdom. There’s a lot of philosophy and theorizing. But the most available means to ourselves by which to alleviate our problems most readily is by caring more and more about others.
And that’s we as the ordinary people that we are. And the more that we can begin to concern ourselves with the problems of others, I think the directly proportionate consequence will be that we ourselves will be that much happier, that our lives will be that that much less problematic. So beginning to again and again reorientate in terms of where we’re going with our life, but again and again reorientate in terms of why we’re doing it. If we can only do it for one other person, even if it’s only that person you’re closest to, even if it is very much involved in selfishness and attachment. It’s at least something that’s going against the patterns of our isolation and exclusion of others totally in our life.
It can become something in our way of finding happiness. We can be sure of that, and then it becomes meaningful. Something will change. Something will come to an end. Something will stop.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Communities, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening.
Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, mind, and present clouds of every type of offering,, those actual and imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until cyclic existence has ended and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to great awakening.
So we’re going to meditate. Would you like to stand up for a minute and stretch your legs? Okay. Okay, maybe I’ll speak louder than usual. Okay.
I hope, you know, I think it’s quite necessary to talk in these ways that we have to We need inspiration, but we also need to be reminded that there are other possible ways of living life, perhaps more meaningful and more of what we might want in our life. And it is sort of a constant reminder of other possibilities because we lose sight in dealing with what seems to be the practical necessities of everyday life, the real world, whatever that might be. Or because of laziness, inauthenticity or hypocrisy or we feel we feel coerced. One way or another, we lose sight. If nothing else, it’s it’s necessary to reflect and think, well, maybe there is something more than what I’m I’m experiencing in terms of my practical everyday life, you know.
And to get back to those dreams that we once had or that occurred to us from time to time. And we empower ourselves and we inspire ourselves and and try to live out that life, those dreams. This is this is all this is all we’re gonna have. This one shot. You know, Jampa, you, this particular personality isn’t going to be around whether there’s rebirth or not.
That particular personality, that particular identity is finished. You know, this opportunity, this unique conjunction of causes and people and situations is is a only occurs once in trying to make the best of it in terms of quality of life. You know, beginning to look at our life not in terms of owning or controlling or affecting, in being. What would you have yourself be? Who would you have yourself be?
We, you know, we we last week, we began to talk about the this first in the three principal aspects of the path, talks about leisure and fortune are hard to find, and life has no duration. So leisure and fortune were begin to talk about helping us to overcome our sense of taking for granted our humanity and not only being a human being, but be especially being a privileged human being amongst all the, you know, the people of the world. And that we in the west, in our affluence, in our our position, our freedoms, a great privileged position that we oftentimes take for granted. As is often the case with Buddhism, a lot of these facts that are being pointed out are common sense. It’s necessary to point them out so that we don’t take them for granted.
That by becoming aware of the fact, we begin to value what it is that, in fact, has always been there before ourselves that went unnoticed. And by valuing it, we won’t allow it to be lost. We won’t allow it to be wasted. And this extends even to our fact of being a human being. The very fact that we are alive in this privileged world, the class of society that we live in.
You know, more or less, you can say, we’ve got to start to count our blessings. I think you know, people are always trying to solve their problems, but a great number of the problems that we seek to solve are pseudo problems. They aren’t the real problems. Now begin to look at the reality of who we are and the fact of our life and to begin to appreciate it, to overcome our sense of inadequacies and feelings of self pity, to begin to empower ourselves. In that process, many of what we now see as difficulties and problems will dissolve on themselves.
They won’t even need to be dealt with. They are byproduct of these self-empowering, self-realisation processes. You know, many of the problems, of the sufferings of life which Buddhism seeks to deal with are ahistoric. And by that mean I mean, that whoever we might be, whether we had loving parents and all the good things economically and socially and materially, or whether we had a traumatic childhood, we’re deprived, lived in poverty, are beside the point. Whatever type of history we may have had, we’re still going to suffer.
That’s the reality of being an ordinary human being. The very fact of suffering. That was the very first teaching that the Buddha ever taught and become confronting that issue. You know, I’ve heard that I’ve heard you I’ve heard all that you’ve had to say about your problem. My suggestion is you begin to face the very fact that you’re an ordinary human being if you ever want to solve your problem.
So Buddhism is beginning to suggest ways that we can begin to solve not our historic problems in terms of our unique histories, but simply what are the problems of any human being, no matter what position, no matter what circumstance they may have been raised in, no matter what their particular history might have been. So here we’re simply trying to begin to appreciate who in fact we are, to count our blessings, to become aware of them and value them so we don’t waste them. And with the the opportunity that they present ourselves, this opportunities of freedom and fortune. So we’re going to meditate on this. You know, just begin in terms of our imagination, you know, to to overcome our sense of insufficiency, to overcome our sense of self defeatism, overcome waiting for something outside of ourselves to give us permission to get on with our life and the living as we might want ourselves to live, to empower ourselves, to take advantage of this opportunity, to not let it go to waste to solve our problems.
And I there’s no one else that’s able to do it. The Buddhists can’t do it. They can’t. There’s a verse by the Buddha that says, those that have gone, which is an epithet for the Buddhas, they do not wash away sins with water, they do not remove suffering with their hand, nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others. But by the showing of the truth, the way things are, all of them are made free, that’s all a Buddha can do.
That’s all perhaps anyone could ever do for us. There are there there are possibilities in terms of supporting ourselves, in terms of holding our hand. There are compassionate gestures that we can make and interact with others and helping others and benefiting others. But in the end, it’s very much at some point, we have to begin to understand it is only in terms of changing our own minds that we’re ever going to solve our problems at a basic level. And, you know, there’s there’s no other choice.
It’s it’s the I I saw a term the other day. It said the the the aloneness of liberation. No one else can do the work for ourselves. It is only ourselves who can liberate ourselves from our problems ultimately. We’re alone in that and accepting that.
So anyway, we’re going to meditate. So we’ve been working in terms of adjusting our motivation again in various individuals and development of love and compassion. And, you know, tonight working with someone who is you feel neutral toward, a stranger who’s neither a peep particularly appealing to you or unappealing, attractive, or or unattractive. Just a neutral individual working with that individual and seeing if you can actually develop some kind of feeling in terms of these levels of love and compassion, some movement of the mind. You know, even if it’s only the words, that’s a beginning.
It’s taking us in the direction that we want to move. That’s that’s something. Even to think the word, let alone begin to evoke the actual feelings which those words are pointing ourselves toward. So working with the an individual who you feel quite neutral toward or in in a way indifferent toward. So taking a firm, comfortable position.
And first, getting in touch with our body. These compulsive reoccurring dysfunctional patterns of thinking, behaving, and developing the will to awaken,. And this is developed in terms of our present existence and in terms of our future existence. In terms of our present existence, the method which Śāntideva is making use of is first becoming aware of our leisure and fortune, let’s say, our freedom and our great privilege that we all experience, not taking them for granted, not allowing them to go to waste. If we become aware of these facts, then we’ll begin to value them, and we’ll begin to utilize our life in a greater to a greater extent.
We won’t waste the opportunity that our human life affords us. And more than just the human life, our life as privileged beings in a difficult world, you know, that we, as white middle class Westerners, enjoy. Most people in the world don’t. That’s the fact. This so what our life affords us a window of opportunity, but that window of opportunity isn’t always going to stay open.
It’s a passing as in all things, all phenomena, all compounded phenomena. They are impermanent. The window is going to be closed eventually, and that is our death. And then we’ve discussed the basis of growth in terms of the spiritual master, the Lama, and our own Buddha nature, and that we possess, in terms of this window of opportunity, all the external and internal conditions whereby to actualize our potential. And we have to understand this opportunity is not going to last forever, that it’s finite, that we’re going to die, that life has no duration.
This is a tremendous you know, death the contemplation of death is a tremendously empowering understanding in our life. You know, there was an interview of a woman who was terminally ill and she was asked, you know, what do you regret most about your life? And she answered that I never thought about death till now. Know, for those who look death squarely in the face while life is still flowing in their veins, a strange paradox comes true, which is that to live gracefully and to die gracefully are one and the same things. You know, for most of us, death is something dark, something unknown, you know, something to be feared.
And fear here is is fundamentally a state of unawareness in combination with irrational beliefs. The the this undercurrent of dread that we have in or anxiety, which permeates a great deal of our lives, is based upon a core of misassumptions, based upon some grandiose ideas, grandiose expectations about ourselves and what we should be experiencing in the course of our life. Our grandiose beliefs about death include, I shouldn’t have to die. I must have one hundred percent guarantee that I won’t die tomorrow. I should be able to control things so I don’t have to die.
Death should not be this way for me or my loved ones. And I will not let it happen because it’s so unfair. You know, it’s it’s terribly sad and makes me feel lonely and fearful. So on our way of developing an awareness of death, which we’re seeking to develop, We have to begin to challenge our grandiose ideals about ourselves and surrounding our death. You know, we have to ask ourselves, what’s so special about me that somehow the universe should single me out for special dispensation, for special treatment?
You know, death is unfortunate, and it’s terribly sad, but it’s also terribly normal. You know, our our irrational beliefs concerning death go unchallenged because more than that, they go unnoticed. They go unnoticed because more than that, we are unaware. Unaware because, at least in terms of death, we are cowards. You know, we we we in our cowardliness, we are forever seeking to deny or ignore or evade, distract ourselves from this from the acknowledgment that of the inevitable outcome of all of life is death.
We were all born and we were all going to die. That is in the nature of things. You know, we want to forget death. You know, we we say, maybe of course, we cannot we can’t we have to admit that people die. We we know that we too are going to have to die, but not just yet, not any time in the near future.
You know, we we can place enough veils between ourselves and our impending death so that we don’t have to respond to its meaning in our life. You know, this inescapable possibility which nobody can take from us, which more than any other reveals to us how inescapably this life is our own, you know, how alone each of us is in the face of death. And in the fear of losing everything, of everything that we have of our loved ones, of our possessions, you know, our achievements, our entire life, lost, gone. Everything which we we base our conception of who we are and what we are, and even if we are. Our very identity is lost, and we don’t know where we go, and we don’t know where.
Ah, but to die and to go we know not where. To