Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with the image of life as a Melbourne-to-Brisbane overnight train — wheels turning toward death no matter what you do along the way — Ven Jampa Gendun structures this 33-minute session around the certainty of death and the uncertainty of its timing, each supported by three sub-points. He then addresses what cannot help at the moment of dying: possessions, loved ones, and the body itself. A striking Tibetan passage describes the dying process in visceral detail — doctors lying to your face, lips curling back, being called “that stinking corpse” — reinforced by Milarepa’s line that the frightful corpse is the very body you wear now. The session closes by introducing tantric death practice and the Buddhist model of coarse, subtle, and very subtle bodies, laying groundwork for a discussion of rebirth the following week.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 3 PA 1990 05 11.mp3
UUID: c9b2855b-5e9c-473d-b281-02b391c3ba1b
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-05-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 32.7 minutes
Words: ~3,869
A time is passing. And then seconds become minutes, minutes become hours, hours become days, days become weeks, weeks become months, months become years. And our life creeps on at this petty pace. But it creeps on, nevertheless. We can’t say, Time out.
Let’s take a recess. No matter what you’re doing, whether you’re happy or sad, whether you’re sleeping or awake you know, it’s as if you got on a train. You’re going from, say, from Melbourne to Brisbane, and it’s an overnight train. And you read books on the train, and sometimes you look out the window at the countryside. Sometimes you chat with passengers.
You have a good time. Sometimes you’re laughing. Sometimes you’re bored. You sleep. Whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re saying, the wheels are constantly turning.
Even as you sleep, you’re approaching your destination continuously, moment by moment, unremittingly moving closer and closer and closer to your destination, and then you have to get off when the train comes to the end. You have no choice, no matter. Even as we sit here, we’re a little bit closer to our destination, sometime, a time when we’re going to die. Even as we sit here, even as I talk, just a few more seconds closer to that moment of our death, which is inevitable. Third point, third reason.
Know, thinking about the amount of time that we spend on your life to develop your mind is extremely small. Actually, how much time do you devote to understanding your own mind, what’s going on inside in this inner world of yours, looking inside yourself? How much time do you spend benefiting others, developing wisdom, developing compassion? You know, the things which are real methods to solve your problems in an average day. How many hours do you spend how many hours do you spend sleeping, working, eating, socializing?
How much time do you spend feeling depressed, frustrated, bored, angry, lazy? And finally, how much time do you spend consciously trying to improve your mind, which is the basis of all your happiness and suffering? To live some kind of meaningful purpose of life. By meditating on these three points supporting the one basic reason, one basic part, develop a determination to use your life wisely, mindfully, with some kind of meaning and purpose. The second part is the uncertainty of the time of death.
Death is inevitable, the uncertainty of the time of death. The second part, again supported by three points, three reasons. First point: human life expectancy is uncertain. human life expectancy is uncertain. We simply don’t know how long we’re going to live.
It is not fixed. Sometimes fetuses die in the womb. Babies die at birth. Infants die at the age of three. Children die at the age of seven.
Adolescents die at the age of twelve. Fourteen-year-olds die at the age of fifteen. Young people die at the age of twenty two. Then we go through twenty five. People die at these various ages.
This is the reality of our situation. They die at the age of twenty seven, twenty nine, thirty one, thirty six, fifteen, thirty four, thirty two, forty, forty four, forty five, fifty, fifty five. How old you are? There’s not a time, there’s no age, when people don’t die at that particular age. The fact that you may be young, that you may be healthy, is no guarantee that you’re not going to die on your way home tonight.
There’s no guarantee. You could probably take out insurance policy. Sometimes the insurance they know they’re going to lose sometimes. Otherwise, they would just give you any odds at all. But they know they’re going to lose a certain percentage of the If you took out a policy saying, Well, I’m against dying this week.
They would give you fantastic odds against you dying this week, but they know sometimes they would lose. And you might be just the person. They’re going to lose, too. So there’s no guarantee. There’s no certainty in the time of our death.
First point supporting this. human life expectancy is uncertain. There are many causes of death. Second point. Every day we can hear about some disaster, some kind of earthquake, some kind of volcano, landslide, forest fires, storms, floods, wars, famines, terrorism.
You know, we may feel safe and secure at present against such types of violent deaths. But even for us, still there are heart attacks, there is cancer, all kinds of various diseases. We can die in a plane crash, we can die in car crashes, fires, drownings, murder. And of course, there’s old age. We can die of old age.
People die in their sleep. People die coming home from work. People die going to school. People die playing sports. People die cooking dinner.
People die listening to talks and dharma. People People even die in hospitals. You know, death can occur at any time, any place. There’s no place in we’re safe. There’s no time which we can think we’re secure.
Third point, supporting the uncertainty of the time of death, is beginning to look at the fragile nature, the delicate nature of the human body. Within just a minute, our body can change from being strong and active to being helplessly weak and full of pain, just in the course of one minute. A piece of glass, a small sliver of metal, a tiny air bubble in our bloodstream can kill us. Even a virus which you can’t even see can end your life. These are the three points supporting the uncertainty of the time of our death.
By meditating in this way, contemplating in this way, we can create the determination to begin to practice, to begin to develop our mind right now. Perhaps we don’t have all that much time to put it off as we normally think we do. What do they say? The today of your death may come before the tomorrow of your practice. Something like that.
It could happen. It hasn’t happened yet, but it could. Third part is the fact that at the time of death, only the development of your mind will be of any benefit to you. The only thing which can help you at the time of your death is how much you developed your mind, what types of patterns you’ve laid down, what types of insights you’ve gained during the course of your life, what attitudes, how much love and compassion you’ve developed, how much wisdom. That’s all that can help you at that moment.
This is supported, again, by three points, three reasons. Your possessions and all your enjoyments cannot help you at that moment. You’re laying there, dying. Think of all the material things which you’ve traded your life for, what you’ve spent your life acquiring your nice home, your car, your television, your video, your furniture, all your enjoyments which you run after sex, food, music, alcohol. At the moment, when you’re lying, they’re dying, when everything is growing dark.
Can any of them help you at that moment? Can any of them be of any benefit to you at that moment? Can you take any of them with you? Of clutching on to your VCR. Put it in the coffin with you.
It wouldn’t help. Not only can they not help you, but in fact, your attachment to them is only going to be a hindrance to your dying peacefully. Possessions, enjoyments, first point. Second point, your loved ones. They can’t help you either.
You know, as the consciousness begins to slip away from the body, you’re totally alone in your experience of death. You know, those know, those people who love you sincerely want to help you as if they would do anything for you. You know, they don’t want you to die. And they’re crying. They’re clutching.
They’re even trying to hold your hold on to you, hold on to your body, hold on to your hand, not letting not wanting to allow you to slip away, to die. Sincerely love you, would do anything to help you. No matter what they can, there’s nothing that they can do. When the begins to separate from the body, when the bond, when the karmic bond between the physical basis and the consciousness begins to break, begins to be exhausted. There’s nothing they can do, and their grasping and their clinging to you will make a peaceful death almost impossible.
Second point. Even your loved ones can’t help you at that moment. Third point. Your own body is of no benefit at the time of death. It can’t help you.
We’ve done everything for this body. It’s been our constant companion since our birth. It’s shared in all our pains, in all our good times, all our pleasures. The moment our death, it weakens, and finally, it becomes useless. It becomes like a slab of meat in a butcher’s window.
No difference whatsoever. And then we give it the best of everything, vitamins. You wash it, keep it clean, exercise it, take it jogging once in a while, put lotions on it to make it nice and soft and attractive, perfume. And then it’s useless to us. It can’t help us anymore.
It can And your attachment to it will only make Compound your suffering when you have to part from it. So meditating on these three points, you’re going to develop the determination to integrate — we’re not saying that you should give up your car, your loved ones, taking care of your body. But to develop the determination to integrate the material things, enjoyments, people of your life, and even your body around the central guiding principle of developing your mind, of growing, to somehow fit them into an integrated approach to your life centered upon growth. That’s all.
It’s not that we wish to give up anything. Maybe just to grow up. This is another quotation from a book called The Principal Teachings of the Buddha. It’s more of It’s very nice. It’s very Tibetan, but I think maybe you’ll enjoy it.
Someone is dying and is talking about death. They try all different kinds of treatments and holy rituals, but your condition gets worse and worse. The doctors start lying to you. Your friends and relatives say all sorts of cheery things to your face, but behind your back they start wrapping up your affairs because everybody can see that you’re dying. 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 you did in your life and you wish so badly you had never done them. You can’t quite be sure if you ever really got rid of them all when you confessed or that you really did any true good deeds. Then comes the final pain, the unspeakable searing pain that comes with death. The basic building blocks of your body begin their domino collapse. You are blinded by catastrophic images.
Hallucinations of pure terror crowd into your mind and carry you away, and the whole world you have been living blinks out. People take your corpse and wrap it up in a sheet and lay it in some corner. They hang up a curtain to hide it. Somebody lights a smudgy little candle and leaves it there. If you’re one of those reincarnated lamas, they dress you up in your fancy ritual robes and they try to make you look good.
Right now, we are all running around trying to arrange ourselves a nice house, soft clothes, cozy chairs. But you know the custom here in Tibet, when you die, they’ll tie your arms and legs against your chest with a leather strap, carry the body far from town, and throw it naked out on the rocks. Right now, we all go home and try to cook ourselves some delectable dish. But there will come a day when you will stand there praying for a little taste of those cakes they offer to the spirits of the dead. Right now, we have the big name.
They call us doctor, professor, or respected sir, or your reverence. But there will come a day when they look at your body and call you nothing but that stinking corpse. There will come a day when the title they put in front of your name is the late, or the guy they used to call. Now, when you respect the lamas out there in the audience, look at your ritual robes. Let it come into your thoughts that these are the robes that they will dress your remains in after you have expired.
And all the rest of us, when we look at our bed sheets before we go to sleep, we should try to remember that these are what they will wrap our stinking corpse in when we die. As Milarepa said, The frightful corpse they talk about is the very body you wear, meditator. He means, Look at your own body now and always see the future corpse within it. Are we going into another aspect of death, from the point of view of another way in which death can be made mindful in one’s life. In terms of the advanced practitioner, a yogi For a yogi, an advanced practitioner, the yogi seeks to make use of opportunity that death presents itself, that it’s presented at the time of death, as a means to gain liberation and awakening.
For those who are involved in some types of tantric practices, it’s very much a daily practice to mimic the actual death process, to become familiarized, familiarize oneself with the death process as a means to make use of, to utilize the opportunity which death presents as a means of spiritual advancement. Familiarizing yourself with the process of death will prepare you to face the experience of dying. Death and the intermediate state, which comes after death. You’ll be able to confront it with both confidence and awareness. In this way, it’s possible to actually utilize it as an experience for awakening, for liberation.
Perhaps I can just introduce it very briefly. We don’t have time to go into it. The idea of I think it may help you to Maybe in the future we can talk about the idea of rebirth, some of the logic of rebirth, the reasons of supporting rebirth. Understanding the nature of our mind, which is the basis for understanding rebirth. For our ordinary physical form is composed of material elements.
They’re all subject to inevitable sickness, decay, and death. We have to ask, What do we mean by death? All causes of death, whether they’re due to old age at the end of a natural lifespan, or due to some interruption, such as a car accident, are determined by karma, the karma of that particular individual. What do we mean by karma here? karma is a complicated and vast subject.
But here, in this context, karma means all of the activities or shapings that have formed the being. All the activities are shaping us. Is as if we’re being shaped into who we are, into our being, who we are in our embodiment, expressed through physical, verbal, and mental activities, embodiments. That which is doing the shaping, that which is doing the forming, molding, mentally and physically is what we mean by karma. This includes all of the imprints of past actions, genetic coding, our life in the womb, our parental and social conditioning.
All of these factors who we are at present. This is our karma, the sum total. All the interaction between the individual and these processes themselves is karma. The shaping. karma is the flow of events, the flow of causes, the forces shaping, and it’s as if it’s forming just like a piece of clay.
All of that which shapes that, molds it, is karma. Even the cells of our body are controlled by karma. Any breakdown of cells, either naturally or through disease, such as cancer, is due to a breakdown in the continuum of this karmic flow. Now, what is sustaining that shape? Understanding the impermanence, Things constantly change from moment to moment.
They never remain the same for even one moment. From moment to moment, there’s a flux, a flow. There’s a recreating of our entire being from moment to moment, of the entire universe from moment to moment, moment by moment, this arising, abiding, disintegration. There’s a flow of recreation, that which is reforming in a consistent pattern, a similarity of types. As long as there is this continual flow of karma, there will be a consistent arising in a similar type.
There will be a continuum of a similar type, with slight variations as time progresses. We have a sense of permanency about us, but we can easily see that I’m quite different than when I was born, than when I was five years old, ten years old. But it’s very difficult. We can see the gross changes taking place, but it’s extremely difficult to see the changes which are taking place on the molecular level, on the moment to moment change which is occurring, the recreation about who we are. But there’s a similar type, almost a similar type, in terms of similarity in type gives the false impression that over a short term period there’s no change.
But we can see there be change from moment to moment if there’s going to be change over long periods of time. It’s such a gradual changing process that unless we aren’t able to see the change occurring in small periods, but only in very gross periods, only in long term change. It’s that karmic flow which is sustaining and shaping from moment to moment. Once that flow ceases, then there’s disintegration. These cells, which are in turn made up of the four elements within Buddhist, what would you say, cosmology?
Element, water, fire, wind energy element. There are six elements, which constitute the entire universe and everything within it are made up of combinations in one way or another: earth, water, fire, wind energy, space, and consciousness. In Western science, they have a periodic table of about one hundred and eight elements, which constitute the physical world. Everything is a recombination of these one hundred and eight elements. Buddhism would say that the entire universe is a combination of, in some way, six elements: earth, water, fire, wind, consciousness, and space.
The cells are made up of combinations of these four elements. What do mean by these four elements? They aren’t like our conception, or the old conception, or what it used to be held within Western chemistry. You know, these different balls with electrons whirling around them. The earth element is some kind of special ball with special electrons or something like that.
The earth element ball and the water element ball. They’re more qualities or processes. Earth element is the principle of extension, or solidity, or hardness. Water is the principle of cohesion. Fire is the principle of temperature.
Air, sometimes air, sometimes called wind energy, is the principle, the quality of movement, motility, vibration. These principle characteristics are what constitute the cells of our bodies. These combinations evolve into a gross body, this body of flesh, blood, bones. This serves as the basis for coarse consciousnesses. By coarse consciousness, I mean sense consciousnesses, like eye sense consciousness, ear, nose, tongue, body, also gross types of conceptions, mainly sense consciousnesses.
This gross body composed of flesh, blood, bones, various cells, which in turn made up of these four elements, serves as a basis for coarse consciousnesses, sense consciousnesses. But there are more subtle levels of bodies, and more subtle levels of consciousnesses. The subtle body. We can talk in terms of three different levels of bodies: coarse, subtle, and very subtle. I’ve just described the coarse, the body which we are usually familiar with, made up of flesh and bone and blood.
There’s the subtle body. The subtle body is made up of channels, winds and drops. Channels, winds and drops. The subtle body serves as a basis for subtle consciousness. By subtle consciousness, I mean there is a listing of eighty indicative consciousnesses.
We’re talking specifically about the concepts of the mental consciousness, not about sense consciousnesses. Sense consciousnesses are coarse consciousnesses. These conceptual consciousnesses are more subtle, and they have as their basis their connection with the physical plane, the subtle body. The very subtle body is made up of a very subtle fundamental wind. By wind, it’s different translations of the same word, wind energy.
Sometimes I use these two words in combination, wind energy. Mind is always found in conjunction with energy. Wherever there is energy, there is mind. Wherever there is mind, is energy. The two, as I’m going to I’ll talk about this next week or two weeks, is compared to a horse and a rider.
The energy, as I said, has motility, has ability to move, but it lacks the quality of knowing, which is the essential property of consciousnesses. Whereas the consciousness has the property of knowing, but lacks the function of movement. It’s compared to a horse and a rider. The horse is the wind energy. The rider is the consciousness.
Together, they can go anywhere. They have free movement. Sometimes it’s compared to a cripple and a blind person. Let’s see. A blind person who has a strong body and a cripple who has good eyes.
The person with good eyes, but is crippled, gets on the back of the healthy person who is blind, and together they can travel wherever they wish. This is the combination of subtlest wind energy, which supports subtlest consciousness. This combination is what goes on to future lives. This coarse body, flesh, blood, bones, it just rots and decays. They no longer serve as a basis for coarse consciousnesses.
During the death process, the sense consciousnesses will begin to diminish their function. You no longer can see, hear, taste. They begin to cease functioning. As this gradual process of death evolution moves forward, then the conceptual consciousness is when the subtle body begins to degenerate, it’s no longer able to function to support a subtle consciousness, then we lose the conceptual ability. We no longer can think.
We no longer can remember. During the death evolution, we come down to the final most subtle energy, very subtle energy, in combination with the finest, most subtle mind. This breaks the link from this gross pattern of the body, both coarse and subtle. This is what goes on to rebirth. We’re going to talk about that next week if we all live that long.
Maybe yeah, it’s nine o’clock. Are you tired? No. We could take a couple minutes to meditate on what we’ve discussed. Maybe if you’d like to stand for a minute, and then we’ll sit down.