Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute talk, Ven Jamyang explores Buddhist teachings on death and Buddha nature through both theory and a detailed case: a woman shares guilt she has carried for decades after witnessing a taxi accident. Using Buddhist analysis, Ven Jamyang shows that killing requires intention—which she lacked—and her real work is self-forgiveness rather than karmic purification. From there, the talk expands into why contemplating death brings clarity and urgency to practice: consciousness flows moment-to-moment, continuous like cycles of sleep and waking. She emphasizes that even five minutes of daily practice matters, and closes with a meditation on mind’s continuity. Direct and grounded for those beginning to work with death and self-forgiveness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2009 03 17 jamyang – mind healing 170309 2.mp3
UUID: 7c34e25d-0ce2-40d1-9025-ad61141a09fc
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009-03-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~5,631
So thinking about death and especially when we think about, you know, the other realms, that’s not easy for our minds, Especially if we feel, I have been working already so hard and it’s not fair if I’m gonna end up there. Or we can also say, I just don’t believe in that because I think, you know, human beings are good essence, so there will be something good after. You know, human beings are good in essence, but so are hell beings and hungry ghosts and animals and all beings have a mind, have this inner goodness. The inner goodness of beings is located or is the very subtle mind. And any being with a mind has that very subtle mind.
And that very subtle mind is pure by nature. There are no stains on it. So, this is what we call Buddha nature. Buddha nature refers to the subtle mind. Wish to say that.
All have the potential to completely develop themselves into a Buddha without any stains in their mind, all the realizations in their mind. All sentient beings have that potential. But it is that if I punch you, then one day it will come back to you, to me. If someone punches you, if I punch you, it will come back to me one day. And the longer in Buddhism it says the longer it takes before it comes back to you, the bigger it is, you know, unless you purify it.
And then it can come back in a very, very small form. How do you purify it? The main thing to purify is generating regret that you have done it. Seeing that by doing that action, you know, if we talk about karma, we talk about realizing that everything that I put out will come back to me. And if I put out something negative, that will come back to me.
When I have regret, I regret that I actually have done something that is going to cause me to suffer. Yeah, but that is actually not not you realize that that is very painful and what that person experiences you’re going to experience. But if you think I’m going to experience it then you start to realize what you have done to that other person. But that other person Buddhism is not so much they’re not concerned about it but when you purify it’s all about things that come back to you. It’s about your karma.
What happened to that other person that is their karma? We cannot purify them. I cannot purify the karma of anybody else. If I could, if the Buddha could, the Buddha would already have purified all our karma. But they can’t.
We have to do that ourselves. Yes. There is an influence, and you can Even if somebody mean, Ribur Rinpoche said that when you eat the meat of an animal or when you see the bones of an animal, even if that animal has died hundreds and hundreds of years ago, if you say mantras and you’re blessed on the bones, then that being to which these bones once belonged will still receive the blessings of that action that you’re doing. So, karma goes for a long period of time. If somebody has passed away and if you on their behalf, even years after they have passed away, you create merit and then dedicate it to their, you know, their life wherever they are now, that will have an effect.
The more pure your own mind is, the stronger that effect will be for that other person. But yeah. But the main effect, you know, Yeah. That’s what yeah. That’s what lama super says.
Yeah. Lama Zopa has a very subtle mind. You know? He Well, that makes sense, though, to me. Because those There’s a connection between the bone and the being.
And if you start blessing the bone, then it’s between you and the bone. And generally the lamas say whatever action you are doing you you are having the fruition of that, you know. And yes, there is an effect on others but that effect is not so big. The main effect that we have with our actions and on ourselves. So when I pray for you, the main effect will be actually on my mind.
Very selfish, but that’s just because I do the action. And yes, there might be the stronger connection we have, the more effect there will be for you too, you know, but the main thing is that happens in the person who creates the actions. So how do we purify? We regret. We regret the action because we know what kind of result is gonna come back to us.
There’s something very serious that happened many, many years ago. And it was something that we would say I was operating under diminished responsibility that I think might have led to the death of somebody. So I regard it as terribly serious even though I’ve been told that I was not at fault. I was in the back of a taxi and I was going to announce my engagement that night and I was very excited and not normal. I was very irrational in my behavior generally.
And an old man crossed on a pathway in front of the taxi. I was sitting in the back of the taxi and I saw the taxi driver was turning around and talking to and I saw this old man begin to cover begin begin to cross, and I didn’t do anything. And and the taxi hit him. And to this day, I’ve regarded myself as having killed him. Mhmm.
Can I can I show you Buddhism? What they say about this? I can’t I’ve never got over it. No. I don’t know.
Oh, you don’t know what happened to him? No. He was old. Yeah. He could’ve been hit by a taxi.
Was crossing. He was crossing. There was a crossing. Yeah. And the taxi hit him.
And I just turned this man just moaning. What? No. I still feel responsible for it. Yeah.
You I just screamed out. Be careful. Did you scream that? Screaming out. You know, like No.
You can’t cut close I can’t. I’m gonna make it very rational. Okay? Because we all wanna say, no. You didn’t do anything.
We’re sitting in the back. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it different. I can’t see how. I didn’t do it.
But we’re gonna we’re gonna we’re gonna look. What is killing? What is killing really? Because if you think I must have killed that person, Buddhism says killing is intention to kill. So you must have had a thought, I’m gonna kill that person.
You didn’t. So there was no intention to kill. But I was just screamed out. Be careful. What are doing?
Yeah. So so have you been beating yourself up your whole life? I’m guilty. I’m guilty. I should have.
I should have. Yes. I Okay. And I’ve gone away. I’ve been waiting to die in the same way.
But I’m gonna be hit by a car. You have to purify that before you’re gonna die. And and make it very clear what you have to purify and what you do not have to purify. Okay, because guilt we cannot purify. Guilt is like a self blame.
Buddhism is not about self blame. Buddhism is about I throw the ball against the wall and the ball will come back. It’s about that. Right? If you if that would come back, if you were gonna be killed in a similar way, you needed to have the intention to kill.
No. It wasn’t. So you did not have the intention to kill. Then save it. Sorry?
I didn’t save him. That’s why I was responsible because I didn’t save him. I didn’t scream out. Look out. Look out.
And I shouldn’t. Could you? No. No. I was too away with the fairies.
Okay. So if you couldn’t, why do you think you should? Been having normal. You have been normal? Were you were you normal right then?
You were not. So you had you you could not have said it in the circumstances? No. But you do expect yourself to do have done it? Yes.
So you have ex unrealistic expectations of yourself? Yes. So that’s the only thing that you have to drop. Did you get out of the taxi? The taxi driver went over to him, I just walked away by myself.
You know, what I was doing, we got, you know, we got another taxi somewhere else going home. Inauspicious way to start an engagement time. But Buddhism would say there are many cause and conditions coming together. They maybe all show the same kind of thing, but it doesn’t mean that it was a blame. Right?
Killing is only when you have the intention to kill. And then you need to have the delusions to be involved. Normally, intention to kill has to come from, you know, either attachment or anger, but it was not. So the delusion that was related to that, you you were delusional, but it was not focused on the killing. And then the person that you harm must die before you die.
And then you have to rejoice in what happened. So the only thing that might have happened is that the person died before you. But all the rest is not there. So I would say according to Buddhism, it’s not, it has nothing to do with killing. He was old.
Yeah, he was old. But all the rest is not there. The intention is not there. The delusions Rejoice. We’re not there rejoicing.
It’s not there. Just pain. Just pain. So, I think you have to learn to forgive yourself for who you were. Yes, it’s very different to me.
That’s a very different thing to regret. This, this is what you regret. Unrealistic expectations. That is what you can regret, not this. If you keep on thinking about this, this will never go away.
You will never find peace because this was not reality. This is reality. So if you start working with that in your mind, you will be able to find peace. Peace will come. Yes.
You were more a witness. But I couldn’t. You just told me you couldn’t. No. I could I could.
But I if I’ve been sensible, I could. Yeah. But you were not. No. I wasn’t.
So you couldn’t? No. Couldn’t. I thought. No.
No. So you have to expect that you were not sensible. Very very quick. You were not sensible. You were not in a capacity to do anything.
No. And that’s why you didn’t do anything. And you keep on beating yourself up. I should have, but you couldn’t. But that’s because because you had expectations.
I mean, this is the expectations of myself, which I wouldn’t have. Yeah. So you have to find peace with that. And that is forgiving yourself for where you are at. Yeah.
In what sense? You know, you need to go over things and. Yeah. But if you go over the wrong things, they can never resolve. Yeah.
That’s right. So it’s forgiveness. Forgiveness means that you completely let go, that you can see reality and you let it go. You let go your attachment to, you know, whatever other outcome you would have liked to have. So then, yeah, there was the driver and the person walking who there was a clash between them, you know, and the driver could say, I should not have been talking to you.
I should have been watching the road. And he was crossing on a crossroad. And I mean, the the driver had conditions. He had a little bit of crazy woman in the back of his car being very excited. Sure, it is.
So, can’t even blame him in that sense, you know. There is no he would not have had the intention. I’m gonna kill this man. The taxi driver didn’t have that. He got out of the car so fast and I just departed.
He was so distressed. Can you work with that this week? And next week we’ll talk about forgiveness. Unrealistic expectations of myself. Yes.
You expect yourself to do something that you couldn’t. And you know both. So there’s a tension between what you know that you can and what you think you should. There is a tension and that causes the distress. And if you become more realistic about that, that will fall away.
Because I was twenty eight. It’s about time that you let it go. So keeping that with you, you know, keep if you would take that into your death, right, that’s like a self blame, that’s like an anger towards yourself. That is what causes suffering, you know. It has caused you so many years of suffering.
And if we do not resolve that, we’ll carry that with us and that is what causes, you know, not good not so good rebirth. That will attract a lot of distress in your life. But we’ll get rid of that. Thank you. You’re well.
Perfect. Mrs Guru, I don’t know how Judy came here by mistake. Yeah. She came and she said, I’m coming to do the meditation. I said, Oh, we actually have mind healing.
And she said, Oh, that I’m on the wrong day. And I had a fear. I said, oh, maybe not. So he said No. That’s how I got to be.
The right thing. Yeah. Jamyang said, well, you could join the group. So I joined the group. That is what she knew.
She knew it pretty quickly. That’s all I know. Did you do this before? No. Second time.
Oh, it’s my second time. Yes. But the first one I didn’t finish. You didn’t you didn’t start at the beginning? No.
You came in late. We came in late at the end. Yeah. So, talking about death, what we normally do in Buddhism, and I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to tell you now. I’ll tell you what we normally do and you can say this is where we want to go or not.
We talk about the disadvantages of not thinking about death, you know, because we have the tendency not to think about it. So, we’re going to think, Oh, that’s actually really, it’s not so clever that we don’t think about it because and then there are many reasons that you contemplate. Which means that you motivate yourself to start thinking about death. Right? To help turn around that attitude.
That attitude is so strong, you and we can think now, oh, we’re really thinking about death, but if you really go into the details it’s like, oh, no, I don’t want to go there and I don’t want to go there. But, you know, so bringing yourself to thinking about it, it helps if you realize how not clever it is to not think about it. And then what they talk about why it is very good to think about death, how it helps you in your practice. And the main thing is that, that’s what I feel, is that if you realize you’re going to die, you take the moment, you use the moment fully, you practice sincerely, you know. Sometimes when you practice, if you already practice, your mind is half of the time distracted and it’s going on in other things.
But if you realize this can be actually my last moment, this is what I have to do right now. It helps you to bring your awareness to the present moment, to really do the things well. And if you can bring your mind to the present moment, we know that that mind is a very powerful mind. It’s a pure mind because what makes the mind impure is the delusion, it’s our attachment and our anger and everything that comes from that. That thinks about things that already have happened or things that might happen and it’s all in this fantasy world, right?
But if we can bring our mind to the present present moment and realize I will not have many of these moments where I can practice, our whole attention is there and then the practice becomes very powerful and very pure. So then you can go very fast, then you can use this life to to the best of its I said it? To the best of your ability. Yeah. Thinking about death is not about getting worried about what will happen when you die.
Right? Thinking about death is worrying now about your death, so that when death comes you can just all let it go and look back and say, I’ve done what I could. And then die in peace. It’s not about being afraid of what is going to happen at death. It’s about being more prepared, being more familiar what is going to happen, thinking about different scenarios that can happen.
There are meditations in Buddhism where you think about that you’re going to die and that you actually lay in your sick bed and you’re very sick and you see everything, you know, is fading away and you can’t recognize this person anymore. And because, you know and then they talk very confronting about you know, very soon you just will be your body and there is nothing else of you left. And this is how you’re gonna end up, and that’s how we’re all gonna end up. Just to help you to engage in the practice now, not to scare you at the time of death. Right?
For us Westerners, that’s difficult to hear. You know, we sometimes go into the fear like, my god, I’m gonna die and what’s gonna happen? And if I think about death, I get a little bit, but at the same, you know, at the same time there are some moments that when I talk about it then I feel like, you know, whatever happens, that’s okay. I can only try what I can try and then I have to let go all the rest. As long as that when I arrive at the time of death that I can say I’ve done what I wanted to do.
I’ve done what I could do. You have done what you could do. Then you do not have regret, you know. If we arrive at a time of death and we say, Oh, I wish I had utilized my time for something else. Then we are in a bad situation because we can’t change anything of what we have done.
And that is what we’re trying to prevent, you know, that you do not die with regret. Yeah. So don’t go into the worry. And they say there is nothing to fear about death in the sense that if we look at our experience that we have of life, we have one moment of experience and then the next moment and then the next moment and the body is like facilitates experiences. But we do not need this body to experience.
Right? Mind is what experiences, not the body. The body is like a tool. It’s like a facilitator of experiences. But if we meditate and we shut the whole body down and we don’t hear anything and we don’t see anything, we still experience, we still think, right?
There is still an I that is there that we perceive to be there. So when we die, that consciousness just moves on, you know. And just as that when we go to sleep, we also don’t think, oh my god, when I go to sleep now, then it will be finished. We never think it’s going to be finished, isn’t it, why we go to bed? But that’s what we think about death.
Oh, when I’m going to die, it’s going to be finished. But death is exactly the same as going to sleep. It’s the same kind of process they say, like waking up is like being being born. And then when you go to bed and you go to sleep, you go into the intermediate state and then you go into deep sleep, and that is like death. And then you come out of that and then you’re reborn reborn again.
It’s the same cycle. And your consciousness does similar things as at a time of death. Or in the sleep, you can have the clear light experience. There is a similitude of the clear light. So, it’s exactly the same experience.
It’s just continuous. And that continuation means that there is always an experience. So, it’s not that when you die, although you might lose control over this body and the perception of this body, there there is still a perceiver, there is still an experience, there is still a knowing. And that might be more on a subtle level like when you go to sleep and then you wake up. You just wake up somewhere else, you know.
But when you wake up, that’s very normal. That is just as that is normal that we wake up in our own bed. Is the mind that you have, is it like, the mind that you carry on to the next rebirth? Yeah. Well, mind is the same mind.
Mind is like a stream of moments. And the stream is the same stream. But the moments are all different. And the moments progress. And the moments, whatever you experience, can go from high to low, from very painful to very happy to anything.
Depending on what you have created before, depending on what causes and conditions arise in your life that ripens certain karma. But it is the same stream. Yeah. And that will always be with you. And you know yourself.
Sorry? And you will know yourself. Do we? You will know yourself. It’s if it’s the same stream.
Yes. You will. You will know yourself. Eventually. We hope.
They say the Buddha doesn’t know himself, herself. The Buddha knows herself. I should start talking in her form. Yeah. So we don’t have to be afraid of death in that sense.
It’s just a continuation. And the more you meditate upon it, the more, you know, if you think about this moment of consciousness is going to go to the next moment, it’s going to go to the next, it’s going to go to the next, you can almost guide yourself through that. Right? You can think about how would it be how well would my consciousness go at the end of my life? I imagine that I’m old or I’m very sick and I’m laying in my bed and this is happening and then the next moment this is happening.
And then at a certain point all the sensory input fades away and my consciousness becomes very subtle and it fades away further and you can visualize that you go through that stage. And actually a lot of Buddhist practice uses that. We practice that. We go through that every day so that we are familiar with the process. I think one of the most important things would be not to fight death.
Yes. And so many of us will, I’ve known people that fought death. But people who fight death, they’re actually very attached, you know. They’re just trying to hold on to something. But even when you practice you can prepare your mind and you can, the more you’re familiar with it, the more you can let go of your resistance, the more you can let go of whatever you’re touched on.
You know, you will live, you will have to let go of your children, will have to let go of your husband, you will have to let go of your family, you will have to let go of your house, your car, your everything that is dear to you. And you can think about how that would be if you have to let go of everything. That helps, isn’t it? If you wait till the moment that you die it it can be very difficult. Because it is a struggle, know.
It is what makes us us. It gives us the identity, everything that is around us, our whole environment, our body. And letting that go is letting go, having that feels like we’re gonna we’re gonna fade out of existence. But when you guide yourself through it, you can feel, oh no, I will still exist, you know, even when all these things are gone, there will still be be existence. And that can give a lot of peace and a lot of trust and Yeah.
Contentment is about letting go. Yeah. You have to go, Julie. Yes. Do you have a is there a a a meditation for this?
No. I didn’t bring your meditation. I’ll try and remember. That’s fine. Do your meditation is on On Yeah.
Next time, I’ll bring your meditation on forgiveness. Okay. Thank you very much. Goodbye, girls. On the CD or or on the paper?
One CD. On one CD. Which one? Meditations on one, people would all, you know, get the access to it. Yeah.
Because I find I do a lot better when you’re Talking. Yeah. Yeah. I should actually sit down and just do them on my own again, isn’t it? And then to one.
Yeah. It’s what Mhmm. That would be wonderful because reading them distract from the meditation. Healing meditation. You know, the one you’ve been taking back.
Yeah. You know, all of those would be good for the long run. So which one were that? Can you remember? Maybe I’ll I’ll write them down.
The clarity. The compassion, the clarity of the mind. Is that the continuity of the mind? Love meditation? Was a good one.
How many? Was love meditation. Yeah. Taking care of that child. Yeah.
All of those. Did you want to anchor? No. Maybe something we’re gonna skip that. We did about equanimity where you have your enemy who also wants to be happy just like you.
What I can do, I can I can I think the love meditation and meditation from last week, I can make quite simple a CD from that, but making that whole CD? I’m not sure if I can do that before I go away, but I definitely would like to do that. So can you wait that long? Or you wanna have the love and the compassion before that? Yeah.
Put a whole CD. So I’ll make the love and the compassion on one CD, and then the rest will do when I come back. If I’m gonna do them all, I’m gonna do them all again. I’m gonna record them all again. Yeah.
But with the ones you’ve got, you could just burn them. Yeah. I have to put them together and burn them. Yeah. Yeah.
Good. Yeah. Appreciate it. Yeah. Good.
So if you wanna read about death, if you go into the Lamrim Lamrim book, any of the Lamrim books, there’s a whole section on death that talks about how we think about death. There are meditations that go that that says, you know, death is certain, the time of death is uncertain, and what will help you at the time of death? And the more you contemplate that, the more you realize that I have to practice Dharma and I have to start doing that now, you know. Because we think, Oh, I still have a long time to live and, but if you really look how much time we have, first of all we don’t know how long we have to live it, can we finish tomorrow? And then the time that we have, we are caught up in so many other things that are important for us to sustain our life.
The time that we have to practice is actually very, very short. You know? Is thinking about it doing meditation. I’m sorry? You can’t?
Possibly. Twenty four seven. Yeah. In a way. Yeah.
But it’s well, in a way, it is. You know? In a in a way, it can be twenty four seven, but but in a way, you can also say, even if I do five minutes a day, that is better than nothing. Right? But what we do is I say, oh, I actually should start with a meditation, but I’m, you know, I’m really in a hurry and I have to do this and this and this.
So I’ll first do that and then the next thing happens. And then before we know it’s evening and we think I’m really tired now. I’ll I’ll do tomorrow morning. So we postpone all the time and we never take even that five minutes. So when you say I’m gonna do the five minutes and these five minutes is my priority.
I’m not gonna go anywhere before I have done these five minutes because you you you see how nurturing and how useful and practical and important it is for you, not just for now, but also, you know, for for however long you’re gonna live and after this life. And that five minutes is very important. And if you do that every day, there is gonna be a continuum, you know, just as if we have the mind with many moments, you have every twenty four hours five minutes coming in where you do meditation. And if you it’s like you create a continuum of that and your mind knows, you know, the moment you’re going to sit your mind somehow knows, Oh, there is these five minutes. This is where I’m going to go.
And that five minutes can actually nurture your whole day. Right? And the five minutes maybe become ten minutes. I’m talking about that, you know. And yes, if we have twenty four hours, we wish twenty four hours, you know, but even being a nun I do not my life is still very busy with many many other things and many distractions and really doing this, it has nothing to do with being busy.
It has to do with where we put our priorities in life. That’s what I feel because I can distract myself the whole day from doing proper meditations, being a nun. And I’m doing all kinds of nun things. It’s true. It’s true.
And if, you know, it looks like, oh yeah, I’m doing all Dharma. But to bring the mind really in the state of Dharma, that is, you don’t have to be a nun, you don’t have to lead a spiritual life in the sense of, you know, coming here and doing this and doing it. It’s like taking the time out and being very sincere and and focused on what is important to you and and going into your mind, connecting with your mind. Okay. You know?
I didn’t prepare a meditation for today because I felt I had too much too much material, but we can we can close off with a small one. Ten to four. Ten past. Five minutes? Okay.
Okay. And I’ll make that meditation for next week. I’ll look up what we what is recorded. So just close your eyes. And I know that I give you a lot of information.
So for now, just let it all go. You can quite easily find it back in books. And you know that it exists. Feel your body. Feel breathing.
Be aware of the breath going in and out. And be aware of your experience right now. And stay with that experience in the moment. So the changes that happen in your mind. And you don’t judge them.
You just observe. And this mind, whatever you experience and the observation of your experience, that continues moment to moment. Sometimes we experience busyness. Sometimes the mind is quiet. Sometimes we’re very awake.
Sometimes we’re deep asleep. We’re not conscious of what is going on in our mind. That continuation is always there. It will never stop. Try to connect with that continuity of mind.
And then make your own conclusions. Meditation. And then we dedicate the merits. I think in that whatever merit that we have created by listening and thinking about the teachings, may that become a cause for us and for all sentient beings to experience perfect happiness in the future. And maybe we’re able to continue reflecting on impermanence and death so that at every death that we encounter, we find peace and comfort.
Thank you for coming. So next time we talk about forgiveness and is there anything else that we have to talk about? What practice? Oh, wait. I can take the purification practice.
I can take some text on that, how to do the purifying and then forgiveness. Practice, I would say come on a Wednesday and do the practice. Yeah. You do some Monday, Wednesday. But that’s you know, doing practice, that’s really Buddhism, and I feel this is there might be people here who are not I just remember that, like I don’t know.
Someone mentioned that really trusted in practices. Was it? Yeah. How do you feel about that, Jane? If we do practice?
Buddha’s practice? We can can do visualization with the with the Buddha and sending light, you know, like a light visualization. That is actually very nice. Okay. Forgiveness and light meditation and purification.
Okay. Good. We’ll do that.