Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Pende Hawter opens this 46-minute teaching on death and dying with updates on his mother’s recovery from a serious illness and the role of lamas’ prayers in preparing for future lives. He addresses questions from a prior session, clarifying that once consciousness leaves the body, disposal method is irrelevant, and explaining four traditional Tibetan approaches: sky burial, water burial, fire burial (cremation), and earth burial. He then teaches the foundational meditation on death, outlining three certainties: death is certain and universal, the time of death is uncertain, and only the state of one’s mind determines how well one meets death. Through concrete examples—from the two-hundred-thousand daily deaths worldwide to the single breath separating life from next rebirth—he conveys both the inevitability and imminence of death. The talk emphasizes that recognising death’s certainty generates conviction to develop positive mental qualities and that life’s preciousness lies not in its length but in how deliberately it is lived. He stresses that practices for the dying aim to generate positive potential, not to deny the naturalness of dying itself.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 D and D 1994 11 12.mp3
UUID: df45a37a-9a1f-4e16-967f-362ed08967e6
Teacher: Ven Pende Hawter
Collection: Death and Dying (Ven Pende Hawter)
Date: 1994-11-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.0 minutes
Words: ~6,757
That came up from that first session. Apparently, someone wanted to know what happened to my mother. So my mother recovered, and she’s now at home and just managing at home. She has emphysema which from which there is no recovery. So she’s still very short of breath and probably still has limited life expectancy.
In fact, Lama Zopa said that there were indications from his observations that she would meet with a how did he put in a major obstacle, a major life hindrance next year, which makes me suspect that she’ll probably pass away next year. But in the meantime, she’s had all these practices done for her and a great deal of positive energy generated and also when she dies then because he’s met her and through the connection with me then he will intercede if you like on her behalf and be able to help her to take a better type of rebirth So I think she’s an extraordinarily fortunate lady that she has that contact with him. A couple of other things from that first session. Someone from what I was saying about ashes and stupas, someone thought that was asking whether Buddhas always got cremated and the answer is no. That as we’ll talk a little bit more later, that once the consciousness has left the body then it doesn’t matter how the body is disposed of.
That once the consciousness has left the body, then it doesn’t matter how the body is disposed of because it’s just an empty shell. And so traditionally in Tibet, the body would be disposed of according to one of the four elements, and I think that was determined astrologically. So for instance, there was sky burial which many of you would have heard of where the there were certain people who who cut up the bodies and fed them to the vultures. So that was like a sky burial, and that was done in a the people who were actually doing this process apparently were practitioners. And, one of the lamas said that depending on the size of the body, then a certain number of vultures would be summoned, and only that number of vultures would come, which I think is very interesting.
And I think the vultures themselves may have been, you know, some special beings or something. So that’s sky burial, water burial, where it’s like the body being disposed of into lake or river or something, a fire burial, which is cremation, and earth burial, which is into the ground. So the bodies in Tibet would actually be disposed of in one of those four different ways. So as I said, once the consciousness is left, then it doesn’t matter how the body is disposed of and it’s up to the individual. And recently at Chenrezig Institute in Queensland, we had our first burial on the actual property there.
But probably because of what I was saying earlier about the the potential to bless the ashes, make them into holy objects, and and then to then put them into stupas or or holy objects, then then that perhaps is the preferred way to go because then there can be lasting benefit for the people who come afterwards. Someone was asking me, Sue, the other Sue was asking me about these four opponent powers whether you, you know, you need to sit down and meditate on these after you’ve done some negative action and the answer is no, that this can just be something you can do quickly in your head, in your mind when you’ve done the negative action. You can just immediately think, you know, have regret for that action. I wish I hadn’t done it and and apply these four opponent powers in your mind. Ideally, they should be applied sort of immediately after you’ve done the action and not sort of that night when you do your prayers or whatever.
That’s the same principle actually when you do positive actions. It’s actually immediately good to dedicate the positive energy from that action rather than leave it to some later time because for instance it said that for instance one moment of anger can destroy a lot of this positive energy if it hasn’t been dedicated and so you know help an old lady across the street then immediately you sort of dedicate that positive energy and you might think by me helping this old lady across the street may that create the cause for me to be able to help all sentient beings or or to lead every sentient being to complete enlightenment out of suffering. So every action, every positive action you do, you you try and dedicate for that higher cause or seal for that higher cause. And similarly trying to immediately purify all the negative actions. Again, there’s a story of the this one lovely thing about Tibetan Buddhism is full of stories, and so there’s a story about the in terms of analyzing our day’s activities because I said it’s good at the end of each day also to dedicate or see all the positive energy of the positive actions we’ve done that day and to purify the negative things we’ve done, the negative energy, by doing something like the four opponent powers or perhaps doing a certain number of Vajrasattva mantras, whatever.
For instance, often it’s recommended doing twenty one Vajrasattva mantras when you go to bed. But there’s a story of the Tibetan practitioner monk who at the end of each day would have a bag of black and white pebbles and for each negative action he’d pull out one black pebble and for each positive action one white pebble and then he’d see which pile was bigger and which would be a very good reminder actually of you know if you had lots of black pebbles and very few white ones it would sort of give you a bit of a jolt and make you want to try and build up your white pile in the future. And so that was actually something that this particular practitioner did. So that’s a few things that came up in morning tea about things we talked about this morning. Is there any other particular questions people have?
Yes? No. I do agree with you. I agree with you entirely. And Can you just repeat the question?
Anyone who asks a question please ask. The question was relating to why is why isn’t it okay to die basically relating back to what I was saying about my mother and so yeah the whole point of this weekend is to get across the point that it is okay to die and that we have a certain life force lifespan and when that finishes then we die and it’s quite okay So I think often when the practices are given someone like my mother it’s as a way of quickly generating a lot a great deal of positive energy that can help that person in future lives now my mother may well have recovered from this episode anyway I mean it’s quite common for instance with people with emphysema to get a superimposed superimposing chest infection and be hospitalized and recover and that go on for years. So but the main thing was there’s an opportunity for generating a great deal of positive energy which can help her and us because we were doing the actions and creating in our future lives and her future lives. So it’s sort of trying to set up the most conducive conditions for future lives.
So the whole idea of these teachings is not to prolong life but to create as much positive energy as possible while we’re alive. And in a sense the often I’ll give an example which which emphasizes what you’re saying or agrees with what you’re saying that often someone will go to Lama Zopa and say, Lama Zopa, I’ve got I’ve got cancer or AIDS or something and and I want to live longer and he’ll say why? What’s the point of living longer? You know if you’re just going to live longer in order to create more negativity there’s no point in living longer. So the only reason to live longer is so that you can create more positive potentials on the mind stream and do more to help you and others in future lives.
And one example of that I’ll just finish this illustration one example of that was a fellow who came to me with cancer, a young young man with cancer several years ago, and he’d been offered chemotherapy several times and declined because he was happy to die in effect he didn’t see the need to prolong his life but then he decided that if he lived longer he would have an opportunity to learn and to grow more before he died which would be beneficial. So I thought that was a good motivation for wanting to live longer so then he elected, he changed his mind and had chemotherapy, lived longer, attended various courses and things to improve his mind, develop his mind, and and then he died quite peacefully. So that I saw as a good motivation for living longer. But just to live longer for the sake of living longer in Buddhist terms is meaningless. So the only reason to live longer is if we can put more positive potentials into the mind.
But basically the teaching is that, you know, we have a certain lifespan, karmically determined lifespan, and when that’s finished then it’s it’s okay to die. Dying is a natural normal thing, but it all comes back to just trying to set up the most conducive conditions for the next life. You want to ask something Yes. Yeah. She I’m doing this stuff.
Sure. Did did you then also get, like, lamas to do prayers and things? No. Oh, you didn’t? Oh, that I think would have been wise and still wise to do.
Khensur Rinpoche or Amdo Pal or a monastery in India or something. Always. Reading on what what who she is. You know? No.
No. No. Because because that can help her to take a a better rebirth where then she can more quickly meet with spiritual teachings and develop her mind for the benefit of others. So for instance each year, I just did it just a couple of days ago before I came, I sent a list of all of the people at Karunā, our hospice service who died of fifty or whatever seventy that have died over the last year. Sent that list off to Lama Zopa and asked him to make prayers for all those people with a copy of our annual report.
And that’s that and that and that’s the same thing I will now do as I do each year. I’ll send that same list and the annual report to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, perhaps with a money offering and asking him to make prayers because because these holy beings, they their prayers can affect the the the lives or the can they can have an impact on the people who’ve died. Definitely, your prayers and things had a positive effect on your mother. There’s something else I was gonna say about your mother there as well. Yes, you see now even though your mother wasn’t Buddhist, she had the karma to have you as a daughter making these prayers on her behalf.
So there was this connection there. And so, again, she’s very fortunate that she had that connection, which can then help her in future lives. Even though she wasn’t a Buddhist, she had she had still created the causes to have you as her daughter working on her behalf. So no. They’re good questions.
Good questions. Yes. But who are sick? Well, are sick, who are well. It’s not usual because in effect all the Lamas do twenty four hours a day is to pray for the welfare of every living being and it’s just that those who have died they make special prayers that they will take a better type of rebirth etc.
So in effect every holy being in the world is already praying for all of your friends. So it doesn’t make a lot of I remember once or twice saying, you know, Rinpoche, you know, please pray for the success of Karunā or something, and he sort of looked at me a bit puzzled and said, of course. And I’m like, of course. Why are you asking me this? You know, it’s what I do all day.
It’s my job, it’s what I’m paid for. So it’s sort of automatic and it’s not the usual thing but it’s certainly the usual thing when someone for instance has a life threatening illness that you can then check with the Lama. One of our staff, one of our nurses actually, has just been diagnosed with or just had a malignant melanoma and had an excision which proved that it was malignant. So because she’s a long term student of the Lamas, immediately send off the fax to Lama Zopa. I’m sure she had a bit of trepidation because of what was likely to come back.
And so immediately, this list of practices came back for her to do, to help to it said that there is a life What was it? There is some danger to her life, and she needed to do these certain practices. And interestingly, I’ll mention this now, one of the common practices to do for someone who has a life threatening illness or a threat to their life is to save the lives of other beings, in particular, animals. And so one of the practices this this nurse had to do, one of a number, was to save the lives of thirty thousand animals, which is the biggest number most people have heard of. Usually, it’s a few thousand, but thirty thousand is a lot.
And so that can be small animals like worms or little fish or whatever, just anything that you actually stop them from dying. And I said, ideally, that you to include the lives of a few bigger animals, and, actually, you keep them alive, like keep them on your property if you have a property, that’s even better if you can do that. But I don’t think she’s going to rush out and buy a sheep farm or something and look after thirty thousand sheep. But I know a few of the students around Australia who who do have farms and they’ve helped various friends by taking a few sheep and goats and things like that so that’s a very common practice and a very powerful practice because by saving the lives of others you’re in a sense creating a of positive energy which helps to improve the length of your life as well. Similarly for instance karmically it’s said that one of the main causes of having long life and good health is helping other people like being a nurse or a doctor or something that actually creates the cause of having long life and good health.
You’re helping to keep other people well or provide comfort for other people physically through nursing or medicine that creates the cause for your own good health and long life, if not this life then certainly future lives. And as well as that then you also it sets up the habitual pattern in the mind or the tendency in the mind from life to life that you continue to want to help other people. So those who are nurses and doctors then that tendency has been sort of brought with you from past lives often many of you from a young age would have wanted to help other people and interestingly when we think about those karmic tendencies I think in my own family where I grew up on a farm and I certainly grew up thinking that killing you know trapping rabbits and shooting birds parrots and crows and silver eyes was normal because that’s what you did when you grew up on a farm and I had no hesitation in doing that killing which I now deeply regret but I remember my older sister from a very young age couldn’t bear to see anything being killed on the farm, couldn’t bear to see the sheep being slaughtered you know for us to eat and brought her a great deal of pain so much more than I did she had this very strong gentle kind streak within her and I mean she’s always been that sort of person, very kind sort of person and so there was a very strong tendency that she brought with her.
Other children well we’ve seen several examples in recent months. Two ten year olds in England who killed a child, and just the other day we saw this three or four children aged eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen in Queensland who murdered this old man. Unbelievable that a child of that age can can be killing people. But just the tendency is so strong from past lives that the the this tendency to kill harm is so strong that it can manifest even in a young child. Other children couldn’t even you know, some children pull the wings off insects, and others couldn’t even bear to to do something like that.
And I was thinking that the other day as I was reading the story about Hamas bomb attack on the Israeli bus. This twenty seven year old Hamas suicide fighter who who you know, the mind of someone who can get onto a loaded bus with ten kilograms of TNT in his pocket and ignite it in the middle of a crowded street, I mean, it’s frightening, isn’t it, that the mind of someone can be that sort of so far off off center or so deluded as to think that that was a positive action just almost beyond comprehension and that same person at the same time has the enlightenment potential or the potential to become fully developed, fully enlightened and yet so deluded. The delusion is so heavy. What was your question? You’ve answered it.
Okay. Could you just say Please use the machines. Yes. Just remembered. Could you just say briefly how if if it’s true that only really enlightened beings can truly help others who are ill or dying, how can our prayers, as not being enlightened yet, actually help?
It’s it’s it’s not true that only enlightened being can help those who are sick or dying, I think our prayers can certainly help those who are sick or dying, but I think when it actually comes to affecting or hooking a person’s consciousness which is heading for a lower rebirth, hooking it so that it has a higher rebirth either immediately after death or even weeks or months or years afterwards can only really be done by a higher lama, someone with higher realizations. So we’re talking not so much about the ability to help but the degree of help, the the amount we’re able to help. Similarly, tomorrow and and as Khensur Rinpoche will do on in two weeks’ time, the course on PoWA or transference of consciousness. He’ll be explaining, as I may explain a little bit tomorrow, that it’s not terribly difficult to learn to do the PoWA practice for yourself. It’s a tantric technique, but one of its beauties is that it’s not difficult to to to master the training.
Can be done by ordinary people sort of like us. But to do the Phowa practice for somebody else, it’s it can only really be accomplished by someone with a high level of realization. Someone I think it says on the on the second Mahāyāna path, the path of seeing, I think it is if I’m if I’m right, path of seeing, second or third Mahāyāna path. So it’s said that you need that degree of realization. But still our prayers do have an effect on on others that we’re working for just as you you were saying.
For instance, it’s it actually says that that those who can most benefit the person who’s died are those with the closest karmic connection. So friends, relatives, loved ones, their prayers can actually have most effect. And also it’s said that those who have shared and this perhaps relates more to the monastic situation but or the way people live together in a group perhaps it could even be a dharma center but those who’ve shared the same utensils or possessions So like people in a monastery or a dharma center, if you’ve worked together, eaten together, then your prayers can greatly help the person who’s died. So, for instance, probably the prayers of those with a close close karmic connection with the person who’s died would have more effect just with a minister who doesn’t know the person who’s died is called in to conduct the funeral and say prayers, unless that minister has high realizations but generally it’s our prayers of those closest to the person who’s died that would probably have most impact, most effect. Have to this can be a little bit of a tricky area, we have to really be very careful here because the basic law of karma is that one of the basic four aspects of karma is that we can only experience the karma that we ourselves have created.
We can’t experience someone else’s karma just as they can’t experience ours, and we generally can’t intervene with another person’s karma, if I can use that expression. But a person with high realizations can have some effect on, as I said, on hooking another person’s consciousness or helping them through that dying process. For instance, I mentioned earlier, as things about the third or fourth talk I’ve given in two days, I have to remember who I’ve said what to, but I was talking earlier, I think, to this group about Geshe Jampa Wangdu, about the lam-rim meditation for two weeks, and one of the strong theories or or rumors about his death was that he had died because he, through the power of his meditation, his realizations, he had deliberately taken on some life obstacles to the Dalai Lama and had chosen to end his life in order to remove the life hindrances or obstacles to the Dalai Lama. So that someone with very high realizations can actually take on someone else’s karma. And often actually the our own teachers, by helping us, can can physically become ill and I think often we’ve seen this with our teachers.
I remember I remember just once seeing Lama Zopa at the beginning of initiation and, again, the certain requirements or certain requirements to doing some of these initiations. And he was sitting there in meditation, and one of the people in the room, he said, oh, I think better you don’t do this. We didn’t know why he said that. I was a very good practitioner, and he said, better you better you don’t stay for this. And then some blood sort of came from his nose just after he said that, and he wiped it away.
Like some obstacle or hindrance, which somehow he’d picked up on and taken away or something. And very often we see that the Lamas can actually become someone like Lama Zopa who is so sensitive and highly realized and can physically become ill when he takes on some hindrances or some problems that are around him because they’re sensitive to the vibrations even of a place and there was a story once when Lama Zopa visited one of our centers which had been the place where there’s been a lot of disharmony between the students and Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa was physically vomiting just by being there and had to leave immediately because it just it just affected his mind in that way because of this disharmony. So so so people with high realizations, they can, in a sense, affect the karma of somebody else, but generally, it’s only the karma that we create that we can experience but we have to remember that if a high lama intervenes on our behalf it’s not interfering with our karma it’s actually the result of karma that we’ve created. Like in your what’s your name? Natalie.
Oh, you’re Natalie? Yes. I’m Okay. Your name’s been mentioned by my host a number of times the last two days with great thanks. So, yeah, like in your case, it wasn’t like by you getting lamas to to to pray for her or whatever, by your prayers, it wasn’t it’s not like interfering with your mother’s karma.
It’s actually part of your mother’s karma because if she hadn’t created the causes then you wouldn’t be doing those things. And this discussion came up yesterday at Daw Park at the hospice in terms of, for instance, this concept of giving pain medication for somebody which some people would see as interfering with the person’s karma. If you give pain medication to somebody you relieve their pain, you relieve their suffering that you’re interfering with their karma, but in fact that’s incorrect because it’s only because that person has created the cause that actually there’s someone there to give the pain medication. Otherwise, we’d be lying out in the desert or in the bush or something with no pain medication if we hadn’t created the cause for it. karma in the concepts of karma are quite simple, but the subtleties of it are quite complex and we may talk more about that on the weekend.
Any other questions? Sorry. Can you use Their emotional pain or their fear? Yeah. So the question, incidentally, reason that Sue wants you to use the radio mic is not so that you can be heard, but so that the questions are recorded on the tape so that then I don’t have to repeat for other people to use in the future.
So the question relates to the emotional pain that people experience when they’re dying and in particular non Buddhists, how to help people who are non Buddhists and may not have this sort of understanding. So this is the sort of thing we are going to cover over the course of the weekend and there are various methods that can be used but as we’ll go on to shortly the crucial message from this weekend is that our whole life is a preparation for death, and the time to start preparing for our death is now because if we don’t, then when when it comes time to die then we’re likely to meet it with a lot of fear and apprehension. So the crucial thing is to help people prepare for death as early as possible and to actually live our whole life as a preparation for death. But we’ll cover that more when we come to that. Alright.
So you heard that? Right. Yeah. We’ll we’ll cover that. I’ll I’ll talk quite a lot about how to help someone who’s dying, and then I’m sure perhaps more questions and things will will come from that.
So perhaps later today I’ll go into in some detail how to help someone who’s dying using some specifically Buddhist methods and then some more general methods or non-Buddhist methods, how to help someone who’s conscious as opposed to unconscious, how to help someone with a spiritual belief as opposed to someone without a spiritual belief. So that will all be covered today and tomorrow. Probably by the end of tomorrow, all your questions will be answered. Otherwise, Sue may give you your money back if you Not if you like it. So there’s another another question.
Will you also be talking about attachment? Yes. Yes. We’ll see how we go and then, you know, by the end of today or something you can see what sort of questions you have that are not answered. Attachment certainly we will talk about in terms of rebirth and what causes rebirth and how to transcend rebirth or uncontrolled rebirth and also the negative aspects of attachment in terms of doing this transference practice as well.
Khensur Rinpoche will talk a lot about that as well in the Phowa weekend because one of the greatest hindrances to doing this transference practice is attachment to things of this life. The attachment blocks the ability to let go and eject the eject the consciousness. We will talk more about those things. So I better move on. So in terms of the different practices or the different types of meditations in the general teachings in the Sūtra system, we can say there are there are three main types of meditation that we can do.
The first one is what’s often called the nine point reflection or meditation on death, looks at the certainty of death and the imminence of death and makes us think about what can help us at the time of death. So it gives us this strong sense of the shortness and preciousness of life. The second main type of meditation in our tradition actually looks at the actual dying process, the actual death process, and step by step leads us through that process. And then the other type of traditional meditation that would be done in Buddhist traditions is that the person would actually visit a burial ground or charnel ground they used to call them, where they would have the bodies and actually reflect about the nature of death and impermanence. For instance, I think the most powerful teaching I ever had on death and impermanence, on exactly what death was was with the same lama who I mentioned I’ve mentioned several times who sat in meditation that several days after his death at our meditation center in India, His body was wrapped in a sheet and put on an open cremation site just with the wood stacked up and then that was lit and as we did particular prayers and you saw the flames coming up and the sheet burning away and then you see the flesh sort of burning and you sort of wince, you think that must be very painful, know, they’re getting burnt to death, and then you think no, actually that’s just an empty shell, the mind or the consciousness is gone, so you start to get a very strong sense of this separation, this distinction between the mind and the body.
While we’re alive, the mind just pervades all parts of the body, but it’s actually not it’s not of the same substance as the body. And in fact, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, his definition of death if we if I actually said to you, what is death? To make you think about what what actually is death, and his his definition of death is the label that we put on the separation of the the body and the consciousness or the mind and the body. When the mind and the body separate we give that the label death, but that’s all it is, it’s just simply the separation of the mind and the body and in the West that’s something that generates great fear, apprehension, but it’s just simply this move of the body of the mind away from the body and moves moves off onto its onto the next life and that’s death. So in this first meditation, I’ll explain some of the main points of it and then we’ll actually stop and do it as a meditation before lunch.
It’s probably a good thing to meditate on before lunch. What could be your last lunch? So the first of these main points, three main points, the first one is that death is certain, the second one is the time of death is uncertain, and the third one is that the only thing that can help us at the time of death is the state of our mind, the state of our spiritual or mental development, and each of these has certain sub points. And in the first one, the death is certain, and I mean we think about them, hear our death is certain, I mean that’s just so obvious why I even mention it, but we don’t actually stop and meditate on it deeply. So the first point here is that there’s no possible way to escape death, that nobody ever has escaped death, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, every great being in the world has had to go through the dying process.
And also if we just consider for instance that the what’s the current world population? Six billion. Six billion. Is it? Yeah.
Yeah. Was five when I wrote this. Something over five, isn’t it? And of that current world population of something over five billion, in a hundred years time, it just seems like a vast number of people throughout the world, but in a hundred years time virtually none of those people will still be here. Almost everyone will have died and there’ll be another, I mean there’ll be another ten billion by then probably, but that particular five billion will have gone.
You know, it’s the entire population of the world now will no longer be here other than a few individuals who live beyond a hundred. And the fact that every day in the world something over two hundred thousand people die I think in the world every day, which is something like seventy five million people a year die, so it’s a fairly common occurrence And it’s just it’s just happening every day. There’s just so many people dying, and and, you know, and yet we expect somehow we expect that we’re going to keep living for a long time. A bit of a false thought. So the second point is that life has a definite inflexible limit, and each moment brings us closer to the end of this life.
And so in reality, that each one of us is actually from the moment that we’re born, we’re actually dying. It’s sort of as each second, each day goes by, we’re actually that much closer to our death. So Lama Zopa for instance says that you if you look at your watch and as each second goes by my watch doesn’t have a second hand, but as each second or minute goes by then you’re that much closer to your death. You’re another second or minute closer to your death. And so by doing that it’s it’s not to sort of make us depressed or want us to jump off a bridge, but just to give us that sense of how life is ticking away minute by minute and that we really have no time to lose because we don’t know how much time we’ve got left.
Of course, you can also say that we’re living until we die and those of us working with the dying, that’s the philosophy that we work with, that to give people quality of life until they die, but to understand that we have a sort of a life as a definite limit that we have to to go by. And the third point in this meditation is that death comes in a moment and this time is unexpected, and the sobering thought here is that the all that separates us from this life and the next is one breath, so all that death is is that we breathe out and we don’t breathe in again, that’s all that death is. So our hold on life is actually that tenuous that it’s just one single breath that separates us from this life and the next. Lama Zopa is often more cheery than that and he says the only thing that separates us from this life and the hell realms is one breath, but I won’t be so pessimistic. So anyway that it’s just simply, you know, and that’s what you observe and sometimes that comes as a shock to people when they witness their first natural death that you’re with a person and they breathe out and they don’t breathe in and that’s death, that’s the end of life.
And it sort of comes as a bit of a shock because it’s just so simple and so natural. Sometimes a bit more traumatic than that, but basically they breathe out, they don’t breathe in. So by contemplating the fact that death is certain, it helps us to generate the conviction to practice the spiritual path and develop our inner potentials by developing our mind, these positive qualities in our mind, and abandoning negative states of mind, disturbing states of mind. So it gives us the incentive to embrace the spiritual path by recognizing the certainty of death and the finiteness of life. Now the next point is that the next main part of this meditation is that the time of death is uncertain.
And the fact that well, the first point here is that the duration of our lifespan is uncertain. And we know that young people can die before old people, sick people before well people, etcetera. These things we know from our own experience in our own families, and I’ve heard several cases for instance, and I’m sure some of the nurses and others have as well, that of the carers dying before the sick person, a few people nodding their heads, so this can happen often it comes as a surprise, and I even are close friends of my mother’s where the husband was caring for the wife who had Alzheimer’s and he was going to visit her and he was killed in a car crash. So these things happen every day. Just in some I mean we read in the papers every day of so many amazing, amazing stories of freakish accidents where people die of giant waves and was telling the story I think last night about a child in in Brisbane or just south of Brisbane.
Also, we were talking about the the karmic causes for for living or not living, a little bit like what Natalie was saying. But, you know, when the causes to continue living are exhausted, then life finishes. So there was a story of this two year old child in Brisbane, and at the age of one, the child had been hit by a car and survived. And at the age of two, a pass a tire a wheel flew off a a passing car and hit the child and killed the child. And the other interesting part of that story was that the father was extremely angry at God for allowing such a terrible thing to happen.
But you know in Buddhist terms that child only had the causes, the karma, to live to two years of age, and those causes finished and the child died. Just as thinking now about my younger brother who died severely crippled and died at the age of seven of pneumonia, so he had the causes to be born crippled and to die at a young age and for his karma to be finished in that way. Does that include people who choose to take their own life? No, because they’re artificially ending their life. Their lifespan actually is much longer than that, so suicidal euthanasia, which are big topics in themselves, we can touch on this weekend, which fit into this course, they’re sort of different because that’s an artificial ending of a natural lifespan.
We’ll talk a little bit later about the factors that limit life, the different things that limit life, but that’s a different story again. Perhaps we won’t touch on that now until we’ve covered some of these other topics. We can talk about things this weekend, things like suicide, euthanasia, donor transplants, abortion, those sort of different issues, because they all fit into this larger topic of death and dying. So the next point here is that there are many causes and circumstances that lead to death, but few that favor the sustenance of life. And very often even the things that sustain life can actually end life.
So for instance, know, we can get electrocuted by appliances in our house.