Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching on death and dying, Ven Pende Hawter explores how Buddhist practitioners prepare for death through meditation and understanding the dying process. He describes the stages of consciousness dissolution at death, the gap between physical death and consciousness departure, and why a body should not be cremated or buried for two to three days to avoid harming lingering consciousness. Hawter walks through practical signs of consciousness leaving the body, including heat retention at the heart region and shifts in the presence around the deceased, then considers how pain medication affects mental clarity during the final transition. He concludes by stressing that our habitual mental patterns determine our state of mind at death, linking end-of-life awareness back to lifelong spiritual practice, and shares contrasting stories of two dying AIDS patients whose deaths reflected how they had lived. Addressed to practitioners and those working in palliative care.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 D and D 1994 11 12.mp3
UUID: d596ceb1-b37c-4eb7-9e11-6597e90a2b80
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: ~6,412
They talk about at the time of death mixing the mother and son clear lights, and so that the yogic practitioner is totally familiar with all these stages and is able then, like the Lamas I’ve mentioned, to use the death experience as a way of attaining liberation because they’ve rehearsed it again and again. And it’s very interesting, this particular also related to to these different yogas is the they talk about the yogas of sleeping, dreaming, and waking. So as well as being able to experience this in their normal waking state, the meditator or yogi can actually use this the sleeping, dreaming, and waking states to simulate in a sense death, intermediate state, and rebirth, and also then to, in those states, to rehearse taking on the different bodies of the Buddha by using sleep and dream and awakening. So there’s actually a so there’s different yogas of sleeping and dreaming, etcetera. So the person comes to to this final stage of the dying process, the clear light of death, and it’s said that from the time the breathing has stopped up to this clear light of death or the time that the consciousness leaves the body can take up to three days.
Now usually less, and especially if the body is ravaged by disease, it’s said that often that will be less, or if the person dies traumatically it will usually be less, but it can take up to, certainly up to a day or two and often certainly several some hours. Now in terms of that, yeah, so for instance, on one of the videos we have called Visions of Hope and Near Death Experience, it’s the description of a Jewish man who I haven’t told a story before about a Jewish man, have I? Who when he was a boy had a near death experience and died on the Friday night. And because it was the beginning any Jewish people here? So because Friday night was the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, the doctors wanted to do an autopsy, but the mother wouldn’t allow it because it was the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath.
So they didn’t have the autopsy then. And then in the Jewish tradition, I believe they have someone who sits with the body for some time after death, the sitter of of the body. Pardon? It’s like Shiva, is the thing I call. Shiva, Natalie, what’s it called?
And so this happened with this boy, and then this was a Friday night. Then he said on the Sunday morning, woke up kicking and screaming. Some thirty six hours after he’d stopped breathing, he woke up completely normal. Now the other thing as I was saying last night is that normally medically how long can the brain survive without oxygen? Three minutes?
Three minutes? Doctor? About three minutes. So you then ask yourself how can someone not be breathing for thirty six hours and be perfectly normal? And the reason is that there is an outer breath and an inner breath, and so when someone is in this stage they still have an inner breath or a subtle breath, and sometimes when people do advanced meditation the outer breath will actually stop, they will actually stop breathing, and actually I remember years ago when I did a psychology unit there was a study of one, I think it was a Hindu yogi, who they’re doing experiments of of seeing how long someone could remain buried underground or something.
And this particular yogi, by entering into meditation, could stay underground far longer than than norm than would be expected with a normal supply of oxygen because he was able to completely slow down his metabolic rate and use less oxygen. So a yogi can actually stop breathing completely and just have a very subtle inner breath, and so it is with the person at this stage, even though the breath has stopped, there’s no vital signs, there can still be this inner breath as this process is continuing. And I also mentioned last night, and the story that’s now being confirmed by one of the lecturers at the University of Queensland who runs the death and dying unit that in America in the twenties and thirties, they exhumed a number of coffins. And and they found in a significant number of these coffins, and I can’t remember the exact percentage to quote, but it was a high percentage, something like two percent or ten percent even, perhaps even twenty percent, that the inside of the coffin had been torn to shreds. So it’s like obviously the people had woken up inside the coffin.
And so the point here is that if we dispose of the body too quickly, that in a sense we could be guilty of killing the person. So if you cremate the body or bury the body in less than a couple of days or before the consciousness has left, then you could actually, in a sense, be killing the person because their consciousness still abides within the body, it’s still in the body. I think, myself, I think if you if you you don’t dispose of the body for a couple of days, should be pretty safe, I think, Ideally, three days. And traditionally in Tibet, they would leave the body undisturbed for three days, and monks would come in and say prayers, etcetera, but they wouldn’t touch the body for up to three days. So if if your friends or whatever are dying, it’s a bit complex in hospitals, we’re we’re trying to we various people are trying to get the laws changed in Australia regarding how bodies are dealt with in hospitals and and in particular about autopsies because it’s it’s very detrimental if the body is badly handled after the death or an autopsy is performed quite quickly because that can very much disturb the dying process.
And Sogyal Rinpoche himself and his students have written a submission to the attorney general’s department, to the attorney general, because last year one of the young Tibetan lamas, aged forty two, died of a heart attack. And they against the wishes of his community, they whisked him off to do an autopsy. And it was very distressing to the Buddhist community that they would do that with one of their teachers and where they couldn’t perform the normal rituals, etcetera, before his body was tampered with. And so that group and perhaps all of the Buddhist groups around Australia now have a particular interest in trying to change the laws relating to Buddhists and the need to do this sort of immediate autopsy and how the body is handled after death. It’s difficult, of course, in general public hospitals.
There’s a wish to remove the body as quickly as possible so I can fill up the bed with somebody else. That’s more only applies if they’ve come into hospital. It doesn’t apply if they’re dying. At home? There’s a couple of there’s a couple of different things here.
The autopsy at the moment under Australian law is sort of no choice, you know, it has to happen. Yes. Our experience at Corona is that certainly when someone dies, you need to notify the doctor. Although if you don’t do that until the morning, I don’t know there’s any problem. We would normally we would normally notify the GP, but we encourage our families to keep the body at home as long as they wish, and often they’ll do that for six or eight or ten hours as long as the doctor has certified the death, and the the funeral director is quite happy to come at any arranged time after that.
So we we encourage our families to just keep the body at home as as as long as they want to. Keep just stay with the body. Keep it at home as long as they want to, because often the most traumatic thing for the family is not so much the death as when the funeral director comes to take the body away. Because like this person they’ve cared for and loved, it it’s this finality of having the body handled by somebody else and taken away. It’s very traumatic.
And so we encourage the family to to stay there with the body as long as they can, to say their goodbyes, to call in their relatives. There’s actually a video we have from New Zealand called I want to die at home. And I think in this case, the body might have gone to the funeral directors and come back. Perhaps even something was done to it to preserve it, but they kept the body at home for three days after death, and they packed ice in the bed or something, and relatives came from different parts of New Zealand, Quite an inspiring video. We haven’t kept anybody home that long, but certainly we encourage the relatives to keep the body at home as long as they feel the need to.
Sometimes that can cause a bit of conflict in families because one or two family members want to get the body out immediately and others are very keen to keep it there, so that has to be worked out between them. And then where we can, we’ll be there when it comes time to remove the body by the funeral director and just comfort the family at that time and whatever as the body is taken away. Yeah. So it is a complicated thing with autopsies and etcetera. So you were telling me earlier about pardon?
Do you want to come in? And, Sue, do you want to get any of this on Sue, can you talk into this so that it’s turn it on. It’s recorded for posterity. I’m actually in the funeral industry, and I was just having a little smile at what you had to say. I haven’t actually been in the industry for a long time, so this is my own personal experience, but I do transfer duty.
And once a doctor has certified, it’s really up to a family how long it is before the body’s taken away, unless there’s extreme circumstances like it’s been there for days already and it’s gone into decomposition, etc. But we’ve picked them up twenty four hours later as the family have expressed the wish to keep them at home and do some white light meditation and that sort of thing. And we’ve come when the families have requested. If they request straight away, we come straight away. If they’ve requested, wait till the morning or till seven o’clock tonight or whatever.
And we also try to, if a family wish certain things to be done before the person is taken away, we try to, within the best of our abilities, do that for them. So did you say after my personal experience from my father’s death, that was in Sydney, and this is what happened. And my father died on a Sunday afternoon. I was here. I tried to get to Sydney and the next plane was impossible.
And so there was a my mother had a fight with the funeral because she notified the doctor and who certified death. And then the funeral director came and all the funeral people and she had to force them out with my aunt to stop them taking the body. It was in summer that the house was cool and the next day I arrived she she actually was able to do that. That. When I arrived early the next morning, again, they were on the doorstep wanting to take the body.
It may be a peculiarly thing to Sydney, but and then, of course, similarly, when my mother died. So I’ve had several experiences and it’s not really pleasant. No. Well, I can only comment on my particular company. I can’t comment on what happens in others, but Have you got some cards to give me?
Yeah. Don’t have cards. Personal experience is that And I don’t know what happens state to state either, but we really try to do what the family expressly wish within reason. I think there’s always a lot of variations between different companies and states. So did you say once you waited twenty four hours?
Yes. And Joy was just mentioning that often it’s up to fourteen hours afterwards before the funeral doctor comes. Joy is saying that she’s found all the funeral people very good in Adelaide. Could someone Can I just I think just one important thing to mention? No.
Don’t don’t. I’ll just pretend it’s there. Okay. Conditioned response. Perhaps I should mention at this stage the signs of the consciousness leaving the body.
That’s a fairly crucial point because this will sort of determine a lot of things. So the signs of the consciousness leaving the body, because it’s all very well saying all this, but how do you know when the consciousness is left? I mean, we need to we need to be able to know that. The classic sign of the consciousness leaving the body is said to be a drop of white or red fluid leaving from the nose or the sexual organ. Now it’s a very reliable well, when it happens, it’s the most reliable sign.
The trouble is that it it seems it often doesn’t happen, especially the body is diseased, and b, almost nobody I’ve talked to has ever seen it. So we won’t from nose? Oh, you have? Oh, I thought you said just the eye. Oh, see.
Okay. So Joy’s saying that she’s seen it lots of times. Thank heavens for that. From the nose. Fantastic.
Actually it is very interesting. I think it’s a real privilege to be with the dying people. And when these signs of either a tear or a clear drop from the nose do occur, it tends to be quite soon after the death, but a lot depends on state of mind and whether the person’s prepared to die. You know, it’s really quite interesting. The last little lady that I was with that died where this happened, she had been preparing herself to die since she went into the hostel some four or five months and had a very good relationship with her doctor and it was all decided that, alright, this would be the time to die.
And I think a lot of it has to do with this mental process, you know, so I really appreciate what Pende is saying here. But you know, this little lady just literally seemed to die. There wasn’t even any release of urine or faeces or anything else. It was just this total dignity, this tiny drop of clear fluid from her nose. But I do notice in my practice that it’s the state of mind that’s terribly important.
We’ll come to that. Do you want to break now? We’ll see if we can finish at four thirty. We just people, do you want to take just a fifteen minute break now? Let’s break fifteen minutes, come back.
Before the break we were talking about the signs of the consciousness leaving the body, so we can say a little bit more about that. Just incidentally with this session, we’ve got an hour to go. The way I plan to finish the afternoon is to do the death meditation with you. My experience is that especially for those who aren’t so familiar with the death meditation or haven’t done it before that often it can be quite a deep profound experience to do the death meditation and various stuff can come up. Often people feel the need to not talk a lot after they’ve done the meditation just to go away and be quiet and think about the experience.
So I usually like to do it before a break or at the end of the day, and then perhaps tomorrow morning we could talk a little bit about it if stuff has come up for you, or you can come even afterwards. I’ll be staying on when we finish today because there’s a puja here at six. And what’s the Guru Puja isn’t it? Guru Puja anybody who would like to I’m sure is welcome to stay for the Guru Puja this offering ceremony to the spiritual teacher for those of you who aren’t familiar at six o’clock so please feel free to come back or to stay for that. And some offering ceremonies as offering of food and drink to the guru, which is a bit like communion but with food and drink that’s distributed to everybody So if your fridge is empty then So the signs of So the point is that if after we’ve done the meditation there’s something that you feel a bit unsettled or you want to talk about it and just come up to me individually privately and we can talk about it between then and the puja and anyone else who wants to talk about things between four thirty and six then I’m happy to stay and chat.
Now the signs of the consciousness leaving the body after death I mentioned already and we talked about the white or red drops fluid leaving from the nose or the sexual organ which thankfully Joy has seen on a number of occasions, but most other people don’t. So Joy has some karma there for seeing the drops. Now another sign that that is the one that I normally go by that seems to work for me, perhaps I have the karma for this one, that I mentioned earlier that as the consciousness absorbs during the dying process, it absorbs the very subtle drop at the heart. And and the consciousness then leaves from the heart’s end of the heart chakra. And so as long as there is some also, the last part of the body that the heat leaves the heat leaves from, disperses from, and the consciousness leaves from is the center of the chest in the heart chakra, which actually as I said is about three fifths of the way back classically described from the front of the chest, closer to the back in front of the spine.
So a sign of the consciousness still being in the body is if there is still heat retained at the heart region, that’s an indication that consciousness remains within the body. And certainly sometimes three, four, six hours after death, the person will still be quite warm in the heart region. Sometimes within a couple of hours they can be quite cold there. And I was just reading several days ago of one of the head of one of the Buddhist tradition, the Karmapa. When he died, the doctors observed that he was still quite warm thirty six hours after the death, after he stopped breathing, was still quite warm at the heart.
And someone was telling me last night, I don’t know if it was a public question or or a private comment lady after the talk that her father or someone had died and some ten oh, eight, ten, fourteen hours after he died somehow she leant across and put a hand on his chest and he was still quite warm at the heart so many hours after he died. For me that’s often a sign that I will use or an indication that the consciousness is still in the body. Now someone mentioned to me, I can’t quite remember who it was, another sign of the consciousness leaving the body is that when a person first dies, there’s a strong sense that the person is still there, that the person that you are looking after your loved one is still in some very real sense there. And then after some time, some hours or whatever, there can be a sense of some shift, some change, where the person goes from being a person to an empty shell, to some perception that the person is actually gone. Now, there’s just an empty shell.
How many of you might have that experience? Well, quite a few. I’ve met lots over the years who’ve had that experience, and so it’s quite a common experience for nurses, doctors, relatives, those people who’ve died. It’s not one that I’ve personally experienced, but as many people have attested it, is a common occurrence or perception? Actually, can the people put their hands up just tell me how many hours after the death that was?
Five hours? Two or three? Five. Up to eight hours. Up to eight hours.
And so this is something people from any different belief or philosophy it’s a similar experience some hours after the death. Possible, but I suspect it was more related to the actual believing of the consciousness. Hard to say, but Yes. Yes. And that’s good.
Okay. Sometimes people talk about an observation of a feeling of what is it now heat or a wisp of smoke or something leaving from the body or the crown some people have that experience I’ve never do you want to say a little bit about that Well, just She’s spoken to the wrong end. I hope you don’t do that with your patients. This was several years ago. It was a young man who died in a motorbike accident.
I didn’t understand what it was at all, but it was very eerie because there was a white smoke that came in the upper part of his body. I think it was about an hour after he’d come in, so it was very strange. That’s all I remember about it. Definitely a sign, I think, of the consciousness leaving. And some people, there is a real presence there.
It’s real obvious. Some don’t seem to have any. And I can remember working on somebody one day, and I actually touched them on the forehead. And it felt like it was boring a hole through my hand. It hurt.
Heat? Heat? Yeah. And it was a very powerful push. It was hot, and it was strong.
It made my Three days after death? Yeah. It made my hand hurt for a long time. On, yeah, on the forehead. And some people, you can really feel them there.
Yeah. Some are quite happy. Some don’t know what to do. Yeah. Some are as mad as all hell, and others is nothing.
But some of them here, they can really you know, I try to avoid putting my hand on their foreheads now because some of them it hurts. There’s a real push wherein and my hand is warm for a long time. Right. That’s interesting. Would that be related to the third eye?
Yoga we tend to focus more here on the eyebrow center? Yeah I think that’s possible because the consciousness can leave from many different parts of the body. It can actually leave from any part of the body it doesn’t have to leave from a chakra or from a center, so it could leave from from one of the chakras but it could leave from other parts of the body as well because it can pass through objects. So I’m not quite sure how to explain the uncomfortable feeling because I wouldn’t normally have thought that the consciousness leaving would induce an uncomfortable feeling in the hand the part of the body. Okay.
Okay. Well, could have been the consciousness exiting and having some effect. You see, different people have different sensitivities and different calmness to experience different things. I as some people in the room have particular awarenesses perhaps more than other people, and for myself my awareness is a fairly gross and it is more gross sign like heat of the heart rather than a subtle shift of consciousness. Other people are clearly clearly aware when when this consciousness leaves and this subtle shift.
I rest myself not aware. So it’s a matter of using whatever skills you have and whatever signs work best for you. But that’s a little unusual to have someone feel that discomfort perhaps related to the consciousness. Now it’s three days after that. So possible the consciousness could stay there that long.
Yes. On the top, there’s a little switch. At the final stages of my mother dying, she went through those four stages you talked about. She actually, on the last breath, she actually opened her eyes and smiled after having been in a coma for several days. Is that actually is that medically just a normal practice or is that that’s something related to one of those four stages?
Of the dying process? Yes. So she stopped breathing sometime before? No, she’s on the final breath. Okay, yes, yes, yes.
Okay. That can certainly occur and that could be related to some inner experience, a pleasurable experience. I’m not sure if it could just be a physiological response. See sometimes a person will sort of grimace and often that’s perceived as pain and often I’ll explain that away as being just like a physiological response or restlessness and not actually indicating mental distress or pain. Often at that stage people will perceive different expressions or movement as being due to discomfort or pain, but often I say it’s not.
It’s just due to a physiological also the the rasping noise in the throat or whatever it’s it’s not necessarily the discomfort but just part of the dying process and also with the four stages over what period of time can they take place? Can it actually extend over several days? Or is it over Yes. Weeks. I mentioned earlier one of our patients who’s dying of AIDS, I would have said was pretty much in the fourth stage the night that I did a shift with him.
And I was sure he was going to die that night because the breathing had become very shallow. His body was quite skeletal. I mean, was just nothing to keep him going. And he was still he was identical to that or he died five days after that. So he’s on the brink of death for five days.
Other people I’ve seen walking around one day and dead the next, It can vary so much and one thing perhaps all of us I know some people again who are more intuitive than me but one one thing I’ve certainly learned not to do is try and predict when someone’s going to die because invariably I’ll be wrong and some people who you sure will be alive next week are dead tomorrow and others who who you think are going to be dead tomorrow still there next week so and that’s sort of advice we try and give to the families is just simply not to have any real expectations but just to take each day as it comes because often the hardest thing that the worst thing for the families is the waiting the interminable waiting for the inevitable end and it’s just agony for them to wait and wait and wait and so they need lots of support and also often find by explaining what’s going on in this process and by them at least having sort of sort of some understanding about what’s going on and why it’s happening and at least then it helps them to get through what’s happening to their relatives, but at least understanding what’s happening and that at some inner level their loved one is aware of what’s going on and they’re aware of their thoughts and feelings and even if they’re unconscious they’re aware of the fact that you’re there and of your love and of your touch and all those things.
So just explaining that I think a big part of hospice care palliative care is education explanation to families in the way that we support families. Well, ideally, one dies the best possible. It’s good if you actually give the microphone to somebody before they finish speaking. With a little bit of practice, I’m sure that we’ll get better at this method of time. Analgesia.
Okay. Was the question? You said earlier if a patient receives, say, morphine then that’s analgesia in the last stage of dying that it could be detrimental to their death. I just wondered in which way could it be detrimental. All right, so the aim, okay it’s coming to another point really which I haven’t covered yet but it comes more into tomorrow’s discussion but it’s it’s the basic one of the most important things helping someone it it comes into the teachings on helping someone who’s dying, but the crucial point in helping someone to die is the state of mind at the time of death.
Because the state of mind at the time of death, I guess, because it’s the the uppermost state of mind or the uppermost thought that’s in the person’s mind, it’s the state of mind of the person’s death which has most effect in projecting them into the next life. So that if the mind is imbued with positive qualities or thinking about your teacher or more compassion or those sort of things, then that’s that has the force to project you into a better type of rebirth. If the mind is imbued with negative qualities like fear or anger, then that’s likely to throw you into a negative type of rebirth. So the crucial thing is a state of mind and all of the all of the work that we do with a dying person is is aimed towards creating the best possible state of mind at the time of death. And tomorrow I’ll be talking about how you work with different types of people like people who are conscious versus unconscious, people who have a spiritual belief versus those who don’t have a spiritual belief, etcetera.
We’ll cover those probably tomorrow morning. So the aim in terms of pain medication or any sort of meditations is for the person’s mind to be as aware as possible at the time of death so that they are most able able to bring these positive qualities or spiritual qualities to their mind. So if their mind is heavily before death and during that dying process if their mind is heavily clouded with analgesia then it’s going to be very difficult for them to have a clear awareness of positive qualities and of the dying process, especially you see because when a person gets to that end stage this invisible chart again, the end stage of that dying process and they come to that clear light stage then that’s such a crucial point of their spiritual evolution. You know if they’re a practitioner they can achieve some state of enlightenment at that stage. If their mind is bombed out with analgesia, then it makes it much more difficult.
Now even as I’m saying that I have some doubt in my own mind because it’s the gross mind that’s dulled by analgesia, the subtle mind actually is not affected by analgesia. So perhaps it relates more to the gross mind bringing those qualities uppermost in the mind as as the person approaches death. Because when you actually get to the end stage, and this is why it comes back to this basic point that our whole life is a preparation for death. Because the the state of mind that’s most likely to arrive or the state of mind that will arise at the time of death is the one to which we’re most habituated. And if we’re habituated to positive states of mind and spiritual values, that’s the state of mind that will automatically come up at the time of death.
If our mind is habituated to anger and fear and anxiety, and that’s the state of mind that will come up at the time of death. So it’s a matter of as a person is approaching death, not so much at the time of death because as said they’ve lost the ability to feel pain and they moved more into that very subtle level of consciousness that heightened awareness, but as they’re approaching death then you want them to create the most conducive conditions to having an aware state of mind, and so the idea is to use as the minimum amount of analgesia that will provide adequate symptom relief and pain relief, and sometimes it may even be better to a little bit on the side of slightly less analgesia, even if there’s a bit of discomfort or pain, especially for a practitioner. If a person’s a practitioner, they would want the least possible amount of pain of analgesia to enable them to keep those spiritual practices uppermost in their mind. Now this also relates to what we’re going to talk about a little bit tomorrow if we have time, and certainly in two weeks time with Khensur Rinpoche when he talks about practice, the transference of consciousness practice, because this is a practice or the tantric aspect of the practice is a forceful technique of transferring your consciousness sometime before you die.
And to be able to do that technique you have to have some mental and physical strength and awareness, and if the mind is bombed out by morphine then it’s going to be extremely difficult to to yourself transfer your consciousness. So then the practitioner would want the minimum amount of pain medication that’s going to keep him relatively comfortable. So that’s a little bit about meditations pain relief. It’s a matter of finding a balance between adequate pain relief and having an aware and awake mind to die mindfully and with awareness, so that you can actually recognize the different stages of the dying process and be aware of it and to utilize those stages and at the time of death to be able to if possible stay in that clear light meditation. Coming back to that other point about our whole life being a preparation for death is the fact that I talked about this last night and I apologize to Joy for she said all of this last night, but the fact is as we all know working with the dying is that people tend to die in character.
If a person has lived their life aggressively etcetera then that’s the way they tend to die. And if they live their life peacefully, calmly, helping others, that’s the way they tend to die as well. Like we read at the beginning of today when we talked about Lama Yeshe, that’s the way he died because that’s the way he lived. And I mentioned last night a friend of ours, one of our been a friend for a number of years who was dying of AIDS. He was a Zen practitioner.
He was extremely gentle and kind, always thinking about other people. And several days before he died, on the day that he ate for the last time, one of his sisters has sat with him through the night. He had three sisters that cared for him very devotedly and beautifully, and someone brought him in some food, some breakfast in the morning, and he must have been in I mean, he’s very weak and perhaps semi conscious, and they brought him some food, said Richard, would you like some food? And and and even then he still said, oh, please give some to my sister in the corner. So as I said last night, I’m sure when I’m dying, I couldn’t give a damn about anyone else.
You know, if there’s any chocolate around, then I’m gonna I’m going to want the chocolate. So that was a habitual response. Please give some to my sister in the corner. I think that’s an incredible thing to happen when you’re actually dying because, you know, we know what it’s like when we’ve got an ache or a pain. Usually then we forget about anybody else’s with a simple ache or a pain, let alone when you’re dying.
And that’s why because dying is so complex and difficult that we need to start practicing the smaller things now so that we can habitually train our mind with less difficult things now, so when it comes to the big test that dying then then we will be able to take charge of that process and use it well. Now a very best friend of Richard who died who I mentioned also has AIDS. We’ve known him for many years, and he’s a great contrast to Richard, and he’s been a very egocentric, selfish, arrogant person and has always neglected if you like his inner spiritual development, even though we’ve known him for about ten years and there’s lots he could have done. So about three months ago after getting a lot of pain in the chest etc, he was diagnosed as having I think some acute leukemia or some acute cancer. I think leukemic sort of cancer.
Myeloid leukemia, leukemic cancer. Is that alright? Leukemia. Thank you. So after that happened and he was very shocked, very distressed, and he said, oh, he said, I must get on to a good diet.
He said, I must learn how to meditate. Now he’s just been given a diagnosis of three months to live, and that’s not the time to start thinking about your meditation practice or your spiritual practice, whereas Richard had been meditating for many years and had developed these qualities for many years. Now several times in the last few weeks I’ve visited this other fellow who’s now quite ill, and he was a very exuberant sort of fellow, mean arrogantly exuberant but exuberant, and he’s now sort of lost all his energy, he’s become very sort of deflated, and he’s spending his days watching videos on TV, like he still has this opportunity but still there’s no there’s no interest or no incentive or no ability actually still to practice some spiritual teachings. He’s watching just rubbishy videos on television to fill in the days because he’s at home and he’s lonely. So I mean not that I’m blaming him for those things, but I’m just contrasting the different approaches and I’m pretty certain that that this fellow will die.