Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Venerable Pende Hawter explores Buddhist perspectives on death and rebirth, grounded in the doctrine that uncontrolled rebirth into suffering realms is inevitable without spiritual practice. He outlines the six realms of existence and explains the three levels of spiritual motivation—from seeking a better rebirth, to liberation from all suffering, to enlightenment motivated by compassion for all beings. Pende introduces a key tantric practice: transforming the death experience, intermediate state, and rebirth into the three bodies of Buddha, making death itself an opportunity for enlightenment rather than a catastrophe. He illustrates how advanced practitioners can transcend physical limitations, answers questions about shamans and interdimensional travel, and discusses dementia through the lens of subtle and gross mind. The session emphasizes compassion as the healing force underlying all effective therapy, and concludes with guided meditations on white light visualization and Tonglen, the Tibetan practice of taking on others’ suffering to develop equanimity and compassionate action.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 D and D 1994 11 13.mp3
UUID: cdd4d54d-fd9a-4889-bb38-1954e5410f9a
Teacher: Ven Pende Hawter
Collection: Death and Dying (Ven Pende Hawter)
Date: 1994-11-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~5,628
The basic point would still be that that person still has to create the cause to be reborn into that family. So whatever way it occurs, the causes still have to be there because nothing happens for which previous cause hasn’t been created within our own minds. But the actual physiology of it, and I I’m not quite sure. I’ll I’ll think about it. Maybe they choose their parents, not not the ego and You know, the it’s it’s that attraction, that that attachment, that attraction that propels the being into that fertilized egg.
It’s not a again, it’s not a conscious choice, you see. It it’s it it’s thrown there uncontrollably without control. These teachings? Yeah. Like, a few thousand years.
Yeah. So I’d invite Sue, our consulting Buddhist, to answer that. We’d like to I don’t feel qualified to answer that because I’m not so familiar with Jung’s theory on that. I’ve heard about it before, but I’m so I’m not sure. Certainly, Jung did take a strong interest in Buddhism, and I think he’s even written the preface to the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
So he he did have a strong interest in in did you say Freud or Jung? Yeah. Think Jung too. Yeah. Yes.
Jung certainly had a strong interest in Tibetan Buddhism. So what’s next? Can we we can perhaps go down. I mentioned it earlier that in Buddhist terms, we did talk about it before morning tea, that in Buddhist terms, we take rebirth depending on the causes we’ve created into one of those six realms of rebirth. They eat?
Hell. Hell realms. Ghosts. They talk about hot and cold hells. They’re very hot and very cold.
Earth, animal, hungry ghost, which is the the Sanskrit name is Preta. Preta, p r e t a, animal, human, anti-god or jealous god, which is called the Sanskrit word as Asura, a s u r a, and then the Suras or gods Or one of the western teachers described the the god realms, I think he called them the Vogue realms. It’s like the it’s like a a realm out of vogue magazine with great comforts and richness and riches and things like that. So the Vogue realms. And so and we can relate these to different types of human rebirth or human situations.
As I was saying before, the the vogue type of people, the lives of the rich and famous, and people who live in hellish situations in war torn countries in Africa and that we see on the news all the time. And, of course, we’re very familiar with animals and the suffering of animals, and, of course, humans. Oh, Okay. So we’ve talked a lot about that rebirth, about uncontrolled rebirth, and so we’re convinced that we don’t want that that sort of rebirth and to be reborn into one of these suffering realms of existence where it’s inevitable that we’ll experience suffering of of mind and body. So the tantric practitioner or the spiritual practitioner, the aim of the spiritual practitioner is to transcend or go beyond uncontrolled rebirth.
And there are different. Ultimately, the only way to do that is to to go beyond uncontrolled rebirth is by developing the mind, achieving high states of realization. But in particular, the thing that will lead a person beyond uncontrolled rebirth is realization of emptiness or of the true nature of reality. And emptiness has many synonyms. Perhaps those of you might be a bit more familiar with sort of Zen teachings or Zen content Zen teachings or scriptures, it’s often described as things like seeing the thisness or thatness or itness, thusness or phenomena.
In our tradition, it’s more talked about as emptiness or sunyata or voidness. There’s many different synonyms. There’s others words I haven’t mentioned, but many different sort of synonyms for this. Seeing seeing reality as it is in in a pure pure way, seeing the true nature of reality, or the lack of inherent existence of phenomena, that everything is actually just labeled and doesn’t truly exist in a fixed way. And that can either be our self, our concept of self, or other phenomena.
I won’t I won’t get into that for two reasons. A, I don’t understand it very well, and b, we don’t have time. And so that’s that’s the the key. And actually, in terms of if we mention here in terms of spiritual motivation, and it talks about the different spiritual aspirations, It said that the the lowest level practitioner understands the the suffering nature of of his or her existence and practices the spiritual path in order to obtain a better type of rebirth or happy rebirth in the future. And the medium level practitioner realizes that anywhere you’re born in any of these six realms is all in the nature of dissatisfaction or suffering.
And when you go through that life, you’re born again, you have to you could be reborn anywhere in those six realms, and there’s there’s no place in those six realms that’s free of suffering. So that practitioner has a very strong wish to go beyond suffering permanently, and so practices in order to obtain personal liberation for him or herself state beyond suffering, which often is called nirvana. And then the highest level practitioner not only wants to be free of suffering for him or herself, but sees that every other living being in the world has exactly the same wish to be free of suffering. So then rather than just working for their own salvation, then they want to achieve the state of full enlightenment, which basically is the realization of emptiness conjoined with the realization of this great compassion, this highest level of compassion. And that, in our tradition, is given the the name of enlightenment.
And so so the highest level practitioner wants able to lead everybody else to that state as well. And I said that if if we only work for the happiness of this life, that that actually is not even a spiritual motivation. Also, when we work for these higher levels of motivation, our own happiness comes automatically. It’s an automatic byproduct because working for the benefit of others automatically brings happiness, whereas working for your own benefit only brings suffering. Those of us those people who work with others and and help others know that the the happiness that comes from that, the satisfaction, as long as you don’t burn out.
There’s a there’s a specific technique which I’ve mentioned here, a specific tantric technique which I’ve mentioned once or twice on the weekend, where the the tantric practitioner will transform ordinary death, intermediate state, and rebirth into what’s called the three bodies of the Buddha. The the dharmakaya, which is called the truth truth body, which I have been translating. I think this I’m not sure if this is correct. I need people to tell me whether this is correct. I’ve called it here the enlightened mind of the Buddha.
It’s usually translated as the truth body. I’m not sure if that’s strictly correct. Does it sound right or wrong? But it’s it’s basically the the truth body or the omniscient mind of the Buddha. And so we transform death into the the truth body of the Buddha, intermediate state into the sambhogakaya or the pure enjoyment body of the Buddha, and rebirth into the nirmanakaya or the emanation body of the Buddha.
And that’s a whole another teaching in itself, which we’re certainly not going to go into today. But it’s just to indicate that for a practitioner, they can actually utilize the death experience to achieve this state of enlightenment, and instead of taking uncontrolled rebirth, they can actually become a Buddha or enlightened at the time of rebirth. So for a practitioner, death is an incredible spiritual opportunity because enlightenment can be obtained at the time of death. And and so that’s why, for instance, when the can’t remember his name, Geshe Tokpa, the forty two year old lama from Sydney who who died of a heart attack last year. And then because the cause of death was unknown, he had to have an autopsy and very much distressed his community because rather than allowing him to stay in meditation and have the community be with him and say prayers.
His body was whisked away to have an autopsy, and it could very much have interfered with this process, which is so crucial for a practitioner. And so we might have that off now. Thanks. So rebirth in these six realms of existence, sometimes the analogy is made that it’s like flies in a jar or or a bucket in a well that goes up and down. And so it’s said that over, you know, countless millions of years, we’ve taken rebirth in all of these different realms of existence, sometimes low rebirth, sometimes high rebirth, sometimes a very fortunate situation like we have this time.
But we just keep going up and down through these various realms of existence without control. So that’s why through practice, we want to try and transcend uncontrolled rebirth. And once we do that, then we have a choice. We have a choice about how we come back, if if even if and when we come back. So for instance, if we achieve that state of nirvana or enlightenment, we can actually stay in one of these pure realms, which I may talk about more this afternoon if we get on to the Amitābha Phowa teachings, but we can stay in one of these pure realms and sit at the feet of Buddhas and receive teachings directly from them in a state that’s totally beyond suffering.
And and in particular, perhaps meditators who who not on this Mahāyāna path, but a lower path of the Hīnayāna path, through the power of their meditation, they could take perhaps take rebirth in these pure realms, or in higher realms of existence which are sometimes described as the form or formless realms, sort of at the height of this uncontrolled rebirth. But so the choice is the person then goes beyond suffering. But in the Mahāyāna system, the Mahāyāna meaning the great vehicle or great because it it has this great emphasis on compassion. The Mahāyāna practitioner, like many of the Lamas when they die, they choose to take rebirth in order to keep working for the benefit of others. Out of their great compassion, they choose to take a body and continue to work for others, but it’s a controlled rebirth.
I mentioned yesterday about Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, who when he died sat in meditation and then has taken rebirth as an incarnate lama in Hong Kong. And Lama Zopa, many of you know, my own teacher, the spiritual head of this center, he spent about in his last life, he was a he was a lay lama. He had a family. And but for about the last twenty years of his life, he did intensive meditation in a cave up in the Himalayas, up in the foothills on the way up to Mount Everest. And his family cared for him and looked after him, and then he took rebirth in the same area.
And then almost from the time that he could crawl, he kept he tried to crawl up to his previous cave and from an early age took a strong interest in in the spiritual path and entered the monastery at the age of five or six, and and since then, has devoted his whole life to spiritual practice. So he chose to come back, know, take rebirth in the same area. And so, you know, this Dalai Lama, for instance, is the fourteenth Dalai Lama. It’s the fourteenth recognized reincarnation of the same stream of consciousness. This continues to come back.
And also one of the attributes or qualities of that enlightened mind is that it can reincarnate or manifest in any form and in fact in countless forms simultaneously, in whatever way is is most useful to benefit others. At one stage, the Dalai Lama was quoted as saying when when he was asked whether he would whether there would be another Dalai Lama or whether he would come back as the Dalai Lama, he was quoted as saying that if it was you know, he would come back in whichever form was most beneficial. And if it was more beneficial to be a tree or a bridge, then he would manifest or come back as a tree or a bridge. And so for practitioners, these Buddhas, these holy beings manifest in whatever way is useful. And for instance, the Buddha made a promise that no practitioner would ever die of hunger.
Perhaps he said also of thirst or cold or heat, but anyway he certainly said that no practitioner would ever die of hunger, and I’ve never heard of any of the Lamas or anybody dying of hunger. And there are stories of, for instance, meditators being up in the mountains and being snowed in for about six months with no food, for instance. And when afterwards, after the snow has melted, people go up to the cave expecting to find a body and the lama is sitting there completely healthy, and the food, you know, the nourishment, the food has come from somewhere. And I remember one one lama that I have great admiration for in Dharmasala who spent many years in the mountains meditating, and he related this story of of the Buddha’s promise not to allow any meditator to to starve. And he had to stop when he was telling the story because he was tears were rolling down his face because, obviously, it was his experience that he’d obviously been protected and looked after in this way, and he was sort of overcome as he told the story.
So through through practicing the spiritual path, the the point I’m making here is that by practicing the spiritual path in a graduated way over a number of years, we can go beyond this uncontrolled rebirth. In particular, by practicing, you can summarize the spiritual path, what’s often called the three principles of the path of having renunciation or what perhaps more accurately is described as the determination to be free, determination to be free from uncontrolled suffering rebirth, and by developing the other limbs, developing compassion and developing wisdom. So renunciation, bodhicitta, or this great compassion and wisdom, and the methods for doing that are outlined in the path. And by gradually practicing the path, we can go beyond uncontrolled rebirth, we can transcend that, and then we have a choice, And then we’re able to choose our place of rebirth and to help others in whatever way that is most beneficial for them. Any questions?
I’ve been talking a lot. That’s alright. The little thing at the top. Now could you talk a little bit about beings that can go between the intermediate stage? Like, I’m thinking of shamans and there’s a whole lot of fashionable stuff around that at the moment.
You know, this going in between the other realms, the other what’s the Buddhist approach to that? Going between various realms? Yes. Like, particularly Don Juan and the American Indian. There’s all this stuff about other realms.
Shamans, beings who those attributes you were talking about, not having you can walk through them, having this sort of magic in inverted commas quality. Alright. I mean, basically, people who have developed their minds to a high extent, they are able to travel to these different realms of existence. I mean, this in a sense is someone was talking at morning tea about faith, like a lot of concepts here we’ve heard over this weekend that is quite out of our out of our experience and our education. And so, you know, why should we believe this stuff?
And so at this stage, because it’s not part of our experience, it requires some degree of faith. And then gradually as we practice and train, then we we will directly get that experience. And all of this information sort of comes from people with high realizations who’ve traveled to these different realms, who’ve been through this, who’ve experienced these various stages of the dying process, etcetera. Now, for instance, one of the the stages of yogic attainment or high attainment is that you transcend let me put it this way. You gain control over the outer elements.
By gaining control over the inner elements, gain control over the outer elements. So then a practitioner who has gained control over the inner elements can then do things like control the weather, you know, control the weather, make it rain or stop raining, or levitate or fly through the air or move through solid objects or going beyond the limitations of the physical elements. And so that sounds a little bit like what you’re saying with Don Juan and the Shamans and things like that. And there’s the story, for instance, of the great Tibetan saint, Milarepa. And there was one famous Geshe, Geshe being like a scholar equivalent, someone like a PhD in Buddhist philosophy.
And so this Geshe was very jealous of Milarepa and wanted to show him up in front of his students. And so Milarepa agreed to debate with this Geshe. And so they had this debate and and he he started the Geshe started with some scriptural quotations, but and Milarepa said, well, I don’t don’t really understand those, but he said, I’ll ask you a question. He said, is space obstructive or non obstructive? And the Geshe said, well, of course, it’s non obstructive.
And he said, try and move. And the Geshe tried to move, and he wasn’t able to move because Milarepa had put some sort of invisible barrier around him. And then he said, okay. Now is that wall of my cave, is that obstructive or nonobstructive? And the Geshe said, well, of course, that’s obstructive.
And then Milarepa walked through the wall, And then the Geshe felt rather silly and went home. And I was very embarrassed. So so a person whose mind is very developed and sort of can go beyond these ordinary limitations, and and I think that’s what you’re saying. So that person’s mind can go to any realm and help beings in those different realms. And I was saying to somebody yesterday that in a couple of weeks is the celebration of one of the four Buddhist holy days of the year, which is usually called the Descent from Tuśita Heaven.
And it’s it’s celebrating the the time in the Buddha’s life when he had gone to this particular heaven heavenly realm to teach his mother, his his previous mother, who had been reborn in that realm, and he went there for some days. I can’t remember how many. And then when he when he descended from Tuśita heaven back to this earth, then of course his disciples were very happy. And that’s sort of one of the four special days in the Buddha’s calendar which we celebrate. So so the Buddha is able to or an enlightened beings are able to see all of these different realms and the suffering in those realms and able to go and help beings in those realms.
So sounds like a busy job, I think, to be a Buddha. Any other questions? I’m interested to understand more when you use the word mind. For instance, a person who’s demented, that’s not the mind that you’re talking about. When we talk about mind and Buddhism, we didn’t we didn’t really cover that in this course, but the mind is that part of us that nonphysical part of ourselves, and the mind is described as formless, shapeless, colorless, and one would add is genderless because of all the debate about male, female, and etcetera.
Genderless and its basic nature is clear and knowing. So the basic nature of our mind is clear and knowing. But in terms of your question, there are Buddhism talks about three different different levels of mind. So there is the gross mind or the mind that operates through the senses through the five senses. And there’s a subtle mind, which I think relates more to the mental consciousness, and then there’s a very subtle mind that normally only manifests at the time of death and resides in this indestructible drop at the heart as we were saying yesterday.
And and so the meditator, the yogi, will actually, by bringing the energies into that central channel, will get in touch with and utilize that very subtle mind and that very blissful clear state of mind. So the dementia relates to the gross mind. That’s the gross mind. But in a sense, even someone who’s demented, the very subtle mind remains unaffected. And it’s that very subtle mind that goes on from life to life and always retains its clarity and purity, always clarity and its knowingness.
And and it’s like perhaps we can make the analogy that it’s like putting on different pairs of glasses. You know? We see things differently. So if we take rebirth as an animal, then it’s like looking through a particular pair of glasses, and we see life as an animal sees life, or a hell being or whatever. And so a demented person or a person with schizophrenia or mental illness sees life in a particular way, and that’s the way that their gross centers operate.
But at the deepest level, at the most subtle level, then they every living being has this pure mind and this Buddha nature. So Buddha’s teaching is that every living being has this this potential for complete enlightenment, complete development, or every living being, no matter how bad, how good, or or whatever realm of existence has this enlightenment potential. And that person who’s demented, they’ve created the causes this life to experience that loss of clear mental thinking. But once that karma has finished, then they’ll they’ll take another rebirth, and and then the mind can operate again normally. Is it cause causes of this life?
Pardon? The cause of this Not necessarily. No. That could be any past life. Does that answer the question?
Short of having an extraordinary level of skill, how could one penetrate that direction? My father has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. That’s a very good question about how do you help someone with Alzheimer’s or dementia, and we’ll talk about this after lunch when we talk about how to help those who are dying. That even even if a person is not and it fits in with what we’ve talked about this weekend, that even if a person is not or going through the dying process, that even if a person is not aware at the conscious level, at some deeper subtle level, they are still receiving information. Who asked the question?
And so I believe that and what we talk about this afternoon is, say, how to help someone who’s conscious as opposed to unconscious or demented. And so if a person’s unconscious or demented, then in effect we have to do the practice for them. So if a person has Alzheimer’s or dementia, then in a sense we need to feed the information to them. So we need to read to them things, you know, depending again on a person’s faith, but we need to read to them particular scriptures or recite mantras into their ear or play them uplifting music or, you know, scriptures or play, you know, uplifting television programs or anything like that. Anything that can feed this positive information into their mind.
Try and avoid television in the room that plays Days of Our Lives constantly, because at some level that information will be received and it’s not beneficial to the mind to feed rubbish into the mind. In relation to people with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, there is a woman called Naomi Feil who has brought a lot of wisdom to working with those people. She is no Buddhist, but her approach and her through her mistakes with reality therapy with those people, which doesn’t work, to a therapy called validation therapy. She has found that for those people with Alzheimer’s disease, their mind’s eye is really alive, and the wandering and the strange things that they do are like memories that are triggered off that they just have to live through in that way that happens. Yeah.
Just just with people that have what seems to be a disability, with the mind thinking of them with the highest intention helps enormously. Having the highest intention. Yeah. Well, yeah, with the highest compassion, highest thought, respect. Sure.
So, again, yes, that’s that also fits in with what I’m saying that the you know, it’s the gross level of mind that’s sort of disjointed, if you like. But the deeper level of mind remain unaffected, and at some deeper level, they’re still receiving any information that you’re giving to them. And in terms of your last comment about the compassionate attitude, it’s certainly stressed again and again by our teachers that the greatest healing power for ourself and for others is the mind of compassion. So the the greatest force that can can heal ourselves of sickness, disease, problems is meditations and practices relating to compassion, and our ability to help others is directly related to to our practice of compassion. And for instance, that a doctor for instance, a doctor who has compassion, the medicine that he gives to somebody else is likely to be more effective than a doctor without compassion.
Same medicine, but the power of compassion. A few people nodding their heads. It’s the power of the compassion that gives the medicine its force. And that’s why, you know, these days, are about there are countless different therapies and new ones coming aboard every week almost giving all sorts of wonderful and weird names, but ultimately and they all work, and they all work because perhaps the original practitioner or the person who’s developed that theory or whatever is working from compassion, from a place of compassion. And any any philosophy or any practice or therapy that is based on compassion is going to work.
I mean, unless it’s done with a huge lack of wisdom, like like hanging people up by their toes compassionately probably won’t work. Yeah. It’s it doesn’t have wisdom. So there has to be a degree of wisdom as well. But if if it’s coming from compassion, then it’s going to be beneficial.
And what happens is then other people come along and perhaps they want to make money out of this therapy, and then it doesn’t work so well because it’s not being done with compassion. Do do people agree with me? So it’s that it’s that it’s the power of compassion. And and for instance for instance, Tibet Tibetan medicine has a reputation as being extremely effective. One reason is that all of the ingredients of Tibetan medicine, whether it’s the Phowa pills I showed you or the mani pills or just general Tibetan medicine, that it’s all been blessed by lamas.
It’s been blessed by people with pure minds. And that’s what gives us its power and its effectiveness because it’s all always administered or or created with a compassionate mind. And, therefore, as I said, it it because of that blessing it either has the ability to heal people or if they’re not going to be healed then they they will die quickly and painlessly. It helps for a quick painless death. It’s a good sort of two way no loss situation.
So it always comes back to to the compassion. So ultimately, the most important thing we can develop as a therapist in any type of therapy or any type of work is that attitude of compassion and the genuine wish to help others. And then whatever we’re doing will be beneficial and will help others. One more question before lunch. So he needs the thing.
Does this mean that if we can’t help our friends who are suffering, that we haven’t got enough compassion. Why why couldn’t you help your friends? It depends how you define help. If if you if you have a mind of compassion towards your friend, then you’re helping your friend at some level. So people sometimes confuse physical help or physical healing with as being helpful or often often, especially when when it comes to working with people who are sick or dying, too often, physical healing is is equated with success.
And one of the reasons I really like Stephen Levine’s work is that he equates mental healing or psychological healing as success. And as he says, he’s been with many people who who have died healed. And to me, and that makes a lot more sense because as we’ve talked about this weekend, the only thing that’s going on is the mind. So why get so hung up about physical healing of the body? Of course, if that happens, that’s good, but it’s not the most important thing.
And if you go through a particular healing process and you live a lot longer and you create a lot more negative karma, then it’s been a complete waste of time. You would have been better off dying earlier rather than create more negative karma. So ultimately, it’s the healing of the mind which is the most important thing, not the not the healing of the body. So let’s I might just finish by dedicating the positive energy from this morning’s session. Again, dedicating sealing the the positive energy from this morning with the wish that by listening, reflecting, meditating, we may quickly be able to develop our minds to to realize these various teachings and to be able to help others as much as we can and to be able to lead all other beings out of their confusion, their suffering, their pain to a state of this highest form of happiness and peace and healing.
Okay. Let’s stop for lunch and meet back here at one thirty. Meditation. Just bring our awareness back into the room, into the present moment, leaving aside the discussions, all of the thoughts from lunch. Immediately bringing the mind to the breath.
Just being aware of the movement of the breath of the nostrils. And just counting up to twenty one breaths, just keeping the mind on the breath for a count of twenty one. And again now just visualizing either that spiritual being or that ball of light above your crown in the nature of white light radiating white light in every direction, and allowing that white light to stream down through your body, through the crown of your head, just fill your whole body from head to toe with this brilliant radiating light energy, completely dissolving away all mental and physical problems and sickness, and completely bringing with it all positive qualities, in particular the qualities of love, compassion, wisdom. Allowing your whole being to be transformed into this white light, purifying, healing energy. So now we can, just for a few minutes do the meditation, known in Tibetan as Tonglen, which literally means taking and giving.
That’s a very powerful technique for developing compassion, a very profound powerful technique, which some of you may have some resistance to doing because visualization is to take on the suffering of others, to willingly take on the suffering of others. So if it’s not comfortable in your mind to do this then don’t follow through with the visualization. So firstly, at the level of our heart, again in that heart chakra, we visualize a black rock. This black rock represents all of our selfishness, our self-cherishing, our ego, the cause of all of our problems, all of our negative states of mind, everything that derives from from ego, all of the hatred, anger, jealousy, pride, desire, all of those negative disturbing states of mind that come from ego are visualized as a black rock in the center of the chest. And then we visualize again around us, in human form all of the sentient beings of the six realms, all other living beings in the universe in human form around us, all the same as us in wanting happiness not wanting suffering.
But most of those living beings with no method of how to overcome their suffering without any true spiritual path, without knowing how to go beyond suffering, lost, confused, suffering. So with this, Mahāyāna thought, this thought of great compassion wishing to liberate them from their suffering, we willingly take on their suffering so that they can be free of it. So as we breathe in, we visualize breathing in all of their suffering, all of their pain in the form of black smoke. I should explain here that some people have the thought that if they do this type of meditation, will actually manifest as some sort of more suffering or sickness, and that’s not the case. It’s just the visualization, so it doesn’t physically have that effect.
Also what you can do if there is some difficulty doing the meditation is to visualize taking on your own pain and your own suffering at least as an initial step. So as you breathe in you breathe in suffering of all other living beings around you, and you visualize breathing in that suffering, that pain in the form of black smoke.