Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute workshop session, Venerable Pende Hawter explores Buddhist perspectives on death, dying, medical ethics, and practical funeral arrangements. He grounds the discussion in karma and states of mind, distinguishing between actively ending a life and allowing natural death, and illustrates how the Dalai Lama’s approach to life support emphasizes the possibility of meaningful mental function. Hawter walks through resuscitation ethics using vivid real-world examples from palliative care and hospital settings, then addresses the complex issue of organ donation, arguing that compassionate intention during the donation decision overrides concerns about bodily disturbance. He covers the flexibility and spiritual significance of Buddhist funerals, the legal and practical freedom in designing ceremonies, and closes with guidance on preparing for death by cultivating compassion, renunciation, and emptiness. Pitched at practitioners and healthcare workers seeking Buddhist wisdom on end-of-life care.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 D and D 1994 11 13.mp3
UUID: fb5fbf55-8ba4-49f9-9d65-f6b65cae65b9
Teacher: Ven Pende Hawter
Collection: Death and Dying (Ven Pende Hawter)
Date: 1994-11-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~6,321
Supposed to go ahead and do that. We have patience sometimes. I remember one night with the patient, and he asked his sister to end it for him. And she was very distressed by that. And she said, no.
You know, that’s against our religious beliefs. And I think I just reassured him, said, look. You know, it’s okay. We’ll keep you comfortable. And I think he died the the next morning or something or a few hours later.
But it really distressed her very much, Just the thought of it. And we have one one young fellow. I mean, he he has a lot of problems anyway and has been quite suicidal since his mother died. I think there was some unhealthy relationship. Perhaps he was Jewish.
I’m not sure. Sorry, Nathan. But had a sorry. I’ve just been around Jewish people this weekend, and I’ve been hearing all these stories about, you know, this terrible Jewish parenting and stuff. Anyway, he was obviously very close to his mother, and and his mother, when she was dying, asked him to end her life.
And he refused, and she died about two hours later. But he has just experienced unbearable, terrible guilt about not carrying out his mother’s wish. I guess he felt such an obligation to his mother, was so close to his mother, the fact that he refused to do this for his mother, and there’s no way we could sort of get through to him that he did the right thing. He’s just stuck with this terrible guilt about not carrying out his mother’s wish. And then even though he said, look, you know, she died comfortably or she died only a couple of hours later, but the very fact that she’d asked him and he hadn’t carried it out just created such a problem.
So it is a it’s a it’s extremely complex and difficult area, but, anyway, from the spiritual viewpoint, that’s the sort of Buddhist Buddhist view, which I think is worth thinking about, and it’s certainly not part of the usual euthanasia debate, which gets very complicated when when these top lawyers start discussing the legal implications of euthanasia. But the spiritual issues get totally ignored. And I think it’s to me, it seems very simple. If you look at it in terms of the karma and the state of mind, it sort of takes away most of the argument, I think. Other comments?
I just like to know what would the Buddhist viewpoint be on resuscitation of a patient. Okay. So that’s yeah. That’s that’s I’m glad you mentioned that. So we we have to clearly distinguish these two types of situations.
One is where you actively end a person’s life, which is euthanasia and the other one is where you allow a person to die naturally which is not euthanasia. And in terms of I’m going roundabout way to your question but in terms of someone who’s on a life support system, terms of turning off that system, the Dalai Lama said that he’s often asked this question and his answer is that if there is no real possibility that the person is going to regain useful mental function which is the main reason that we exist or our main purpose for living then you may as well, in his words, you may as well turn off the machine and say bye bye. He said because he said he feels the money that’s used for that could be better used for something else. He said of course if the family has a lot of money then it’s okay to continue but it doesn’t make a lot of sense or purpose to do that. In terms of resuscitation, now this actually fits in with a little bit with what Natalie was saying at afternoon tea.
It’s a different case. Can I mention my case? Natalie was saying that some time ago, she found somebody who had attempted suicide and and through her intervention the fellow was resuscitated and and lived and she wondered whether he had done the right whether she had done the right thing also because since then he’d he’d done a lot of negative things and I think now she’s been killed in a car accident. My answer is yes, completely. She did the right thing because she saved a life and life is precious.
It was a young person who it was a young person who had the possibility of useful life ahead of them. No matter how much negativity people have done in the past, that can always be turned around and they can always embrace the spiritual path. There are countless examples of people who’ve been incredibly negative and and turned it turned it around, become saints, really. And a couple of of course, a couple of the classic Buddhist examples, Milarepa, who’s through black magic killed about thirty of his relatives when he was young. Seemed the right thing to do at the time because they had wronged his parents.
And and then also the classic case of the the Angulimala at the in the time of the Buddha. Angulimala had a a false teacher who told him that the way to become enlightened was to kill people and cut off their little fingers and wear them around his neck or or to kill kill a thousand people, I think it was. I don’t know if he’s and then so what he did, I guess, to prove that he he was doing the right thing was he cut off the little fingers and he wore them in a necklace around his neck. So Angulimala literally means a necklace of fingers or a necklace of little fingers, And he had nine hundred ninety nine, so he was feeling quite pleased with himself, only one to go. And then the Buddha saw what was happening, and so he manifested there.
And Angulimala tried to catch him and through his through his magical powers, he sort of kept getting away. Eventually, he was able to show Angulimala the error of his ways and taught him the dharma, and Angulimala became an arhat or liberated in that life, which again shows that even people who’ve who’ve created huge amount of negative karma, even in one life, can purify all that all that negative karma as Angulimala did, as Milarepa did in that same life. In terms of resuscitation, it probably depends a little bit on the situation, and I think one has to be realistic. And there’s a couple of examples. Years ago, I was visiting an old lady in a nursing home, and, again, I’m sure the nurses, doctors here have very similar experiences but I visited an old lady in a hospital and she was in a six bed unit and there was an old lady there who would have to be in her late seventies or eighties she was demented She didn’t know where she was.
And she wanted to go to the toilet and I helped her out. And the nurse then took her and she came back to bed and then she had a cardiac arrest. And so, you know, I went and told the nurse and the button got pushed and the trolleys came from everywhere and about six doctors and nurses came and frantically worked on her and and there was tremendous sort of disturbance in the in the ward and all this running here and there and I sort of comforted the other ladies in in in the unit and they eventually got the triumphant. They got this old lady going again and whipped her off to CCU where she died the next day. Now to me, that was just a I mean, just so ridiculous such a ridiculous thing to do.
The kind, sensible, spiritual thing to do. I mean, imagine what was happening to that woman’s consciousness while all this was going on. The kind, sensible thing to do in a situation like that with an old partly senile woman would have been to just sit with her, hold her hand, do some of the things we’ve talked about this weekend, and just let her die peacefully, draw the curtains, and just make it as peaceful and calm as possible. So that’s a case of inappropriate resuscitation. As opposed to one of my experiences at the hospice, Mount Olivet Hospice in Brisbane, The one old fellow I’d been visiting and I went to see him one day again in something like a six or eight bed ward, probably six or eight beds in the ward and the curtains were drawn and I peeked in and the business was going on as normal in the ward.
I had a look in and he was lying there dead with a rose between his hands sitting up on his chest. It’s a peaceful death, which I and that’s how death should be, you know, that’s how death should be in hospital or a natural, normal, peaceful, loving, calm, and that fellow certainly had a much better chance of having a good death and a good transition than that poor old lady in the other ward. But if it’s a younger person like the person Natalie saved or someone again I think he would and I haven’t thought so much about this before with resuscitation but I would say someone where there is a real chance of useful mental function if they if they’re resuscitated, then that would seem to be the sensible thing to do, depending on on the circumstances. But I think generally if there is a chance of restoring life, then that should be done as much as possible. Now I’m not sure if I mentioned in in this in the weekend, but another reason why perhaps the Tibetans have a different attitude towards suicide perhaps than other groups, did we talk about the Vietnamese monks who immolated themselves?
So often when we talk about suicide, somebody always asks, in this case I ask, but somebody always asks about the Vietnamese monks in the Vietnamese war or the monks in the Vietnamese war who immolated themselves. You all remember that. Many of you remember that. And someone asked me even yesterday or the day before about this. I was one of you.
Yeah. You asked me? Came off the night. Yeah. Someone asked me.
I might have been Jampa. Jampa. Jampa. Jampa. Trouble is these new monks, they change their names all the time.
So, anyhow, now it’s just a matter of getting used to new names. But it was brought up, this thing about the the Vietnamese monks who immolated themselves. And I’ve asked the some of the Tibetan lamas about this, and and and often they find it a little bit hard to answer because at one level, the it was done with with the the compassionate wish that it that it would bring world attention to the suffering in Vietnam. It was done very mindfully and with a deliberate sort of sacrifice and with a mind of compassion to relieve suffering. In in that level, it was a positive action.
But the negative side was that they actually took their own lives. They ended their own lives. And I think part of the the difficulty for the Tibetan lamas is that in the tantric system, I mentioned before about the causal vehicle and the resultant vehicles. And the resultant vehicle in tantra, you actually visualize yourself as the deity, as a Buddha, or as in fact the mandala of deities. Perhaps all all parts of your body are many different deities, even like a hundred deities.
And so if you kill yourself, you’re actually killing the Buddha. Whereas in the other Buddhist systems like Vietnamese or Theravadin, they don’t have the tantric system, so it wouldn’t be seen as such a fault. But if you kill yourself in Buddhism, in in Tibetan Buddhism, you’re killing the Buddha, you’re killing the deity. And so that also has a lot of implications in terms of the Phowa practice, because if you do the Phowa practice and transfer your consciousness at the wrong time, you’re actually killing yourself, and that’s a fault. So one of the so associated with this practice, there is a whole science, I think I mentioned this weekend, of recognizing the signs of impending death based on observation of the breath, of dreams, of the shadow, even things like the flow of urine, and many different sorts of things that can be checked to see whether you’re likely to die, and then if there are these signs of impending death then you do what you can to turn those around, and if even if when you’ve done that then are still certain that you’re going to die then you can do the Powa practice.
So there’s a lot of safeguards built into the system if you like to make sure that it’s not done at the inappropriate time. So does that answer your question on resuscitation? Yeah. Do you have particular examples? Well, to me, it doesn’t make sense.
I I think it makes much more sense to let someone die naturally. If it’s a young person like if it’s a young person, it’s attempted suicide. If it’s a drowning, something like that, then obviously it makes sense to resuscitate them. But if it’s an old person and they have a stroke or a cardiac arrest, it just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to resuscitate them. It would seem more appropriate to let them die naturally.
What about if it’s a young person who has the same thing? Same Or has a cardiac arrest or a stroke or, you know, it seems like natural causes. Well then I think, again, it comes back to this thing about their karma and this concept of interfering with their karma. And basically if a young person has a stroke or a heart attack and there is the medical help available, that is part of their karma. And if again they have the possibility, the likelihood of active mental functioning then I think the appropriate thing would seem to be to resuscitate them and of course you don’t know what mental functioning they’re going to get until you resuscitate them.
But it seems to me that an older person is likely to still have clarity of mental functioning if they resuscitated eighty seven. My grandmother was eighty five or so when she died. And she, you know, had a number of operations before then, which I felt uncomfortable about thinking but, you know, total clarity of mental functioning to the point that she actually did finally die. It’s like, where is that choice lying that because somebody is, what, under seventy or under sixty, do you’ve That’s, I mean, that’s a good point. And how do you judge?
So there’s shades of grey there and then, you know, somebody has to make that judgment about who you do or don’t resuscitate, obviously, which the doctors have to do in Australia. Variations on this. There must be so many reasons why a heart might fail, and some of those may be temporary and some of them may be, you know, more permanent or more serious. I think it’s a complex issue. I don’t think there’s any simple answers.
No. Yeah. It depends. Yes. There are a lot of ridiculous things happening, we had a case a couple of weeks ago.
One of our patience was dying, and I’m sure Joy has come across this as well and others. There was a locum doctor on the the main doctor had gone on holiday and there was a locum doctor on and this lady was dying and he insisted that she’d be offered a drip in a nasogastric tube to keep her going. He said people shouldn’t die dehydrated. I mean, you know, how have people been dying for the last fifty thousand years if not a little bit dehydrated? So it was inappropriate.
So our nurses who are very skillful as palliative nurses are, sort of went up to this lady and said, well, doctor said that I should offer you a nasogastric tube, they jammed this thing down your nose, and it’s pretty horrible. And do you want it? And she said, no. Thank you. So she carried out the doctor’s wishes, and common sense prevailed.
So for patient who’s resuscitation. That’s right. Now I’ll tell you another another sort of silly point of the law, and several years ago, our consultant gave a theoretical one of these theoretical sort of situations to an oncology nurse’s seminar and he gave the example of if you if there’s an old person who’s or a patient who’s dying and they may only have a few hours to live, they’re very close to death and then you take off the drip and then some church going group, her friends of the family, convinced the relatives that they should ring the doctor and say, If you don’t put the drip back in, we’re going to sue the hospital. And what would you do in that situation? So it was a theoretical case of what would you do.
After the seminar he said that this had actually happened to him and he was actually filling in for another doctor but this actually happened and he took it to the medical superintendent who said put the drip back in because legally you can be sued for failure to care or something by not maintaining life saving measures until the person takes their last breath. So there are some real problems with the law. So he put the drip back in and the lady died twenty four hours later or something. So there’s some silly things that occur because of the law and because of a lack of common sense. Yes.
Otherwise, it can be interpreted as negligence and failure to care. The other thing I wanted to mention is about funerals because many of us will be involved in funerals. So all I wanted to say about funerals was that it’s not commonly understood and if I say anything wrong here Sue tell me that funerals can be conducted by anybody and they can be conducted anywhere and you can do anything you want in them right? In broad terms? It depends what you want to do and where you want to do it I mean there’s lots of bylaws and council laws and regulations, but in general, yeah.
General terms, so any of us could conduct a funeral, we could do it in the person’s home or in a park, can you do it in a park? Do it in a park, I’ve done several of them in a little pergola outside the in the gardens outside the the crematorium because the people preferred that than being inside in a funeral chapel. You can include any form of music or prose or poetry or prayers that you want to. I did conducted one funeral which was very powerful because the fellow was involved in music and he got his friends to come along with their bongo drums. And they set that up inside at the front of the funeral parlor, and they were just going to play it at the end of the funeral, but because the daughter of the fellow got the time of the funeral wrong and arrived fifteen minutes late, they played at the beginning with just the bongo drums, just the drums.
And then at the end, they played and they sang this very powerful, soulful music that they sang, know, French the French or from French Polynesia or something. And and as they played, then people came up and said their goodbyes to the fellow in the coffin and came up and and supported the family. But it was such it was the most powerful funeral I’ve been involved in with the playing of the music. So, basically, you know, usually when I conduct a funeral, I sit down with the family and I say, what do you want, you know, what do you want to do? Who do you want to have speak?
What prose and poetry and music? And I’ve collected a little folder of different prose, Buddhist and non-Buddhist. And and so they put something together that’s that’s that suits that person who’s died. And I remember our friend Richard who who was a Zen practitioner. Some of his close friends were Christian.
He was very involved in music, so the ceremony comprised the Zen group chanting some of the Zen scriptures and then three pieces of classical music that he loved and several people in his aunts coming up and reading from the Christian scriptures. And then at the end, people coming up and putting a they chose not to have the coffin there, but they had a little altar. And people came up and placed a rose or a flower at his picture on the altar, said their goodbyes and the whole thing was totally appropriate for Richard. And so the main point is that the funeral should be appropriate for the person who’s died, not not so you can arrange it in whatever way is is most appropriate and there’s an excellent little book has been written which I’m sure Sue knows of called Funerals to Celebrate Life by Marion Barnes. And and and if you’re interested in this area, I’d recommend that book.
There are certain elements for a Buddhist funeral, which I didn’t bring the list with me. But and in a sense, because funerals are a bit it’s not the sort of Buddhist custom in a way. They would have pooh pujas or ceremonies, but not the western’s type funeral. So we’ve sort of put together a little ceremony, and and you can just use any prayers that you think of. But as I mentioned, that Lama Zopa recommended the king of prayers and and the recitation of of Mani, so Om Mani Padme Hum is very good.
And then perhaps getting someone else to do Guru Puja or or some sort of Puja, another group, say, here at the center. Those type of things is good. Any questions about funerals? Comments? I’m interested in the disposal of the body, the options that are available.
Somebody else can ask it on the microphone. So the question relates to about disposing the body in different types of funeral. Perhaps somebody in Adelaide could set up a sky burial service and bring in a few vultures. Yes. Okay.
Okay. Basically, in terms of disposal of the body, as I said before, once the consciousness leaves the body, then it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter how you dispose of the body, whether it’s cremation or burial, you’re just disposing the empty shell. So the main thing is how you care for the body and and the person while the consciousness is still within that body. So times marching on. Yes.
Any any anything at all. Yes. Oh, okay. Good point. Donor.
Donor organs. It’s a good thing to talk about a four twenty five on Sunday afternoon. Did I talk about this yesterday? No. No.
You’re rich. Yeah. Well, I can’t let you down. So donating organs, people often ask about this because it does involve tampering with the body while the consciousness generally while the consciousness is still in the body, and therefore the argument is is it something that should be done or shouldn’t be done with Buddhists? Now the usual answer the lamas give is that because the wish to give your organs is done with the motivation of compassion, with the wish for part of your body to be to be used to help someone else stay alive, that’s a very compassionate thought.
And for instance, there’s many many stories of the great saints of the past who’ve been able to use parts of their bodies, if not their whole body, to keep, you know, to feed animals or to keep other people alive, to help other people live. So the thought to and it’s a bit like giving blood. I think donating blood is a very good practice for aspiring Bodhisattvas because you’re giving part of your body to keep other people alive. So I think it’s an excellent practice to do. So what the lamas generally say is that because you’re dying with that thought of compassion uppermost in your mind, which is the most important thing, then that overrides any disturbance that may come from tampering with the body.
So it’s fine to donate your organs if a Buddhist, because you’re doing it, as I said, with a mind of compassion. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Because you’re using it to benefit others.
You know, if it helps, well, it will help to to die with that compassionate state of mind therefore it’s a good thing to do. Yes, microphones. Just give clarification on the legality of the body after death. When my mother died in New Zealand, we were actually told by the undertaker that the family didn’t have jurisdiction over the body, that it belonged to the state. And I think it I just wanted clarification because I think it was up until such time the death certificate was signed.
Is that right? I was just curious. I know it actually shocked us at the time. Actually can’t really answer that, and I’m not really too sure. Okay.
One of the lamas gave an amusing answer to this question about what happens to your body after you’re dead and they said, you know, you don’t have to worry what happens to your body, they said, you know, it’ll soon become sort of smelly and unpleasant and someone will get rid of it for you. You don’t have to worry. Someone will get rid of it. It’ll be a nuisance. Yes.
At the back. Was I thought you could hear me. I was projecting. His wife, Yvonne, was quite badly hurt in the accident and her her child was killed in uterus before before it was born. Mhmm.
And the baby was removed from her an emergency cesarean and kept there at Grafton for quite some time while she was transferred to Brisbane and given the appropriate medical attention. And it came to a point where there needed to be a decision about what would happen to the infant. Also there was a lot of discussion on whether the infant was considered to be a living thing. It was quite a distressing time for everyone. My role in that situation was to bring the baby from Grafton to Brisbane and to take it back into oh, I’ve just broken a promise.
It’s not my intention to do that. Okay. The the baby was taken back into where the mother was so that she could say her farewells because, as you can imagine, a lot of her faculties were very badly, impaired at the time of the cesarean section. We did have a little bit of conflict between two authorities, one being one person in charge of where my sister was staying, another one being this is just baffling on here a bit, I’m sorry. The director of the Brisbane Hospital.
But we did manage to get the baby back in with a lot of tact and calmness. The the point that I’m trying to make here is the question I wanted to ask you was, in my mind, was definitely a living thing, a living And I just wonder why people why it is believed that if a baby doesn’t go full term, that it’s not a living thing. I was saying yesterday different people have different beliefs and some believe that the consciousness or soul doesn’t enter the fetus until three months or six months or full term. Also, I know that in the what do they call, the baby hospitals, maternity hospitals, in terms of they have a bit of a rule. I can’t remember.
Something like what’s the weight of a full term baby in in grams? There was something like if a baby is born like if there’s a miscarriage or something and if it’s under a certain weight they don’t have to record the baby and if it’s over a certain weight they do. I can’t remember it’s four hundred grams or something like that. And so I’ve heard for instance that the doctors sometimes fib and if it says four hundred grams and it’s four zero two or four zero five they’ll write three ninety seven. And and so it’s so that’s one aspect of it and I’ve heard of babies badly deformed babies being born and still being alive there’s one awful story really one of our one our nuns who worked as a midwife.
And this baby that was still alive, even though it may have died after a while, sort of been dropped into an old Milo tin while it was still alive and just being and she picked it up and held it in her arms. But the doctor just didn’t wanna know about it really because that very much was in Buddhist terms, you know, the consciousness was there and it needed a proper proper help to through that period of transition. A lot of things happen that are undesirable. Yes. So so a lot of people don’t believe that the consciousness enters at the at the moment of conception, which, of is also very convenient in terms of abortion because you can have a very clear conscience about abortion if you think that you’re not killing a living being.
Time is running out. I’m very happy to keep talking for hours, but I wanted to finish with a couple of little quotes, one of which I read yesterday, but and again, it’s it’s sort of, in a sense, Lama Yeshe’s summary or conclusion of this Phowa practice, and I read this yesterday. And it’s perhaps as as a summary of the weekend or something that we should take away with this from the weekend. He said, we should send forth sincere prayers constantly. Some people, however, have the wrong idea about praying.
They think prayers must be made in a very formal manner with great seriousness and heaviness, But this is not true. Prayer can be and should be done in a completely relaxed state of mind. And then the the the key sentence here. The thought that is prepared to go anywhere or do anything as long as it is of benefit to others is the true mind of prayer. Repeating such thoughts in your mind over and over again under all circumstances is extremely powerful.
Therefore, you should always ask yourself, what does it matter, what time it is, or where I am? What is the best way I can help as many beings as possible? And then as his conclusion about the poa practice, and in a sense, we can talk about in a sense the whole weekend that we’ve just done. Also, also remember that whether you do Phowa or not, or any of this stuff or not we’ve talked about, if you have compassion in general and the three principal paths in particular, which is the renunciation, compassion, or bodhicitta, and emptiness, you already have the best method of transferring your consciousness. The best way to lead your life and to be happy is by giving the best possible vibrations to others.
Instead of being angry, uptight, guilty, or upset with yourself, you should try to be happy with both yourself and others. So that’s his conclusion to his summary of the Phowa practice, and I think very good advice for all of us, and perhaps a nice thing to finish with. So we can finish there. As I said, there’s a lot more things I could have talked about, but we’ve run out of time. Yeah.
I’m I don’t have to go for another hour or two, so I’m happy to stay and chat. If people want to stay, we can keep talking about different things, But I’d like to firstly to thank Sue and the Buddha House committee for organizing this course. It’s been I’ve I’ve enjoyed the course very much. As you’ve seen, I can talk all day about this stuff and enjoy it. And I hope it’s been of some benefit to to you who’ve come.
And I think the best thing I can do is to give you the advice that the lamas invariably give at the end of courses, which is that if this if any of this information has been useful for you, then take it and use it. If not, then just put it aside, but just really use use what you can that you’ve from this course to to help others. And I wish you all well in your future death and dying journeys. So let’s finish in the usual way by dedicating the positive energy from this weekend. So we dedicate, see all the positive energy from this weekend by making the wish that by coming together like this and listening, reflecting, meditating, discussing on these various topics that we’ve covered this weekend, that that may allow us to quickly gain the realizations of death and dying and the other aspects of the path so that we can quickly develop our minds, reach those higher states of realization, compassion, love, wisdom, and be able to lead all other beings to that state of peace and happiness.
Also, that in this and all of our future lifetimes, may we never be separated from perfect teachers who can show us the path and guide us on that path. May all may the lives of all of our teachers be long and free of obstructions and interferences, In particular, thinking of, Geshe Rinpoche, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, all the other teachers. And through these positive actions, may the minds of all beings in the world be pacified so that all beings everywhere can live in peace and harmony, so that all fighting and wars and hatred will cease. And may each one of us be able to bring about that result. And for each one of us may all of our hindrances and obscurations quickly be finished so that we can, grow on the spiritual path.
Okay. Such a perfect conclusion to a most beneficial weekend but I would like to express thanks to all those who have been involved in preparing the workshop and of course to Pende and I’ll come back to Pende But so far as the other people who have contributed enormously to the preparation I’d like to name various people. I can’t say that I know all of the hard work they’ve put in. Sue has coordinated everything and she’s done a wonderful job of getting the workshop organized, getting it to happen. And I know that not so long ago there was a real fear that there was going to be an inadequate number of people and it’s a tremendous turnout and a wonderful achievement.
So far as the other names are concerned there was Lindy, Leslie, Natalie, Kerry, Karen, Barbara and Tony. And I’m sure that you’d want me to thank them too for all the hard work they put into it. And of course, the absolutely fantastic food that we’ve had from Rana and from Theresa and from Tony. And before formally thanking Pende, I’d also like to thank everybody for their contributions and I think that it’s been particularly down a bit. I think the people’s contributions have been particularly helpful.
I’ve been very impressed with the level of comment and questions and contributions that people have made. I would like to thank Pende in particular for so generously coming down to Adelaide or yes, down to Adelaide from Brisbane for this weekend for our benefit and for so successfully distracting us away from one of ultimates in Samsaric experiences, the Grand Prix. I must say that I found it absolutely amazing that I could scarcely hear the Grand Prix and that was obviously substantially due to him. He so gently and skillfully taught us and imbued in us the Buddhist way to approach our own death without fear and the most beneficial mechanisms for helping others to approach their death and that of their relatives and friends. So we are now better prepared for death by knowing how better to live and better prepared for life by knowing how better to die.
Thank you very much, Pende, and come back soon as many of us perhaps regretfully regrettably rather may still be alive tomorrow and beyond. All your questions which always makes it very easy for the for the teacher, for me, and I’ve enjoyed it very much. I just remembered something I didn’t say. In reviewing the death meditation, people can react in different ways to that. I didn’t sort of finish that off and sometimes I know when people have done the death meditation, sometimes they’re upset that they’ve had to come back.
Some people enjoy the meditation so much they say, oh, why do they have to come back? You know, living is a bit of a drag. And other people, of course, they can when they come out of it, they can be quite upset, you know, sometimes they’ve visualized it so well that the thought of separating from their loved ones or their children can be quite traumatic. Both reactions have happened with that death meditation.