Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 99-minute Q&A session, Ven Robina Courtin answers practical and philosophical questions about death, dying, and karma from Australian Buddhist practitioners. She opens with guidance on supporting someone in their final hours: what to do around the moment of death, signs that consciousness has left, and practices for the three-day period after breathing stops. She explores the bardo (intermediate state) and Pure Land rebirth, including how accomplished meditators may remain in meditation after physical death. Throughout, she engages challenging questions on dementia, homosexuality, gender, and attachment, drawing parallels to Christian and Muslim frameworks to illustrate how philosophical worldviews shape our emotional responses to suffering. A local practitioner describes compassionate action training and practices for the dying. Pitched at serious Buddhist practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 E 2016 07 31.mp3
UUID: 9a88dd07-b081-43e8-9b7c-c0230b677002
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Robina Courtin (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2016-07-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 98.9 minutes
Words: ~18,082
Okay. Yep. I’ve got a couple of questions. Yes. Venerable Robina.
First one, just relating to the animal skins in the in the dying person’s room. My mother actually sleeps on a sheep skin. Okay. Yeah, so That’s interesting. I mean, yeah, it’s like all I can tell you is what they say, you know, then we can make our own calls on it.
I remember yes, all I can say, what can I say, all I can tell you is what they say? I don’t know what else to say. I might encourage her to lose the sheepskin Under her sheet, you mean? Yes, under her sheet. It might be something synthetic.
Yes, like a wool underlay. On the other hand, the yogis sit on animal skins because they’re yogis and they’re able to transfer or transform it or something. Don’t know. Second question is just related to Amitābha’s Pure Land. If you do a deity practice, the recommendation is still to aspire to go to Amitābha’s Pure Land rather than your deity.
I understand, that’s the interesting point. And that’s only something that I’ve just discovered recently since doing this book, the way Rinpoche talks is very clear. All the Buddhas have their own Pure Lands. But as Rinpoche is saying, and I’ve never really heard it so clearly before, and maybe it has been this, you know, is that even if you want to go to the other, unless you’ve got high realizations, unless you realize emptiness most of the time, unless you’ve got a direct realization of emptiness, you’re just not qualified to go there. They’re for very advanced beings.
That’s the point. So there’s no contradiction to Amitābha’s because all these Buddhas, well they’re all connected to the different Buddha families anyway, you know? So that seems to be the point, that it’s the only one that is where ordinary, deluded people who haven’t realized emptiness can go. That for me is the clear point that he’s making. Yeah, that’s my point.
That’s Rinpoche’s point, isn’t it? Robina, I’m just thinking about people that die in different states of dementia. Yes. And my mother has dementia. Yes.
It’s not advanced, but I’ve seen advanced. No. No. It may be by the time she dies. And I’ve seen people quite disturbed at the point of death with dementia.
Just wondering the best thing I suppose is no difference. Rinpoche’s idea, Rinpoche’s point, the only way you can help them is by having sounds of prayers. Only way. There’s no other way. Most of us are hopeless, we can’t put our minds together, you know?
But the only way to help is to have the power of the Buddhist mantras, the prayer is very peaceful and quiet. That’s what I said one experience I had at one old people’s home, this mother, demented but paranoid, you know? Angry, unhappy mind. We sang few mantras like instantaneous peace. That’s the only thing you can give.
Like babies, animals, there’s nothing else you can do. And the power of it, just the soothingness of it, even itself, but the power because it’s the Buddha’s can help, if nothing else can. That’s the And that seems to me even having it so quietly that it’s almost in the air, they’re just there while they’re sleeping. You couldn’t do anything better than that, it seems. Not to mention the ones that have mantras on their body, that type of thing, all these practices that are mentioned in here.
Do you see my point? Could I just make a comment to that? People with dementia, there’s research that shows that they respond incredibly well to music that they have loved. So if that has a spiritual base it would give power to a spiritual It actually awakens them. So not only does it place them at people who are still living, not imminently dying, but it awakens a part of their being that actually knows things and then enables them to recall memories and aspects of life that is rich for them.
So to therefore do what you’re saying would be very potent. Yes, absolutely. And the key point, of course the extra component here for the Buddhist one is that it puts an imprint of the Buddha in their mind which is helping them get to the next life. That’s the added piece of course, which is not the way the West talks, but yes, it’s helpful to know, isn’t it? So helpful.
I have a question. I’ve had two experiences of this with family members who have been quite lucid, but in the last twenty four hours, having hallucinations? Yes. You know, and verbalizing those. I’m just wondering what I mean, think I have some guesses to it, but I would just want to know.
Well, it’s I mean, hallucinations that could because it depends on the person and it depends on the hallucinations, but that means their subtle mind is more vivid rather than the conceptual sensory which is the grosser level. The subtle mind is more vivid and it can very easily be predictions of their future. Were these hallucinations difficult, tortured, fearful? No, no, quite pleasant in both situations. One was my uncle who’s a priest, but he wound up holding class.
He wound up holding a Oh. You know, so he had students in the room. Okay. He was sort of repeating his preachings, I guess. Okay.
But it was quite pleasant. He was quite calm, he actually wanted us to sing along as well, and Oh, there he goes. He had marching around the room and, you know. Well, yeah, this this I mean, yeah. It could be it’s like the dream line.
It’s like just memories of things, isn’t it? Yeah, mean, it’s true. Recently a friend of mine who died, who lived in India for years, and she was like abbess at one of the Indian centres and she probably spoke Hindi, but when she died suddenly she sat up before she died and started shouting orders in a language this woman didn’t know. I’m assuming it was Hindi, you know? So I mean, could and that then she died.
So it could be bad or good, it doesn’t matter. But some of you do hear about people having like the Steve Jobs one, oh, wow. Like blissful, radiant, light, they see the new life coming, the white light one or it can be like fearful there’s a friend of mine in Cairns, her nun who sits with the dying she said she’d never seen anything as horrific as this this man like transformed into almost like a demon in a second his eyes became red he was screaming in agony terrifying like pushing away people you know unbelievable suffering unbelievable torture like hallucinations of the future suffering lives maybe you know people often say I mean they use an example in the Lamrim of a person who’s been a butcher, who’s killed animals, I mean actually killed animals, that you have hallucinations of animals attacking you, this kind of thing, they’re the karmic imprint. That could be just like dreams, know. I’ve heard that too before.
Else people? One of the things, once the person’s this the bit here we’re talking about finally what to do the hours before death. First of all be quiet, totally quiet. Extremely important, essential that your loved ones not disturbed. Don’t create any situation that disturbs their mind.
This is the main point. Helping them avoid strong attachment and the other delusions during this time gives them a chance to have virtuous thoughts, that’s the point. Recognize the stages of death. Well, we can, we can. If we can’t, we can’t.
This is a very typical thing they do, which is what you do to your animal, is put this live in the this posture that’s on the picture of your cover, which is the way the Buddha is said to pass away, that’s said to be a very auspicious way to pass away. One of the things they say is to have mani pills, these pills that are blessed by His Holiness and many of the monks in Dharamsala, to have these crunched to have these oh there’s two different things, to have one of them on the mouth, give them to them. But that should be before you crush the pill and put it in water, It should be while they can still swallow. It can’t stay on their tongue, they should swallow it. That’s a typical thing that Tibetans do.
Or a relic of the Buddha, same kind of thing, you know? And then you just talk about whatever’s appropriate for their mind, the practices, talk about the Buddha, talk about Jesus, whatever. Touch, give and text, all the stuff that’s been happening before, you focus on that now. And then you do prayers and things, or you can have certainly, you can also organise at this point, like if you have, you know, let’s say you have a connection with a centre somewhere or a monastery, get them to do prayers right now, sponsor pujas and things, you know, that’s really auspicious. So practice is to do during the hours and days after the breath has stopped.
They also say here, now that your loved one’s breath has stopped, apart from putting the blessed substances, another thing you can do, on their crown, you shouldn’t touch the body. It’s possible that touching the wrong part of the body before the mind leaves can disturb the person, that’s what this is, you know? Causing their consciousness to leave at that point and take a lower realm rebirth. And this is where they always talk about it as a Buddhist, you’d shout in their ear the name of their guru. Well that’s the thing, know, when I told you, when I shouted quietly into my friend Judy’s ear when she was in a total dead coma, they didn’t even think she’d come out alive, and she remembered crystal clear the words.
So there’s more to things that you know, I told you that story. I just every now and again I’d say to I went to the ICU unit at night and I’d say prayers next to her. She was out of a, you know, she was in a coma, deep coma. And every now and again I’d say Judy, His Holiness, such and such a Rinpoche, praying for you, that kind of thing. And there the word, the only thing she remembered, that was usually like deep coma.
Well there she has her senses aren’t working but she remembered it, so that’s the point. Same here, you know, especially when the mind’s stopped breathing, the mind’s become more supple now. Putting blessed substances on their crown chakra. So you can have a Mani pill or Puja pill, different kinds of things. And it’s all written about here.
So where’s Judy? So tell us Judy, come up here, would you? I think Judy should come up. Who? Yeah, come up and tell us about the group you’ve got.
The group here that could certainly grow into a really good group to help the dying, you know? Tell us what goes on. You do in the group. Here at Buddha House we have a Compassionate Action Group, and it’s a small number of volunteers who attends the centre and who are Buddhist. And some of us are really a bit more trained or been around Buddhism a bit longer than others, and we have done the Karunā course.
Tell me what that is. Well, Karunā Hospice in Queensland put on this course called It’s an FPMT centre. Got like government funding and they had palliative care. Not just for Buddhists, they help everybody. They help everybody.
So we held level one here at Buddha House and we had twenty five people, some GPs, nurses, pharmacists, just Buddhist students. And it was very good so that we can help people dying from any religion or no religion or spiritually help them when they’re dying to be peaceful. Also if anybody has any problems or would like any assistance they can always ring the office and the office will contact one of our members and we can go out. We do have what Lama Zopa Rinpoche when we first got this box it was called the death box and now they call it the liberation box. Yeah Rinpoche because it’s got a it’s all these different things that Rinpoche recommends you do, like put blessings on people, put mantras on people, put a stupa, and they’re all in here.
He calls it a liberation box and you get it from FPMT. It’s like a little death kit, you know? Death kit. And also mantras, through texts, bracelet mantras, bless strings, wheel of prayer wheels, stupas. And we do have some mustard seeds which been blessed by Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, who was a previous teacher here at Buddha House.
And also we also have access to things like from the Amitābha Hospice Service, Amitābha Hospice. Talk about that. Yes, there’s a wonderful hospice in New Zealand. A hospice service like palliative care, like Kareena. With many volunteers and lots of in house training.
So they actually put out an advance directive for Buddhists saying you can actually fill it out and say what practices you’d like, see what you’d like done with your ashes, would you like people to make donations, where to. And so if people want one of these I can direct them to the Amitābha Hospice website or I’ve only got a few printed out. Whatever. What’s this something? Oh no, they’re just some of the cards but actually some of those cards, well that card now, Namo Amitābha Mantra, they recommend Namo Amitābha Mantra, little baby one, the big one.
But they’re actually one of those copies. A beautiful colorful one is in the book now as well. So what we’re just saying is that if anybody needs any help, of us that have been there’s about four of us that have done level one. And eventually as they grow they don’t have their own website, own course. So we can also always assist people or advise them or help them with some practices, give them some CDs or whatever they complain about.
And your mentors, how often do you meet once a month? Once a month. Doing what? We meet once a month and then in the afternoon we have what we call the Medicine Buddha Support What you do at your meeting? The meeting, we do a little bit of training and if we have clients that we’re visiting out in the community we will share some of those experiences or say, you know, discuss how if there was something we could have done better, what other ideas somebody else would have done to handle this or advise them.
And then we do a meditation in the afternoon and a cuppa and a chat and then we do Medicine Buddha. Yes, one thirty till four o’clock on a Sunday, the third Saturday of the month. There we go, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you Judy, thank you Joey.
Here, are different things on the crown, that’s a really good practice to do. Then the other one is if this person has requested what they call the POA, transference of consciousness. It’s a particular practice, and again there’s one related to Amitābha that’s in this book written by Lama Yeshe. That can be done either by the person themselves over the period before they die, obviously, because they’ve taken the initiation. It can be done by a lama at this time, not before, or it can be done afterwards during the forty nine days.
And again, that’s in the book. Then if your loved one dies at home, so then there’s a series of things where your loved one dies. So the ideal scenario, the one that Rinpoche always teaches, like I said, is the assumption of three days. So we call it if your loved one is at home when they die. So the assumption being you might be able to keep them for three days.
And Rinpoche recommends all these different practices, but essentially they’re the same practice whether you’ve got the person for half an hour, but it’s what you can do. And most people might do one thing, most people might do twenty of these things, but because of Rinpoche’s book you’ve to put them all in, know, that’s why it’s a bit overwhelming sometimes, but you do what you can, you know? And so basically the three days would be you treat it like a shrine room, totally peaceful, totally quiet, only exactly as before, quiet, nothing else but the practices going on. In many of the monasteries they do them twenty four hours a day. You know they have the monks and nuns rotating, you can easily do that.
Many people do that in their own home, and that’s where you’ve got to be educated and know what the laws are, and often they’re not as restricted as we think, they can be quite casual, you know. What your rights are, the way you love one dies, and what the law demands you do when you know that you know what you’re doing and you plan for it, you know? But that would be the really auspicious thing to do. You’d have pujas done in a monastery and you’d be having your friends come over, you know, rotate. Even just one person in there for a few hours at a time, something like that.
This is so fantastic to do for the person. And then at the end of the day, three days, you do this, you check, there are various signs, there are various signs that indicate that consciousness has left the body or not. Okay, before that, the particular practices Rinpoche always recommends, and the particular ones at the end, he would recommend there’s this typical thing they do in the monasteries called the Eight Prayers to Benefit the Dead. One of those is the King of Prayers, which is always the one he recommends, you can do all eight, eight, fine, if not do the King of Prayers. This is a key one that’s said to be just fantastic, you know?
Another one is that prayer, the prayer to be born in Amitābha’s Pure Land. You’ll have that recited as well. Then there’s also some other practices Rinpoche recommends, and they’re all here. And then when it’s time to move the body, you should check that the mind has left the body. So that’s in chapter twenty four there are several ways to check.
But as I mentioned, easier chapter twenty five, here we go. So there’s different signs that show the mind has gone. So no longer warm at the heart, this is the key one. So if the mind is there, it’ll be distinctively warm, you’ll feel it immediately. The rest of the body can be cold, here will still be toasty.
That shows the mind is still there. If it’s cold there, that shows the mind is gone. Okay, the next one is this is mentioned in more depth when we go through the death process When your consciousness goes into the egg and the sperm of your mummy and daddy, what your subtle consciousness is doing is joining, as I said before the way they describe, the subtler physical energy called the red and the white. The red from the mother and the white from the father. These components of the cells from the mother and father that join together and you start at the heart chakra.
So like I said, everything ends up here and your very subtle consciousness or clear like consciousness is conjoined with what they call this indestructible drop. So when your consciousness leaves the body, depending on where it leaves from, you know here, here, here, the red and the white the white from your own body carries on down is it? Oh it’s different from men and women, I can’t remember which is which now. One goes up and comes out the nostril and the other one goes out and comes out the sex organ. And that’s a sign the mind has left the body, but that could be a bit difficult to locate if there’s other messy stuff there, you know?
That could be difficult to see. The body smells is a pretty obvious one, but if the mind is still there, it won’t smell. The flesh doesn’t respond is a pretty obvious one, isn’t it? You press and it stays pressed, mind’s gone. The head moves, that’s interesting.
I’ve heard that in the past. Especially the consciousness leaves from here, it can show the head can move slightly. Especially yogis they say. So what you do to make sure is that if you are confident the consciousness is gone, especially after three days it’s likely, but if it hasn’t, especially the next lot when you’ve only got a half an hour in the hospital, then as I said before the thing to do is tap here very strongly or pull the hair very vigorously. Don’t be polite about it.
Because if imagine in front of the spine is this subtle central channel as they call it, and the consciousness can go from the heart chakra and it will go up the central channel and out through the crown chakra. And if it leaves through the crown chakra they say a pure land rebirth is what it’ll get, you know? So that’s the best way to do it, so you can help it. No matter what karma was triggered before you stopped breathing. I’m a bit confused about that but that’s what they say.
So then if your loved one dies at hospital, that’s where you know, again you’ve to know your rights. Talk to Gabe beforehand, or if my loved one dies don’t touch her, okay? Let me know immediately. You come, can I have as long as possible? Is there a spare room?
Know what your rights are. The point is have as long as you possibly can. Take as long as you can to do as many of these different prayers as you can. That’s the point. As long as you can without disturbing the body.
The next one is if they die with organs. So our friend Tim who died, I mentioned in North Carolina, he was pronounced dead at noon. Well some of the nuns from that centre went there and did prayers, but every time he was giving his organs, so every time they had to come and do things and take blood or whatever they do, I don’t know what they do, because he was kept alive, you know, was breathing. They had to leave the room, they couldn’t do much. They had as much time as they could, and then finally midnight he’d been gone and they’d taken all the organs.
So they did what they can in that period, you know. And again you wouldn’t do that thing of doing the consciousness to leave because they’re still breathing, it’d quite difficult. So even though they’re going to cut the whole body up, when you get the body back, maybe it’s still possible to why not do that just in case, know? I mean who knows, it’s hard to say. So the other one is you love or die suddenly, and again as I mentioned before, you’ve to have your wits about you, who has?
If you’re a nurse or a doctor you know what to do for CPR, but if you’re a Buddhist you should know what to be checking are they really dead, do you think they’re dead, is it any better than calling the doctor, what do you think? It’s hard to know that it seems to me, especially if you don’t realise what you’re doing, you panic. Because people die suddenly, don’t they, all the time? They drop dead in their soup, drop dead in cars, they collapse on the street. Key thing then, and of course the key thing is that moment, it’s really important how their mind was at that moment, which is determining the karma that would have been triggered.
Because they go through the eight stages exactly the same, but just quickly, that’s all. But it’s not the cool way to die, it’s not the ideal way to die. Recently just talking to a friend whose brother had a terrible car accident, he was drunk and he ran into a tree, it’s in America, and she’s been really worried and so anxious about it, but the point was he didn’t in fact die, he took four hours, he was in hospital. It was really terrible, they didn’t even contact the family, they read about it in the newspaper. Can you imagine?
The local police put in the newspaper, they discovered from the newspaper her son was dead. That’s really terrible, isn’t it? Very distressing. Anyway, the point is, know, and the sister was so anxious and worried, she’s a Buddhist, because she was thinking of all the suffering and the pain he had in those four hours in the hospital. But actually I said I don’t think so, because when you’re unconscious like that you don’t feel your body, you’re hallucinating, you’re dreaming, it’s like a dream, you’re in a dream state, know, in this intense struggle.
And I said it’s far better that he had those four hours, because every second of that suffering he was probably purified and he had a connection with Lama Zopa, you know, who knows? Whereas if he died suddenly drunk running into a tree, not so cool to die at that second and have your consciousness leave that second, that would have been much heavier. She felt much better about that and she was going to tell the mother too, you know? Do you understand what I’m saying? Far better to have that four hours, and his mind could have been really blissful by that four hours, you just don’t know.
And purified so much suffering, and time for the Buddhas to help him, you know? But again the same types of practices. And the other one is if you’re so fortunate to have a loved one who’s a high yogi I’m really committed to this, this is very nice. Don’t disturb the meditator. I want to read you a bit from chapter ten as well, this is very inspiring actually.
This is about the great meditators. So generally it’s not permitted to openly give details of the methods that the great yogis use, however I feel it would be useful to talk briefly about them here. Death is the moment they’ve been waiting for, like I said. At the point in the death process when all the grosser consciousnesses have ceased and only the extremely subtle consciousness is left, those who have observed karma well, kept their precepts purely, spent their lives training their minds in the clear light meditation, and have been able to recognize the clear light at the time of death, they’re qualified, you know, basically. In other words, this is the point, taking the view, the Buddhist view of the mind, which is not the western view, as I’ve been repeatedly saying.
We’ve got the gross consciousness. Then you’ve got these subtler levels, and the only time we experience those is when we dream, and then what they call very subtle consciousness, which is the very subtlest level of your conscious being. So the yogis have spent their lives and they grow all these, you know, and we’re going to discuss this in a minute, in these meditations, which if you’ve got any kind of deity initiations, tantric initiations, they’re like structured to enable you, but he talks about it here. So they can remain in meditation, meditating on emptiness, getting realizations for as long as they like, one hour, three days, many months. Of course this is just not considered possible in the West, but this is exactly the point.
Lama Yeshe was many days in meditation. Many stories, many stories, you know. His Holiness Dalai Lama’s main teacher, Ling Rinpoche, for example, stayed in meditation for thirteen days. There are many examples like this. So by concentrating in this subtlest state without distraction, that was they go through the process but stay conscious at the ever subtle level, not conscious at the gross level because that’s ceasing, but they don’t lose the plot, you know?
They’re able to go to the very subtle level because they practiced all their lives with powerful single pointed concentration. And the reason they want to get to that subtle level is very simple, because that level of consciousness, I like to call it like the microscope of your mind. Because it’s unencumbered by all the grosser levels, it’s crystal clear and capable of getting all the realizations and even becoming enlightened at that point. It’s practical issue, not some cosmic hippy trippy thing, you know? Many Tibetan lamas have okay, so the practices these yogis do are available to those who have taken a highest tantra initiation.
They are the quickest methods to achieve enlightenment in one brief lifetime of this degenerate time. These practices have a very special arrangement, and doing the sadhana every day is very important preparation for death. You know, basically. So back to chapter twenty four, there’s something in there I want to read to you about this. Okay, so the face of the meditator is very radiant.
This is exactly where they’ve died. Very peaceful, very radiant, even blissful. They look magnificent, totally different from an ordinary dying person. You know, as long as they’re in meditation, even though the breath has stopped, will be no smell or decay. One of Rinpoche’s Lamas, he talks about him here okay, I’ll mention it.
So here in Tibetan ceremonies for the dead, the author says that for somebody who is in meditation you should not consult okay, one of the things that Tibetans all do is they consult an astrologer, not the kind of astrology we have, very different astrology, which is related to the day they should take the body out, the day they should burn it, the day type of even indications of the next rebirth, that type of thing, you know. So anyway you wouldn’t call an astrologer about what day to move the body because the mind is there you wouldn’t do that. However, the meditation is not over but for various reasons such as the country’s laws you have no choice but to move the body, you need to request the meditator to end their meditation. So while you’re requesting them you can offer things like this. As I mentioned in chapter twenty one, Lama Yeshe passed away at the Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, a wonderful hospital.
Before Lama passed away the nurses were watching intently throughout the night. The moment Lama’s heart stopped, people rushed in with a defibrillator and wanted to try to get it started again. It was all very hectic in the room. I had checked with Serkong Rinpoche, who earlier had come to be with Lama and now was back in Switzerland, and he said to do everything possible to save Lama. The defibrillator is very strong, it pulls the body up violently.
Lama opened his eyes for a moment and then his body fell back down. The doctor then said there was no hope. It was five o’clock in the morning. This was my first time dealing with someone passing away in the I had no experience. Apparently they usually take the body to the mortuary where they prepare it, but I didn’t think we needed to do that.
That’s for ordinary people, not for those who are in meditation, a state like Lama. Anyway, Lama remained in meditation in a private room throughout the the day. By the late afternoon we couldn’t stay there any longer, so I asked Rinpoche what should be done to release Lama from his meditation. As I mentioned, Rinpoche advised me to play holy instruments, and so I made three prostrations and rang bells and requested Lama to stop. I also recited the prayer to be born in a pure land from the Vajrayoginī practice, and I touched Lama’s crown.
This one. Of course, Lama didn’t need all this as he had already achieved the clear light and illusory body, all the high realizations. Apparently, there was a candle and one of the students present in the room said that he saw a second flame leap from the flame. I didn’t see it. They put Lama’s holy body in a box packed in ice and took it to a mortuary.
The next day one of the students, and this seemed like they gave permission at that time to take the body away again. Can you do that here? Like if you have a body can you take the body back home? The law lets you do that here. You couldn’t do that.
Okay that’s an important point to remember. If your granny dies at home, take her to Clayton. Clayton first and then you can say thanks a lot, want my granny back and he can give it to you. Because they wouldn’t let us do it here. But then back then they did, actually when we had Lama.
So they put him in the back of Tom Wagner’s truck and he drove like really slowly the five hundred miles between Los Angeles and up north San Francisco you know, to Vajrapāni Institute. So Lama remained in meditation. Anyway, then I mentioned Lama advised okay, so they put Lama’s body in a box packed with ice, blah blah. Next day the students drove, sorry three fifty miles, I exaggerated, north to Vajrapāni Institute near Boulder Creek, very slowly, taking many hours. When they were preparing Lama’s body for the fire puja were you there?
Did you go to that? You were around there? That was in nineteen eighty, what was it? I keep forgetting, We were in London, I was working for Wisdom, so the three of us went there from London. We were there at vajrapani Institute in the Redwoods, about ten days I think.
So Lama was all day in the hospital, and they drove him in the book, he was in the box there for a while, and they drove him down all the way up north, then they kept him, we kept him for like five days in his coffin, you know. Anyway, I’ll just read. So when they were preparing Lama’s body for the fire puja, because what happens is, you know, what they mean by a fire puja, came from all over the world, a couple hundred people, and then they had this very elaborate long, long, long fire puja. You build this they build this kind of square, you know, according to the structure, all according to the kind of the holy architecture, build a square kind of small kind of thing, fireplace, with four walls, holes in each side, and then Lama’s body is dressed up in certain things and put in a chair, then taken down and put into the thing, and then lots of oil and wood on him, and then they build up this cone shape on the top part with a hole in the top, and then someone comes and lights it and then burns the body, and all this special stuff is offered into it, you know, goes on for hours and hours.
So when they’re preparing Lama’s body, he’d been in his coffin for like four or five days, and people who were in that room, who would always go in there, we’d go in there and do prayers and things, everybody said it had a very sweet smell. His body was like five days already, it always had a very sweet smell. They said that when they prepared him to put him in the chair, his body was still flexible, wasn’t stiff, you know? So one of the monks, one of the boys there, Lobsang, who had been a monk, he knew all about these things, he was preparing the body to put him in the chair, he reported to Serkong Rinpoche that even though the body had been lying in the coffin for many days, Lama’s limbs were very flexible, and that it was only when they were preparing Lama’s body that the white drop came out. They noticed the white drop came out, I think through his sex organ.
That’s a sign that his body, his mind had been there for five days, meditating, while doing the drive and everything. So in other words it seems that Lama had been in meditation state for at least five days even though the body had been moved many times. So the body of a meditator will start to smell when the meditation is finished, in other words when the mind leaves, just like the bodies of ordinary people. On the other hand, no matter how long the meditator’s mind remains in the body, days, months or even years, there are stories of this, you know, there’ll be no smell. The red and the white drops coming out of the body, as with ordinary people, is also a sign that the meditator’s mind has left the body.
Anyway after bringing Lama’s relics to Switzerland, because what happened was they did the fire puja, we did the fire puja, and then they seal it, seal all the little holes, then it’s left for several days. And then Lama Zopa comes, or the student of the Lama, they come and they open it up and they look for what they call relics, pearl things, especially little things that they say are holy indicating the meditators’ realisations. After bringing Lama’s relics, they’re all packed together, these things. I think there’s another chapter here about the funeral. Hang on.
Okay. Going back and forth to funeral service. You can have, you know okay. So they’re all the relics, so repair the So anyway, bringing Lama’s relics to Switzerland means all the ashes Remember he said put ashes of Lama’s ashes into little vitamin capsules? And all the students got some of those.
He says vitamins for the mind, then the bones and things were kept and then all the centers got relics. You must have here. Rinpoche went to Dharamsala for teachings from the Dalai Lama after the funeral and everything. So the day after the teachings at the funeral there was a long lived puja for His Holiness, but I couldn’t attend because one of Lama Zopa’s teachers, Gen Jampa Wangdu, passed away early that morning, having been in meditation for three days. What was interesting, I remember at the time that this Lama passed away, there’s another Lama.
Lama’s Ösel was in London. No, somebody showed me photos. He died in meditation, he was like this you know, some of these people okay I have so many stories to tell you, I’m getting all mixed up, I’m so sorry. Hang on, He passed away early that morning after having been in meditation for three days. One of the tantric monks checked to see if the white drop had come out.
It seemed the bodhicitta had, but not the red. It seems again anyway, so sorry. Somebody showed me photos of him, they took photos, he’d been sitting in meditation and his meditation cloak, you know? They took photos over those three days and even by the third day his body had visibly shrunk. The head looked like poking up above the cloak, you know, but it didn’t rot, it doesn’t rot as long as the mind is there because the senses aren’t working so it does shrivel, but it doesn’t stink, know.
But it came distinctively smaller while he was in meditation, and then his mind leaves, you know. Another sign the mind has left the body to meditate while they’re sitting up or lying down is that the head moves. That’s what they say. It seems that Gen Jampa Wangdu had chosen to pass away, he’d chosen, he decided, you know, on the very day of his holiness Dalai Lama’s long life puja, so that his holiness could live a long life. In other words, he sacrificed his own life for his holiness.
I don’t really understand this, but they often talk about that. People can choose to take on obstacles for someone else’s sake, you know. That’s how they say it. So many great practitioners become enlightened in the intermediate state. I haven’t mentioned that yet, we’re going back and forth between the death process and all these sorts of things.
I’ve got more to say here? Okay, back to here, back to where we were, put things on the crown, once I stop breathing, do the practices for three days, they die suddenly, give their organs, all this business. Then you’ve got to prepare the body for the funeral. This is now practices to do after the mind has left the body. So one of the things to do: get sesame seeds, mustard seeds, water, perfume, talcum powder or something similar.
Now recite Rinpoche says the Namgyalma mantra, one of the many, but he says any mantra will do. And then having blessed your breath with a recitation, you now blow on stuff, and then you use this and this is blessed, and you sprinkle that on the body. Usually I keep a big packet of mustard seeds or baby powder close by. Every day after I’ve chanted of various mantras, I blow on the powder or seeds to bless them. I use them whenever I see dead insects or animals or for people who have died, you could do the same.
And also you could send the blessed seeds to other people for them to use when people die. So another thing you can do is if you’ve already not written mantras on the body of your loved one, it’s especially good to do so now. You could also use the there’s other different mantras, eleven mantras, this one, that one, but also you can do like he says Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche does, you have long rolls of mantras and you wrap the body in it, with the mantras touching the body, and they get cremated with that, you know. But you make sure you keep if the body’s going to be buried, you make sure you keep some of the hair or the nails or any part of the body. And if you have ashes you keep these aside because you want to bless them.
Another practice afterwards, and also I’ll talk about now, is you bless which is so beneficial called jangwa. So the funeral service, I mean you do what you do, you You do what people do at funerals. But of course you could do here the King of Prayers, these types of ones. So how to bless your loved one’s ashes and include them in holy objects. As soon after the funeral service as possible, you should organize a janghwa, it’s called jangwa practice.
It’s not in this version of the PDF, but it’s in the wisdom version. You should organize a janghwa practice during which the Buddha’s wisdom is invoked into the remains, thus purifying and blessing them. Keeping the ashes of your loved one that haven’t been blessed has no benefit for the dead or the living. Whereas as Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche said, now that the ashes are purified and blessed with jangwa, they are actual relics or holy objects. Even if the person died with non virtuous thoughts, which usually means it’s definitely born in the lower realms, and they are in the intermediate state, which I’m going to go back to and talk about in a minute, relying on methods such as janghwa can help them change direction and receive a human body instead, or even go to the Pure Lands.
They’re on the way to the lower realms because of the power of vajrayana, the power of the Buddha’s words, and the power of the concentration of the lama, or the person who does the practice suddenly the person changes their journey. Anyone can do the practice, but it’s best if you have a qualified person, but if not, you do it yourself. It’s in the Lama Yeshe book, in the wisdom book, in English, you just recite it. Next thing you can do is now you can even do more to benefit your loved one. Having blessed the ashes with jungwa, you can now include them in holy objects such as tsa-tsas, these little, you know, bas relief little statues, you know, small little statues with an image on the front made of plaster, or statues or stupas, you know?
And many and there are some parts of this different organizations of the FPMT who do this, like there’s one in Queensland called the Enlightenment stupa. Other people do it to work, don’t they, Gabe? Gabe? Judy, somebody? Yeah, other people.
In the back here, there’s all the websites and things, hopefully in the Wisdom Book as well. You have these ashes mixed with the plaster, and then you can you know, I mean we often have, don’t we, little containers of the ashes. Whereas it seems to me if have a little image of the Buddha on your mantelpiece that’s got their ashes in it, that feels more auspicious, doesn’t it? Feels more kind of sweet somehow, doesn’t it? Do you understand what I’m saying?
And even if they’re dead twenty years, you’ve got your ashes, drag them out please, get blessed and make some tsa-tsas, it’ll help them wherever they are. Some people say that you shouldn’t okay, never mind. Blah blah blah. Or you could get the blessed ashes and throw them into the wind or in the water, and because they’re blessed, all the sentient beings who get touched by them will be benefited. You can do that as well.
Then there’s all the practices to do during the forty nine days. You can do that every day, seven days a week, other people do them, sponsor pujas, and there’s millions of practices which I mentioned, that’s all. That’s it. So let’s go back now to the death process and the intermediate state. This is very fascinating.
Freud would really have liked this. I will explain. Alright. When I started having to travel I realised I couldn’t carry all my books and my newspapers and my magazines around and I was very distressed because I was so attached to them. But attachment doesn’t take long to change objects.
Now I can never leave my iPad alone, know, it’s in my hands all the time. I don’t have my phone, I just use my iPad. Now all my books and I look at newspapers and go, what’s that dirty stuff? I used to be so attached to my newspapers. At the airport I buy like ten kilos of magazines and newspapers and now I have them on my iPad.
And it’s quite handy because you own them, is it? You don’t own them, you’ve got nothing to hand on to anybody else. I just have my iPad, know, when they clean up after me, just have my iPad, throw it away, easy. No possessions. One set of robes, one computer, one iPad, three pairs of socks, one pair of shoes.
So I’ll be quite cheap when I don’t. Just chuck me on the fire, chuck my things on the fire with Be right. Can I have your iPad? You can have my iPad. Okay.
Where are we? Intermediate. Death death process. What happens at death? Here we go.
Okay. No no wrong one. Alright. So basically from the time you stop breathing, the mind goes through this next stage of subtle consciousness, everything gets more subtle, more subtle, more subtle, never mind the details, it’s all in the book, and you get to a very subtle consciousness they say. The subtlest level of your being beyond which it can’t be subtler.
And if you like it’s the receptacle of all the karmic imprints, all your bank vaults are in there, all your karmic seeds. So the seed that was determined in your next life is already done, so in our case, know, I would say Clayton was waiting for Faye and Donald. Wasn’t it? That’s right. To do their trip, he’s sitting there impatient in the intermediate state waiting for them to jump into bed, right?
And then when they do, this is what happened, this is what happened, Clayton. Is what happened. Called to these people. The intermediate state basically is like a dream, it’s the best way to call it, it’s your subtle consciousness, the same as the dream state, and depending on the karma that ripens, it can be very powerful, like a terrible nightmare dream, or it can be quite a pleasant dream. But a dream is the experience of it, weird and strange and all over the place and quite intense.
So then when you knew Mummy and Daddy, in his case, Faye and Donald hopped into bed, wherever they hopped, what happened is this: The moment his consciousness left that body, you know, the past life, Tenzin’s body, the Tibetan monk in the past life, we’re just pretending he was, he probably was, who knows? You know, the time of death, the second that the very subtle consciousness leaves, go to the reverse process into the intermediate state, you go through these eight stages and you kind of wake up in a of a mini life, it’s like an intermediate state. My feeling is it’s like the Christian’s idea of purgatory, really is. Very interesting, know, people’s observations, they call it purgatory. So he would have seen the world he just left, he would have seen Tibet and the Tibetans in his monastery but he wouldn’t have recognized it any longer because karma’s finished, it’s all over you know.
Unlike when you’re sitting hovering above your own body in the operating room, haven’t the karma hasn’t finished yet and you’ll go back there. But here, karma finished, you know? So that is in the intermediate state. And then when Faye and Donald hopped into bed, this is what happened. Well you can spend up to forty nine days they say, different things happen, but up to forty nine human days.
Lord knows what the experience at time is, it’s probably something else, but forty nine human days. So then, okay, if from the intermediate state you will take rebirth as a human, you will see your future parents in sexual union. If you are to be born as a male, you’ll be attracted to the mother and will have aversion for father. And if as a female, you’ll be attracted to the father and have aversion for the mother. Because of the habit, the karmic imprint of attachment to sexual union, the intermediate state being will want to embrace, have sexual intercourse with the one it’s attracted to.
But as it approaches, and that’s like in the millisecond, he doesn’t have to fly on an aeroplane from Tibet to Adelaide, know, just in one millisecond next he’s there in Adelaide, next to Fred and next to Donald and Faye, and he runs like a magnet to his mummy but as it approaches it doesn’t see the body of the parents, only the sexual organs which causes anger to arise. And this anger becomes the condition for the intermediate state being to die and that its mind to enter the mother. You see Buddha talks about this as a desire realm. It’s created by desire from countless lives, by attachment. And so it’s intense attachment to your next parents that causes rebirth.
As Rinpoche says very politely, It is easy to see how ordinary birth is caused by delusions and karma. But I have to say there’s a very interesting discussion recently about this never mind that, cancel that. Okay, any questions? Two thirty, any questions? Any questions of any kind, about anything?
Because I haven’t covered covered everything. Yes, we have covered. This might sound very provocative and I don’t mean it to be all I’ve been to room, I’m drawing a club. Okay, so at the time of death they’re drawn to the one of the opposite sex. How does this account or is there any accounting in Buddhist tradition for homosexual people?
I understand that, I understand that and I think about it and I can’t quite work it out. See the way, whatever it is we’re born, however we’re born, the point is Buddhist understanding of attachment, it’s the motor that causes any kind of rebirth. It’s energy that causes us to have a male body, a female body, whether we’re attracted to chocolate cakes or carrots or having sex with an animal or having sex with a person looking like you. Or now these days more and more people wanting to be another gender. So it’s all because of attachment.
We stop criticizing people. I mean it sounds like really cruel like you’re saying transgender people are attachment. We’re all driven by attachment. Having anything at all, any kind of body, any life, the way we’re driven is just by attachment. So whatever it is, attachment has caused it.
So, you know, this is a typical one of how you get born, so whether that again refers to a person who ends up liking boys in a boy’s body, I just don’t know. I mean this is a very traditional way, based on the Yogis, probably of a heterosexual person. So what would it be? Then you start to think about what about now when people like what happens is and again even different Lamas have asked different questions about if you say you’re fertilised in a petri dish, the egg and the sperm, right? One lama was very clear and said that this consciousness cannot go into the petri dish.
The condition that is absolutely crucial for a consciousness to go there let’s say, you know, let’s say Clayton’s parents couldn’t conceive, so they put their egg and their sperm in a petri dish. Well, this particular lama said there’s no way Clayton’s consciousness could ever go there until the egg and sperm were implanted in her womb because the condition that’s necessary is the presence of the human body, you understand? But another lama said exactly the opposite, so it’s really hard to know, you know? And all these yogis say different things. Now the other point is this: know, I heard about cloning.
Cloning. Only really understood that someone explained to me what they do about cloning. They take any cell from any person, it doesn’t even have to be a male or a female. So that makes complete nonsense of this business of it having to be a white and a red for the male and the female. So there must be male and female components, however they call it, in all the cells.
Because you know that dolly, the goat or dog or sheep or whatever, that was coming from cell from another female. Those two female cells and that became the basis of a consciousness to go there. So it’s very interesting, I’d like to hear what the yogis have to say about that, because I mean this is kind of old fashioned Buddha days, know? Do you understand? So who knows?
I don’t know. So as to whether you know, it’s attachment that causes to have any kind of body, any kind of sex organs, any kind of any attachment for whatever it might be. And then the part of the suffering of attachment you see is this. Like especially there you are, you’re born in a even just now people it’s okay to be homosexual these days, can even get married right? You know, I mean imagine fifty years ago and you probably go to prison right still isn’t it?
And look at the look at the way society would see you. So you could say that part of the suffering of that karma, you’re born in a male body and you’re like other boys. Well, you’ve you’ve got this very heavy karma called bad reputation. You’re considered a monster, people criticize you. Do you understand what I’m saying?
So that’s another whole component of it. But why you’re born in a boy’s body and you’re attached to other boys, they would say it’s some imbalance, I don’t want imbalance, but some attachment. It’s all attachment. In the end it’s all attachment, you know? You’re born as a girl and you crave boys.
What’s the difference? There’s no difference. And what are the in this whether, you know, it’s just attachment. It’s caused by attachment. But part of the suffering let’s say you’re transgender, it’s very common these days and more mean, it’s always been the same probably, but people now are coming out more and more and getting the surgery, know, all the the systems are there now to help you.
Can you actually get vaginas and penises and everything now? Yes. That’s an interesting discussion that one, because the Buddhist view about these subtle physical energies. So it’s all very fascinating. You can see part of the suffering of attachment, part of the main suffering of attachment is when you can’t get the object.
Do you understand what I’m saying? So there you are born as a homosexual in a world that thinks you’re a monster. The suffering isn’t because the suffering is number one because the world thinks you’re terrible and you’ve got to sneak around at night and do it and number three, you can never find a partner in the open. So that’s the suffering of being born homosexual. Technically speaking, born homosexual is not the cause of suffering.
Being transgender is not the cause of suffering. It’s because, you know, like you hanker after being in ladies clothes, for example. Which I find very fascinating because it shows its sort of culture, it’s called a culture, karma’s culture you know. It’s interesting to think about it, it’s all. Not criticizing anybody, just thinking about it.
Do you understand people? But the suffering of attachment is when you can’t get the object. And then the suffering of attachment is when you get the object and then you think you’re going get satisfied but all you do is get fat. Like if it’s food, know, you turn it to four hundred pounds isn’t it? So the suffering of attachment whichever way you turn is gonna be it’s a no win.
You get the object and you get too much of it and you get exhausted. Or you can’t get it and you’re miserable. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s suffering of attachment altogether. Difficult one.
But it’s kind of a bit of a controversial topic, because it sounds like, you know, I remember saying this sometime when there was a transgender person in the audience, and they felt absolutely shattered, like I criticised transgenders, but it’s not that. It’s just looking at the mind and the human and how we cause things, you understand? Because we all cause it ourselves from past lives, you know? How come you want to have sex with a furry dog? I mean a furry toy?
It proves emptiness actually, it proves emptiness. So you go, know, Sampanos, my friend, he’s considered normal, right? Because he likes girl shapes, Living girl shapes with skin, you know, and breasts here and a couple of holes there or whatever. Whereas the furry guy, he didn’t even he even tried real animals, but he prefers his piece of felt cloth. So he’d go to the shop, buy a piece of felt cloth, buy a couple of beads, cut it out, stuff it full, call it Mickey Mouse, and he gets turned on!
It proves we make up everything. It proves we make it all up. Do you understand? We’re very fascinated. Robina, I’m experiencing very real anguish because my grandfather survived the Battle of the Somme which killed over a million people and now it’s the anniversary of it.
Now I’ve been a hippie and a Buddhist and an activist and I’ve been into peace all my life and I don’t understand why I’m experiencing such severe anguish at this anniversary. What do you mean anguish? Explain? I just get tearful, anything to do with soldiers, guns, battles, blood anything any slight reminder makes me cry so there’s some attachment here and I want you to unpack it so that I can feel better. Well that’s your job not mine. So darling I mean see you’ve got to explain a little bit more than the anguish because anguish is a very Anything to do with war, battles, soldiers That makes you upset or nervous or fearful or angry?
It’s compassion, it’s anguish, It’s just that particular war that a family member of mine survived it. But that particular war? Yes No other wars? I suppose they can all slaughter each other you don’t mind? Don’t any hint of it but for months now I’ve found myself really distraught and I feel there’s something karmic or there’s some attachment that I’m not dealing with.
Because I’ve always been a peace activist and a hippie and a Buddhist and somebody who thinks war is wrong even as a very small child I was telling my dad war is wrong daddy, people get hurt daddy. So I’ve always been very anti war but now it’s really bereaving me. So there’s some attachment, yes? Or some karma? So okay, so okay.
We can see can’t we that our mind is capable of taking something and then thinking about it. And then holding on strongly to it and then we say all these stories in our head, don’t we? That’s how we spend most of our lives, wouldn’t you agree? Well that seems to be I mean join the universe here again, no criticism. That would seem to be what you’re doing.
For some reason, since you’re very little, I think it’s just because you’ve got the habit since you’re little. Obviously since you’re little, you know, you’ve got some imprint to not have you killed in your life or you never No, not a a lot. It’s a little girl, you never liked to kill. No. So it seems to me got upset when other children did it.
Okay. Well, my interpretation, for what it’s worth, is that you’re due to past non killing, past karma in the past lives to non killing, you’re born into this life, and then you see killing and you had aversion for it, or you didn’t like it, other people did it. But obviously you’ve got a creative mind, which is attachment mind, we’ve all got it. So clearly you heard about your grandpa dying in Somme in a million people’s lives? No, he survived it.
Died in Okay. So you heard about from him the story, he told you about it. So obviously you’re a little girl and he told you the story, right? You probably that’s what happens when we’re young, we’re very fresh, and the vivid image stay. I never forget when I was seven and I was jealous of my eight year old sister because nanny, my grandma, allowed her to come and listen to all the radio shows before they had the television shows, were like radio shows.
And there’s one in Melbourne it was about the local police show, and it was called D24, it was the murder squad of the Melbourne police, it was a radio show. And I was really jealous of my sister, so I stood by the doorway and I listened to this radio programme, and I’ll never forget it as long as I live. The imprint was so intense. You know, we had a crazy family, but I heard about this girl called Shirley who was standing on Flinders Street in Melbourne waiting for her boyfriend John, and the boy drove up and she said, Oh hello, is that John? And he said, No, John sent me.
And then he took her to Mount Martha and raped her and killed her. Now all I can say is in my mind still there’s a vivid image of this happening. The distress in my mind. I thought about it. Why did so on and on I thought about it.
Well that’s all that’s happened to you darling. You’ve heard about it since you were very little, your little mind has picked up on this, you blew your mind when you first heard a million people dying and it’s been in your mind ever since and you’re like a dog with a bone! So you’ve to go somewhere with it, which is mean not just keep chewing the bone. You’ve then got to understand if you say you’re a Buddhist, you’ve to start explaining to yourself according to Buddhism why there was a war of a million people dying. Not just go on about it, which is what attachment does.
You’ve to go you’ve got to go further, use this as the basis of your compassion, which first means you have to have an understanding of why it happened, which is karma, then you have compassion, and then you go and I’m gonna never give up continuing to work on myself or I can become a Buddha so I can help all these sentient beings. Then you utilize your suffering and the anguish and you turn it into action, otherwise it makes us insane. So I just have to convert it into compassion more clearly? Precisely darling, but you first got to have an explanation for why it happens. Does the view of karma make sense to you?
Is that powerful for you? But if you don’t unpack that properly, it’ll just be this anguish. In other words, the anguish is why did that happen? This is terrible. That’s not helpful.
karma is the Buddha’s explanation for why. That’s up to you if you like the Buddha’s you to explain it to yourself. And once you explain why it happens you stop the stress and then you go and I must continue to do what I can to help sentient beings. Then you’re turning the anguish and the dog with a bone and the attachment of the fears into action. That’s what the bodhisattvas do and they become courageous and never give up working for sentient beings.
And suffering is brisk for the mill for their compassion. Thank you, I was getting confused. You’re right though, anguish is a precursor of compassion and I can just push it a bit. Move forward with it. Use it darling, it’s compassion.
But I think it’s a very strong one for you since you’re a little girl, you heard it and it blew your mind, a million people died, it blew your mind. And it’s been there all this time, so open it up, use it, explain, and then act. Because this is the world, honey, and that’s just the tip of the of iceberg of the suffering of this earth, is it not? And that’s the grist for the mill for the bodhisattvas. Endless compassion, they never give up, they think in terms of eons, as Holiness says, being reborn and reborn to help others, never giving up.
That’s the courage of the bodhisattva. Do you understand, Nelly? Yes. I have a girlfriend who’s terminally ill, and I anticipate I have very little impact on her environment. I’m just wondering if there’s anything I can do perhaps from a bit more distance.
Buddhist view would say absolutely plenty, saying mantras, having prayers and stuff done for her. Judy, do you recommend people, one of the tools that you use is you get people to email Kopan Monastery and sponsor pujas? Talk to Judy. There’s lots of things you could do darling, yourself and also have monasteries do prayers. This can be very powerful.
Absolutely. Anybody else? Yes, we have. Robina, I’m just wondering what I can take away with this. I did share this once here before with another teacher.
When I went nursing at the Children’s Hospital, you know it was always a joke that when I went on that ward someone would die that night and when I was eighteen I used to do specialing and that meant you were with one child all night and three nights in a row about the same time each little baby died with me and all I had done up until that point was be with the child. I never sensed any distress in any of them. I mean I might have been but I wasn’t sensing it but I would just be aware of the breathing in the breathing out and the things I had to do and then there would be a split second when I would sense something coming into the room like what I would have called as a Catholic and Archangel but a light there was no form and I thought because I only imagine things walking through doors I imagine it was coming through the door and I would look up and then then I’d be aware split second later and the child that was it. Okay So I just wonder what I can just do with that for myself, my own.
I don’t know, what do you mean? Well I’m not sure What view of the world do you have? Do have a Catholic view, Christian view, common what are you? I mean do have a view yourself? In the end it’s how we interpret these things ourselves isn’t it?
What’s your view of this? What makes sense to you? That all I’m doing is walking towards not me exactly now but walking towards enlightenment that’s what would have come out of that. Okay well that’s good enough then, perfect darling I think what you just said is fine. I can’t say more to it, I don’t think I need to say more to it.
Okay. I mean, I can try and give you a Buddhist interpretation, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Thank you. I mean, all it says to me, all these stories reinforce to me is Clayton’s story about the something coming with spiritual something is reinforced in every culture there’s obviously something more than the body. If nothing else, that’s something is the interpretation going on here, there’s more stuff than we think, you know?
That there is stuff that’s subtler and more powerful and more holy more amazing. That I can say whether you call them Buddhas or Archangels, I don’t care, you know? That seems to me the main point that I think is the common ground, isn’t it? Yes, over here. We’ve still got six more postcards.
Anybody want more postcards? Business? They’re up here in the addresses. Go on darling. Yes, yes.
Go on. I love that. Let me get this right, karma is the Buddha’s answer to why. Yes, that’s right. Love that.
And lady down the back that was speaking to you about the war where you said that asked the question why? Well the karma explains why. So which means being killed is the fruit of having killed. One of the four ways that karma ripens, good or bad karma, one of the four ways that karma ripens is called an experience. It’s the experience of the so in this life there’s two main ways, three actually.
One track of karma, which is how I like to call it, is your tendencies, your personality traits. So one of the experiences of having killed in the past is you get born in this life with a tendency to keep killing. The fisherman was an example. The other way that killing ripens from the past is as an experience of getting killed or dying young. Clearly getting I mean look at the world.
People die on their own, They get killed in the womb. They get killed as they die as babies. Their life so your life runs short or you get killed. So obviously, what a war is is a group of people altogether creating the cause by killing in the future life to experience the results, but in this life, the ones who died, experiencing the results of past killing. And as we all do things in groups, look at us, we’re here as a group.
Social beings. We do things as groups, so we experience the results as groups, isn’t it? So that is a simple enough explanation of what of why people die in wars, you know? Isn’t it? Simple enough.
So if you have the view of karma and you’re using the view of karma as the basis of your life which is as a Buddhist use I probably suggest you would certainly the view I’m using then as soon as you have you see I think the biggest cause of our suffering is when we say why is this happening? Now that is a very interesting point this, I find this very helpful. I read a couple of years ago about one of those air Asia flights that went down in Malaysia, know, and all the people died. So the parents were interviewed, how do you feel about the death of your daughter? Well they were devoted to God.
They said she belongs to God. He has taken her back. We are peaceful. Now if you analyze that, what they have got is a clear philosophical explanation to the answer why did my daughter die? And look at the result for them.
They were peaceful because that was the view they bought into. Now a materialist is there is explanation. So we pull our hair out and go mad and say, why do bad things happen? We don’t have an answer. So that’s the reason, my feeling, for much of the intense suffering when you have the materialist ist view.
I’m not being anything, I’m not being critical, it’s logical. If you have the view that your mother made you, you have the view that your mind is the brain, if you have the view that you didn’t ask to get born, I mean, isn’t it true? Then of course you’ve got no explanation for why some person would come up and murder you. It’s just no explanation. There is no explanation according to that philosophy.
So that’s what means you’re gonna be racking your brains. Why do bad things happen? And we can’t get past that point. Now a Buddhist, these young Tibetan nuns, I always quote this story, back in two thousand three, Richard Gere, you know, invited the Dalai Lama to New York, and he invited twenty former prisoners, all of whom had done some kind of meditation in prison. And of course I was working based in the States then, he asked me to come too, and there are other people who are working with people in prison.
And so it was a very moving day, these ex prisoners or, you know, black, white, male, female, Puerto Rican, Mexican, whatever, cross section of Americans, all this wonderful meeting, all this suffering and their dramas and the racism and the sex and the blah blah blah, you know? So then they all met the Dalai Lama, they all had a happy day, and he also invited two young Tibetan nuns. Well, there they were, and their philosophical position was the one of karma that’s in the bones of their being, just like those Muslim mommy and daddy in the bones of their being was this explanation of God, which they bought into and accepted. Well, a Buddhist buys into and accepts the view of karma. So they didn’t have the question, why does this happen to me?
They don’t sit there, you know, with anguish about it. They have suffered. There’s no question, they suffered. But they didn’t have the question why is this happening because their view, their model says they know why, it’s called karma. The Muslims, if they know why it’s God’s plan.
The westerners, we don’t have a reason so we pull our hair out. I’m not criticizing. I’m looking at the implications of the philosophical views we all carry around in our head. But we mostly don’t realize we’ve got philosophical views in our head. Do you understand my point?
So there’s two examples, you know? So those Tibetans, at the end they were in tears, they weren’t angry, because they weren’t angry. They weren’t saying how dare this happened to us. They knew from their point of view why it’s happening, so they dealt with it. It was intense suffering.
They were raped and abused and tortured for a couple of years, you know. So then they finally got out and then they said at the end of the day, very quiet, tears in their eyes, and then they said, and of course we had compassion for our torturers because we knew we must have harmed them in the past. Now that’s their philosophical position, which they were using as the basis of interpreting their life. And this is our job, it seems to me, to look into these things and just scrape below the surface. Don’t just accept our assumptions.
Look into these things. It’s up to you. You can be a materialist, a communist, a feminist, I don’t care, but look into these things. And for me in my life I always wanted sort of answers and understandings of things. So I was a Catholic first, then a hippie, then a radical lefty, then a feminist, now I’m finally a Buddhist, know, and I haven’t given on that one yet, it’s been forty years so far, so so far so good is all I can say, you know?
But really the way I think we don’t realise that our emotional responses to things are just the tip of the iceberg, they’re based on the views we hold in our mind. So we better start unpacking our own assumptions, own philosophical views. Do you see my point here? This is our job, it’s my life, who else is going to do it if I don’t? So the view you have is useful for that Christian, you know, for those Muslims, they were peaceful.
Another friend of mine, who’s a Buddhist, happens to be black, in America, works with people in prison, and we had a conference in San Francisco, and one of the topics in it was restorative justice. And so there was a white mummy whose daughter had been raped and murdered, and there was a black daddy, my friend Andre, whose son had been murdered, and they were talking about their responses and the one of restorative justice, the woman who had been always wanting to meet the prisoner, the guy who raped and murdered her daughter. So he was very happy to meet her, had a very moving conversation, she was a very devoted Christian, and he told her that before I shot your daughter, she looked me in the eyes and said, I forgive you, and God does too. Now I mean, in the end whatever comes about out of our mouth, it’s a viewpoint, isn’t it? And that informs the way we respond to life.
So that’s up to us to find the viewpoints we want to work with, isn’t it? Do you see my point down there, sweetheart? We’re gonna unpack our own feelings and thoughts and emotions and look at our thoughts, our feelings, our assumptions, our viewpoints about things, and that’s our job, you know? That’s our job. Yeah.
So that’s what I said to you. That’s your call how to interpret that, you know? You understand? So if Christian one makes sense? I mean, you could also argue, we could all debate about these things because the Buddhists would view whatever, that’s up to us.
So what else people? It’s only ten to three and I think we’re finished. Yes sweetheart? I suspect that if I truly believed all of these teachings that I hold so dear that I would lead a very different life than I do. And, you know, if I truly believed in karma, I don’t think I would buy into this ordinary life that I spend most of my time involved in.
So I guess it’s doubt, I guess I must not believe it even though it feels like I do. You know well I, that’s a very interesting point you know, well you know should I tell you the way I would say it? First of all for myself I never use the word belief because I think we can get intellectually lazy when we say belief. Like you know what I’m saying here is Buddha, this bloke called Buddha, was this regular guy who came out of this amazing Indian tradition of these extraordinary beings who are the ones who actually, more than three thousand years ago, who created this remarkable psychological skill, known broadly these days as mindfulness meditation. But this remarkable sophisticated skill that enables a person to plumb the depths of their own conscious mind.
The actual cognitive process itself is extremely sophisticated. Not some trippy hippie cosmic thing like we think in the West. It’s remarkable, and on the basis of this they actually mapped the mind. So it’s astonishing, on the basis of this they became more subtle, they were able to have clairvoyance, all of this fits with this model of the mind. The Buddha took these techniques and then moved in his own direction five hundred years later, you know.
So the point is about the Buddha, he’s not a creator, okay? So if you think that thought, it’s quite intense. Normally speaking, when we think of religion or spiritual, we assume and that’s the creator religions that I’m not criticizing. I was a very devoted Catholic. The creator religions necessarily is belief, because the worst crime sin of pride would be to actually to try and unpack God’s mind and work out what his plan is.
That’s not our job. If I’ve got complete faith in God, faith in God, it’s surrendering my delusions and completely merging with God as a superior being, who is my creator, whose information I trust. That’s the approach, but that is not the Buddhist approach. Buddha’s a regular guy who from his own direct experience has come up with every word that we’ve said in this room. That’s the assumption here.
So in other words if I’m Einstein spending the day telling you about relativity, you know perfectly well you would never say, Oh I believe in relativity. You’d know that it’s an advanced concept. You’d know that I, being Einstein, must have come up with this, you know I didn’t have a revelation of it, you know it’s not a dream, you know I didn’t have a vision, you hope I’m not making it up, you are sure it must have come from my own direct experience. Is that not our approach to science? Well that’s Buddha’s approach.
It’s just that we’re so used to believing believing that if you can’t see it you can’t prove it. So you’ve got to shift your assumptions. Take the view coming from these Indians more than three thousand years ago, these amazing sophisticated thinkers who came up with this x direct experience of subtler levels of mind. It’s all there. And these techniques are still living today, practiced by millions of people.
So the Buddha’s view is he is not a creator. This is not from on high, this is his own direct experience. And as the Dalai Lama says, it’s either, you know, if you’re going along following, let’s say, like Einstein’s methods to prove that Einstein’s right or wrong, that’s how you practice Buddhism. You’re going each step of the way, and each step of the way you tick the box and you experience it for yourself and you verify it. But if you get to a certain point where you prove that it’s wrong, and that’s what you do when you’re engaging in something, then he’s wrong and you must reject him.
That’s the approach. So I would not say that your faith isn’t strong enough, I would say because this is a subtle point and it’s really intense and we are addicted to the opposite, that it takes time to even intellectually get confidence in this model of the world. So don’t put yourself down. It takes time honey, because we’re addicted to the opposite. We’re addicted to the view that we didn’t ask to get born, we’re addicted to believing we’re just the body, we’re addicted to the samsaric methods which we’ve been practicing for countless lives.
So be humble and recognize it takes time to shift. So one step at a time, you know. It’s okay. Does sound like point? Yeah.
As I was saying, this is Buddha’s view, it’s up to us, you know. What else people? I’m happy to keep talking whenever you like, you know, you can tell, just press the button and I’ll talk. I mean you want to know more about karma, hope to talk about karma, whatever you want. You just ask me and I’ll make the most of our time as you wish.
Talk about karma? Yeah. Oh, okay. I would, I’m happy to. I’m happy to talk about karma in more detail and also how he purified karma.
I’ll do that. Yes sweetheart. Robina, there’s something that comes up a lot for me in the last year or so and that’s something I believed in too. Ever heard of the phrase ‘shit happens’? Yes, I’ve.
And that means? Well to me it’s to understand why shit happens and to surrender to it. To be active with it So you feel that’s the approach? Don’t know? Shit happens seems to me that you don’t know why it happens Isn’t that the view?
No, it’s an acceptance of it happening Yeah, but there’s an assumption there that no one knows why it happens so you might as well accept it. I disagree with that fundamentally. Mean if you’ve got a Buddhist view you wouldn’t say that. That to me is saying no one knows why, so you might as well accept it. Don’t bash your head against a brick wall.
Whereas the Buddhist view is there’s always an explanation, it’s a natural law. There is an explanation, just that we have to learn it slowly, first theoretically and then experientially. Do you see my point? Would you agree with that aspect? I have to think about it.
Okay, good, fantastic. What? Why do we have to know it? Why do we have to understand it? You mean you don’t want to know why things happen?
You don’t want to how make a cake? You don’t want to know about how gardens work? You don’t want to understand how to use your computer? You’re really saying that seriously? No, but we can’t know everything.
Excuse me, again excuse me, I would suggest you look at that assumption. Who told you that? Why do you believe that? That’s exactly my point, that’s an assumption of the materialist view. Buddha would disagree with you, that’s my point.
That’s up to you to decide. And that would be a good view if you’re a Christian or a Muslim because God knows everything and you don’t. Yes. And then you’d use that as a basis of your faith and you’d surrender. Or you’re a materialist and we don’t know the answers yet and we assume we can’t.
Or you’re a Buddhist and you would never say that if you did. Do you my point? This is a question of what’s view? Look at our assumptions, they’re very huge in us. We’ve all got them, we just don’t realize.
It’s an interesting point, isn’t it? Buddha would say by death. Buddha’s view is this: that our consciousness, our mind, this river of mental moments that is necessarily beginningless and endless, the product the law of cause and effect, it’s got the potential this is the point of all this business, is the goal is to become an enlightened mind, a Buddha. We’re talking psychology here. Please, I’ll talk okay.
So what would you be like when you’re fully enlightened? And Buddha would say, this is the natural potential of every single mind. And he would say humans are just a tiny percentage of all minds. The term sentient being that’s translated in English from the Tibetan or the Indian, the Hindu, whatever the Sanskrit, is actually the Tibetan term is mind possessor. The Buddha would say there are trillions of minds pervading universes.
There’s not an atom of space, you won’t find minds. And Buddha’s teachings, and it’s dealt with extensively in all the literature, is that every mind naturally possesses the potential to be perfect. Omniscience is the first characteristic. So I was a Catholic. I know all about omniscience.
God is omniscient. Well Buddha says honey, you can become omniscient. Buddha’s deal is that that’s the nature and the natural potential of every mind. And they go to it extensively when they describe the nature of mind and how it functions, what it is. it is vast in Buddhist literature.
The first characteristic is, you know, and right now we don’t have that because we, you know, as thick as posts, our mind is stuck in this body. We don’t remember most of today, forget about yesterday, forget about a past life, because our cognitive, our gross level of conceptuality and sensory consciousness just doesn’t have the capacity. So as we progress spiritually, lessening the delusions and growing our virtues and goodness and wisdom, then literally you expand your consciousness and you start to cognize phenomena that the grosser level can’t, which is the past and the future and the minds of others, until eventually you removed all pollution from your consciousness, which means your consciousness now pervades wherever there is existence. It knows it knows how things exist as they exist naturally, which includes knowing the minds of all sentient beings perfectly. Which you also have because you’ve gone beyond ego totally, you now have infinite empathy and compassion for every single sentient being, as if you were oneness with every one of them, and you have the power to do whatever needs to be done for as long as time exists to manifest in countless bodies throughout countless universes to benefit all these suffering countless sentient beings.
Now that’s a Buddha. So I’m not going to hold my breath, way to go. But all the Buddhist techniques and methodology and practices are leading us to that, that’s the way it’s laid out. So you know Buddha might be a maniac leading me up a garden path, well I’ve got to find out don’t I? I’m not going sit there and just blindly believe him, that’s intellectual laziness.
I have to engage in it, so one step at a time. So the word karma I know when I first met the teachings, I told you, Chenrezig Institute forty years ago last month. Was like I heard the word karma and I knew that was something I never heard before. I never heard this word before, you know. And that’s something made for me most powerful as a Buddhist somehow, most powerful.
Because I always in my life always I was always, you know, like a sticky beak, busy body and, you know, bossy and everything. So I wanted I just always was interested in how things interested in the way things are, why happiness, why suffering. I never went the scientific way, had no interest, you know? I I sort of went the political way, the social way, the religious way first, and then back to the Buddhist one when I was about thirty, thirty one, or whatever it was, you know? So then all I can say is, since then, all I’m doing is, and I mean it when I say it sincerely like this, taking the Buddhist view is my working hypothesis.
It’s the only way to say it for me. It makes me relaxed, it makes me it’s not just to sort of stuff it down my throat and say I believe it, which I find makes me anxious. I don’t want to believe something. I don’t want to believe in relativity. I don’t want to believe in mathematics.
What’s the point of believing in mathematics? Oh, believe in mathematics. I’m very happy for you. Please go get me two oranges Oh but I don’t know what two means, but what’s the point of believing it? You’ve to practice it So I’d rather never say believe because it becomes intellectual laziness but I’ve got to take it, I’ve to start somewhere I’ve to start with the intellectual concepts, the thoughts, the theories isn’t it?
What else can you do? One step at a time. One step at a time. So I have interest in learning the Buddha’s view, interest in understanding the law of karma, the laws of karma, understanding emptiness, understanding the methods, understanding the words. Start with the words, be relaxed about it.
I mean if you want to become an acupuncturist, I use this as an example, you know, fifty years ago in Adelaide, I bet you if you met a Chinese person they said they want to stick a needle in you, you’d sue them. But now we all know all about acupuncture. But back then you thought this wacko person, because we assumed as a given that the allopathic was the only medical system. We’ve never even heard of anything else. So imagine back then you would say don’t be ridiculous, first you heard it, but just say you heard it again then you’ve got an open mind you would have gone well that’s interesting maybe there’s something in acupuncture I might look into it.
That’s the first thing you do but you can’t rush in and start intuitively putting needles in people you’ve got to start learning the theories don’t you? And that means you’ve got to put aside the whole allopathic series of assumptions about health and open your mind to the possibility of a brand new system that you’ve never heard of before. So you’ve got to have a brave mind to do that. It’s a brand new language. You can’t squeeze it into the allopathic system.
You’ve got to look at your assumptions, put them aside and learn this new one. But learn what? Learn the theories. Learn the theories. You haven’t got a clue it’s true yet.
It sounds a bit ridiculous but you’ve to learn the theories. And then every day you go to class and you learn more theories, well the pieces of the puzzle begin to put together don’t they? But theoretically only. You’ve gone nowhere near anybody with a needle yet. You’re learning the theories about this and the liver and that and the kidneys and the meridians and the airs and the blah and the blah blah blah.
It’s a brand new model. But each day you study it, taking it as your working hypothesis, pennies begin to drop theoretically still. Is that not how we learn something? Are we surprised by that? It’s why we learn everything.
Well that’s how we should understand. I’m learning Buddhism. I’m in no hurry to have an experience of it. I’m not clairvoyant. Eventually one day I will be, but I’m learning the theories.
And if the theories are valid each step of the way, and this is my point, They have to be coherent. The theories have to be coherent. They’re not cosmic, we think spiritual means cosmic, wow, cross your fingers, put a needle there, wow, visions, blah. It’s because superstition beyond belief, our views about spiritual. It’s disgusting.
It’s embarrassing. So Buddha’s, you know, it’s his method, view of the world. They studied it for forty years in the Tibetan monastic university system, then they go meditate on it and try to have the pennies to drop, to get the experience of it. You can’t force it, you can’t go quicker than you can, it’s only one step at a time. You’ve got to start with the theories.
Where else would you start sticking needles in people? How else can you play music if you haven’t learned Bach? You don’t put the hands on the piano and hope Bach will channel himself through you. That’s what we think of spiritual beings. I mean we’re ridiculous.
And all Buddhism is, and this is how I studied in the Tibetan monastic university system which I find very appealing it’s a vast world view. He might be a load of rubbish, but you’ve got to find out. You know, even this is what I find most shocking, because he’s used to wanting to believe somebody. I’m not talking about you he believing, okay? We all use that word very easily.
But I remember going to one of the centers where they studied philosophy quite in-depth and we were discussing all these things, we were discussing the different views about emptiness. And one of the students who’s studying very well, he said, Oh but which view am I supposed to believe? I was speechless! You don’t believe anybody, you use your own noggin and work it out. Because Buddha says all this stuff is natural law.
Emptiness is just how things are. karma is a natural law, that every millisecond of every single mind, every millisecond of what it does in this really sophisticated intricate process that one has to learn is sowing seeds, is leaving imprints, is programming itself, and that that is what produces future experiences. As the Dalai Lama says, we are like our own creator. That’s the only way to say it. The other two options are it’s the materialist world only and no one knows the answers yet, or it’s creators.
Well this is the third one, okay? So that’s up to us to look into these. If we want to, we don’t have to. No one’s forcing us, you know. So it’s true your point about karma is so intense.
Of course, if we really so put it this way, not that you believe karma, but put it this way, if you have a direct experiential a direct experience of the truth of karma, it’s true, we’d be profoundly different. But it takes time. That’s all. It takes time. So not believing it strongly, because that’s like forcing.
It’s having confidence in it from your own direct experience which will probably come when you get clairvoyance. Don’t understand my point? Then we’ll have more confidence, then we’ll because at the moment we’re addicted to other views. The view of self existence, the view of being material, the view of my mind as my brain, the view that I didn’t ask to get born, the view that it’s not my fault, we’re sort of stumbling along and that’s the views in our mind right now and they’re very deeply ingrained. So be patient and be humble, know?
One step at a time, one step at a time, you know? So like I’m saying with karma, the Buddha’s you is every millisecond of every single sentient being we’re creating sowing seeds that will produce our own future. Right this second we’re experiencing the fruits of our past and each second we’re sowing the seeds that will produce our future. And that’s why the garden is such a perfect analogy. What is in your garden right now, we know logically, is the fruit of seeds.
And it’s your garden honey, so you must have planted them. So own it. Own the lousy husband, the beautiful daughter, the million dollars in the bank, the million dollars being stolen. Own the sickness, own the goodness, whatever it is, it’s your karmic appearance Buddha says. We are the creators in a kind of not in a magic wand sense but in an evolutionary sense.
Sense. We are the cause of whatever we experience, of whatever’s in our mind, and the way the environment impacts upon us, and even this our actual humanity. We are the boss. Maybe because I like being the boss, I like karma so much. You understand?
Because then it forces you to take responsibility, it forces you to be accountable. This is my life, I made my bed so I like what I made, I made my bed so I’ve got a lot on it. All these wonderful sayings we have in the West, you know. The karma is the essence of that one. I come into this world fully programmed with all my own tendencies, the causes for my experiences, with the causes for the way the environment impacts upon me, you know.
And so then by looking at my garden now, I recognise I don’t like those weeds so I better find out what they’re called and stop sowing And I do like the flowers, so I better find out how to grow more of those. Pretty simple, you know. I don’t want the suffering and I do want the happiness. It’s hardly a no brainer. So learning the words, I can’t just say I like karma.
What good is that? I’ve got to know the nuts and bolts of karma and it’s all there in the literature to the extent that we need we want to study it ourselves and put meat on the bones of it, know, as a philosophy. Are we communicating? You know, think it’s ridiculous, it’s time to go home, come on. I mean you can stay till six o’clock tonight and if I did a Lama Zopa on you it’d say keep you till midnight.
Won’t do that, I value my reputation too much. So I think we’ve covered lots of things, have we not? Food for thought, everybody? So the essence of all this is just whatever you end up with, if you believe in God, I don’t care if you believe in Lenin, I don’t care. But keep living your life, keep practising morality for your sake and the sake of others.
And if the one of death makes any sense, look into these things more, learn these skills, help others you know. And maybe Clayton can have a few little tricks up his sleep now and whisper mantras in his ears and who knows what he can do? How many dead bodies you deal with every day? Handle probably seven funerals in a week. Seven funerals?
Okay. So seven families. So much of your job is being a good person to people, that’s your main job isn’t it? To serve the living but also to respect the Absolutely. You’re a Christian, Clayton?
Devoted to God. So these weird ideas of Buddhist views must be peculiar to hear then. I’m a Catholic background but I’m what they call lapsed Catholic. I go to church every day with funerals so I see all the That’s true you do, that’s exactly right. So you’re a Catholic boy, okay I was a Catholic girl.
You got educated by the priests? That’s the Jesuits? The Jesuits? Have they got a Sacre Coeur Convent in Adelaide? No they’ve got a Loretto.
The caravan of St. Ignatius is also present in the Josephites. Oh I see. Most of you don’t know. Oh there you go.
My brother was educated by the Jesuits. All my six siblings have all given up religion, given up God. Well I don’t go to church so I’m not being disrespectful. No I understand. That’s right.
Well good everybody, so I want to thank you all for having me for these two weeks. Thank you. And I want to thank Buddha House and Gabe and Judy and all the amazing teams here. You do an incredible job you guys. Amazing job this place, wonderful.
So we should sing a little prayer. We can do it at the end. We’ll sing a prayer at the end. Do you want to say something? Don’t like to stand on the ceremony.
Alright. But on behalf of all of us, it’s always an incredible pleasure to have you here. Good job. Personally I find it a real treat. Robina I’ve known for many many years, we share the same teacher and many of the same teachings and experiences around the world and it’s just always such an incredible delight.
When you’re But I also know that she is here to shake and rattle and rearrange our conceptions. I actually treasure I look forward to it. And in the time that she has been here, she’s been incredibly helpful with Judy and I. As you know, we’ve got a new centre, and we’re about to embark on a whole new exciting period for Buddha House. Venerable Robina has helped us to really expand our view.
That’s right, we’ve to bring in eight hundred dollars a day to pay the bills. We’ve been looking at how to bring in eight hundred dollars a day. And it’s not impossible, isn’t it Judy? Not impossible. Not the Lamingtons.
Thank you Gabe. Thank you so much. Alright darling. Thank you darling. Here come Alright people, let’s do a little prayer shall we?
Just a little baby prayer. We just think, just think, just think, think, think. Every millisecond of what we thought and heard has not gone astray, has programmed our minds. So let’s go and nourish these seeds, you know, with our efforts, with our virtue, our goodness, with our courage to develop our own marvellous potential so we can help others. Compassion is not enough.
That’s what helps us, that’s what is the wish to help others, but it’s the wisdom that informs the compassion. And that needs to be filled with iron and strength, clarity and wisdom, then we will never give up helping. As His Holiness says, Bodhisattvas think in terms of eons. And my way of saying it is, even if you’re drowning you might as well stay perky. That’s attitude of the Bodhisattvas, okay?
So you might as well. I always figure what’s the point of life is bad enough, why be miserable as well? So I’d like staying on top of it, know? Then everything’s possible, and we’ll never get overwhelmed. That’s the thing about the bodhisattvas, they never get overwhelmed, the courage of the bodhisattvas.
So we all have that potential. Never give up, never give up, never give up. That’s all, we don’t need to sing any prayers, may bodhicitta exist and may all our holy beings live long lives may we all live long lives so we can be a benefit to others. Okay that’ll do, that’s enough. Don’t you think?
Don’t need to spend words that’ll do for the English words. We should have photos, we’ll be taking photos of this group. Have we been taking photos? We should take photos, come on. Do you have a group shot?
Can’t you take a group shot from this direction? I’ll just sit here. You can’t do it. Sit around you. Oh, then come on then.
Squeeze in, okay, come on. Come on, everybody.