Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 2.6-minute talk, Ven Sanghy Khandro addresses the fear that death will be terrible and painful, offering Buddhism’s contrasting view. She draws on a powerful personal example—her own mother’s death, witnessed directly—showing how a mind shaped by acceptance and freedom from clinging can approach dying with peace and even cheer. Rather than treat fear as inevitable, she offers practical guidance: meditation on impermanence reduces anxiety and builds the acceptance and courage that make a peaceful death possible. For practitioners at any level exploring Buddhism’s wisdom on mortality.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1.07 Not Fearing Death.mp3
UUID: 7397986d-8faf-4f0e-bf1c-225ab073a70a
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 2.6 minutes
Words: ~396
And then Buddhism also says that we don’t actually have to be afraid of death even though it’s quite natural that people are afraid of death. But death is not necessarily a bad experience. You know, that is the reason why a lot of people have fear of death is they think it’s gonna be a terrible, painful, horrifying experience. But that isn’t necessarily the case. As I mentioned before, this example of Linda McKim was extremely happy before she died and and had a really wonderful death.
And I myself just recently was present, when my mother died and I was with her for several weeks before she died. And I was just amazed at how positive she was. She showed no sign of fear, no sign of sadness or depression, no clinging to her life, to people, to her possessions. And she was just in this really wonderful, peaceful, positive state of mind, even cheerful about what was happening to her and very loving to the people around her. But just completely ready to go, accepting of death, accepting of what was happening to her.
And so she had a very, very peaceful time. And there are many stories like that, many experiences like that. So so we shouldn’t think that death is necessarily going to be a terrible experience. And the kind of experience that we have at the time of death depends a lot on how we live our life and how we prepare for death or whether or not we do anything to prepare for death. And even if we do have fear, there are things that we can do to work on that.
To reduce our fear and increase our courage so that we’ll be more prepared for death as well as any other unforeseen and difficult experiences that may happen to us in our life. And one of the things that is helpful for reducing fear and anxiety and helping us to be more peaceful and accepting of death is meditating on impermanence. So the more we can understand and accept the truth or the reality of impermanence, the more we’ll be able to accept change when it happens. Both the changes that happen as we go through life and then the big change that happens at the end of our life when our life comes to an end.