Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 36-minute guided meditation, Ven Sangye Khadro leads practitioners through a contemplation on the uncertainty of death—designed to kindle urgency about living meaningfully rather than inspire fear. She unfolds three central insights: the unpredictability of human lifespan, illustrated through examples of deaths at every age; the many causes of death, both external (disasters, accidents) and internal (disease, old age), and paradoxically, life-supporting things like food and medicine; and the fragility of the body itself—how a microscopic virus or a simple fall can end life in moments. Rather than dwelling in morbidity, she concludes by reframing this realization as motivation for sincere spiritual practice and compassionate living.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2.04 Meditation 3 The Uncertainty of the Time of Death.mp3
UUID: ec93d844-8866-4776-81d9-ddf06be35931
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 36.3 minutes
Words: ~1,684
First of all, make sure you’re sitting comfortably with your back straight so that your mind is more clear and focused. Other than your back being straight, let the other parts of your body be relaxed. Relax all the muscles in your body. Let go of any tension you have. And let your breathing be natural, natural steady rhythm.
Let your mind settle down in the present, here and now. Put aside any thoughts that you may have about the past or the future, or anything not related to the meditation that we’re doing. And decide that for the duration of the meditation you will keep your mind focused on what we are meditating on and let go of any other thoughts and bring your mind back to the meditation whenever it wanders away. And then generate a positive motivation for doing the meditation. You can simply remind yourself of the positive motivation that you had at the beginning of this session.
So, renew that motivation. Think that you are here to do this meditation to create more positive energy in yourself so that you have more positive energy to give to others. And help others be free of unhappiness and problems and confusion. Help others to have more peace and happiness. We’re now going to meditate on the uncertainty of the time of death so that we realise that we really don’t know how much time we have left in this life before our life comes to an end.
Death really could happen at any time. The first of the three points is the uncertainty of our human life expectancy. Even though we talk about life expectancy, we say that human beings at this point in time in this world may live to be seventy something or eighty something. But that doesn’t mean that everyone will necessarily live that long. Because the reality is that people die at different ages, at different stages in life.
So, bring to mind actual cases of people you know or have heard of who have died at different ages. Some as infants, or as small children, or as teenagers, or as young adults in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and so on. So try to get a sense of how human beings in this world live to be different ages. Not everyone has the same number of years to live. And try to get a sense of how you yourself really don’t know how many years you have to live before death happens to you.
Just because you’ve lived so many number of years up until this point doesn’t necessarily mean that you have many more years to go before death happens to you. Look into your mind and see if you can recognise the attitude that says, Oh, I don’t have to think about death now. I don’t have to worry about death now because I’m not so old. It’s old people who are getting close to death, but I’m not so old. So, death is still a long way off for me.
And if you do notice that you have that kind of attitude, see if you can recognise that you might be fooling yourself. Because you really don’t know how many more years you have before death happens. And then the second point in the meditation is that there are many causes of death. Many different ways that death happens. So, one general way that death happens to people is due to external factors, external causes.
So, these can include natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, fires and so on. It can include human made problems such as murder, terrorist attacks, war. Or by animals or insects. People die sometimes being attacked by some animal, a lion or tiger, or bitten by a poisonous snake or insect. To bring to mind cases of people you know or have heard of who have died in these ways, in order to get a sense of how there are external factors, factors coming from the environment or from other people or other beings that can cause death to happen.
And then death can also happen due to internal causes. There are hundreds of different diseases that can cause us to become weak, become unhealthy and lead to death. And there are also things that can just go wrong in the body. We may not know that we’re sick, but something happens in our brain, our heart, our lungs. And in a very short time, we find ourselves robbed of our energy, our strength, and getting close to death.
And then there’s also old age. The body becoming older and older, and the organs and other parts of the body just not working well. And so that too can lead to death. So again, contemplate examples of people that you know of or have heard of who have died due to internal causes such as sickness, old age, and so on. And death can also happen due to things that are normally helpful for sustaining life.
Things that enable us to survive and have a comfortable, healthy life. For example, food, eating food. So we need food to survive. But food itself can sometimes become the cause of death. So think of examples of people you know or have heard of, who died as a result of eating food.
Food that was contaminated or poisoned. Or they ate food that was just unhealthy. They ate too much of the wrong kind of food. Or not enough food. Starved themselves.
Or even cases of people who may have choked to death while eating. Another example is medicine or medical treatment. This can sometimes be the cause of death even though it’s meant to support life and health, prolong life. So again, if you can think of examples of people you know or have heard of who died as a result of taking the wrong kind of medicine, or the wrong dosage, or who died as a result of some mistake that was made or something that went wrong during an operation or medical treatment. So, are various ways that people die in various situations.
It doesn’t always take something major, something tragic, like an accident or a natural disaster. People sometimes die in their sleep. Or they die while doing work, even sitting at a computer doing work. Even while meditating. So death is something that could happen at any time, any time of the day or night, in any place, in any circumstances.
There are things that can happen, causes and conditions that can bring on the end of our life. So contemplate this and try to get a sense of how our own lifespan, how much time we have to live before death happens, is completely uncertain. And then the third of the three points under the uncertainty of the time of death is that our human body is very fragile. So we may have the sense that we are very healthy and strong. It may feel as though our life, our energy, our health is invincible and invulnerable.
But that may be an illusion. Because it doesn’t take something very huge, very major to rob us of our energy and our strength and bring on death. For example, in many cases death happens as a result of some extremely tiny microscopic organism such as a bacterium or a virus. And death can also happen as a result of a fall. People may fall from a ladder, from a roof, from a bicycle or a horse.
It doesn’t have to be a very high distance that they fall, but if they fall in a certain way, land on a certain part of the body, then in a very short time they could find themselves robbed of all strength and energy and their life coming to an end. So even though we have this sense of being strong, healthy, invincible, within a matter of minutes or even seconds, this life, this thing we call life, strength energy can disappear, come to an end. So really try to get a sense of that, the fragility, the vulnerability of your body and of your life. Now, see if you can come to the conclusion, having meditated on these points, that there is no certainty as to how much time you have left to live in your life. And it may be an illusion, you may be fooling yourself to think that you have a long time, many years, before death happens.
See if you can feel that it really could happen any day and even any moment. And because of that, if there are things that you regard as important to do before you die, such as spiritual practice, working on making your mind more positive, less negative, preparing yourself for death. It is important not to postpone this work but to find time for it now, to start doing this work from now, from this moment. And again, the purpose of doing this meditation is not to make ourselves frightened about our impending death, but rather to bring about a strong sense of how important it is that we use our life wisely, compassionately, doing what is meaningful and beneficial for others, for ourselves, for the time of death, for future lives and so on. To make good use of our life.
So, see if you can come to that conclusion, an optimistic, positive understanding of how precious our time is, how precious our life is, and that we really must make good use of it. And finally, dedicate the positive energy of doing this meditation that it will bring benefit to not only yourself but to others as well. It will be the cause for greater wisdom, compassion, love and other positive qualities in your mind. And help you to decrease the disturbing negative aspects of the mind. So that it will be helpful both now in your life, at the time of death and for the future.
Dedicate or share this positive energy with others, as many beings as possible.