Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 9-minute teaching, Ven Sangye Khadro explores why loved ones cannot reliably help us at the time of death—a meditation designed to shift how we think about reliance and attachment. She examines three key obstacles: family and friends may not be present due to accidents, travel, or sudden death; if present, their emotional distress can agitate our mind when we most need peace; and as the dying process unfolds, our awareness withdraws inward, progressively isolating us from the external world. She frames this reflection not as pessimism about relationships but as motivation to cultivate self-reliance and reduce attachment now.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 3.03 Nine Point Meditation on Death Part 3.mp3
UUID: f2b036ca-0ae7-47a5-ae42-45abe989c650
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 9.3 minutes
Words: ~1,413
So, in the third point, the third main point or root of the Meditation on Death, we look at what can be helpful to us at the time of death so that we know what we need to do to prepare ourselves. So I’ll first talk about these points, explain them, and then I’ll lead a meditation on them. There are three points to meditate on. The first of these is looking at our loved ones, our family and friends. So, the idea here is that as we go through life, we sometimes face difficulties.
And we normally turn for help to certain people, certain objects that we rely upon to give us comfort, to give us support, and in general just to make our lives more pleasant, more peaceful, more comfortable. But the question is, at the time of death, who or what can help us? Is it possible that the people and the things that we normally rely upon for help and comfort as we go through life, will they be able to give us the help that we need at the time of death? So, most probably, what we turn to, first of all for help, when we’re facing difficulties in life and when we get closer to death, we will turn to our family and friends, to other people. And while we’re alive, we do get a certain amount of help from family and friends.
They give us love, they give us comfort, they help us both in a practical way, financially, with practical things, and also emotionally when we’re feeling sad or distressed or anxious or whatever emotional problems we might be going through. So our family and friends are able to give us a lot of help in our life. But are they able to help us at the time of death? It’s only natural that we would want them to be there when we’re dying. We might imagine ourselves dying in a hospital or at home in our beds, surrounded by our loved ones showing us love and feeling loved and feeling supported by these wonderful people in our life.
But one thing is, it’s not completely certain that they will be there when we die. Because again, we don’t know when we’re going to die. We don’t know the circumstances of our death. And it’s possible that we will die in a place where we’re far away from our family and friends. We might be travelling in another country or in another part of our same country.
And our family and friends simply will not be there with us when we die. And we may not even be able to call them on the phone and talk to them. And even if we die, you know, within our own town or city, we might for example be in a car accident and die very suddenly before our family and friends even know that we’ve been in an accident. So that’s one thing to consider. That it’s not completely certain that our family and our friends, our loved ones will be there when we die and that we’ll be able to rely upon them for help.
But then, even if they are there, even if we die a natural death at home or in a hospital or hospice and our family and friends are there, we can consider how much help they would be able to give us. One thing that often happens is that the family and friends of someone who is dying become overwhelmed by emotions. They feel sad. They’re crying. They don’t want the person to go.
They plead with them to stay and not go. They they make expressions such as, oh, I don’t know how I’ll be able to go on living without you. And so they themselves might be caught up in disturbing emotions, and that will affect you. You’re the person who’s dying. It will make you feel sad to leave them behind.
It may make you feel worried. Will they be able to go on without me? And so that can make it very difficult for you to let go, to be able to have a peaceful, positive state of mind as you’re passing through the stages of death and beginning your journey to the next life. Again, most ideal thing is to be able to die with a peaceful state of mind, with a mind that is not caught up in fear or anxiety, that is not caught up in attachment and clinging, sadness and depression or anger. So one thing you can ask yourself is your family and friends, the people you’re close to.
How much will they be able to help you as you’re dying to have a positive and peaceful state of mind? To be able to let go and just pass peacefully from this life to the next one. And even if they are able to remain calm and peaceful and be able to let you go and say things that will help you to have a peaceful and positive state of mind as you are dying, Another factor is that as we go through the death process, and I’ll be talking about that later. In Buddhism there is an actual explanation as to what happens to us as we die. So there is actually a process that we go through.
So as we go through the dying process, our awareness of an ability to communicate with the outside world, including family and friends, gradually diminishes. Our mind goes deeper and deeper into itself to subtler and subtler levels of awareness of consciousness. So we find ourselves gradually receding from withdrawing from the outside world deeper into our own mind, our own consciousness. So we find ourselves alone, separate from, cut off from family and friends, making this journey from this life to the next one very much alone. And so even if our family and friends are there and holding our hand and pouring their love into us and saying words that can be very helpful and comforting to us, at a certain point, we will no longer be in touch with that.
We will find ourselves alone within ourselves, within our own mind, within our own conscious, making that journey alone. So if we have not learned how to manage situations, how to manage problems, how to manage difficulties on our own without being totally dependent on others, we might find it difficult at this time. We might not know how to manage as we’re making this journey alone to the next life. So whatever help we may be able to get from family and friends, from loved ones, is limited when we go through the process of dying. And if we can realize this, then we can understand how important it is to learn how to manage things on our own.
How to be able to stay alone and strong and courageous and be able to deal with whatever we might face, whatever difficulties, challenges we might face on our own without being totally dependent on others. Another thing is that if we have strong attachment to family and friends which is only normal, it’s very difficult not to be in relationships and not have attachment. So the attachment that we have, this feeling of wanting to be with them, not wanting to separate from them, will make it difficult for us to be able to let go, to be able to move from this life to the next one alone leaving everyone behind. So, stronger the attachment we have, the more difficult it will be to make a smooth, peaceful transition from this life to the next. So, if we can realize that, then we can understand how important it is to work on our attachments.
Learning to let go of attachment. Learning to accept the inevitable separation that we’ll have to face with our family and our friends, our loved ones. So this is the first point. The first point is recognising that any help we might be able to receive from our loved ones, from family and friends is limited. And any attachment that we might have to family and friends could be an obstacle to having a peaceful, positive mind at the time of death and being able being able to set out on a journey to the next life in a smooth and easy way.