Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 2.8-minute teaching, Ven Sanghy Khandro uses the English saying “you can’t take it with you” to examine our attachments to possessions. She observes how we accumulate objects—houses, cars, furniture, books, electronics, money—and rely on them for comfort and security. Yet death brings complete separation from everything we own. As we die, we grow unable to use or enjoy these things. Attachment to possessions becomes a significant obstacle at the time of death: we cling, feel regret about leaving them, or worry about their fate. This preoccupation disturbs the mind and prevents peaceful letting go. The core instruction is to recognize now, through clear reflection, how useless these attachments are and to begin practicing non-attachment while we still have time.
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File metadata (for organising)
File: 3.04 You Can't Take It With You.mp3
UUID: ecf9a24b-89ce-4e7d-8f79-5c14643676e8
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 2.8 minutes
Words: ~424
And secondly, the second point is to look at our possessions and enjoyments. So, in our life, we tend to accumulate a lot of things. We have a house or apartment. We have other possessions that we rely upon when we may face difficulties or just feel unhappy or depressed. We turn to these things.
We use these things to get a certain amount of comfort and pleasure and happiness, satisfaction. But are these things able to help us as we die? So we have this saying in English, you can’t take it with you. So death means the complete separation from all our possessions, from our house, from our car, from all our furniture, from our books, our CDs, our electronic gadgets, our phone, our computer, our clothes, our shoes, our food, everything that we own, our money, all the money we have, the stocks, the investments we have. We can’t take a single cent of our money with us.
We can’t take a single article of clothing, a single CD or book. So every single thing that we have has to be left behind when we die. And as we’re dying, we might not be able to get any comfort from these things. We might find ourselves becoming weaker and weaker, less and less able to use and enjoy the things that we have. And if we have attachment to these things, if we’re strongly attached to, concerned about our property and our possessions, that attachment can become a big obstacle at the time of death.
We might find ourselves feeling sad about leaving all the these things behind, feeling regret, not wanting to leave these things, wanting to take them with us. Or we might find ourselves worried about what’s gonna happen to them, who’s gonna get them, will they take care of them in the right way and so on. So our mind could be quite disturbed by these kinds of thoughts, worries, concerns. And so not only will our possessions and enjoyments be unable to really help us at the time of death and go with us into the next life. But attachment to them can make it very difficult for our mind to remain peaceful, positive, and be able to just let go of this life and move on to the next life.
So if we realize this, that can help us to realize how important it is not to be so attached to concerned about our things and to start learning now to let go of them.