Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 8-minute talk, Ven Sangye Khadro uses her own life story to show how the sense of self is not fixed to the body or any identity. She begins with a familiar hook—how we instinctively claim this is me when seeing ourselves in a mirror or photo—then teaches that the body is merely a temporary container for the mind, like a hotel room we’ll vacate at death. Using concrete examples (mirror reflections, photos) and her personal arc (Catholic upbringing, Buddhist nun, teacher), she demonstrates how the sense of I changes even within one lifetime, and will change again at rebirth. She concludes our attachment to the body becomes an obstacle to a peaceful death; at dying we’re left alone with our mind, moving into the next life.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 3.05 The Body Can't Help.mp3
UUID: 81389ca2-77e3-4445-a8ff-61859524be9e
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 8.2 minutes
Words: ~1,342
And then the third point is looking at our own body. So, we probably take our body for granted. Our body has been with us right from the beginning of our life. And we probably have a strong sense of identification with our body. We we we have this kind of instinctive or intuitive sense of our body being me.
This is me. This body is me. For example, when we see ourselves in a mirror, see a reflection of our body or our face in the mirror, we automatically feel that’s me. Or we see ourselves in a photo, a group photo, and, you know, we are there amongst many other people. As soon as we see that image of ourselves in the photo, we think that’s me.
So so we feel I with regard to this body. We have the sense of I or identity with regard to our body. And in actual fact, we are not our body. Our body is like a shell, like a home for our mind. Like I mentioned before, this idea of the body being like a hotel room or a guesthouse in which our mind abides only temporarily during the course of our life, but which our mind will depart from, separate from when we die, and then go to the next life and take on a new body and a new identity.
So our body is in fact not me, not I, not who I am. But not realizing this, we tend to cling to our body and identify with our body. And we may also develop a lot of attachments with regard to our body. Attachment to how we look, for example. Wanting to look attractive, wanting to be strong, wanting to be capable and independent and and so on.
So as we get closer to death, especially if we die a natural death, and our ability to do things with our body gradually diminish, then we might find this quite difficult. This might give rise to a lot of sadness or a lot of distress or even a lot of anger and impatience when we find that we can’t do the things that we used to be able to And maybe our body is feeling very uncomfortable, maybe even experiencing pain. So attachment to the body and identifying with the body can become quite an obstacle at the time of death, can make it difficult for us to be able to just let go of our body, de identify with our body, and be able to leave this body behind and go into the next life. So not only is our body unable to really help us at the time of death because it’s becoming more and more weak, more and more helpless, more and more dependent on others and possibly experiencing physical discomfort or even pain. So it doesn’t really help us at the time of death.
But our attachment to our body can become an obstacle to a peaceful, positive state of mind at the time of death. So if we realize this, it can help us to see how important it is to start working on letting go of our attachment to our body, letting go of our of our sense of I, our identification with this body. And one thing that I find very helpful is to just contemplate what actually happens as we go from life to life, as we go through this process of dying and rebirth, which happen again and again. So the way I think of it, which you might find helpful as well, is to think that I lived a past life. My mind, my consciousness was in some other body before this body came into existence.
So I had another body, another identity, another life, other experiences. And then that life came to an end. Death happened. My mind separated from that body and then made the transition or the journey from that body into this present body, which began in my mother’s womb at the time of conception. So this body had its origin in my mother’s womb.
The fertilization of the egg by the sperm growing into a fetus and into a baby and then coming out being born. So my mind was in this body right from the beginning, right from conception. And because of that, my mind developed a sense of identity with this body. And it just so happens in this lifetime I have a female body. I was born in America to a set of parents.
And they were Catholic, so they raised me as a Catholic. And they were English speaking, so they taught me English. I went to Catholic schools, I had friends, I had siblings. So in this lifetime, because of the circumstances of this life, because of the experiences I had in this life, I developed a certain sense of identity, a sense of I in relation to this body, to this life, to the circumstances and experiences of this life. This sense of I is not something permanent.
It’s something impermanent, something changing even in the course of this life, even as I go through this life. For example, in the earlier part of my life I was a Catholic. I identified myself as a Catholic. Later I went to India, met Buddhist teachers. I decided to become a Buddhist and to become a Buddhist nun.
So then my identity changed to that of a Buddhist nun. And then I became a teacher. So even in the course of this life, my sense of I, my identity went through changes. And then when this life comes to an end, my mind or my consciousness leaves this body, separates from this body, from this life, from the people I’m close to in this life, the circumstances of this life and so forth. And goes alone to the next life.
And then it will be born in a new body. Maybe in my next life, I’ll be born as a boy. Maybe in India. So I will have a different body, different set of parents, different circumstances. Maybe they’ll be Hindu, they’ll teach me Hinduism and they’ll teach me Hindi.
And so I’ll have a completely different identity depending on the circumstances of that life, depending on my education and experiences in that life. So I find it helpful to think in that way to understand that the sense of I that we have is is not something permanent, not something fixed to this particular body, to this particular life, and circumstances, and relationships, and so on. But it changes from one life to the next. It changes even within one life. So contemplating that can help to loosen the sense of attachment to the things of this life, such as our body, such as our relationships with other people, such as the possessions that the things that we accumulate during our life, the experiences that we have during our life, to understand that that that all of this is is transitory.
And we might think of it as being like a play or like a movie, like a drama that takes place. But then at some point, the curtain falls. The movie is over. It’s all over for this life, But that’s not the total end. Because our mind, our consciousness will leave all this behind and go to a new life and start a whole new movie, a whole new drama, a whole new set of experiences, a whole new set of identity, sense of I.
So, after having contemplated these three points and recognising that the help we can receive at the time of death from our family and our friends, our loved ones, from our possessions and enjoyments, and from our own body is very much limited. And as we go through the process death and dying, we will find ourselves alone within ourselves, within our own mind, just alone and naked, moving to the next life.