Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 5-minute talk, Ven Sangye Khadro addresses what helps the mind at the moment of death—a question that transcends any one tradition. Her answer: the qualities that matter then must be cultivated now. She identifies three essential supports: love and compassion for others (rather than self-absorption), detachment and the ability to let go, and faith in a spiritual object or teacher. These cannot be rushed into just before dying; they must become our habitual mental state through regular practice. Khadro illustrates this with the Native American death chant tradition—a prayer learned and recited throughout life, then drawn upon when dying. For anyone approaching these questions, Buddhist or not.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 3.06 What Helps at the Time of Death.mp3
UUID: aea6cd4d-07c2-4cc2-abfe-d882e2951d3e
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 5.2 minutes
Words: ~783
So, what can give us help at that time as we’re making that journey? So, according to Buddhism, and I think the same is true for all other religious and spiritual traditions, what can give us help at that time are positive states of mind, positive qualities that we have made ourselves familiar with during our life. So these can include the sense of love and compassion for others as opposed to being obsessed with our self, our own self, our eye, our ego. But but having positive thoughts and feelings and aspirations with regard to others, wanting to help others, caring for others, concern for others, as opposed to only concern for myself. And other qualities would be detachment, being able to let go when it’s time to let go.
Not not having a strong sense of clinging and attachment and which is for, again, very much dependent on a sense of self or I and ego. And faith is another important quality. If we have faith in objects of devotion, for Buddhists, this would be the Buddha, other Buddhist figures, Buddhist saints, Bodhisattvas, spiritual teachers. Or for a Christian, this would be God or Jesus, Mary, the saints. So depending on your particular spiritual or religious affiliation, there are certain objects, beings that represent pure qualities of pure unconditional love and compassion and wisdom and ability to give you help when you’re in a difficult situation.
So people who have faith receive a lot of help, a lot of strength and courage when they go through difficult situations such as dying. So making ourselves familiar with these positive states of mind and living a good life, being a good person, acting in ways that are positive and beneficial and meaningful. These give us help at the time of death. Having familiarity with these will enable our mind to be in a peaceful, positive state to have strength and courage to go through this experience of death and dying and make this journey into the next life. So to be able to do that at the time of death, we need to practice now while we’re alive.
We need to make ourselves familiar with these positive qualities, these positive states of mind, positive ways of behaving while we’re alive. We can’t expect that just before we die, we’re suddenly gonna know how to do this. If we haven’t lived our life in such a way that we’ve become familiar with these positive qualities and positive ways of behaving, then waiting till the last moment just before we die is too late. We just don’t have the time. We just don’t have the ability to do that.
So this contemplation leads us to realize how important it is to start now since we don’t know when death’s gonna happen, to make ourselves familiar with spiritual qualities, spiritual practices, positive qualities so that when the moment of death happens, we’ll be able to bring them to mind. For example, Stephen Levine, who’s written a number of books on death and dying, has a lot of experience dealing with death and dying. In one of his books, he writes of an American Indian, a native American practice, which is known as a death chant. So the members of the tribe at a certain point in life when they’re adolescent receive a death chant, which is a kind of prayer or mantra, which they learn and they recite, they practice, and it’s to be used during their life at times of difficulty, times of danger, when they might be lost, for example, or facing some dangerous animal or frightened. So they use the death chant.
They they focus on the death chant, recite the death chant to keep their minds calm and clear and peaceful and be able to get through that situation. But the real purpose of the death chant is to use at the time of death when they find themselves dying. They recite the death chant, focus their mind on the death chant. And that enables their mind to remain calm and peaceful, and be able to make a smooth transition through the whole process of death into the next life. So I think that’s a good illustration of the whole idea of a spiritual practice, having some kind of spiritual practice or some kind of positive attitude that you’re so familiar with, you’ve made yourself familiar with during your life, that at the time of death you’ll be able to focus your mind on that and use that to get through this experience.
So, that’s an explanation of the meditation. And now we’ll take a short break and then do the meditation.