Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 34-minute guided meditation, Ven Sangye Khadro takes practitioners through three hard truths about death: you will be separated from loved ones (who may not be present or know how to help), must leave all possessions behind, and will lose control of your body as it weakens. The teaching isn’t meant to frighten, but to clarify why attachment to these things now is useless. The core realization: only your mind continues, shaped by the habits you’ve cultivated in life. So the real work is training your mind now in positive states and freedom from negative emotions—when death comes, letting go will feel natural. Unsentimental guidance for anyone facing impermanence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 3.07 Meditation 5 What is Helpful at the Time of Death.mp3
UUID: ea06decc-e4d7-4a5b-a1fd-fd06e1ac2a8f
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 34.0 minutes
Words: ~2,829
So begin by making yourself comfortable. Whether you’re sitting on a cushion or in a chair, try to keep your back straight to help your mind be more clear and focused. Other than your back being straight, let the other parts of your body relax, let your muscles relax, let go of any tension you might have. Let your breathing be natural. Let your body breathe in a natural, steady rhythm.
And you might spend a few moments focusing on your breath, just being aware of the inhalation and exhalation of your breath to help your mind to settle down in the present, the here and now. Let go of or put aside any thoughts of the past or the future. Any thoughts not related to the meditation that we’re doing. Just put them aside for now and decide that you’ll keep your mind focused on the meditation that we’re doing. And bring your mind back whenever it wanders away to something else.
And then generate a positive motivation. You can simply remember the motivation we had at the beginning of the talk. Or generate another thought of wanting to be of benefit to others, wanting to make your life as beneficial and meaningful as possible to others, to the world, by freeing your mind from disturbing negative thoughts and attitudes such as selfishness, attachment, anger and so forth. And making your mind more familiar with positive qualities, positive attitudes such as love and compassion, the altruistic intention to help others, and think that that is your reason for doing this meditation. So in this meditation we’re looking at what will be helpful to us at the time of death.
As we go through life, we tend to accumulate material possessions and relationships. And we probably don’t really consider that these relationships, property, possessions and so forth are going to come to an end at some point. That we’ll have to leave these things behind. We may have a sense of permanence or maybe it’s more like wishful thinking. Wanting to always be together with our friends, our family, our loved ones and always have our possessions, always be able to enjoy them.
But this is not possible. The reality is that we’ll come to the end of our life and have to separate from all of these, leave them all behind and go all alone to the next life. The only thing that continues after death is our mind, our consciousness, imprinted with the experiences of this life, with the actions that we did in this life, the ways that we behaved, the attitudes that we had. And according to Buddhism and other spiritual traditions, the only thing that will really help us at the time of death to make this transition from this life to the next, and to give us help in our next life to be able to have a good situation, good experiences in the next life. The only thing that will really help us is spiritual practice.
What we have learned about spiritual teachings, what we have put into practice in terms of spiritual practices, making ourselves familiar with positive states of mind, positive ways of behaving, and not negative states of mind, negative ways of behaving. And it’s possible we might come to the end of our life and be devoid of such spiritual teachings and spiritual practices, having not made ourselves familiar with them while we’re alive. And this would be very sad, very tragic. And so this meditation helps us to realize how important it is that we give at least some of our time to learning about and putting into practice spiritual teachings. So first of all, we look at how much help we can receive from our loved ones, our family and friends at the time of death.
Normally in life, whenever we face difficult or frightening situations, we naturally turn to family and friends for help. And we do receive help from them. But can they help us at the time of death? So one thing is, we can’t be absolutely certain that they will be there at the time of death. It’s possible we will die far from home, alone, with no family and friends around us, and not even the possibility of calling them on our cell phone and talking to them.
So we might be alone when we die. So consider that, possibility that your friends and family may not actually be there with you when you die. But it’s also possible that they will be with us when we die. But even if that’s the case, how much help will they be able to give us? Even though they feel so much love for us and the wish to help us and would be willing to do anything to help us at the time of death, will they know what will be helpful for us?
We understand how important it is to have a positive and peaceful state of mind at the time of death. Do not be frightened, worried, not attached to or clinging to the things of this life, being able to let go and just go on to the next life? Will our family and friends be able to say the right things or do the right things to help us be in such a positive state of mind? It’s possible that they will be overwhelmed by sadness, by fear, by confusion, and not know what to say, not know what to do. Just contemplate that possibility.
Ask yourself the people you’re close to in your life, your family and friends, would they be able to give you the right comfort, the right help that you need to be able to let go of and make a smooth transition into the next life? Another factor to consider is your own feelings of attachment to and not wanting to separate from your family and friends. This feeling of, I want to be with them. I don’t want to leave them behind. I don’t want to go off alone to the next life.
So if you have such feelings, that will make it very difficult for you to be able to let go. So look into your mind honestly and ask yourself whether or not you do have such attachment, whether or not you would be able to easily let go and say goodbye and move on alone to the next life. So see if you can recognize that attachment to family, to friends, the sense of wanting to be with them forever, never wanting to say goodbye or separate from them, that this is a problem, that this could create problems, difficulties at the time of death, making it difficult for you to die peacefully and move easily to the next life. If you can recognize that this attachment is an obstacle, then make the resolution to start working on this attachment. Start letting go of your attachment.
That doesn’t mean letting go of your love. You can still have tremendous, pure unconditional love for your family, your friends, your loved ones. But attachment is more about self, about I clinging, feeling I need them, I want them, I don’t wanna have to separate from them. So that’s the attitude that is the is the problem, is problematic. And the best way of letting go of attachment is remembering impermanence and death.
Remembering that there will inevitably come the point when we have to say goodbye, we have to separate from our family and friends. So starting to accept that, starting to prepare yourself for that separation will help you to let go of attachment. And then the second point is looking at our material possessions, which can include the place where we live, house or apartment, other property that we might have, all the things that we have within our house or car, and so on. And also the things that we do, for example, hobbies or sports, things that we enjoy doing. So as we go through life, we tend to accumulate a lot of these things, a lot of activities that we enjoy doing.
And again, when we come to the end of our life, we have to leave all of these things behind. We have to leave behind all our material possessions, our property, our money. We can’t even take one cent with us, one article of clothing. And the things that we enjoy doing like sports or hobbies and so on, we’ll have to leave those behind as well. So not realizing this, we tend to develop strong attachment to these things and a feeling of wanting to continue to enjoy them, not wanting to separate from them.
So, see if you can recognise that attachment that you have. See if you can recognise how that attachment would be an obstacle at the time of death, making it difficult for you to be in a peaceful and positive state of mind, to be able to let go easily and smoothly, and for your mind to make a smooth easy transition from this life to the next one. So again, if you’re able to accept that there will be this inevitable separation, you will have to leave everything behind and being attached to your things will make it difficult to die peacefully, you can make the resolution that you’ll start working on overcoming your attachment. Start learning to let go as a preparation for that final separation. And then the third point is looking at our own body and how our body will not be able to give us any help at the time of death.
So, we’ve been with our body from the beginning of our life, from birth, from conception. So it’s it’s been like a long time friend of ours, and we tend to be very attached to our body, concerned about our body. We we put a lot of time and energy into keeping our body healthy and fit and making it look good. And we also tend to identify ourselves with our body. We tend to feel this is me, this is who I am.
We’ve probably experienced a lot of pleasure in relation to our body, with our body. We’ve also experienced a lot of difficulties and pain with our body. But still, there’s this very strong sense of identification, attachment. I am this body. This is me.
And when we come to the end of our life, we find ourselves approaching death, our body will most probably become more and more weak, more and more incapable of doing the things that we’ve always been able to do and took for granted. Even things like bathing ourselves, going to the toilet by ourselves, eating by ourselves, walking. These things may become more and more difficult and eventually impossible. We’ll become completely dependent on other people to help us with these most basic things. So our body will not be of much help to us at the time of death.
And may present us with a lot of difficulties, a lot of challenges. And the stronger the attachment we have to our body, the more strongly we identify ourselves with our body, the more difficult we will find it to be able to just let go of our body and allow our mind to move easily from this body, this life to the next one. So spend some time contemplating this. Really get a sense of how your mind, your consciousness is going to separate from this physical body and make the journey to the next life, to the next body. And how difficult it would be if you have strong attachment and a strong sense of identification with this body, be able to let go and have a peaceful positive state of mind.
See if you can recognize the danger of having attachment and the importance of learning to let go, starting to let go of this attachment now. So the purpose of meditating on these three points, how we have to separate from our loved ones, family and friends, from our possessions, property, possessions, money and so forth, and how we have to separate from our body. The purpose of contemplating these things is not to generate fear, to not to generate sadness or other disturbing emotions in our mind, but to realize that we will have to separate from these things eventually, and that it’s of no use to be attached to them, no use to to feel the strong regret and sadness about separating from them. And if we don’t start working on those attitudes now, it will be very difficult at the time of death to be able to just suddenly let go, suddenly be free of attachment. Whereas on the other hand, if we start working now on letting go of our attachment and overcoming such feelings of fear and sadness about separation from people and things that we cherish, then when we come to the end of our life, the time of death, it will be easier to let go.
So that’s the purpose of this meditation is to see the importance of starting to work now on changing our mind, changing our attitudes, not having such strong attachment and clinging, but preparing ourselves for that point where we will have to let go of and leave behind people and things that we love and cherish. And also this contemplation is to help us realize how important it is to start working on our mind since our mind is the only thing that will continue with us to the next life. And we want our mind to be in a positive state. We want to be able to feel happiness and peace and non attachment and non anger and be free of negative thoughts and emotions. So if we want to have our mind in a positive state at the end of our life and in the journey to the next life, we need to learn how to have those positive thoughts and attitudes now, while we’re alive.
So, as we’re going through life, if we don’t learn how to work on our mind, how to manage our mind and our emotions, if we just let our mind get caught up in whatever thoughts and emotions should arise, whether they be anger, hatred, impatience, jealousy, depression, fear, anxiety. So if we just allow our mind and never try to work on our mind so that it doesn’t get caught up in these disturbing negative thoughts and emotions, then when we come to the end of our life, we won’t know how to do it. So on the other hand, if as we go through life, we learn how to manage our mind and our thoughts and our emotions, how not to let our mind get caught up in or stuck in negative, disturbing thoughts and emotions, and how to keep our mind in a positive state, have positive thoughts and emotions. Then when we come to the end of our life, we’ll know how to do it. We’ll be able to do it easily, naturally, spontaneously.
So this is another important point to come to a conclusion in this meditation. To see the importance of working on our mind, learning to manage our mind, learning how to keep our mind in a positive state and free of negative thoughts and emotions. To learn how to do this now while we’re alive, so that we’ll be able to do it easily, naturally at the time of death. So see if you can make that resolution to start working on your mind now. Start learning some kind of method, whether it’s a spiritual practice or some other method that will enable you to keep your mind positive and not stuck in negative thoughts and emotions.
And finally, end the meditation by dedicating the positive energy that you created by doing this meditation. And don’t worry if you found it difficult to do this meditation. You may have found it difficult to keep your mind concentrated. Maybe you had a lot of distractions, or maybe you felt sleepy. Or maybe your mind got caught up in some disturbing thoughts and emotions.
Don’t worry about that. Just the fact that you tried to do the meditation, you made the effort to do it, so powerful, so beneficial. You definitely create some positive energy. Dedicate this positive energy in the same way that we motivated at the beginning, wanting to be of benefit to others. So you can think, by the positive energy of doing this meditation, may I become more and more able to help others, to be a source of happiness and peace and comfort for others and help them be free of their suffering and problems, and ultimately help others follow the spiritual path and reach enlightenment.