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 how habituation shapes our spiritual life and death. She explains prayer as cultivating positive aspirations—enlightenment, freedom from ego, meeting teachers, benefiting others. The core is the power of familiarity: whatever mental habits we strengthen recurs most naturally. She illustrates with depression and anger (habits that deepen) versus compassion and loving-kindness (positive states that become effortless with practice). She then applies familiarity to dying: even if death comes suddenly, strong familiarity with spiritual practice allows the mind to access those positive states quickly. Using difficulties at death to deepen reflection on suffering, develop compassion, and meditate on teachings you know—supported by the traditional “lion posture” Buddha used—keeps the mind positive through the transition. For practitioners already engaged in spiritual practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 3.14 The Powers of Prayer and Familiarity.mp3
UUID: 8ad653e8-593b-4320-9018-8b5cbf71fbee
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 9.4 minutes
Words: ~1,401
Fourth is the power of prayer. And this involves making prayers. Not so much prayers in a sense of asking for help, but prayers in the sense of expressing our positive aspirations. For example, wishing to attain enlightenment, wishing to free ourselves from our negative thoughts and emotions, especially ego and selfishness so that we can achieve enlightenment and be of benefit to all beings. Making prayers to meet with spiritual teachers and spiritual teachings in our next life, and all the conditions in which we can continue following the spiritual path to nirvana, to Enlightenment.
Making prayers so that we can make our life really helpful for others. So prayers expressing positive intentions, positive aspirations. And then the fifth power is the power of familiarity. And this means that we familiarize ourselves with positive thoughts, positive attitudes, intentions, positive ways of behaving, so that these become most natural, most spontaneous. Because the way in which our mind works, the way in which our behavior works is that whatever we are most familiar with or habituated to is what will arise most easily and most naturally.
For example, if we have the habit of being depressed. If thoughts of depression arise in our mind and we don’t know how to deal with them and instead just follow fall into them and follow them, let ourselves get caught up in depression. That way we make ourselves familiar with depression, with a depressed state of mind. And and that’s what comes up most easily and most naturally. It’s like we we make a habit of being depressed.
And and then it becomes more and more difficult to stop that habit and to make a habit of being more positive and cheerful. Or with anger. If we have a habit of getting angry when things don’t go our way, blaming people for things that go wrong and so forth. So if that’s a habit that we have, then angry, critical blaming thoughts will come up again and again easily and spontaneously, naturally in our mind. Whereas on the other hand, if we develop positive habits such as seeing the positive qualities of others, seeing the good things that others do, appreciating others, or feeling love and compassion, wishing others to have happiness, wishing others to be free of suffering, or positive intentions like wanting to help others.
So if we make ourselves familiar with or habituated to those kinds of thoughts, those kinds of attitudes, then as time goes on, those are the ones that will arise most naturally, easily, spontaneously in our mind. So understanding that that is what happens and that is why we have the thoughts that we do, the feelings that we do, the habits that we do, then we can understand how important it is to make ourselves familiar with positive thoughts, positive feelings, positive attitudes and ways of behaving. So that’s the general meaning of the power of familiarity. And we can do that as we go through life. And again, that is why it is so important to engage in some kind of spiritual practice or practices as we go through life so that we are very familiar with them.
And then at the time of death, even if death happens very suddenly and unexpectedly, people sometimes worry about dying in a car crash or a plane crash and not having much time, only having a couple of minutes. Even in a very short period of time, if we are very strongly familiar with certain spiritual practices or with certain positive thoughts and emotions. Even in a short period of time, a few minutes or a few seconds, it’s possible for our mind to switch into those positive thoughts, positive experiences. So that’s why it’s so important to work on this power of familiarity, make ourselves very very familiar with our spiritual practices, with our prayers, our mantras, with attitudes such as loving kindness, or practice such as mindfulness, if we’re very strongly familiar with it, then easily, naturally we will be able to switch our mind into those states at the time of death, even if it happens very suddenly. So, making ourselves familiar with our spiritual practices, with positive states and so on during our life, then at the time of death, the power of familiarity means utilising whatever difficulties we might experience at the time of death, such as physical pain or discomfort or helplessness, having to depend on others, or whatever difficult thoughts or emotions might arise in our mind.
So whatever difficulties or challenges there are at the time of death, using those to reflect on the teachings, to familiarize ourselves more and more with our spiritual teachings that we are familiar with, such as Buddhism or Christianity or whatever. In the case of Buddhism, this would mean remembering the suffering nature of saṃsāra. That as long as we’re in this cycle of death and rebirth, we’re never completely free from suffering, and we don’t have total freedom. So it’s a very undesirable, imperfect situation that we want to free ourselves from and achieve higher states of nirvana or enlightenment. So we can reflect on these teachings at the time of death with the difficulties we are experiencing.
And another practice we can do is using the difficulties we experience to develop compassion, understanding that what we are going through is something that everybody has to go through. Every being in Samsāra has to die. And we die not only once but many times, again and again, life after life. So, using this experience to feel compassion for others and the wish to reach enlightenment, reach freedom, so that we can help others be free from these sufferings as well. And it’s also recommended that at the time of death, possible, we lie on our right side in a position known as the lion posture.
The posture that the Buddha adopted when he was passing away. That involves lying on your right side and your right hand is under your right face, under your right cheek. And if possible, you block your right nostril with your little finger. This is said to stop the energy of attachment, desire and attachment, which can become a hindrance at the time of death. And then you have your left hand resting on your left side.
So if we can die in that posture, then it’s helpful, conducive to be able to die in a positive state of mind. But even if that’s not possible, the most important thing is to have positive thoughts, positive feelings and attitudes in our mind at the time of death. And then if we can to meditate on the teachings, on certain practices that will enable us to have a positive state of mind such as love, compassion, Tonglen, the practice of taking and giving, which will be explained later. If we have received teachings on emptiness, which is said to be the true nature of all things, the fact that things are not so solid and real as they appear, but they are empty of permanent, solid, independent existence. So if you have some understanding of that, you can meditate on that at the time of death.
Or whatever meditations, teachings or practices you are familiar with, you are able to bring to mind at the time of death so that your mind is in a positive state as you die. So those are the five powers recommended practices that we can do at the time of death. So again, these are just a partial list of spiritual practices we can engage in as we go through life. That will be helpful at the time of death to be able to have a positive state of mind. But they are also helpful as we go through life.
They enable us to live our life in such a way that we ourselves will be most peaceful and have good relationships with other people, success in the things that we do, feel good about ourselves, satisfied with the way in which we are living our life. They are helpful as we go through life, but also helpful at the time of death and helpful to be able to make smooth and easy and positive transition from this life to the next and find ourselves in good conditions in the next life.