Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 4.6-minute teaching, Ven Sanghy Khandro offers practical guidance on helping someone who is dying through hope and forgiveness. Dying people often experience guilt, regret, and hopelessness — haunted by past mistakes and fearing they cannot be forgiven. She walks through several approaches: allowing them to express feelings without judgment, reminding them of good they’ve accomplished, explaining that their pure nature remains intact and mistakes are transitory and can be purified. On forgiveness: if they believe in God or Buddha, assure them they will be forgiven; if not, encourage self-forgiveness through genuine regret and commitment to change. They can also seek forgiveness from those they’ve harmed. This teaching is for those caring for the dying.
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File: 5.06 Hope and Forgiveness.mp3
UUID: 75f9d4d3-7b1f-40b3-9e6c-3139745ac221
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 4.6 minutes
Words: ~694
Another thing that’s helpful in dealing with someone who’s dying is giving hope and finding forgiveness. So this is mentioned by Sogyal Rinpoche in his book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. He says that two things are very important in helping a dying person, and these are giving hope and finding forgiveness. So when people are dying, they sometimes experience guilt, regret, depression, or a sense of hopelessness. Sometimes because they look back on their life and remember many things they did that they feel bad about, they realize were wrong, or they may regret that they didn’t do enough of the right things.
They may feel that it’s not possible for them to rectify the wrongs that they have done and that they will not be forgiven by God or whoever they have faith in. So you can offer help to a person who’s going through these emotions by allowing them to express their feelings, to talk about how they feel, listening compassionately and non judgmentally. Now that might be challenging because maybe the person has done something really, really horrible. So to be able to accept and forgive that person could be quite difficult, but that’s really important to do. And it’s also helpful to encourage them to remember the good things that they’ve done in their life.
They may be focusing only on the negative things, the mistakes that they made, and forgetting about all the good things that they did. So it’s important that they realize that they they did do a lot of good things. Their life wasn’t just a total waste, a total mistake. So get them to think about and talk about the successes, the good things they did, the positive actions, the virtuous things that they did, not only focus on their failings and their wrongdoings. And if they’re open to the idea, you might talk to them about Buddha nature.
You don’t have to use those words, but that then their nature, their pure nature is basically pure and good and not evil and tainted. And whatever mistakes they made, whatever faults they have are transitory, not permanent. And they can be cleaned away, purified, just like dirt on a piece of glass. You might even talk to them about the practice of purification. Teach that to them, help them do it if they are open to it.
If the person is concerned that their wrongdoings are so numerous and great that they couldn’t be forgiven, then you could talk to them about forgiveness. If they believe in God or in Buddha, Then assure them that the nature of God or Buddha is pure unconditional love and compassion. And so they always forgive whatever mistakes we make. They don’t hold it against us. If a person doesn’t believe in God or Buddha or some higher power, then what they need to do is to forgive themselves.
And you can help them to do this by encouraging them to express their regret for their mistakes and to ask for forgiveness. That’s really all they need to do. Remind them that whatever actions they did in the past are over and gone and can’t be changed. So it’s best to let go of them. But they can change from this moment on.
They can learn from the mistakes they made in the past and make the strong resolution that they will not do them again. So from this moment on, I am not going to do those negative actions again. So if the person truly regrets their mistakes and truly wishes to transform themselves, there is no reason that they can’t find forgiveness. And if there are people that the person has harmed and who are alive, then you can encourage the person to express their regret and ask forgiveness. Sogyal Rinpoche in his book says: All religions stress the power of forgiveness, and this power is never more necessary nor more deeply felt than when someone is dying.
Through forgiving and being forgiven, we purify ourselves of the darkness of what we have done and prepare ourselves more completely for the journey through death.