Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 112-minute opening session of a five-week course, Ven Thubten Dondrub introduces the foundational Buddhist understanding of death and rebirth by first establishing why this topic matters for spiritual practice. He explains the course structure—weekly teachings plus a one-day retreat—and sets expectations for active engagement through homework, reading, and meditation. He then contextualizes death within the broader Buddhist path: the mind is beginningless and endless, controlled by delusion and karma until liberated; death occurs when the mind separates from the body and takes rebirth; and our actions determine whether we experience good rebirths or suffering ones. Moving into the core teaching, he explores impermanence—the moment-by-moment decay of all compounded phenomena—using the striking example of a clapping sound to demonstrate how everything arises and passes away irreversibly. He concludes by presenting the disadvantages of not meditating on death (lack of motivation to practice, procrastination, impure practice, loss of energy, creation of negative karma, dying with regret) and previews the advantages. Throughout, he emphasizes that realizing our own mortality—not merely understanding it intellectually—transforms how we live, motivating genuine Dharma practice and ethical conduct. Suitable for both newcomers to Buddhism and those with some background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 07 09 DB Death&Rebirth Dondrub Week1 090713.mp3
UUID: 60175fbf-f2f0-4e36-afbc-032bf336e31e
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Death & Rebirth (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-07-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 112.0 minutes
Words: ~12,994
I’m sorry. Don’t it’s too loud. I think it’s it’s much too loud. Okay. I did it.
Oh. Oh, I Don’t you want to choke? No. That’s it. I’m sorry.
Welcome everyone to Buddha House and to our first class on death and rebirth. So first people have been doing some of the the series of courses. They were just doing this introduction to the whole thing first. Sorry I’m going to have to bore you again. We are Anyway, I tried it out very quickly for the people.
FPMT is an international organization called the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna tradition. And the two lamas who started this tradition, Lama Yeshe Rinpoche and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. So those are my two main teachers. Lama Yeshe passed away in nineteen eighty four, so Lama Zopa Rinpoche who’s depicted in this picture on the right or to the left of His Holiness, is now the sole spiritual head of the FPMT organization. He’s also my main teacher and he, on the request of Kathy Davis, the director of the center, Rinpoche asked me to come here to be the resident teacher.
The FPMT organization is dedicated to preserving the Mahāyāna tradition especially as it’s found in the Tibetan system of the Mahāyāna and particularly of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. This center in the FPMT follows the Gelug School which is the most recently established of the four schools. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the most famous teacher within that school. So we try and follow His Holiness quite closely here. So I myself have been a monk since early nineteen seventy seven.
I got ordained in Australia and then I went to live in India and Nepal and various other places and came back to Australia about just over ten and a half years ago. Okay, just to give some kind of background to what we’re doing. So with FPMT, teachers with the FPMT have developed a number of programs to help people study the Buddhist teachings more effectively. And one of those programs is the Discovering Buddhism program, which is designed to introduce the basic ideas and practices of Tibetan Buddhism to people. So it’s a program that is suitable for completely new people, but also people who have been studying and practicing for some time.
What we’re trying to particularly do in the Discovering Buddhism program is encourage people to be is the word to be active, to be engaged in the whole thing rather than just coming once a week and listening to a talk. The idea is on the basis of listening to the talk to really engage in what the talk is about by doing some reading. That’s why you have this student material. Set some homework once a week with this homework I really encourage people to do. You don’t pass or fail this homework it’s just so I get an idea of what what you’ve understood of what I’ve said or misunderstood and or any questions you may have and it’s a way to encourage you to put some effort into the subject because the more you put into it the more you’ll get out of it Right?
And so there’s some writing but also a little bit of simple meditation homework and some mindfulness practice to try. Just very very simple things to do during the day related to the topic. If you don’t do the I can’t make you do the homework so if you don’t do it that’s it, but I would really really encourage people to do it and to do it as well as possible because it will help me to understand what I’m doing, if I’m doing it properly or not, being understood or not, and it will help you to integrate everything much better. Because the best teachers weren’t given just to entertain people they were given with the aim that people would put them into practice. I’ll talk about that very briefly a little bit later on.
An integral part so this course is going to involve five talks, and then on the Saturday of the last talk, was a one day retreat. So this is meant to be an integral part of the course where there’s a chance to meditate well hopefully people will meditate on the topic throughout the week, but also this is a chance to meditate on the topics together and it’s really good to try to do this retreat. So I encourage people to check your calendars and book that day so you can make it. For some people on a one day retreat sounds like very scary and very difficult but it’s not scary or difficult it’s very pleasant I think generally speaking. Okay so as you can see that this talk is being recorded so it will then be you will be able to access it.
Cathy Davis our director will send out a link on our web to the talk and you can download it is that the term or listen to it wherever you like. I would encourage people to maybe listen to the talks at least one more time, not because they’re so wonderful just because but as a way to reinforce what’s been said. The first of the first thing to do in the homework is to review what heard in the class. And most of us have very poor memories so we don’t remember much. So is also why I encourage people as much as possible to take notes during the talks.
That’s really helpful so you can review the subject but if you haven’t done that or even if you have taken notes then to listen to the talk again sometime or even several times if you want to torture yourself or you find it interesting. Also I really encourage people to make a personal commitment to do the whole course not just one talk. The DB program is presented with the idea that people study the whole module they don’t just come for one talk or drop in and out. The idea is to do the entire course because that will bring about the greatest benefit and give me a chance to explain things because one can’t explain everything just in one talk. Okay.
If you decide to drop out of the course it would be nice to let us know and you can just give a polite reason why you decided not to continue. It would be helpful for us to to know why people do leave courses which some people do of course. And otherwise if you just can’t make a particular class it’s also nice to know to inform the center if you can’t make it for that particular night. Okay that’s the basic introduction. Now just a little introduction to listening to the teachings in general.
Especially for those people who by the way are there any people who are completely new to Buddhism here who’ve not really studied anything, heard anything? Oh, okay. Well, as you know, when we first listen to the Buddha’s teachings we don’t know anything about them but we listen to them to know something about them with presumably the motivation wanting to consider whether Buddhism has anything to offer us to benefit our life. And so after hearing, listening and studying our teachings, reading the Buddhist teachings for some time when one may decide that you know I’m not interested in them or one makes a decision that there is something interesting here to check out. So the reason to continue to listen to the teachings is to understand them more and more and the reason for understanding the teachings more and more and to get a whole picture of what the Buddha was trying to tell us is to put them into practice.
So this is the main reason for studying the Dharma. The reason the Buddha appeared on this earth and taught. He didn’t teach just to entertain people or to make himself rich or famous or anything like that. He had this immense compassionate wish to benefit sentient beings by exploring what is suffering and what its causes are, what real happiness is and how one creates the causes for it. He taught that with the understanding, with the hope that people would practice having realized, having from their own side, as the Buddha himself said, don’t believe what I say just because I said it, but check up yourself.
And so the Buddha taught with the hope that having checked up what the Buddha taught, people would come to the conclusion that it was true, it was valuable, meaningful, beneficial for oneself and others. And therefore the Buddha hoped that any intelligent person deciding something is worthwhile and beneficial, they would practice it. Because it’s really kind of very dumb if you decide something’s really beneficial for you and you don’t do anything about it. That’s why this course is designed to encourage people to do something about what you hear each night. All of you said I have some background in Buddhism, but I don’t know how much background you have.
And I always say that we may discover that we never thought was in Buddhism. And these new things we discover may be interesting and enjoyable and acceptable, some things we may find very difficult intellectually to understand or emotionally to accept. And there may be some things like this in this course. So I would just encourage people to not reject those things but have an open mind and those things that bother you just leave them to aside what you find really understandable and meaningful and beneficial focus on those things with the hope that these more difficult things may start to make sense later on. So don’t try and understand everything all at once.
Just be patient. Patience is a very important thing when studying the dharma. Okay. I think that’s enough for tonight. So as you probably know, especially our Tibetan tradition, and I’ve got up a tradition that I have studied in that sounds very pompous I don’t know if what I’ve done is actually study but anyway, all the elements of the Gelugpa tradition emphasise how important it is that when we listen to the Buddha’s teachings it’s really important to get rid of any negative motivation we may have, or false or silly or stupid motivation to get rid of those and replace them with the best motivation we can possibly have.
Because our motivation for doing anything determines to a large extent what kind of effect we will get from what we do. So if we listen to the teachings with the best motivation we can possibly generate, then we will get the greatest effect from it. Firstly, as new people to the Dharma, we listen with the hope that something that we hear might help us in this life. But as we study the Buddha’s teachings more and more we can start to understand that the Buddha’s teachings aren’t meant just simply to benefit this particular life because the Buddha has mentioned how we are taught how we are all trapped in cyclic existence, having to die again and again, be reborn again and again. So we really need to use this life to, at the very least, to make sure that our next life will be better, have less suffering, more happiness.
But beyond that, the Buddha encouraged us to practice the teachings, not just to have a better rebirth, but eventually to be able to get out of cyclic existence completely, to become completely free of all suffering. But I know that the highest motivation that we can possibly have to listen to and practice the Buddha’s teachings is not just for our own sake but for the sake of others. Because the Buddha encourages us realize that just as we want to be free of suffering, we are experiencing suffering but we want to be free of it. It is true for every living being. Every being is suffering.
And there is no sentient being that wants to suffer. But the sad fact is the vast majority of beings, human and otherwise, are experiencing far more suffering than ourself but with far less ability to do anything about their suffering. So that’s one thing. And all of these beings who are suffering are unlike how it appears to us, these people or these beings are intimately connected to us. In our ordinary existence, we only think of just a few people being connected to us, our family and friends and some people who help us from time to time in various ways.
These are people who are connected and we have some bad connections with people who dislike us and harm us, our enemies, for want of a better word. Strangers, we don’t really think there’s much connection at all but the Buddha emphasizes, and I don’t really need the Buddha to say this, but if one thinks about it one can start to see that in fact we are intimately interconnected with every living being. That just for our mere existence day by day we depend on every living being directly or indirectly. As I’ve said many times before, I bore all you people, if you just eat a piece of toast for breakfast then to have that piece of toast requires the whole history of growing wheat to make bread to make bread, going back into thousands of years of human history. So we depended on all those people indirectly, and directly on someone to make the toast for us, make the bread, deliver it and so on.
And then there’s all the things we put on the bread and there’s the knives we need to cut it and all the things that made the knives and made the things that made the stuff that we put on the bread. If you think about it, yeah. And it’s just to survive. And on top of that, all the good experiences, pleasant experiences we have, ordinary, spiritual, they can only arise depending directly, indirectly on all other living beings. Of course, at a deeper level, so that is just at a larger level where it doesn’t have to have any kind of religious belief to start to see that that we are actually interconnected with every living being.
And especially if we understand that the mind is beginningless and endless and we’ve had many rebirths, that interconnection is even more profound. It doesn’t just mean that we’re interconnected with everyone on this planet now but all living beings throughout beginningless time. That’s pretty amazing. But even at a more profound level, because we have had countless rebirths, without going into lots of details now, what the Mahāyāna teachings of the Buddha emphasize is that in fact every sentient being has been our mother. Because of beginningless rebirths we’ve not had just one mother, but because of infinite rebirths, past lives, we’ve had a mother for each past life.
So infinite mothers. Who are these infinite mothers? All sentient beings including the people in this room. We’ve all been mothers to each other And not just once, many times. This is what the Buddha taught.
So all those beings who are immensely kind to us, who have been our mother, are suffering and suffering far more than ourselves with far less ability to do anything about it at the moment. So the Buddha encourages us to practice the Dharma which is about working with our mind, freeing our mind of the causes of suffering, awakening the positive potentials of our mind which are the true source of genuine happiness, and to do this with a motivation not just for this life to be okay, not just to have good future rebirths, not so we can just get out of suffering altogether to be free of cyclic existence, but so that we can help everyone to become free of suffering. To do that we have to achieve enlightenment. So the wish to achieve enlightenment to help all sentient beings perfectly without any exception, that motivation is called bodhicitta. And this is the motivation that we are encouraged to listen to the teachings including this subject of death and dying because this subject is intimately connected with achieving a good happy life now, good future rebirths, getting out of saṃsāra, achieving enlightenment.
To do all those things it will be helpful to understand the death and rebirth which I hope I make clear as we go along. So please try to generate that motivation for tonight’s talk and come to all the talks and retreat of this course. So if you’d like to join, there is a traditional prayer that is said at the beginning of teaching. Since I am a Buddhist monk in a Buddhist center trying to give some Buddhist teachings, I have to say this prayer. I’d be in big trouble if I don’t.
So you’re always welcome to join in either saying the Tibetan or the English. This is on page ten. To make this prayer more effective as we say it, if you feel comfortable, especially for those who have taken refuge in the Buddha’s teachings or in the Triple Gem, there it’s really helpful to think of the Buddha in front of oneself, seated on a lion throne, lotus, sun and moon, the very embodiment of all the Three Jewels of refuge, having all the perfect qualities of the Three Jewels of refuge, and at the same time as we think of the Buddha in front of us as our source of inspiration, guidance and refuge, we try and think of all sentient beings surrounding us. So it’s really very difficult to try and think and visualise all sentient beings. So at least we should try and think of those that we’re most connected to in this life.
So we think of our mother on our left, our father on our right. Behind us, we try to think or visualize of all of our family, friends and helpers. And in front, we think of those people who may dislike us or who have harmed us. We put them there not to generate negative thoughts towards them but to try to help us realize that they are, in essence, no different than anyone else. They are suffering and don’t want it like everyone else.
They wish to be happy but lack happiness just like everyone else. So they deserve my compassion, not my rejection. So then, as much as one can, try to think of all other sentient beings. I go for refuge until enlightenment to the Buddha, the Dharma, the supreme assembly, by the merit of practising generosity and the other perfections, may become the Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So now if you find it helpful, just imagine the body in front of you, very pleased with your motivation for being here and shows this by light coming to the crown of your head.
And then when directly above your crown imagine the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light and that light then pours down into you, blessing your mind to be able to understand all the teachings about death and rebirth and all the significance of these teachings. So we can reinforce that positive state of mind by just doing some simple breathing meditation just for a very short time. For those who know how to do it, we can do the nine round breathing exercise. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Oh, what’s happened to the home the with the the material that was There is a sheet of paper that you will get which outlines the topics we are going to cover week by week. So tonight I’m just going to talk a little bit about impermanence and the benefits of thinking about death and disadvantages of not and just again a little bit of to put everything in in in context. Okay. So here they’ve studied some of the Buddhadharma.
I’m not sure in what tradition, but I’m just doing I’m gonna do extremely brief summary of everything to put this topic in context. Why do we need to think about death and rebirth? So the fundamental belief of Buddhism is that we have a mind, not a brain, or we have a brain but in addition to the brain we have a mind. And our mind is something that is beginless and it is endless. And our mind is the source of all our experience.
Nothing could exist. This world wouldn’t exist. The whole universe wouldn’t exist without the mind. No mind, no nothing, nothing could exist. And particularly it is our mind that gives rise to all the experiences of happiness and suffering.
And the suffering within our mind that we experience in our mind and body is due to basically the disturbing thoughts that exist in our mind particularly ignorance, attachment and anger and all the other disturbing thoughts that are byproducts of those three poisonous minds. So our mind be under the control of these poisonous minds and all the other delusions. We engage in various actions of karma and those karmic blueprints ripen to bring experiences of happiness and suffering. The positive actions we engage in bring positive results, the negative actions bring suffering results. Under the control of these karmic impulses we take rebirth.
Death is when the mind permanently separates from the body. That is when death occurs. That is what death is when our mind leaves the body. Not when the mind stops but when it leaves the body. The brain stops, the heart stops, the nervous system stops and the body decays but the mind goes on.
It leaves the body under the power of karma and takes rebirth again and again. So as you’re all probably familiar, the Buddha taught that rebirth occurs not just simply as a human being. This is only one of many possibilities that we can be reborn into. There are better possibilities, there are worse possibilities. So the good possibilities of course are of being reborn as a human being again.
One can be reborn as what is called a demigod or one can be born in the various kinds of god realms. I won’t go into any details about this Presumably you may have read some things about it but this is context that we need to have some idea of why death and rebirth is such a vital subject within the Buddha’s teachings. One thing to understand is that these god realms are not ultimate rebirth states. We’re not encouraged even though there is more pleasure in those rebirths than in the human realm. We are not encouraged to try and get that kind of rebirth because it is still a samsaric rebirth.
It is still a rebirth where the mind remains controlled by delusion and karma. And those rebirths, although they may go on for a very long time, they don’t last. One dies and one is reborn again and again. This is what saṃsāra is. It is this process is sort of describing what saṃsāra is.
Actually, saṃsāra, the definition is that it is our mind controlled by delusion and karma. saṃsāra isn’t a place, saṃsāra is our mind. That’s a really important thing to understand. It’s our mind controlled by delusion and karma. And when our mind is controlled by delusion and karma, it means we get reborn again and again.
Due to karma we have a particular body but that body doesn’t last and so the mind separates from it and is reborn again and again. So we can have good rebirths but even good rebirths, even if they last an incredibly long time such as the so called God rebirths, don’t last forever and then one is reborn in another situation depending on some new karma. Okay but there are bad rebirths. Apart from being reborn as a human being or in the upper realms one could be reborn in the animal realms. So this is the only realm that we as ordinary people can see other than our own.
And unfortunately more and more people in this world are starting to recognise that animals have minds and feelings. For a long time, the vast majority of people in our culture have just dismissed animals as things that you can kill and treat however you like. They don’t have any thoughts, they don’t have any feelings, but in fact they do because they have minds just like ours. No different. More obscured, but no different.
Einstein’s mind wasn’t any different than ours. It was just working a bit better. In some ways. Maybe not in all ways, we were better than Einstein in some ways but in terms of mathematics and stuff his mind was working quite well whereas mind in that direction doesn’t go very well at all. Our mind is not another type of mind, it is absolutely no different than our mind, It’s just more obscured.
We were animals. We were in the god realms, in the demigod realms because we were in cyclic existence. We’ve been reborn again and again everywhere, every possible situation. So many people like to think animals have a good life and especially if you think it look at domestic animals, little cats, they’re all cozy and relaxed and sleep. But actually from a boss’ point of view if you really check more and more, animals have a great deal of suffering, an immense amount of suffering.
Of all the different kinds of animals, domestic animals probably have it best. But as we can see in all these programs on TV, life as an animal is actually pretty horrific most of the time. There is another class of rebirth which is even worse, which is what is called the hungry ghost realm. And there is the worst realms of all which, for want of a better word, are called the hell realms of which there are many varieties and choices taught by the Buddha in the sutras. So Strictly speaking, saṃsāra refers to our mind controlled by delusion and karma.
In a more general way of speaking, when we talk about saṃsāra, it refers to or implies all the possibilities that our mind can give rise to which is the rebirth as an animal, a preta or hungry ghost, the different kinds of gods. So saṃsāra can refer to all the beings experiencing those samsaric states. Our mind right now has the potential to experience all of those rebirths. All of them. We’ve experienced them before many times and we all have the karmic imprints in us right now to experience those rebirths in the future.
And we are also during our life creating the causes to experience these kinds of rebirths. So the main aim of the Buddhist teachings is to encourage us to get out of saṃsāra, to free our minds of delusion and karma because I tell you to do that, we will continue to suffer. There’s no way to experience genuine happiness genuine, all pervading, perfect, lasting happiness, while the mind is controlled by delusion and karma. It’s just impossible. We can have some pleasure, some entertainment, some distraction, things we call happiness, but it’s not real happiness.
It’s just an illusion of happiness. So if we really want happiness, then we have to free our mind of cyclic existence. But then if we start to realize how everyone else is in cyclic existence and how incredibly kind they are and how much I depend on them, then we can develop the wish not just to become free of cyclic existence ourselves but develop the wish for every sentient being, every kind suffering mother sentient being, to be free of cyclic existence. So to help them achieve that, we ourselves have to fully develop the positive potentials of our mind. We have to get rid of all the negative potentials, fully develop the positive potentials.
And when that’s done, that state is called enlightenment or Buddhahood. And a Buddha is someone who can spontaneously, continuously, perfectly benefit all sentient beings all the time. So we have this potential within us for enlightenment. This is our Buddha nature, our Buddha potential. So that’s the context of everything in a nutshell, in a very simple form of why we study.
It’s important to understand and study what death is and what rebirth is. So the basic aim of the Buddha’s teachings is firstly to be able to get a good rebirth in saṃsāra. Not a bad one but a good one, right? Because we’re going to die. This body isn’t going to last we’re going to die.
We die, there’s only two things that can happen from a Buddhist point of view. We’re either going to have a good rebirth or a bad rebirth. Scientific materialists say everything just stops, but this is not the Buddhist view. The mind goes on. It’s something indestructible.
It’s not physical. It doesn’t have any of the characteristics of physical phenomena. All physical phenomena are subject to change and decay but not the mind because it isn’t physical. So it just goes on and it can only go on in two ways: have a good rebirth or a bad rebirth. That’s it.
That’s going to happen to us. We are going to be our mind is going to leave this body and then it’s going to take another body. And with that goes a whole environment and everything. And that experience will either be a good one or a bad one. It’s very simple.
That’s the basic aim of the Buddhist teachings. Beyond that, as I’ve said, a greater motivation we can develop is to get out of saṃsāra altogether, to stop taking rebirths, but just to completely free ourselves of all suffering and to experience the natural bliss of our mind, which is nirvana. But then the greatest aim is, as I said, to achieve enlightenment so that we can help everyone get out of saṃsāra, to help them become totally free of all suffering, help them achieve peerless, everlasting happiness. So to achieve all of those things, to have a good rebirth, to get out of saṃsāra, to achieve enlightenment and also just tying together understanding death and rebirth is incredibly helpful. It helps us the more we have a real understanding of our own mortality and how everything is impermanent, how we are going to be reborn.
The more we really understand it, accept it and are mindful of it in our daily life, it helps us to make this life better. There will be less suffering, less confusion having that understanding. I hope that I’ll make that clearer as we go along how that follows. But believe me this is the Buddhist message that by understanding one’s own mortality, accepting it, being mindful of it, then it puts everything we experience in life in a proper perspective. So the terrible things aren’t so terrible, amazing things that cause us to get so distracted and full of attachment and craving, we start to realise not such a big deal.
And we start to realise what is really important in life. So just having that awareness will make help us have a better life, a more meaningful life, be help us to be more focused, more ethical, more virtuous, less selfish, just in this life. And all of those things will bring in their wake less suffering and confusion and more happiness. And by living a better life, by this life becoming better, more virtuous, more ethical, less selfish, etc, that enables us to create the causes that will bring about a good rebirth. So it’s a really important subject.
I can only emphasize that this subject of course is taught and emphasized in the context of people believing that there is something after death. If think, if you have a strong belief now that when I die, everything stops, that’s it, there’s nothing more, which you’re perfectly entitled to have, I’m not saying, you know, but if you have that belief, studying too much about death. Certainly rebirth doesn’t make any sense but death could start to become very depressing and maybe unnecessary. But in my way of looking it would be like that. But if you don’t believe in future lives, having some awareness of death can be very helpful.
Because there’s only this life don’t want to wait and death could happen at any moment so it forces us to decide what is really important in life. But if we do have some understanding belief in future existence it becomes even more important and less depressing, I think. Okay, any questions so far? Anyone want to make any comment? Okay, so I’d like to talk about now is the course is called death and rebirth but underlying death, really appreciate death, well sorry I’ll start again.
Why need In the spiritual path as it’s set out by the Buddha, why we need to think about death is to turn our mind away from obsessing with the things of this life in order to create the causes to ensure that we have a good rebirth. Because the more we just think about this life and forget about the possibility of future lives, the more we just focus on the things of this life, that becomes a condition that almost ensures that our negative disturbing thoughts will activate. Because if we only think of there’s only this life and the pleasures of this life, then our craving for those pleasures becomes awakened and it becomes very strong and our attachment to them and the problems of this life become the greatest problems so this can become a cause for anger and aversion and all of these kinds of mindsets to arise. And they don’t seem to be problematic because there’s no life after that. So why worry about getting attached or angry or anything?
They’re not going to have any lasting effects. So while we are obsessed only with this life, it acts as a condition to activate and strengthen all our disturbing thoughts which the Buddha argues and discovered are the actual cause of all our suffering. Whereas if we realize that we’re going to die and that there is rebirth then and our actions have consequences beyond this life and far greater consequences in our future, then this will encourage us to reduce our negative behaviour, our negative thoughts and feelings. If we use this understanding properly, all right, and it will encourage us to live a more meaningful, virtuous, ethical, more selfless life and those actions will create the cause for us to have a good rebirth. Because we don’t have to do anything to get a rebirth.
That will just happen. But what kind of rebirth we get depends on what we do. If we engage in negative actions we will get a suffering rebirth. If we engage in virtuous actions we will get a good rebirth. Of course you know, it’s a little bit more complicated because all of us do good and bad things.
So we need to make sure that the good outweighs the bad and that we purify as much of the negative stuff as we possibly can in this life. What encourages us to do all that is realizing that I am going to die. Right? So death as such is not something that we particularly need to be afraid of. It’s just we leave the body.
To be quite honest, it’s generally not a pleasant thing, dying. It’s a tradition that says great practitioners can die in a state of bliss, but that’s great practitioners. We may like to think we will be great practitioners, but anyway, I don’t want to be too negative but even if death itself is not something necessarily physically very pleasant to experience it’s not something to be terribly afraid of because throughout our life we experience unpleasant physical things. We get sick so on, have car accidents, get beaten up and so on. What we do need to be afraid of is what kind of rebirth we will have.
And I’d just like to make this point straight away which I have in other classes that this whole idea of being motivated by fear, many most people really understand this and they say this is the whole problem of religion. It’s all about putting fear into people about making them good little boys and girls because of fear of something. And it’s true. But there are two kinds of fear, I think. One kind of fear is positive and useful and one kind of fear is negative and not useful.
And we as ordinary beings are mainly dominated by the second kind. There’s all sorts of things that we as ordinary people are afraid of and there’s no reason, no beneficial reason to be afraid of them. It just causes us fears and worries and leads us to negative behaviour. You know we are worried, are afraid of whether we look good or not, whether people like us or not, whether we are acceptable or not. Right?
There’s a whole lot of fear around those things, which causes us can cause us to do all sorts of stupid and negative things so that we will be liked and loved and appreciated and blah blah blah. And so we will look cool and fashionable and sexy and all those kinds of things. Yeah. And we’re worried whether you know it’s working or not. We’re afraid of whether it’s working or not.
All of that fear, oh we’re afraid you know the sky might fall in or the market, what do you call it, the stock market will crash and we’re afraid that you know I might get this disease next year and I’m afraid of growing old and I’m afraid of I might lose my job and I’m afraid I won’t get a girlfriend, boyfriend, this or that You know? And all of that fear is helping in any way. It’s just painful and depressing and can lead to all sorts of stupid behavior. It’s just really dumb fear. Whereas there’s a fear, you know, all of those things we don’t have to really be afraid of.
But there are things that it is wise to be afraid of because they’re harmful. Right? And if one is not afraid of them then one will be harmed. Know? It’s it’s I mean, it’s ridiculous to be afraid of butterflies.
Right? But it’s quite reasonable to be afraid of crocodiles. Yeah? But of course you don’t have to have fright of a crocodile all the time, it’s only when they’re really close or running distance because they can run quite fast which is something I didn’t realise for a long time. So the fear of crocodiles is useful when a crocodile is around.
We don’t have to be afraid of crocodiles twenty four hours a day but that general, the accessibility to the fear of crocodiles is a useful fear to be able to access. Or the fear of fire or the fear of being run over in a in a busy street. These are useful things. Not when I got you you got completely panicked about it, but you just have that, I’ve got to be careful about this. So we need that kind of fear about death in the sense of we all need to fear dying having led a meaningless and negative life.
We don’t have to fear dying having led a meaningful virtuous life. That kind of death we don’t have to fear at all. But it’s wise to fear the possibility of dying not having led a meaningful virtuous life because there is then a real possibility that we will have a bad rebirth. Okay? So the topic of death is emphasized to encourage us to make sure that we treat this life.
And especially it’s taught in the context of understanding that we have what is called a precious human rebirth, not just an ordinary human rebirth but someone who’s born human, who has a basically healthy body and mind and has met Buddha’s teachings, has faith in them, has the ability to put them in practice, has all the circumstances in their life to be able to practice them, such as meeting Buddhist centres, Buddhist teachers, Dharma friends, Buddhist books, images, all of these things having all these things in one’s environment gives one the optimum chance to practice the Dharma, to work with one’s mind. That kind of rebirth is extremely rare and it is called the precious or perfect human rebirth. The optimum chance to practice the Dharma. So it’s particularly when we recognize that we’ve got such a rebirth that we should think about death, our death, because it’s an incredible tragedy to waste such a human rebirth, a precious human rebirth. The optimum chance to free our mind of suffering and to help others free their minds of suffering.
So that’s why we’re encouraged to think about death, our own death, more and more. That’s the essential point. So that at least we get a good rebirth. But we need a good rebirth to get out of saṃsāra and to achieve enlightenment. But enlightenment and liberation all begin by having a good rebirth which begins with practising the Dharma.
And one thing that really encourages us to practice Dharma is recognizing we’ve got the optimum chance to do so but we’re going to lose it because we’re going to die. So while we’ve got it, we have to use it as much as possible. So in that context, what also goes with that understanding of death is the understanding of impermanence. Because what also why we waste our life, even though we’re going to die, is because we get attracted to so many things. We get caught up with so many things that look so wonderful.
We also get caught up with all our problems and suffering and enemies and blah blah blah. But we have all these attachments and cravings for this, that and the other and aversions to this, that and the other. So what helps us to break down all of those disturbing thoughts is an understanding of impermanence. This is one of the most useful things to study to gain some understanding of the understanding of impermanence. Firstly the word impermanence in a Buddhist context has a specific meaning and it means it doesn’t mean not lasting which is what we usually think of something that comes to an end although that is an implication.
But literally what it means is changing moment by moment. If something changes moment by moment it is said to be impermanent. If it doesn’t change moment by moment, if it’s static, it is permanent. Right. One of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha it’s actually considered one of the defining teachings of the Buddha.
There are four defining teachings of the Buddha, four seals of the Buddha’s teachings. One of them is that all compounded phenomena are impermanent. Compounded phenomena is a technical term meaning anything that comes into existence depending on causes and conditions. It is compounded by causes and conditions. The Buddha said if something is a compounded phenomena coming into existence depending on causes and conditions it is impermanent, meaning it changes moment by moment.
And more specifically what that changing moment by moment means is decaying moment by moment. So if you look around this world or if you look around this room, if we just started looking around this room, if you investigate care, you will discover that everything in this room has to existence depending on causes and conditions. Everything the room itself is a compounded phenomena, and everything in it is a compounded phenomena. You know, like the carpet is made by causes conditions, the brick walls, the paint, the lights, everything, the the furniture, you know. Over the natural world, this flower has come into existence depending on causes and conditions.
The water has come into existence depending on causes and conditions. The world has come into existence depending on causes and conditions. The whole universe has come into existence depending on causes and conditions. So actually everything in the universe that comes into existence depending on causes and conditions is impermanent. Meaning it is changing moment by moment which means it’s decaying moment by moment.
And we don’t see that. We tend to experience the world, everything around us, as being permanent. I mean, of course, we know some things are changing and impermanent, you know, like the weather, the climate, although there are a lot of people who are saying it’s not changing, it’s not getting warmer, global warming is not happening, it’s not happening. Which is quite amazing how if we don’t want to see things, we don’t see them. But we can recognize that some things are changing.
And if you check, all the things that we recognize as changing or impermanent are compounded phenomena. But actually everything is a compounded phenomena. So it means that actually everything in our world is changing all the time, moment by moment, decaying moment by moment. So they can reflect how long does a moment last. In our old Buddhist philosophy a moment was defined as one sixty fourth of a finger snap is a moment.
But actually with modern science we have things like nanoseconds. Sorry? A hertz? A A light in other words is very very short And everything is changing in all of in those moments. We don’t say it there’s two kinds of impermanence.
There’s gross impermanence and subtle impermanence. Gross impermanence is we as ordinary people can perceive. Like now I am sixty six years old, so there’s some gross impermanence you can see, getting older, bags under the eyes, lots of wrinkles. I didn’t have these. I wasn’t born like this.
When I was twenty I didn’t look like this. I had more hair even. You know, it was all black, shiny. Gross impermanence, which means gross impermanence is you can see after time you can see the changes of things. Right?
You don’t see a friend for twenty years and then you see how much they’ve aged. When you’re with them moment by moment, it’s not so noticeable. Right? So that’s gross impermanence, but gross impermanence, and things break and so on. Dying of course is an example of gross impermanence.
But why is there gross impermanence? That is because there is subtle impermanence and that is referring to the fact that things are changing moment by moment. But of course, because a moment is so very short, there are subtle changes we can’t perceive. It’s only after a period of time that all the accumulation of these subtle changes becomes noticeable and that’s what gross impermanence. So the question arises, when something is compounded and comes into existence, like the blossoming of a flower or the making of a bottle or a piece of material or a table, where does the impermanence start?
Where does this subtle change start? Where does this subtle decay start? And the answer is: it starts straight away. What happens is that something comes in, you have all these causes and conditions, and they come together and in one moment, one one moment, something that did not exist before comes into existence. Right?
And then the very next moment it changes And then it changes again and again and again and again continuously until that thing doesn’t exist anymore. This per this talk is impermanent, but I’m gonna try and make it a little bit permanent because this this is a very important point, stopped at a crucial time. Yeah. So actually, the fact that something comes into existence is proof that it’s going to go out of existence. The fact that something has been created means it will fall apart eventually.
The fact that something has been produced, manufactured, created, compounded or born means it will die. Because it comes into existence and in the next moment it changes and changes and changes and decays. So in other words for this process of impermanence is of course ageing. This is what ageing is. Things age, they decay moment by moment.
And then death comes, separation comes, decay, disintegration. So it’s a completely natural process. And it’s irreversible. There’s a lot of talk in scientific circles about and non scientific circles about how we will discover something that will mean we won’t grow old. There’s all sorts of people who believe this is possible, not just Michael Jackson, but all sorts of people believe this.
But from a Buddhist point of view, it’s just simply not possible because something comes into existence depending on causes and conditions and it changes the next moment. And what was invented to make us ageless will come into existence depending on causes and conditions. And so it will change in the next moment and the next and decay and weaken. So there are healthy things you can do and health creams you can put on your face which will get the wrinkles going away for a little while maybe but the cream is impermanent. Its effects are impermanent out of line the cream, the skin is impermanent.
You can’t make it permanent. I have done this before, I will demonstrate it again. Is just to okay so one can ask why are things that the car to existence depending on causes and conditions why are they impermanent? Why do they change moment by moment? What is the reason for that?
What is the reason? And do you want to know the answer? The answer is simply because they depend on causes and conditions. There is no other reason. The very fact that something comes into existence, is born, produced depending on causes and conditions is the reason it goes out of existence.
And now I will give my proof. Alright? Which some of you have seen before but I’ll do it again. So I’m going to create before your very eyes. Well actually not technically your eyes but anyway something I will, depending on causes and conditions, I will create something for you that at the moment is not existing.
It doesn’t exist. I will create it right now in front of you. I would like you to observe what happens to this thing. No tricks will be involved. No shenanigans of any kind.
So what I’m going to do is create a sound depending on some conditions and some causes of movement and this and that, having some air. And I will make a sound, just one sound. I would like you to observe what happens to this sound. I would like you to observe if something comes along, someone or something comes along to do anything to this sound. Please observe carefully if any nasty person comes to damage this sound.
Right. Was sound created? Yes. Does sound that it was created now exist? No.
What happened to it? Did something come and destroy it? Something extraneous? No. Not at all.
It just couldn’t sustain itself. The moment it was created, it faded away. Another technical term for impermanent phenomena is other powered phenomena. Other other o t h e r other powered phenomena. In other words impermanent phenomena owe their power to something which isn’t them.
And that’s why they can’t stay the same. They have no power from their own side to stay the same because they’ve arisen under the power of other things. And those things have arisen under the power of other things. So things change moment by moment. And one thing also to check and understand is that that process is irreversible.
That sound has gone. It was created. It existed. And now it just simply does not exist. And there is no way to bring that sound back.
Or once I make the sound, there’s no way to make it stay there. Now I can hit this thing many many times but that’s not the same sound. It’s another one and then another one and each one fades away. Just to conclude, are I’m stopping here is pitting that the point is in this demonstration is that everything is like that sound. Everything in our world is like that sound.
It’s just an illusion that everything is solid and permanent. It’s all changing irreversibly, moment by moment, like that sound. Including, you know, steel bars, titanium. It’s all changing moment by moment. And there’s nothing we can do about it.
And of course, this applies to our body. We were born depending on causes and conditions. This body has arisen depending on causes and conditions. It is changing and decaying, aging moment by moment irreversibly. So we’re going to die.
And everything is changing. So why get attached? Why get upset? Because it’s all gonna change, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We can do little temporary things, you know, can repaint the wall, but the paint will peel and the wall will still crumble eventually.
Which is not to say we shouldn’t do these things to a certain extent. But it’s ridiculous you know if we could if we could really experience things you know as they are as impermanent we wouldn’t have so much craving attachment or aversion because we could see it’s all changing. What looks good one moment can change. Know, we have to do this experiment again. It never works.
You know, these flowers look really, really nice. They look permanent in one week’s time. You know, we’ll have to leave a big sign. We tried this once before and it didn’t work. People threw them out.
But these beautiful flowers, which probably cost quite a bit of money. You leave them here in one week’s time you won’t want to look at them. You certainly won’t pay twenty bucks for a bunch of them. That will stink revolting. Right?
And that process is happening right now. It didn’t it didn’t start. It doesn’t start like next Tuesday. It’s happening now. We just can’t see it.
And there’s nothing we put more water and that salty stuff, know, the chemical. It’s not going to change the fact that these are going to rot and die. We can exercise, eat whole, you know, organic things, bean sprouts, what do you call it, green jelly. What’s it called? Royal jelly.
All the latest things, aloe vera, and what’s all the latest cool things that will, you know, they’re still gonna die. It’s not that we shouldn’t do those things and eat healthy and exercise but we’re still going to die. On that happy note, we’ll take a break. Okay, we’re here more or less. Yes, okay.
So, of course, all of us here being adult people, we all know that we are going to die. I don’t think any any, you know, this is a shock to anyone to know that we are going to die. So we do know this. Some people may think, well it’s irrelevant to do this course, I don’t have to be told I’m going to die. I already know that.
But in Buddhist practice what we are trying to do is gain what are called realisations. Not just an intellectual understanding of something but to be able to gain an inner experience of these things. The other sheet that has just been put out there is the outline week by week of the topics we’re going to cover. Most people actually have it as a separate piece of paper, a loose piece of paper or half a piece of paper in your prep in your student material somewhere but don’t worry about it now. Anyway you can collect that if you don’t have a copy also at the end of the class.
So what we’re trying to do is gain realisations of particular things to transform an intellectual understanding or firstly gaining intellectual understandings of various important aspects of life and then going beyond that to gain a deep realization because intellectual understanding is helpful but it only takes us so far, has only so much influence. Our disturbing thoughts are very powerful. They have arisen not just in this life but have existed in our mind, have controlled our mind during beginningless time. So they have great power. So just an intellectual understanding of something doesn’t have the power to undermine those primordial instincts, negative instincts we have.
They have a little bit of power, especially at the beginning because I don’t know about you but when I first met the Buddhadharma it had a for me personally other people may say something else but I personally felt it had a great impact on my mind. It really changed my mind a lot. Other people, like my mother, said, Oh, you’re just the same. But I felt it had had a lot of effect on my mind. And I think that was valid to say so because somehow just an intellectual understanding, gaining a few intellectual understandings of certain aspects of the Buddhist teachings as a beginner is such a change from how one normally thinks and feels and experiences the world and then you’ve got suddenly this different way of looking and thinking about things.
Even though it’s just an intellectual thing, it’s still quite radical, it’s quite revolutionary and very beneficial. But after some time that honeymoon period wears off because one starts to become familiar with the ideas and one’s old delusions are still there. So just an intellectual understanding is not enough to really radically change ourselves, to uproot or to even strongly modify or uproot our disturbing thoughts. What we need to gain is a realization where that intellectual understanding becomes I’ve never been able to find a proper definition of what a realisation is. And I have asked a few Buddhist scholars and they all say it’s very difficult to define but a realisation is something along the lines of what starts out as an intellectual understanding becomes a lived experience.
Transforms the way you experience yourself and the world. Nothing illustrates that more I think than this whole point of we ourselves know we’re going to die but we haven’t realized it because if we had actually real if we realized we’re going to die, we would live our life in a different way. We wouldn’t waste so much time in general, we wouldn’t do so many meaningless things with our life and we wouldn’t do so many negative things in our life if we had a strong realisation, if we actually experienced not just in our head but deep in our being that I am dying, I’m going to die, I’m actually dying because we’re all dying because we’re aging. And our death can happen at any moment. If we really experience that you know it would completely change how we lived our life, how we treated other people, how we dealt with life in general, if we had that realization.
And that’s what we’re trying to get. That’s why we have to think about this topic more and more and and let it really shake us. Because of course, with something like death, it’s all like it’s fantastic that all you people have come to this course. Droves have stayed away because most people don’t want to hear about death in general. People don’t want to, you know, think about other people dying.
People certainly don’t want to think about their own death to be confronted with it but actually it’s incredibly helpful and liberating to do so. If we had more time to go into the stomach I could try and make it more scary but there’s not so much time and I don’t have much skill but some lamas can do this very well and really give you a strong sense of one’s own mortality and that’s what we’re trying to do to ourselves. But because it is such a threatening subject it can become too overwhelming for people then by thinking about it too much or in the wrong way people run away from it. This is why in the tradition before we go into the topic in any detail of thinking about how we’re going to die and we could die at any moment firstly it’s helpful to think about the disadvantages of not thinking about death and the advantages of doing so. So that’s what I’m going to do because that’s the tradition and it’s useful.
Don’t know if I’ve time to do it very well. But traditionally it’s said that there are I think what is it six or eight benefits and disadvantages of not thinking about death. So the first one is that if we don’t think about death and this really means to think about it really strongly and really be mindful of it then we will not be mindful of practice, of Dharma practice. We won’t see the need to practice the Dharma, we won’t see the need to take care of our mind, to try to reduce, modify the disturbing thoughts in our mind and put effort into cultivating virtue. The things of this life will just dominate our mind, they will seem so incredibly important and craving and the need to get the good things will dominate our mind, the need to get rid of all the bad things and do it in any way possible dominates our mind.
Because we don’t think of the consequences, we’re just thinking of this life and maybe the small consequences of this life. But if we understand the continuity of mind and karma and the incredible consequences of our actions then by thinking about death how it can you know it’s definitely going to come which means rebirth. We should replace the word with not just I’m going to die, I’m going to be reborn. When we say death this is what we as Buddhists or trying to be Buddhist thinking like a Buddha is what we should think Because I think even myself, even myself, that’s pretty pompous. Sorry.
Even after thirty years or more trying to be a Buddhist and a monk, I think still when I think of the word death it somehow like things stopping. Of course this life stops, this body stops, but from a Buddhist point of view death is just like a moment and then in the next moment there’s something else. There’s the beginning of rebirth. So by thinking, you know, being more and more aware of death in the sense I’m going to be reborn, this would encourage us, well by not thinking about, we’re talking about the disadvantages, not thinking about this, by not thinking about rebirth then death and rebirth then we’re not mindful, we’re not motivated to practice Dharma or there’s very little motivation. So that’s the first disadvantage, which is a great disadvantage because if we don’t start our Dharma practice then all the amazing benefits won’t occur.
Second disadvantage is that if Just along those lines there’s a famous quote that is given that one of the great Tibetan lamas used to say, If you don’t think about death in the morning when you wake up then the morning is wasted. If you don’t think about death in the afternoon, the whole afternoon is wasted. And if you don’t think about death in the evening, the whole night is wasted. And that’s how we waste our life because we don’t have that awareness, that mindfulness that death and rebirth is ever present, can happen any moment. So the second disadvantage is that even if we practice the Dharma, if we lose sight of death and rebirth then our practice becomes mostly procrastination, putting things off.
There will always be time to do it later on. And I think most of us are attacked by this mind regularly each day. There’s always something more important than practising the Dharma, more important than meditating, reading Dharma books. Washing the dishes, that’s incredibly important. You know, making a cup of tea, watching TV, texting, Facebook.
So many things to do which are always much more important because there’s so much time, know, because I’m not going to die. Yeah, maybe I’m going to die but you know so far away, know so so far away. There’s tons of time. So we think like that each day and then suddenly, you know, we fall asleep and the time’s gone. But, oh, there’ll be time tomorrow.
And we think about doing a retreat, know, I’ll do a retreat, you know, when I have enough money, when the kids have gone, when this and that. And, you know, we never know what’s going to happen first, death, all these things we’re planning. And sometimes death can come first. So that’s another disadvantage of putting what is really the most important thing off. We keep putting it off.
The thing that is the greatest benefit now to ourselves and others now in the future, we keep procrastinating about it. We put it off. Third disadvantage is if we don’t think about death and rebirth our practice becomes impure. We may practice the Dharma, we may go through the motions of listening to teachings and reading Dharma books and saying mantras and meditating and blah blah blah but it gets mixed up with just very worldly things of gaining knowledge and competition. I know more secret Buddhist things than you do.
I can sit better, can meditate longer than you do. I say more mantras a day than you do. And one acquires Dharma knowledge to impress other people to become a teacher so you can sit up on this terrific throne and have brocade table cloths and things like that. Terrific. All my life I wanted a brocade tablecloth.
So by really forgetting why we’re really practicing the Dharma, be able to free our mind and so on, then and that our actions have effects and those effects are really felt after death. When we forget that, then all these other very worldly concerns creep into our mind. And our Dharma practice gets really watered down an awful lot. Sorry if this sounds offensive but I’ll just say it anyway. I really like to encourage that people who come to for example Buddha House create a community, enjoy being with each other and do all sorts of events, ordinary things but also Dharma things.
But there’s also a great danger in that Dharma centers just become social places to hang out with other people. And you know that’s good at one level but that itself just becomes worldly Dharma. I mean the idea of a Dharma center is a place where we can come together and share our ideas and be with people who support our Dharma idea and practice. Right? Because so many people in our culture don’t share our ideas and practice, which is fair enough, but it makes it difficult for us.
So it’s helpful to be with people who can encourage that. But if we just want to hang out with these people just to talk and just because we’re lonely, this is not really Dharma practice. It’s okay but it starts to water down the whole thing. So we really do have to be careful about those things. So we have to remember impermanence and death to wake us up what’s really happening.
And the fourth disadvantage is said to be that if we forget about impermanence and death there is the disadvantage that even if we practice sincerely to some extent, if we lose sight of our own mortality and rebirth then when we experience problems in our practice and there are difficulties of various kinds then we will kind of lose energy to practice, kind of give up a bit, lose hope or lose you know run out of energy to practice. You know when things are going well and it’s enjoyable and blah blah blah we do it but when it starts to become difficult things are intellectually difficult to understand or meditating becomes painful or we get disappointed that it’s not bringing the results we want then we can lose energy and problems can increase. But if we remember So that’s the disadvantage of losing sight of the fact that death is coming, rebirth is coming, That all the effects of our actions are going to be experienced, start to be experienced. Maybe to make this more sense I should make this fundamental point that many people here already understand is that at the time of death when we are dying in the last moments of this life, during that time, you know during this and previous lives we’ve created you know engaged in many actions of body speech and mind and created many different kinds of karmic imprints positive and negative.
And one kind of karmic imprint is particularly important and these are called the throwing karmas. So there are positive and negative throwing karmas. These are the karmic imprints that are created through very strong positive or negative actions and those throwing karmas, one of these will ripen at the time of death to influence what kind of rebirth we have. What kind of throwing karma ripens at the time of death or starts to ripen at the time of death, whether it’s a positive one which will bring a positive rebirth, or a negative throwing karma which will bring a suffering rebirth. Which of those kinds of throwing karmas will ripen at the time of death depends very much on the state of mind we’re in as we’re dying.
If we die in a negative state of mind under the influence of the different delusions of craving, fear, anger, attachment, desire, pride and jealousy, those are the condition for one of the negative throwing karmas to ripen. If we die in a positive state of mind, if the last moments of the gross mind of this life are positive, influenced by faith, loving kindness, compassion, generosity and so on, then that is the perfect condition for one of the positive throwing karmas to ripen and that means we’ll have a good rebirth. And there is a common saying which Buddhists agree with which is that in general the way we live is the way we die. There can be lots of exceptions but in general if we live a virtuous life, there’s more likely, let’s say that, there’s more likelihood we will die in a virtuous state of mind and therefore have a good rebirth. If we live a negative life then there’s more chance that we will die in a negative state of mind and have a bad rebirth.
Now the tricky thing is again, then we will say, Oh! Then I’m okay because I’m a nice person. I always do good things. Not sure. Not sure.
Yes we are all nice people here but from a Buddhist point of view it’s very easy for even nice people to engage in negative actions. Very easy. It’s so easy to create these imprints. Because negative karma I think we have the I’m getting off the topic a little bit. I haven’t got anywhere started off wrong again.
It didn’t cover the topic. Anyway, you can read it in the book. What was my point? I think we tend to think of negative karma as implying something really really terrible and sinful and evil. But negative karma is any action that has this underlying ignorance behind it and produces suffering as an effect.
So you don’t have to be a monster to engage in negative actions that bring horrible karmic results. That’s the unfortunate thing. It’s not just mass murderers who go to hell. It’s very easy by doing small lots of small negative actions can accumulate as one big nasty imprint. Just very quickly two more.
The fifth disadvantage is if we don’t think, aren’t mindful of death and rebirth, can you engage in negative actions? We put these negative imprints in our mind which will bring horrible results. And the final disadvantage to reflect on is that when we die, when we actually die, having not thought about our own death and acted on that mindfulness, we will die with regret. Especially if we’ve recognized I had a precious human rebirth, had the optimum chance to practice the Dharma, to do really good things, to lay the groundwork, to be able to follow the Dharma in future lives and yet I just completely wasted it. And not only I wasted it, I did all these terrible, you know, negative things, stupid, meaningless negative things.
So there will be a lot of regret. And in a state of regret there’s no way a positive imprint can ripen to bring a good rebirth. Unfortunately I haven’t left time to go through the advantages but they are in the text. Part of the homework is reading through those and meditating on them. But one can think the advantages are basically the opposite to the disadvantages.
The advantage of thinking about death it will encourage us to practice the Dharma and no matter how difficult it is we won’t give up, will keep going and when we die, we won’t die with regret, it won’t come as a shock because we’ve thought about it, oh now it’s happening. So we’ll be prepared and we will lead a good life so there won’t be regret, so we’ll be able to die well, have a good rebirth. So it’s important to reflect on these things strongly again and again because this will give us the courage and the motivation to really go into thinking about death, meditating on it, trying as strongly as possible because the more strongly we go into this subject the more it will affect our mind in a really positive way, a meaningful way inspiring us to practice the Dharma. Sorry everything got rushed at the last minute as usual. Any questions before we go?
I hope I will see you next week and haven’t scared you off. Just very quickly in homework, there’s a question this is just for my information whether you consider yourself a Buddhist, a follower of another religion or not committed to any religion and some people always say I was a Catholic or blah blah I’m not interested in what you were or what you were born into I’m just interested whether you are a follower of a particular tradition now. That’s all. That’s what the question is about. Also each week there’s question about what you found helpful or interesting in the talk and what you found difficult to relate to.
So what I’m asking in terms of what you find difficult to relate to is whether you found it difficult to understand it or make sense of it or think that this could possibly be true. I’m not asking whether you found it difficult to relate to in the sense of difficult to practice because yes it’s difficult to practice. Yeah that’s a given. Dharma practices well it’s easy and difficult. Even in the Dharma meditation I’ve listed four different topics and each topic is numbered and so in each day of the week I’ve given the number so that means please meditate on that topic to reflect about it, think about it and yes, and there’s a gap between each day and the number and the idea is to tick if you’ve done that meditation that day.
Don’t tick it if you haven’t. This is bad karma, lying to the monk. Don’t do that. Yeah. Okay.
So the whole meditation is basically thinking about impermanence, meditating on impermanence, which I talked about, the disadvantages which I have briefly talked about, the advantages which I haven’t but they’re actually in part of the reading material. So you can read about them, reflect on them please. And also there’s a number of readings and there’s a lot more reading in this student material and of course there’s all sorts of books on this topic but I would encourage people not to get carried away and read lots of material but basically just read the set material and read over it a few times so you really make sure that you’ve thought about that bit properly. All right, Thank you very much. So we can finish by, if you’d like to join in just quickly, we dedicate the positive imprints we’ve generated tonight.
The positive imprints may they become a cause for us to be able to realize our own mortality and how everything is impermanent and through this realization be motivated to practice the Dharma more and more so that this leads for us to achieve complete enlightenment for the sake of all kind suffering mother sentient beings. So if you’d like to join in, the prayer is on page ten. By the merits of these virtuous actions may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and let all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious Bodhimind, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore.