Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 95-minute final session of a five-week course on death and rebirth, Ven Thubten Dondrub brings together practical and meditative approaches to dying well and helping others at the end of life. He begins by establishing the stakes: a peaceful mind at death determines a positive rebirth, while a disturbed mind triggers negative karma to ripen, potentially trapping consciousness in lower realms. The core preparation is living virtuously by practicing the Dharma, particularly the graduated path teachings, and actively purifying negative imprints through Vajrasattva practice and prostrations to the thirty-five Buddhas. Dondrub then outlines the five powers of death—practical and mental techniques to cultivate as one is actually dying: releasing attachment to possessions, cultivating altruistic motivation, purifying the mind through intention, maintaining familiarity with Dharma practices and the lion posture, and holding prayer in the heart, especially bodhicitta or tonglen (giving and taking). He addresses concrete preparations including writing a will, creating advance medical directives, and arranging for mantras, prayers, and possibly a qualified lama to be present. Finally, he teaches how to support a dying person—whether Buddhist or not—by creating a calm, unagitated environment, encouraging gratitude and forgiveness, and continuing dedicated prayers and merit-dedication for forty-nine days after death. This is a course for serious practitioners ready to engage death as central to their spiritual path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 08 06 DB Death&Rebirth Dondrub Week5 060813.mp3
UUID: ac05a491-85b0-4778-aaff-be41b0239d9d
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Death & Rebirth (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-08-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 95.5 minutes
Words: ~9,338
It will be this Saturday from, I think, what is it, nine o’clock? Nine o’clock until three thirty. So I’d really encourage everyone to come as a way to con to finish the the retreat. It’s the course. It’s meant to be an integral part of the course so that we can meditate on these topics and if you are coming please register as soon as possible and the idea is for people to produce a vegetarian some vegetarian food that they can can be shared with everyone.
So it’s a nice thing to do actually to come together in this way. It’s, yeah, a chance to get to know each other before we die. Sorry. So if you are coming, the place where we have to bring the the student book. And, also, there are two forms in in the book to fill out.
If not coming for the retreat you don’t need to fill out the completion form because you haven’t completed the course but everyone can fill out the student satisfaction or dissatisfaction survey and hand that in to Kathy or to Jan. They could give it to Jan or Sasha sorry who can give it to Kathy. Right. Next thing is that starting next Tuesday is the next course in discovering Buddhism which is called presenting the path. It is going to be a seven week course.
This is only a five week. The next one will be a seven week course which gives a little bit more time to present the whole path to enlightenment. It’s a very super condensed presentation of the whole path to enlightenment. What in Tibetan is called the Lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment. This is the specialty of the Gelugpa tradition and extremely useful helpful to know this.
So highly recommended. If you want to know anything about Mahāyāna Buddhism and how it’s practiced in the Tibetan tradition, especially in the Gelugpa tradition that we follow here, this is the course to do. Please please if you’re planning to do it or know friends or who might be interested then they need to register as soon as possible because the material has to be printed out for it and that’s a lot of work and if people just show up on the night this makes it extremely difficult. You know? So please register ASAP before you die.
Sorry. Sorry. Right. Okay. In the course, the the last things to talk about are what I want to cover is how to have a good rebirth ourselves, how to prepare for death, and how to help the dying.
And yeah. So this is what we’re gonna talk about tonight. So again just to remind you, context of this whole presentation is that we have a mind that is where our body is going to die but when the body dies for whatever reason, due to impermanence or sickness or injury or accident or whatever, the life itself will continue and what kind of rebirth we have will depend on the type of death we have. So if we have a good death, our mind is peaceful, then a good throwing, a positive throwing karma that we’ve created either in this or a previous life will ripen and that will bring us a good rebirth in cyclic existence. If we die in a negative state of mind, a disturbed state of mind, that is the condition for a negative throwing karma which we’ve either created in this or a previous life to ripen, to bring a very suffering rebirth in a non human realm.
And of course if we fall into the lower realms, once one falls into the lower realms it’s extremely extremely difficult to get out of them because all the conditions are there to engage in more and more negative actions. Even if we get a good rebirth, it’s extremely difficult to get another good rebirth. But once we’ve got a good rebirth, we have the best conditions to get another good rebirth. Even so, even with the best conditions, it’s very difficult. The causes of having a human rebirth and above are extremely difficult to create.
It doesn’t happen easily. So that’s the context of this teaching of remembering being mindful of impermanence and death and preparing for death because it’s so important because if we blow it then we have bad re we get a suffering rebirth and not just that one suffering rebirth, we’ve created the condition to have a whole series of horrible rebirths. So from our own point of view, that is a disaster, but from the Mahāyāna point of view, from the point of view of others, it’s even worse because if we are suffering and helpless in the lower realms, then we are of no benefit to sentient beings. And in fact, as we are suffering in the lower realms, then we can cause more harm to sentient beings, not any benefit. So for our own sake, for the sake of others, we need to make sure that we get a good rebirth not just for its own sake, but again the context is aiming to get a good rebirth, to position ourselves to be able to meet the Dharma again and to be able to continue our practice so that we can get better and better rebirths, eventually become free, get out of cyclic existence, free our mind of delusion and karma, and more than that, eventually achieve the enlightened state.
So how do we have a good rebirth? The simple answer is to lead a good life. How to have a good rebirth means we need to have a good death. And how will we experience a good death is to lead a good life, a virtuous life. Especially to practice the Dharma.
Mean one can also be a good Christian or a good Jew or good Muslim or whatever but here we’re promoting the Buddha Dharma so the answer is especially to practice the Dharma which means of course practicing the Dharma has two aspects protecting the mind meaning protecting the mind from the disturbing thoughts and protecting them and working to eliminate them and cultivating the mind meaning cultivating the positive potentials of a good heart and wisdom and renunciation. If we try and dedicate our life to the practice of Dharma more and more and do this sincerely, which is what the meditation on death is all about, the nine-round death meditation, because it leads us through those three by thinking about how our death is definite it encourages us to practice the Dharma. By thinking how the time of our death is unsure, could happen at any moment it encourages us to practice now, not to postpone it, delay it, but to really practice strongly, sincerely, every day. And by thinking about what is going to be of real benefit at the time of death, this will encourage us not only to practice now but to make sure that our practice is genuine and sincere and not just a facade, a show of being holy or virtuous or kind or whatever, but really trying to change our mind.
That’s the answer to practice the Dharma and from the perspective of the Gelugpa school that we follow here at Buddha House and Buddha House is a member of the foundation for the preservation of the Mahāyāna tradition started by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche and that belongs to the Gelugpa school. At the heart of the Gelugpa School practice is the practice of the Lamrim, the teachings on the graduated path, which is the next course. Meditating on going through the teachings on the graduated path to enlightenment. Because those teachings help us develop renunciation, wisdom, bodhicitta, and all of the teachings are antidotes to all our negative ways of thinking. Everything that we need in life is there in the graduated path.
So in a nutshell, how to get a good rebirth depends on dying well, dying well depends on living well, living well depends on practicing the graduated path teachings, putting them into practice. Especially living one’s life according to the law of cause and effect, because that’s the heart teaching of the Buddha, Trying as much as possible to avoid negative actions of body, speech and mind, cultivating virtuous actions of body, speech and mind, And also what is really important in having a good Dharma practice is dedicating one’s time as much as possible to not only avoiding negative actions but purifying the mind of negative imprints from negative actions already done. Because all of us have engaged in negative actions and if we’re honest we will continue to do so for many lifetimes, probably. Every day, from a Buddhist point of view, engage in negative actions, either with our body, our speech, or our mind. And it’s so easy to engage in negative actions of speech, for example.
Yeah. We do this. So what we need to do is avoid those actions as much as we can, but also put effort into purifying those imprints, Just not leaving them. Because the teachings emphasize that once those imprints are there, they will never go away unless we purify them. Unless we put effort, conscious effort, into purifying those imprints, they stay with the mind and they will eventually ripen.
And the only way they ripen is as suffering and all the conditions for suffering. Suffering while we are human, but also they ripen to bring the tremendous suffering of non human rebirths. So that’s really a vital aspect of Dharma practice something that we should try to do if we’re really serious. I mean this is an introductory courses and some of you may have just come along fairly new but if one is really trying to commit oneself and you’re discovering what Buddhism is about. So someone who is trying to really seriously commit themselves to the Buddha’s teachings and practice, then it important to, as much as possible, dedicate some time each day to purifying the mind.
And applying what is called the four opponent powers of developing regret, making the determination to avoid specific actions for particular periods of time, reinforcing one’s sense of refuge in bodhicitta and doing a specific virtuous action to specifically counteract the negative actions one has done. Either one as one consciously knows one’s done, or we can understand by logic that in our past lives we must have done every conceivable kind of negative action. We’ve all done every possible kind of negative action that’s imaginable in a previous life. So some of the karmic results of that we’ve experienced in past lives. Karmic imprints have ripened and we’ve gone through all that suffering, but we still have many negative imprints left in our mind.
And we have no idea when they will ripen. Right? So this is an essential Buddhist practice to purify the mind of these imprints. For two reasons: one, the obvious one, to avoid pain and suffering and confusion for ourselves. The other is for others because the more we purify our mind, the more we are able to be in a position to benefit others.
The more our Dharma practice will work. If we don’t purify our mind do other Dharma practices, we’re practicing with a sort of polluted mind, like the dirty vessel, you know, putting this beautiful liquid in a dirty vessel that will pollute it. So it’s important to try to practice the Dharma with a mind that is being purified. So that’s really, really important. And so there are I I don’t wanna yeah.
Anyway, go into too many details. Some of this we’ve gone through in the course on karma, just so just to remind you. But there are six particularly virtuous actions which one is encouraged to do as part of this conscious purification practice. And the two, well three that I particularly like to emphasize is to I can’t go into any detail now, I won’t go into any detail, but just to remind you if you know about them is to do the Vajrasattva practice. That meditation there is doing prostrations to the thirty five Buddhas.
These are considered to be two of these most most important practices to do to and to do them daily if possible. Even a very old, you know, monks and nuns in the Tibetan tradition and lay people do prostrations. You go to Tibet, to Lhasa, to the main Jokhang, you will see people prostrating on the ground, on the rocks on rocks, not the rocks, what do call them? Stones. On the stones, the stone pavement outside.
And some of these people are very old, and they just prostrate like that. Or if you go to Bodh Gaya, to the stupa, you know, the whole Mahabodhi stupa, there are people all around prostrating. You see these young monks going zoom zoom zoom. It’s just different. You know?
I get so jealous because I can’t no way I could do it like that. So they go zoom zoom zoom. Not just young monks, you know, nuns, lay people, young girls, Tibetan girls that go zoom zoom zoom all day long. Zoom zoom zoom. And also old men, old ladies, they don’t go zoom, zoom, zoom.
They, you know, gracefully all day long with their nice butter tea, you know, thermoses, sandwich, you know, everything. They do it very nicely, comfortably. Anyway, yeah, something to do. So purifying the mind is is really, really important. If you think about it, it’s obvious.
We need to purify our mind. Yeah. And And the other thing is to accumulate merit as much as possible. All sorts of good stuff accumulate merit. Because the more positive the imprints in the mind, when the death comes, then there’ll be some positive energy to access to help us deal with that difficult process of dying.
Because we can’t pretend, you know, that dying is somehow a lot of fun. You know? Even the best death is not going to be a lot of fun. In the teachings it says, I think I have mentioned it, that the great lamas, the really great meditators, for them it is blissful experience. It’s totally fun, joyful, the tantric practitioners, because they can access these very subtle levels of mind.
They’ve purified their mind. They have control of their mind. They know what they’re doing, there’s no fear and so it’s completely blissful. But we can’t pretend we’re anywhere near at that level. So for ordinary people, even if we live a good life and so on, still we can’t we shouldn’t pretend that death is going to be yeah.
What? Pleasant. Yeah. You know, just like every sickness is under I I don’t know. Have you ever been sick and then have a pleasant sickness?
I don’t think so. I mean, not to say, you know, but your mind can still be okay, but there’s still suffering involved. Right? Physical suffering. So with death processes the same, generally speaking.
Mean of course it will vary for each person because of each person’s mind and also the circumstances of their death. But the most important thing is to prepare the mind. To prepare the mind. And the thing is to prepare the mind by putting as many positive imprints in the mind as possible by practicing. So the best practice is the best preparation is practicing the Lamrim, the Graduated Path teachings what we’re trying to do here at the center basically.
Very specifically, what is really important so what we want to do is to die with a peaceful mind, a quiet mind, a stable mind, right, with some kind of equanimity, a mind that doesn’t go up and down, you know, due to whenever the the slightest negative thing happens, we get upset and or depressed, or as soon as something pleasant is there we get really excited and joyful and optimistic. So we need to try and develop an equanimous mind that doesn’t go up and down due to external circumstances. We need to try and work on having a basically calm, clear, virtuous mind at the time of death. That’s it. That’s what we want to work towards.
And so one needs to live a life that fits with that. Right? That is concordant with it. And in particular, what is really important at the time of death is to in terms of having a virtuous mind, we need to have a mind of refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. To have the mind of faith in the Buddha, the Buddha’s teachings and in the Sangha, the great practitioners.
So if we can die in a state of refuge, faith in the triple gem, that is a very virtuous mind. So there is no way we can have a bad rebirth if we die with the mind of refuge, thinking of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, either all of them, or thinking of just the Buddha, or the Dharma, or the Sangha. Of course in the Tibetan tradition which emphasizes the practice of engaging in tantra eventually because that is the quick easy path to enlightenment for the benefit of others, then the tantric teachings especially emphasize the importance of the guru and having devotion to the guru and and seeing the guru as the very embodiment of the triple gem. So if we can die with the thought of the guru in our heart, in our mind, then this is the best way to die. There is no way one can have a bad rebirth, bad death, a bad rebirth if we die with the thought of the Guru in our heart.
Another teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche once said at a teaching that I was attending which I found very inspiring, helpful, Rinpoche said that even not only of course dying with the thought of the Guru is the best, dying with the thought of the Buddha, Dhama and Sangha is fantastic, but Rinpoche said that even if you think as you’re dying, if you think of an ordinary monk or nun with faith, if you think of that person in faith, there’s no way you can have a bad rebirth. More specifically, in the tradition there is a practice called the five powers of life and death, which I’ll be talking about in some detail on Thursday night, not this Thursday night, but at some point in the Thursday night classes because I’m going through this text called the Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun. And that text talks about, at some point, the five powers of life and death, which is about how to practice bodhicitta during one’s life and especially at the time of death, because bodhicitta is the most wonderful state of mind. That is the whole essence of the Buddha’s teachings. It’s all about developing bodhicitta.
I mean, I say that the heart of the teachings is the law of cause and effect, but by practicing the law of cause and effect properly, this is the ground, this is the basis for being able to practice bodhicitta and generate it. That’s the heart of the Buddha’s teachings. So of course if we can die with bodhicitta in our heart or something like it, for sure we will die well and have a good rebirth. Basically we want to die with a good mind, with a good heart. That’s the best thing.
So I I don’t have time tonight to go through the the five powers of life, but I do wanna talk about just briefly. Can’t do it much justice tonight, but, anyway, just briefly, the five powers of death. So these are practices that we should try to generate as we are actually dying. So what I said before is like before we actually start dying we need to live well. To die well we need to live well virtuously, and that means practicing the Dharma as much as possible.
But then specifically, if we have the good fortune to die how do you say, with a bit of time to know what’s happening, like dying in our bed, then these five powers of death are things that we should try to practice. So the first one is called the power of the white seed. And what this is referring to is trying to make sure to overcome attachment in one’s mind at the time of death. Because this is, if you remember from the meditation on the nine round meditation and what helps at the time of death. What doesn’t help at the time of death is most of the things we’re doing in our life.
None of those things are going to help, and our attachment to them is going to be a great obstacle. We basically want to die with as little attachment as possible. Attachment to our body. We don’t want to have attachment to our family and friends, which doesn’t mean not having affection for them, but we don’t want to have too much attachment because attachment brings pain and suffering, you know, and fear and fear of losing because attachment involves dependency on things and people. And dependency brings fear.
It doesn’t bring strength, it brings fear and worry. So we don’t want that at the time of death. So what we do need is as much as possible some sense of non attachment. And again, you can’t cultivate these things while you’re dying. One has to cultivate them during one’s life as much as possible.
I mean this is what all the teachings of the Lamrim are about. And what the emphasis of the precious human rebirth is. A precious human rebirth is the optimum chance to practice the Dharma. And because when we have a precious human rebirth it means we don’t have too much suffering. We may think we may have a lot of suffering, but compared to others, humans and non humans, we have a manageable amount of suffering.
So our mind is we have a certain freedom in our mind to meditate and change our mind. So we have the chance to reduce our attachment. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So we have the chance with the precious human rebirth to do all the teachings, to meditate on the path to enlightenment, to cultivate all the antidotes to all the problems of life.
And the trouble is we think, oh, I don’t need all these antidotes because I don’t have all these problems so much. But we have the potential for them, they can arise at any time. The antidote to anger, the direct antidote, is patience, cultivating patience. Right? So you can’t cultivate patience when you’re angry.
You can’t yeah. You can you you need to practice it when you’re angry, but you can’t cultivate it when you’re angry. You have to in order to practice patience when you’re angry, you have to cultivate patience when you’re not angry. The trouble is when we’re not angry, we don’t see the need to cultivate patience because I’m not angry. I’ll do it when I’m angry.
Just like we don’t see the need in general to cultivate, to meditate on the path to enlightenment, Oh, because my life’s not so bad. But this, you know, this this life we have isn’t permanent, and we’re permanently we are not permanently not angry. In other words, sometimes we’re angry. That’s why when we’re not angry, we need to cultivate patience. I think I’m making this too complicated.
I know what I’m trying to say. Don’t know if you know what you understand. Sorry. What I’m trying to say is don’t think we’re actually we are dying now slowly. The actual death process we are dying right now and that will eventually lead to the death process starting.
But since we don’t think about that, we don’t think about the need to prepare for it, but we need to by living a good life, doing all these practices, Yeah. Getting rid of attachment because we don’t want to die with attachment. Right? That was my point. Yeah.
And so the power of the white seed is at the time of death is particularly referring to making sure that when it becomes obvious that we are actually dying, that the death process is has started or is about to start, to get rid of our possessions as much as possible. Of course, good to do it even before to some extent, Although you maybe you don’t wanna get rid of them all just in case you don’t die tomorrow. Because there are stories, you know, in the Tibetan tradition of people, you know, who seem to be dying get rid of all their possessions and then they recover and then they don’t have anything. Especially if one hasn’t done that or made arrangements and then one knows one’s dying it’s really important to try and get rid of everything straight away. And of course the natural this is just my own personal opinion but the natural thing is that there’s nothing particularly dharmic about this is that people leave their possessions to their family and friends.
There’s no big deal about that. It’s also very nice to give it to nonfamily and friends if you can manage it. Not you know, of course, you can give some stuff to your family and friends because they probably expect it. May not bury you if they don’t if you don’t. But sorry.
Shouldn’t think. But, to practice some real generosity and non attachment, it’s good if one can give also to other worthy causes and so on. But as much as possible, free oneself of all those things, all of that stuff, all that worldly stuff. Just free yourself from it, especially if one knows one is dying. Yeah.
And of course one can then dedicate the merit of giving it all away to having a good rebirth for the sake of others. So that’s the first thing, the power of the white seed. So the second one, to cultivate as one is actually dying, if we’re fortunate enough to have some consciousness during the process, is the power of motivation. So that’s referring to on the one hand cultivating the wish to die in a way that will benefit others. One can cultivate the wish that just even to die peacefully so that will inspire other people.
Or it could also involve which connects with the power of the white seed of leaving one’s body to science to be used or donating organs for research and so on. But you know it could be in a more general way of just dying just having that wish may my death be of benefit to others in some way. And the other aspect of that is cultivating the motivation to be able to die in order to be able to have a good rebirth so that one will be able to follow the path, the Mahāyāna path, that brings benefit to others. So the third power is the power of intention. So this this is developing trying to to It’s realizing trying to have that awareness as we are dying that all the all the negativities that one has engaged in in this and past lives is due to one’s self-cherishing.
So wishing to purify the mind of all negativities. That one, you know, yeah. So even as one not only trying to purify the mind during one’s life but especially in the last days or hours of one’s life to try to really strongly purify the mind of negative imprints. So by doing such things as Vajrasattva practice, one wouldn’t be able to do prostrations because one is dying, but one might still have the ability to to do the Vajrasattva meditation, reciting the mantra. Of course another thing you can do is to ask people, friends, Dharma friends and one’s teachers and so on to do these practices for you as well.
So there are all sorts of practices one can do including reciting sutras and texts and so on, reciting mantras, like that to purify the mind. Of course, for those who have got involved in tantric practice, are specific tantric practices that can be done at this point. And again, if one can’t do them oneself, this is an important thing to try to arrange before one dies, is to arrange for various prayers to be done as prayers, practices, mantras to be recited for you as you were dying and also after your death because it is very good according to the tradition it’s very beneficial to be able to hear mantras. If you are able to hear these mantras at the time of your death then there are certain mantras that are extremely powerful in helping guide the consciousness into a good rebirth. You’ll get a copy of what are called the ten great mantras.
So these are extremely good to recite as one is dying but also according to the tradition it’s really good to just even have them on your have them on your body. On a sheet you’ll get, the the ten great mantras are here. So it takes up quite a bit of space. But if you take this seriously, what you can do is go and photocopy them so they shrink. And you can make it very, very small, and you can laminate it, and then you can carry it around all the time.
And you can make sure that one is put on your body as you’re dying and as you’re buried. And it helps, they say. I’ve already done it for myself, so you can do it. Also in the sheet that you can collect if you want to, no obligation, but if you’re interested, There are also many other mantras that one can recite or have people recite for you. One particularly good mantra to recite is the Medicine Buddha mantra.
Actually I haven’t put that here. The Medicine Buddha mantra is very good to recite, or have other people recite for you. Om Mani Padme Hum, or this one of the ten great mantras anyway, the mantra of great compassion. That’s great to do. Also there is the mantra called the mantra of Maitreya Buddha’s promise.
So this mantra, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, says definitely if you recite this in the ear of meaning so an animal can hear it as they’re dying, that animal will definitely get a good rebirth for sure. So I highly recommend anyone who’s got an animal or is near an animal, insect as it’s dying, this this is the mantra to recite. But also, of course, it’s good for human beings too. So if you can recite learn that mantra and recite it, that’s fantastic, very helpful. So the power of intention is referring to placing blame on the self-cherishing thought, that is the motivating factor behind negative actions that need to be purified.
So as well as trying to get rid of our attachment as we’re dying, to lessen that as much as possible. It’s really important to try to let go of that self-cherishing thought as much as one can and in addition purify the mind by doing specific practices. The fourth of the opponent powers is the power of familiarity. So this can refer to many things. It can refer to trying to be familiar with to die with some familiarity with one’s Dharma practices.
So that’s why it’s good to have people because at some point one will know even Lamas, you know, even when Lama Yeshe passed away, he manifested reaching a point where he was no longer able to do all the practices and commitments he’d done throughout his life, so other lamas would come along and recite the practices for him. So this is something that we can arrange for people to do for ourselves. So if you know if you get this is like an initial course and maybe some people here aren’t very involved in in traditional practices but if you if you follow the tradition long enough you get involved in having daily commitments, daily practices, prayers, teachings to do. So it’s important to try to do those even as one’s dying and if one can’t to arrange for other people to do them for you each day. One way it can be done of course is to record them and play them and just have them playing for you.
If one dies hearing those then this is really very beneficial. If you go to where wherever Lama Zopa Rinpoche lives at at the time, wherever he’s staying, he has CDs playing of all these things all the time. Particularly the power of familiarity is also referring to trying to die with the having the mind familiar with the thought of bodhicitta. Yeah. Trying to hold that mind of bodhicitta as much as possible and never wanting to be separated from bodhicitta in all one’s future lives.
Very, very specifically what the power of familiarity at the time of death is referring to is trying to die in the lion posture. So the lion posture is the posture that the Buddha, the Lord Buddha, our refuge and guide, adopted when he passed into paranivana. So it is considered very beneficial and auspicious to die in that posture. This is why in tradition it’s very good to try to sleep in this posture every night just in case you might die. But not not not just for no.
Sorry. Because it’s a very beneficial posture to sleep in so the posture is lying on one’s right side with with your legs outstretched and your left hand resting lying on top of your left leg and then you lie with your right hand under you with that finger, which was that one called? The little one. Oh, surprising. Blocking your nostril like that.
Which can be, of course, uncomfortable if you’re not used to it, especially at first. But at least the the lamas say it’s good, at least when when you first go to bed, you know, when you first lie down to lie in that posture, even if it’s just for a short time, just to put some familiarity imprint in the mind. But it is said to be a particularly good way to sleep because of the alignment of the winds and so on and protection for the mind during sleep and therefore it’s particularly the best one of the best ways best postures to die in. Of course, the other is to die in the the vajra posture. But your average person usually is not able to sit up in the meditation posture and die, but some people do.
Lama Yeshe’s very first disciple, Western disciple, Princess Zina Rachevsky. That was her name? Zina Rachevsky. Yeah. She was a white an American her father was a white Russian prince.
Maybe her her mother was too. Anyway, she was she lived in America. Anyway, she became Lama Yeshe’s first disciple. And she died up in Solo Kumbu in Nepal in the Sherpa country in the vajra posture. Yeah.
She sat up. Yeah. So, anyway, some people can manage it. But if you can’t manage that one, try the lion posture. It’s about blocking the this is particularly about, I think, anger energy, blocking that partly.
Yeah. And the yeah. Well The benefit. Yes. Right.
What does it say? I can’t remember. We all have to read it again. Let’s check it in discussion. Finally, fifth seed is the power of prayer.
So again, if one can, is to die with a prayer in one’s heart, in one’s mind, wishing to die meaningfully for others and particularly if one can die doing Tonglen or even praying to be able to practice Tonglen. Tonglen is a practice associated with developing bodhicitta. Tonglen means giving and taking where you imagine taking away the suffering of others onto yourself and giving your happiness to others. In practice you can’t actually do this, you can’t take the suffering of others from them, but it’s very good for the mind to imagine that you can so that they don’t have to experience it. And you can’t give your happiness to others, but it’s extremely beneficial for the mind to imagine giving your happiness to others.
So they have it, not you. So if one can die like that, this is, you know, fantastic. Because also this practice of Tonglen is the way to reverse the self-cherishing thought because the self-cherishing thought doesn’t want to think about suffering, let alone take it on. It’s very grasping to one’s happiness, it doesn’t want to give it away or share it. So it’s an extremely powerful meditation practice that has many many benefits.
It can cure sickness, one’s own sickness, and so it can be a very powerful way to ensure one has a good death, good rebirth. Because again the point is if one can die with a virtuous mind one will definitely have a good rebirth. That’s the point. You could think, you know, the the negative even if you’ve got a billion negative throwing karmas and only one teeny weeny positive throwing karma, if one dies with a virtuous mind, that one will ripen. The negative ones can’t.
Yes. Well, the word the Tibetan word I don’t know what the Sanskrit is, the Tibetan word that is translated as prayer is ‘mönlam’ which means wishing path just like lam rim, lam, mönlam, mönlam, mönpa is wishing so prayer is a wishing path. When you pray to the Buddha or one of the Buddhist deities such as Chenrezig or Tārā, You’re putting an imprint in your mind, you’re putting a path, you’re creating just like they talk about neural pathways you know in a similar way. Through the practice of Dharma when engage in negative actions we’re creating these negative pathways in our mind And when we engage in virtuous actions we’re creating these virtuous pathways where it becomes easier to travel along and be involved in. So when we make a prayer we’re creating a pathway that is directing our mind in a virtuous direction.
Yeah. So that and that tells to bring in it into that path all the supporting conditions that will possibly enable what we’re wishing to happen to happen. So it’s not something magical or miraculous because everything in Buddhism is a dependent arising. Things arise depending on many factors, causes and conditions. So we have to create the causes and conditions.
And one of the conditions is wanting something, you know, wanting something to happen. You don’t and I’d like and if if you if if you investigate, if we if we check our own mind, there there are so many levels of wanting things that we can have. Alright? There is a waiting that is just very, you know, wishy washy wanting. And then there is a wanting or a wishing that is very, very deep and powerful.
And if we’ve got that one, that pushes us to do stuff. And if there’s a path, then it’s easier to it’s easy becomes easier to accomplish it. And the Buddhas do exist. The deities do exist. Right?
So by mightily prayer, you’re connecting more strongly. The Buddhas are always trying to help no. That’s the wrong expression. Buddhas don’t try. They don’t have to try.
The Buddhas the Buddhas are acting for our benefit all the time, but our mind is mostly blocked to it. But a prayer, a wishing path makes a path that accesses that benefit, that what is called the ‘trinlay’, the enlightened activity of the Buddha. It’s something like that. Basically, I don’t understand what prayer prayer works, but that’s my ideas on it. It’s not the official line.
It’s my understanding. Does that make sense or help? Alright. Okay. So So for our own death, it’s really good.
I would highly encourage people to make a will now. Know, that’s the practical side. One has to be very practical. But that practical side is also connected with a spiritual side because if one hasn’t dealt with the practical side, can also be all sorts of agitation and worries in the mind as one’s dying. Oh, I should done that and what about this and auntie Flo wanted my this and that and and you know she may not get it.
Know you don’t one doesn’t want all this garbage in the mind as one is dying and also if all of that is clarified then this can prevent arguments and whatever around one’s death deathbed with relative family and friends you don’t want all of that so if one can have that all clean clear beforehand. Also it’s really helpful not only to have will done now because death can come at any time but also especially now when everything is very complicated with modern medicine and everything to have what is called a living will or used to be called a living will where you explain what you want done medically and what you don’t want done. Do you want every possible attempt to keep you alive no matter what, or do you want some of that stopped because it’s just too much mess and no no quality of life, etcetera, etcetera? So I would highly recommend people to think about that very strongly and have those things done now because death can happen at any time. And there is a little group at Buddha House called it’s the CIA called Compassion in Action.
And Judy and Jan are two of the active members of it. So they meet regularly to talk about and help people dying And so and I think they have some they do have some information about living wills and things like this. So you might like to talk to them about it and we might actually arrange a little workshop sometime for people where we could all come and maybe think about drawing up our own living wills together and get ideas that could be done sooner than later. Right? Yeah?
Sorry? France directives. Yeah. Advance directives is the the the techo term these days for it. Yeah.
Yeah. So there’s a whole lot of things like that that is that is extremely good to do and arrange and also just arrange your funeral, what kind of funeral you want, service, and whether you want to be cremated or buried or and there’s various Buddhist things you can do because if the body is cremated then the ashes can be put in stupas and also in tsatsas so there’s a whole lot of practices like that the one can find out about and arrange to be done for you if you want at the time of death. Yeah. Right. And there’s not much time now.
I’ve run we’re kind of running out of time. But in terms of helping other people die, again, the main thing is to help create a peaceful environment. That’s the best thing. And you don’t want as much as for oneself, you don’t want lots of people around you crying if you’re dying. You just don’t actually eye probably we like the idea of everyone bawling their eyes out around when we die because it’ll prove how loved I am.
You know, we all want to be loved. But actually, when one is leaving this planet, this body, one doesn’t want to be drawn back, held back by lots of desperate displays of affection and crying and stuff. One just wants to be able to go easily. And so, especially for others, if one can create a peaceful environment where people aren’t really agitated and crying and super upset or fight while you’re fighting, you know, and arguing about things which can often happen over dead or dying people and so on, about wills and this or that, or, you know, what should we do? Should we keep them in the hospital or not?
Or this or that? So, you know, one of the best things one can do is just help in whatever possible skillful way one can to create a peaceful environment. One thing is just by being calm and peaceful oneself. And the other way one can be calm and peaceful around dying people is if one is not afraid of the situation, oneself, and that comes from having thought about death and dying throughout one’s life, whereas most people haven’t. So when death comes to them or family member, people get extremely emotional, and that’s not helpful at all to anyone.
So if there can be one person who is a little bit grounded, it can be immensely helpful to everyone in the situation, the dying person and family and friends of the dying person. So that is one of the great benefits that as a practitioner we can be to other people. So if the person dying is not a Buddhist, there is no way we should try and convert them as they’re dying or anything like that or recite all sorts of Buddhist things. One should encourage them, if they are religious, to encourage them in their religion, what they know and understand and believe. If they have no belief, the main thing is to encourage the person to have a good heart, to have to die without regret, without recrimination, die with forgiveness.
That’s really, really important. If people are holding some bitterness against people. It’s also also as a way to counteract those things as well because is to encourage the person who is dying to be grateful to the people looking after them. You know, like the nurses and doctors or whoever visits them, to encourage them to have gratitude and good feeling towards those people. Because that’s putting positive imprints and if they die in the moment where they’re feeling gratitude to the nurse or doctor, then this is a positive state of mind which is really helpful.
So it’s good for them to hear music, see images associated with their beliefs. And of course, for a Buddhist, it’s good for them to have images around, to have the prayers and mantras or whatever that they are familiar with and to encourage them in those whatever practices they are familiar with. Actually there’s lots to say but we’ve run out of time but that’s the general idea. That’s the main things. Of course, for a Buddhist it’s usually very good to have an ordained monk or nun present as the person is dying, if that’s possible.
So one can try and arrange for these types of things to happen. Or of course if the person has a Guru, then to have the Guru there or to inform the Guru so the Guru can make prayers and practices for that person. One of the things that can be done by highly qualified yogis is what is called Phowa, this transference of consciousness. One can learn to do this practice oneself. But these five powers of death, which I mentioned, are also called poa.
There’s a fancy Phowa, which is a very specific meditation technique where you forcefully shoot your consciousness out through your crown chakra as you’re dying. One has to have trained in that practice to be able to do it. But what is equally effective, possibly more effective because it’s very difficult to do that practice, is the best power is these five powers at the time of death, practicing them. So I think that’s it. Any questions?
Yes. Yes. All right. Yes. Yes.
Okay. So as we were mentioning last week, after the breath ceases and what looks like death has occurred from an ordinary perspective, the very subtle consciousness may still be present and may even for an ordinary person can stay up to three days. This is why if it’s at all possible, a body that has stopped breathing shouldn’t be touched for three days. It should be kept warm and not touched for three days. In our society this is practically impossible because I think there’s even laws that the body has to be washed with if it’s in the hospital, it has to be washed within a certain time.
Yeah. Okay. Then they may have. I don’t know. But usually the bodies do get touched fairly soon, don’t they?
Normally. Yeah. When my father died, I asked the nurse, that was a long time ago now. And they were very cooperative, and they left the body for some time, not a huge amount of time, but they left the body for a while. Anyway, because of that situation, unless the person dies at home and you have some control.
By the way, don’t know all the details now, I always assumed and probably a lot of people think that once someone dies, the funeral people just take over and whip the body away and all of this stuff. And none of that actually has to happen. There’s all sorts of stuff that you can now do to, you know, take out much more control over how what happens once a person dies. Yeah. And how you know, yeah, what kind of way the body is disposed of, and you don’t have to have coffins.
You can have shrouds and you can have cardboard coffins and all sorts of things. You don’t have to go for the most expensive coffins and all these things. Anyway, because the body usually gets touched fairly soon, I was mentioning that where the consciousness actually leaves the body tends to affect the kind of rebirth that will occur. This is why it’s really important if possible that the consciousness can leave through the crown chakra. So for this reason there has developed a custom among Tibetans and with Tibetan Lama’s what they do is that before the body is touched, if it has to be moved or whatever, pull the hair at the crown just a little bit, you tug that cause that will encourage the consciousness to move out through the crown.
And what also is done is that in Tibetan tradition, lamas make pills out of relics, all sorts of special substances mixed with relics of holy beings. And you eat these to bless your mind. So what you can do for a dying person, and you can arrange for it to be done for yourself, is what they do is they crush one of these pills up and they mix it with a little bit of butter because everything has to have butter in Tibet, and then they rub it on your crown. I did this for my father when he died. Because the idea is that if your consciousness goes through the relic, it gets blessed by those holy substances, so that’s very good.
Once that’s happened, you give the little tug, then it’s okay to move the body, touch the body. One tries to check for the signs that the consciousness has left, especially the body decaying or starting to smell strongly because that means the body started to decay. So once that’s happened then the body can be buried or cremated or whatever. Yeah. So you can arrange for the yeah.
I’m not sure in Southeast Asia but the Tibetans used to just chop up the bodies and feed them to the birds. There wasn’t a system of burial as we have. Ordinary bodies were chopped up and fed to the birds. For llamas they were always either cremated, most often cremated or in some exceptional cases for very very high llamas their bodies were preserved. I saw it with His Holiness’s root guru, Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, when he passed away, they did this preserving of the body.
They keep it in salt for in a box of salt so all the liquid from the body absorbs into the salt. And they change the salt for many days, and then they and so then his body was actually turned into a statue. So this was done quite a bit in Tibet, but I think his body was the first to be done in since they escaped. I have some of that salt at home. They gave it out as blessings that you keep.
In Dharamsala, I’m not sure exactly where. Basically what is done is the various prayers are chanted, you know, that’s it. It’s fairly simple. Oh, well, with the lamas, of course, it’s very complicated. They do these very elaborate ceremonies.
Oh, another prayer that is very good to do for dying people, and once they’ve passed away is the prayer called the king of prayers, which is available in English. We have it here. That is a very good prayer to do for dying people and once they have died. And it’s also, of course, tradition is to try and do some practices and prayers for forty nine days after the person has died because this can help them in a bardo state to get a good rebirth. So that is the custom to do that.
I think generally, those are the main things to bear in mind. Creating holy images for dying people is very good, like getting thangkas painted, making holy images for dying people or or dead people. And, like, if if you have a connection with a lama, they will can advise you which is the best deity to get made for for for the benefit of the person. But just generally any the merit of creating a a holy image is very you you dedicate that merit for, that person so it can help them in their, you know, in their travel through the Bardo. But of course from a Buddhist point of view the main thing is not taking care of the body because that’s just a physical thing.
It’s the mind that we have to be concerned with. Practices for the dying person and the dead person and dedicating that merit, that’s really really helpful Very beneficial. We do have a prayer book here for dying and dead people so the prayers are done regularly. Also there is a system whereby if someone dies you can contact Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s stupa every day in Aptos, he has a where he officially lives, but virtually never actually lives. But there’s a bunch of monks and nuns who live there, and they make stupas and tsatsas every single day for for all students family who die and family members who contact them so these are made and the merit is dedicated for them.
Also you can contact His Holiness’s office and His Holiness Dalai Lama does prayers for dead for people who’ve passed away. So these are things you can do. But, of course, the people close to a person, those people, you know, because of their strong karmic connection, if they do some practice, this can be really beneficial for the person. Okay. Thank you very much.
We’ll take a tea break. I’ll I’ll put the homework. I’ve I did not get around to putting it out. I’ll put these these monitors and the homework out. There’s no homework because this is the the last night.
Where is everyone? Oh, they’re all gone. What? Oh, what happened? I’ve done it again, haven’t I?
Oh, we finish at nine fifteen, don’t we? Oh, so there’s no time for discussion. I’ve I’ve kind of finished, so I have to ask me questions because I’ve I’ve downloaded everything now. I’ve that was it. Otherwise, we have an early