Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Thubten Dondrub leads a 65-minute guided meditation on death, the first day of a KI retreat. He opens with foundational mental preparation—correct posture, nine-round breathing to calm the mind, refuge in the Triple Gem, and bodhicitta motivation—then recites the Foundation of All Good Qualities liturgy. The core meditation walks practitioners through three key contemplations: certainty of death (the body ages and passes moment by moment; no human escapes), uncertainty of the time of death (people die at any age from disease, accident, natural disaster, conflict, or unpredictable causes), and the practical conclusion that only Dharma helps at death. He invites listeners to examine honestly what worldly pursuits—wealth, relationships, knowledge, bodily comfort—will actually aid a dying mind, and to commit now to genuine, sincere practice rather than empty ritual. The session emphasizes direct introspection and emotional acceptance, not mere intellectual assent. Suited for meditators with some Buddhist foundation who are undertaking a structured retreat.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 5. Day 1 Meditation Death.mp3
UUID: 39c42038-2ad0-494f-9b13-23917d9181ca
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: KI Retreat (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2005 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 65.6 minutes
Words: ~3,460
So again we begin by sitting comfortably in the correct posture as much as we can. Just taking a little time to check, fine tune our posture by placing the awareness at the crown of the head and moving it down through the body, also noting any tension. Having prepared our body, we prepare our mind firstly, establishing a calm, neutral mind by doing the nine round breathing exercise. Then generate strong devotional mind of refuge in the Triple Gem, visualising at least Śākyamūni Buddha in front of oneself as the very embodiment of all the objects and aspects of the Triple Gem, visualizing the Buddha seated on a magnificent lion throne all in the nature of transparent radiating light. And combine that mind of refuge with the bodhicitta motivation wishing to use this precious human rebirth to practice the liberating Dharma, not only for one’s own sake, but especially to bring about that state of enlightenment that enables us to continuously and perfectly, spontaneously, joyfully work for the sake of all suffering mother sentient beings.
Visualize all these beings around you, starting with your mother and this life on the left, father on the right, the rest of one’s family and friends behind, antagonists in front. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, actual and imagined.
I declare all my negative actions accumulated since beginningless time and rejoice in the merit of all holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of dharma for living beings. I dedicate my own merits and those of all others to the great enlightenment. So then the Foundation of All Good Qualities. The foundation of all good qualities is the kind and venerable Guru.
Correct devotion to him is the root of the path. By clearly seeing this and applying great effort, please bless me to rely upon him with great respect, Understanding that the precious freedom of this rebirth is found only once, is greatly meaningful and is difficult to find again. Please bless me to generate the mind that unceasingly day and night takes its essence. This life is as impermanent as a water bubble. Remember how quickly it decays and death comes.
After death, just like the shadow follows the body, the results of black and white karma follow. Finding firm and definite conviction in this, please bless me always to be careful, to abandon even the slightest negativities, and accomplish all virtuous deeds. Seeking saṃsāra pleasures is the door to all suffering. They are uncertain and cannot be relied upon. Recognizing these shortcomings, please bless me to generate a strong wish for the bliss of liberation.
Led by this pure thought, mindfulness, alertness, and great caution arise. The root of the teachings is keeping the Prātimokṣa vows. Please bless me to accomplish this essential practice. Just as I have fallen into the sea of saṃsāra, so have all mother migratory beings. Please bless me to see this, to train in supreme bodhicitta, and bear the responsibility of freeing migratory beings.
Even if I develop only bodhicitta, but I don’t practice the three types of morality, I will not achieve enlightenment. With my clear recognition of this, please bless me to practice the bodhisattva vows with great energy. Once I pacify distractions to wrong objects and correctly analyse the meaning of reality, please bless me to generate quickly within my mind stream the unified path of calm abiding and special insight. Having become a pure vessel by training in the general path, please bless me to enter the holy gateway of the fortunate ones, the supreme vajra vehicle. At that time, the basis of accomplishing the two attainments is keeping pure vows and samaya.
As I have become firmly convinced of this, please bless me to protect these vows and samaya like my life. Then, having realised the importance of the two stages, the essence of the vajrayana, by practising with great energy, never giving up the four sessions, please bless me to realise the teachings of the holy Guru. Like that, may the gurus who show the noble path and the spiritual friends who practice it have long lives. Please bless me to pacify completely all outer and inner hindrances. In all my lives, never separated from perfect gurus, may I enjoy the magnificent Dharma.
By completing the qualities of the stages and paths, may I quickly attain the state of vajradharma. So then think that the Buddha is very pleased with our intentions, our motivation. Because of that, the Buddha, now seated just on the lotus sun and moon, comes to the crown of our head, turning around, facing in the same direction as ourselves. So then from the depths of one’s heart, make a very strong request to the Guru Buddha for one’s mind to be completely free of all the obstacles, to prevent one correctly meditating on and gaining a complete realization of one’s mortality, that one could die at any moment, and that only the Dharma is really helpful at the time of death. So think that the Buddha happily responds by sending a continuous stream of white light and nectar into oneself.
And as this fills up one’s body and mind, we imagine all the obstacles, the obstructions, negative karmic imprints, all those obstacles to meditating, take the aspect of black liquid that leaves from the lower part of the body, it dissipates and becomes completely non existent. Imagine a continuous stream of golden light and nectar comes from the Buddha blessing the mind to be able to correctly meditate on and correctly gain a realization of this meditation on death. So firstly, we begin by oh, sorry. We can remember the Buddha remaining on the crown of our head for the rest of the session, just having that sense that the Buddha is there, creating this protective environment, continuously placing our mind. So now we direct our mind to the actual meditation itself with a strong determination to be very mindful, avoiding, the pitfalls of the on the one hand, the mind becoming very dull and sleepy and so on, and on the other hand, the mind becoming excited and distracted by either external sounds, pains in our own body, especially our own thoughts.
So really making the determination to keep the mind focused only on thinking about this topic. Just we can briefly recall the benefits, the disadvantages of not thinking about death, and benefits of actually thinking about it more and more impermanence and death, especially in this context, realising that our awareness, our experience of impermanence and death is a very powerful antidote to the mind of anger. And helps us practice patience. If we die with a mind of anger, then there’s no way we can have a good rebirth. So although we, of course, all of us here intellectually understand that we’re going to die, still at an emotional level, we don’t accept this.
Constantly, we live our life denying the truth of impermanence and death. That’s why we follow the eight worldly concerns, follow our self-cherishing thought, follow attachment and anger and so on. So we do have to think about this topic again and again, contemplate it until until some real transformation, realization dawns in our mind. So we can begin by thinking that, I definitely am going to die because I have no power to remain on this earth. My mind has no power to continuously abide in this body.
This body has no power to continuously reside on this earth, so definitely I’m going to die. Everyone who has taken birth, sooner or later, dies. There is no way to escape death, no place one can go where one can escape it. Since intellectually I know that every kind of embodied being dies. Animals are dying all around me, humans are dying all around me.
Why do I think I won’t die? Can I find a valid reason to say that somehow my body is significantly different from other bodies so that it’s it won’t age, that it’s immune to harm? Can I really say that? Can I really believe that if I check up? If even the very richest people die, the most intelligent people die, the most powerful people die, even extremely healthy people die, Why do I think that I won’t die?
What valid reason is there to cling to? And if even all the holy beings of all the religious traditions of the world have died, including the Buddha manifested dying, how can I possibly think I won’t die? So then reflect that my death is definite. I’m definitely going to die because my life is constantly passing away without any way to add to it. The actual cause of this life, of the continuance of this life, is the unfolding of the good karma I created in past lives.
So that good karma has been created, it’s finished, I can’t create any more. So now it’s ripening. The experience of this life is a result of causes. Those causes have to come before the result. They have to come before this life.
So there’s no way I can add to the causes of this life. And so now the result is passing away moment by moment. So think that how with the passing of sixty minutes, a whole lot one, minute sorry. Sixty seconds, a whole minute of one’s life is finished, never to return. With a passing of sixty minutes, a whole hour is gone.
With a passing of twenty four hours, a whole day is finished. The passing of seven days, a whole week of my life, has finished, never to return. So with the passing of the weeks, a whole month goes by. With the passing of the months, a whole year of my life, of my present human rebirth, is eaten up, gone, no way to get it back. And so with the passing of the years, my life comes to an end.
Somehow our confused mind does this reverse kind of mathematics where we think, as we get older and the years accumulate, that somehow we’re getting even more immune to death. But the reality is we’re getting closer to it. So really allow the mind to dwell on that awareness that I am definitely going to die. And then if we look at our life, at the beginning of our life, probably we didn’t meet the Dharma. Even if we met the Dharma, as a young person, we don’t see the need to practice so much.
When we become very old, even though there’s a great need for practice, it becomes extremely difficult. In the middle of our life, when there is time to practice, or at least the ability to practice, our time is eaten up by so many distractions, doing so many different things. If we sleep for eight hours a day, that means a third of a day is spent in sleep. Even if we sleep six hours a day, as a quarter of the day is spent in sleep. That means a quarter of our life, even if we live a hundred years, twenty five years of our life, are lost to sleep.
So even if we live a hundred years, if we take away all those things, the beginning of the life, the end of the life, twenty five years of sleep, years of distraction, doing all sorts of things. In that brief life, hardly any time to work with mind. So recognizing that one is definitely going to die, try and generate this strong determination that I that I must practice the Dharma, the liberating Dharma. I must use what is left of my life to work with my mind in a in a skillful, compassionate way, really taking care of my mind. Even if we can generate some sense of our own mortality, that I’m definitely going to die, still grasping at permanence gets in the way, and there’s a feeling that, yes, I’m definitely going to die, but it’s so far away.
It’s not going to happen now. But the reality is that I could die at any moment, literally at any moment. And this is because we humans have no fixed lifespan. People die at any age, very young, very old, middle aged, in the womb, at birth, at any time. Since this has happened to other human beings, it could happen to me.
We can never be sure which will come first, tomorrow or the next life. We don’t know how much good karma we created in past lives. It means we have a long life or a short life. Many people around the world who woke up this morning are dead by the evening. Many people who go to bed tonight will be dead tomorrow.
In the middle of all our different plans, death can come at any time. We may know and we certainly have read about people born after ourselves who have already died. So that means death can happen to me at any time. Just think of your exact date or your age in years right now, however many years old you are. Twenty five, thirty five, forty five, fifty five, did people die at that age?
Have people died at that age? Or is that age that I’m at right now some magical age when people don’t die? Think of the years and months of your age. Have people died at so many years and so many months old, or is it a magical time? And then we can reflect that I could die at any time because there are so many causes of death.
And these can occur at any time. So just reflect on all the different kinds of illnesses there are that can kill oneself, destroy this body. And it seems in our world now, there are new diseases that at first were very rare becoming more common. Am I immune from any of these diseases? Will there be some magical warning when they come?
And think how we read about people die of various kinds of accidents. Just think of the different kinds of accidents that can occur. There are very common ones like car accidents. Accidents in the home, there are common ones. And then there are freak accidents that almost never happen, some that seem almost unbelievable that they could happen, but they’ve happened to people.
Am I immune to any of these? I may feel I am, but I am am I actually immune? Is there something special protecting me? And as it occurs other ways, the death can come through natural disasters. Some again, we somehow, we feel that happens to other people, but not to me.
It happens in other places, but not here. But the people caught up in those tragedies felt exact believed exactly the same thing. It won’t happen to me. Not here, not now, but they do. Wars can occur.
One can be harmed by even if not a war, by other human beings. We ourselves in past lives have caused so much harm to others, killed other sentient beings. Who knows when that unpurified karma of doing that ripens and we get killed? We may think, oh, but I’m practicing the Dharma, so none of that will happen to me. But it happened in Tibet to people practicing the Dharma far longer, more purely than myself.
And further we can reflect that on the one hand there are so many things that can bring about death and therefore can happen at any moment. But on the other hand, if we really check, there are very few things that support our life, that we can rely on to keep us alive. We can think, oh yes, there’s so many diseases, but there’s so many amazing medicines to help me, to cure me. All sorts of operations I can have, treatments and so on. But even medicine, which may cure one disease, can have a reaction that leads to death.
Even the food we eat can become a cause of death in many ways. Then we can reflect that the body itself is so fragile, so complex, which means that at any time, something can go wrong, even just a slight small thing, and that can lead to other complications that can lead to death. No matter how healthy we are, how strong the body, just a tiny scratch can lead to some disease that causes death. So it comes with a conclusion as strongly as one can that since death could occur, my death could occur at any moment, then I have to stop postponing the practice of Dharma and really practice it now. And then just imagine that one is dying right now.
Imagine that we are dying. We don’t know how we’re going to die, but imagine that we were lying comfortably on our bed, in our home or in a hospital, and the time of death is coming. And then we look back on our life and think of all the things we did that took up so much time and energy, just taking up our time and energy now. Which of those things is really going to help us when our mind is separating from this body, from separating from absolutely everything that we know and depend on, is leaving all of that and going into something completely unknown. Really think hard.
What am I doing now with my life that is gonna help me at that time? And what will actually hinder being an obstacle, make it difficult for the mind to peacefully, quietly leave this body? Honestly, check up whether the time and energy that we put into cultivating friends and our family, all the attachment to that, is that going to help when we die? Even if we’re surrounded by hundreds of friends and family, is that actually going to help us as we die? Or will our attachment to them and their and my knowing of their attachment to me, will that be an obstacle?
A lot of time and energy goes into obtaining wealth. We may not get much, but time and energy goes into it and getting possessions. Will that help actually help at the time of death? Or will our attachment to these things, our dependence on them, be an obstacle? Time and energy goes into acquiring worldly knowledge of all sorts.
Is that going to help at the time of death? We spend a lot of time pampering this body, trying to make it strong, healthy, beautiful, desirable. Is that going to help at the time of death? Then we can contemplate whether, as the mind leaves this body, if we have qualities of concentration where we’re able to focus our mind, if we’ve developed a quality of faith in the guru, the Triple Gem, we have qualities of loving kindness, compassion, generosity, patience, the ability to bear suffering. We’ve cultivated enthusiasm for virtue.
We’ve accumulated a great deal of merit during our life, purified a lot of negative karma. Will these things help at the time of death? So then we can bring this contemplation to an end by making a strong decision that not only do I need to practice the Dharma, not only do I need to practice it now to stop postponing it, but I have to practice it genuinely, sincerely, purely, because false practice isn’t going to help at the time of death. It’s only genuine spiritual qualities existing in my mind, stable in my mind, only that is going to really help. So I have to practice the Dharma right now, purely, dedicate this precious human rebirth to the pure practice of the Dharma for my own sake, for the sake of others.
Recall the Buddha on the crown of your head. Imagine the Buddha very pleased with what we’ve been contemplating. Because of that, the Buddha happily dissolves into light. That blissful golden light comes down through the crown of our head, blessing our body, speech and mind, especially feel the mind blessed to gain a complete, abiding realisation of impermanence and death, especially that I could die at any moment. And then we dedicate the merit.
Page twenty seven. Thank you very much. So we can finish with three prostrations, do the triple gem.