Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Thubten Dondrub delivers a 38-minute teaching on the Buddhist meditation practice of contemplating death, the first of three traditional approaches to cultivating certainty that death is inevitable. He establishes death’s universality through concrete examples: all past civilizations have perished, all historical and spiritual leaders including the Buddha have died, and no amount of wealth, power, medicine, or mantras can prevent it. He then addresses the second point—that lifespan is not only brief but constantly diminishing, even as we eat well and exercise. The final section examines how little actual time remains for spiritual practice once sleep, childhood, old age, sickness, and worldly duties are accounted for. Throughout, he uses vivid comparisons—a film reel that runs out, a boat that sinks, a shepherd driving animals to slaughter—to transform abstract doctrine into lived awareness. The teaching assumes basic familiarity with Buddhist philosophy and is oriented toward serious practitioners beginning formal mind training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 04 11 Mind Training.mp3
UUID: b4084674-442c-42ae-8b55-3802e44880ee
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind Training (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-04-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 38.0 minutes
Words: ~4,268
Okay. Okay. So now we’ll go into the traditional meditation about the three-stage meditation on death. So the first part is trying to get this sense, a strong realization that one is definitely going to die. Some people are thinking the break lasts forever.
So okay. So as it says in the text—oh, we don’t have it. We’ve got the interference. No. Don’t touch it.
That is—oh, I wasn’t saying to you. Yeah. Because that thing is so—where’s Kathy? She needs to do the machine. It’s in the wrong spot.
Sorry. It’s blocked. Page twenty-six. We’re still at the very beginning of that section. Yes.
That’s it. No. No. No. No.
Back up. You’re going too far ahead. We’re—yes, we were there. Oh no, we’re—that’s at the very beginning of the book. Forget it.
Just—you don’t—I’ll just—so death is certain because one way to think is that everyone who has ever taken a body on this earth has separated from it. It’s just not possible to remain in this body. This applies to human beings and every kind of animal that has been born on this earth, that we just can’t remain in this body. There’s just no way to do that. And one way to get a sense of that is that, for example, whole civilizations have passed away.
All the people of those civilizations—of ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, ancient Greece, the Aztecs—all of those civilizations have passed away. Not one human being that was born into those places now exists. And just as they thought their civilization would go on forever, so we think we’re part of something that will go on forever. But our civilization will also come to an end at some point and everyone in it. Yeah.
There won’t be anything left. And this applies not just to ordinary beings, but especially we should get a sense that I’m going to die because every human being has died. It’s, you know, the rich die, the powerful die, those who are extremely intelligent die. It’s not just very ordinary weak people who die. Everyone dies no matter how rich you are, how powerful you are, whether you’re an emperor with bodyguards. And, of course, sometimes bodyguards are the people who actually kill people.
And His Holiness the Dalai Lama once when he was teaching on this topic made the point that because of the special reverence Tibetans have for him, he says often, you know, Tibetans who see him will say, “I will die for you. I will sacrifice my life for you.” And His Holiness says, well, it just doesn’t matter because that won’t stop me dying. Just because other people sacrifice their lives for me and try and save my life, I’m still going to die. And so—yes. Okay.
You could move—could you move it up a little bit now? Oh, no. It needs to go down a little bit. You’re a bit too ahead. It’s back a bit.
Back. We’re just—keep going. Keep going. More, more, more. There’s quite a bit more.
More, more, more, more. Yeah. Keep going. Keep going. More.
More. More. Yeah. Yeah. You just—no.
I get up. Yeah. Yes. Now just a little bit more. Yes.
Keep going just a little bit more. More, more, more. Yeah. Yeah. You just—no.
Keep going. More, more, more. “They inevitably have death.” That’s it. Right.
Just stop there. We’ve got that quote. Yeah. So it says in the Special Verses Collected by Topic, which is the Tibetan Mahāyāna version of the Dharmapada—if some of you are familiar with that text—it says, “If Buddhas, solitary realizers, and hearers have all abandoned their bodies, what can be said about ordinary beings?” Right?
So it’s not just the rich and powerful and so on, but even all the great spiritual leaders of the world have died. You know, Mohammed died, Jesus died, the Buddha died. All the arhats died. So if that’s the case, what makes me think I am not going to die? This is how we should think.
Yeah? Why do I cling to this idea that I won’t die if everyone else has died, including the Buddha? Of course, the Buddha didn’t have to die. The Buddha had achieved the deathless state. But he died to show that actually ordinary beings do have to die.
We can’t control it. So we have to ask ourselves, what valid reason do I have that proves I won’t die? For example, is there something special about my body that is different from every other human body that’s appeared on this earth, which means I’m not going to die? And I think it’s very difficult to find anything special about our body. Actually, one could argue that human beings’ bodies now are more fragile than in the past.
We’re full of so many poisons that didn’t exist in the past, you know, because we live in such a polluted environment. But actually we can’t find any valid reason. Our body isn’t stronger. It’s made of the same stuff. So why can we cling to this idea if everybody in the past has died sooner or later, that people just don’t live much beyond a hundred years?
The number of people who live beyond a hundred is very, very few, very, very rare. So eventually everyone’s gone. The number of people who were born in nineteen thirteen—there’s very few of those people left on the earth now. Very, very few. So in, what is it, twenty-one thirteen, we will be gone for sure. And it goes on to say, “In whatever land you may live, you can never avoid death.” There’s no place we can go where death doesn’t exist. There’s a—in the Sutras there’s a story which is quite moving where one woman, her child died and she was completely distraught by it and sort of going quite crazy and—how does the story go? I’m hopeless with stories.
And then—anyway, she saw the Buddha and the Buddha said, “I can bring your child back to life if you—but to do that, you have to find a household where no one has died.” So she went around everywhere and knocked on the door, but of course everyone had a sad story of someone who had died in that household, some family member. So slowly she realized that everyone dies. Everyone dies. So wherever you live, you are not immune to death—neither on the earth in any direction, nor in space, nor within the ocean, nor if you were to hide amidst the mountains.
So even on the top of Mount Everest or somewhere, one can’t escape death. One could blast off on one of Richard Branson’s spaceships and go to the moon, but one would still die on the moon. There’s just nowhere to escape. And even taking rebirth doesn’t avert death because, you know, we die again. We take another body, but then we die again.
So “the wise have understood that those of the past and those who are yet to come have given up this body and are subject to destruction. Therefore, abide in the doctrine and practice with determination.” So just to emphasize the point, it quotes from the Sūtra of Advice for a King where it says, “Suppose four great mountains in the four directions—solid, stable, essential, uncrumbled, uncracked, unblemished, very hard, extremely dense, and touching the sky—were to be overturned. The grass, forest, tree trunks, branches, all the leaves, all the living beings and creatures would be crushed into the smallest particles. This would not easily be avoided by escaping quickly or with strength, nor by wealth, substances, mantras, or medicine.
O great king, likewise, the four great fears cannot easily be avoided by escaping quickly or with strength, nor by substances, mantra, or medicine. What are these four? Old age, sickness, death, and decline. O great king, old age comes with the destruction of youth, sickness with the destruction of health, decline comes with the destruction of your fortune, and death comes with the destruction of life. They cannot easily be avoided by escaping quickly or with strength, nor with wealth, substances, mantras, or medicine.”
In fact, they can’t be escaped at all. So that’s the first way. There are many points given in other texts about the same topic, but that’s the essential first point to think about to gain some realization that I’m definitely going to die because I just can’t stay in this body. There’s just nothing I can do to keep my mind in this body and stop this body decaying. Then on top of—if that doesn’t work, then one can reflect or strengthen it by reflecting the second point—that as you cannot increase your lifespan, it constantly declines, so death is inevitable.
Not only is your lifespan brief, but that brief lifespan decreases continually as years are exhausted by the passing of months, months by the passing of days, and days by the passing of nights. Right? So it’s really helpful to understand that this life is a karmic result of actions we did in the past. Right? So in past lives, we created the cause to have this life in general, and the lifespan of this life is the result of how much good karma we created in the past.
So every day, that good karma to have this human life is running out. So at some point, it’s finished. So there’s no way in this life that we can add to this life. Eating good food, healthy food, taking vitamins, eating organic food, exercising, doing aerobics, swimming—all that stuff, none of that adds to your lifespan. None of it can add to your lifespan.
It may help you live out your lifespan. I’m not saying one shouldn’t do those things. It may help you to actually be able to live out the full karmic extent of your life, but it doesn’t actually add to it. That’s—yeah. It’s a little bit of the usual boring example I give, which I will bore you with again.
It’s—although this example is rapidly getting outdated because of technology. But when I first gave it, movies used to be made on film. Now they’re all digital things and everything. But, you know, a movie is made and it takes a certain amount of time to make it. And once it’s made and edited, you have this reel of film and then you show it.
And when the reel runs out, the movie stops. And our life is like that. The movie of this life was made in the past. Yeah. And now it’s being played out.
And at some point, it comes to a stop. So like with a movie, if you like the movie and you think, “Oh, I wish it would go on for a few more minutes or even another hour,” it’s not possible because all the actors have gone home. They’ve packed up. Some of them have possibly died. Right?
So it’s the same with our life. There’s no way we can add to it because the causes were created not in this life but in the previous life. And so every day is just one less day. It’s like one frame of the picture gone. And as it says here, one way to meditate on this is to reflect—you can even do this by looking at a clock.
But, you know, with the passing of sixty seconds, a whole minute of your life is gone. And then with sixty minutes, an hour has gone. And with twenty-four hours, a whole day of our life is gone. Seven days and a week is gone. Four weeks and a month is gone.
Twelve months and a whole year of our life is gone. And so with the passing of the years, our life comes to an end. That’s it, folks. And, like, you know, you can—I can smash this clock so it stops ticking and everything, but that doesn’t mean—you know, I haven’t stopped the seconds going by. I’ve just prevented myself being aware of it.
So we can prevent—you know, we can ignore the fact that our life is fading away, but it still is. But it’s helpful to know that. So as Śāntideva, the great Indian Bodhisattva master who lived in the eighth century, says in his amazing book, the Bodhicaryāvatāra, “Life is always slipping by and can never be increased. Why will death not come to one like me?” And our author, the disciple of Lama Tsongkhapa, Namkha Pel, says this should be contemplated by means of examples.
So in this text, the Special Verses Collected by Topic, it says—so these verses are verses spoken by the Buddha. So the Buddha says, “Just as weaving yarn stretched back and forth across a loom finally runs out, so too does every person’s life. Yeah. Just as every step of one condemned brings him ever closer to the executioner, so too is every person’s life. Just as the flow of a waterfall can never be reversed, so a person’s life runs on without increase and beyond recall.
Hard to find and yet so brief, and giving rise to so much pain, lives are quickly destroyed like the writing of a stick on water. Just as the shepherd with his staff drives his flock into the fold, so old age and sickness deliver people to the lord of death.” So it’s like if you’ve ever seen these huge trucks full of sheep or pigs, you know. So they’re all alive. They don’t—perhaps they do know what’s happening to them.
As they’re driving along, you know, they’re being driven to their death. Same with us. Whatever we’re doing—driving in our car, attending a Dharma talk, going to the beach, watching a movie, meditating, eating, sleeping—we’re just dying. There’s a fantastic little statement made by a Zen master which goes something like, “Life is like getting on a boat that goes out to sea and sinks.” Isn’t that great?
And it’s true. It’s just true. Which fits in with, like, the—you know, the movie and the reality of the Titanic. People got on this boat and many very rich and famous people were on that boat. And they were having this lovely time, but they didn’t know that they had just got on a boat that was gonna hit an iceberg and they were going to die.
So we’re like that. But we can be aware, and by being aware, we can recognize how precious each moment is so we can use it in the best possible way. So there is a Sūtra called the Extensive Sport Sūtra, which was obviously written for Australians. In Sanskrit it’s called the Lalitavistara Sūtra, where it says, “The three realms”—which is talking about the desire, form, and formless realms—”are as fleeting as autumn clouds. The birth and death of beings unfolds like a play.
Their lives, rushing away like a mountain stream, vanish like a flash of lightning.” Okay. So then there’s the third point to think about how death is definite. Which I must admit, in all honesty, is not an argument for why death is definite. It’s totally unrelated.
It doesn’t prove that death is definite at all. But it does make a valid point, which is that our life is very brief and we’re going to die. And in this very brief life that is definitely going to come to an end, actually if we analyze that lifespan, that short lifespan, there is so little time to practice Dharma. So it says, “Thirdly, the way to think about the certainty of death and the rarity of being able to practice the doctrine in this life is as follows.”
And it quotes from the Sūtra on Entering into the Womb. “Half our lives are spent asleep.” Well, hopefully this is not the case, but in the Lam Rim teachings it makes the point that, for example, if we live to be ninety years old and if we sleep eight hours a day—eight hours a day is one-third of a day—so if we live to be ninety, that means thirty years of our life have been spent in bed sleeping and snoring. Thirty years.
Thirty years in bed. Pardon? Yes. Sure. But that’s all.
Sorry? Some are meaningful. But the meaningful dreams are telling us to do meaningful things. They’re telling us to get out of bed and do something. But that’s really kind of scary, horrible thought—to think thirty years of lifespan in bed.
Especially in the—remember this is in the context of someone who has some recognition that they have not just a human rebirth but a precious, perfect human rebirth. The optimum chance to get a good rebirth, to get out of saṃsāra, to achieve enlightenment, to repay the kindness—to spend thirty years in bed is really terrible. As Śāntideva says, “This is not a time to sleep, you fool.” Not a time to sleep. Or not a time to sleep so much.
Yes. As—which I was just gonna say, my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who’s depicted here on this picture with his hands like that—since he was a small boy, he has never tried to consciously go to sleep, to go to bed. He never sort of puts on his jammies and jumps into bed. Rinpoche has never owned a pair of pajamas or any kind of monk equivalent and has never got into a bed in his life to my knowledge. He never consciously lies down.
Rinpoche does manifest falling asleep but only because he’s been awake for so long and can’t keep awake—at least from an ordinary point of view—any longer. And this is because Rinpoche definitely has the realization of the precious human rebirth and has bodhicitta, the wish to be of vast benefit to all sentient beings. Check how many hours you sleep a day, work out what percentage of a day it is, and then work out how many years that adds up to. And it goes on to say, “Until we are ten, we are children, and after twenty we grow old. Then there are hundreds of distractions.” So when we’re young, we’re too young to practice Dharma.
Right? We don’t see the importance of it. When we’re old, we’re too old. Right? So there’s really only the middle years to practice, but then at minimum around thirty percent goes in sleep.
Then there are hundreds of other—or mobile phones, or what do you call those things? No. Those games, that stuff. Yeah. All that.
Movies. Yeah. Emails. Yes. No.
I don’t think so. Yeah. Yeah. You think they’re developing single-pointed concentration? Are you being serious?
No. I’m sorry. That’s not—it’s a type, definitely, it’s a type of concentration, but it’s not the concentration that is helpful in spiritual practice. It’s actually an obstacle. It’s quite different.
Single-pointed concentration as it’s understood in the Dharma is that is single-pointedly on virtue. And it’s not that iPods and whatever and iPads and all that are non-virtuous, but they’re not virtuous objects. It’s quite a different—it’s a different mental state. It’s relatively easy to concentrate on, you know, all of that kind of stuff. It is much more difficult to develop the mind that can stay single-pointedly on virtue.
It’s really another kettle of fish, whatever that means. So Geshe Chekawa, who wrote this seven-point mind training, said, “Out of sixty years”—which is about the time span that many Tibetans lived, still do—”out of sixty years, if you take away the time spent on livelihood and sickness, there is barely five years directed towards the doctrine.” So again, if we think of all the things that we do in our life, you know—sleeping, working, driving to work and back, cooking, eating, washing, sitting on the toilet. Probably several years of our life just spent sitting on the toilet. You know?
Sorry to give you gross examples, but, you know, cleaning your teeth, picking your nose—like one year spent just picking the nose or something, you know, really, if you think about it. So actually, you take all that and all the times being sick and, you know, whatever, then really the amount of time that is left to devote to the Dharma is very, very little. So we have to devote ourselves. So in the birth stories or the Jātaka Tales about the previous lives of the Buddha, it says, “Alas, the world is filled with disturbing emotions, an unreliable and unpleasant place to live. The glory of this water lily”—meaning our life—”will soon become but a memory.
Such is the fate of all beings. It is surprising that people still do not feel afraid even though all roads are blocked by the Lord of Death. They are thoughtlessly lost in enjoyment. The destructive enemies—disease, old age, and death—are powerful and unavoidable. When they are certainly heading for danger in future lives, how can the wise enjoy any happiness?”
If you think about the life story of the Buddha, you know, in some ways, there are many versions of the life of the Buddha from quite realistic ones to very extreme kind of unbelievable ones. But the very extreme, unbelievable from an ordinary point of view are actually the most—become quite mythical but become the most psychologically profound. So according to the life story of the Buddha, you know, when the Buddha was first born, this wise man said—because he saw the signs—that if this boy doesn’t see certain signs, he will become the greatest king in the world. But if he sees certain things, then this will cause him to renounce ordinary life and become the greatest spiritual leader the world has ever seen. So his dad, the king, said, “I want my boy to become the greatest king in the world, so I’m going to prevent him seeing all of these signs.”
The signs were old age, sickness, death, and some kind of renunciate wandering around. So according to the extreme mythological version of the life story of the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha never saw anyone growing old, sick, or dying, which is, of course, impossible because his mom died when he was three days old. And his dad—he should have realized his dad was older than him and was getting old. But according to the extreme story—now my teaching is dying. But anyway, you know, he grew to be thirty years old and never saw anyone die and never understood that people die, which of course is ridiculous.
But psychologically, it makes great sense because then he goes out on his chariot with his favorite horse and his favorite chariot driver and goes out into the city and sees this dead person and has to ask, “What’s that?” And the chariot driver says, “That is a dead person.” And Prince Siddhartha says, “Oh, how many people does that happen to?” And the charioteer has to tell him, “Everyone. It happens to everyone.” And then the Buddha or Prince Siddhartha drives back in his old version of a jag back to the palace, freaked out, and looks around at his father, his wife, all his other lady friends, you know, all his friends, and looks and thinks, “They’re all going to die and they don’t know it. How can they be happy? How can they waste their life singing, dancing? And they’re going to die.”
And the point is we are all like Prince Siddhartha. We are all living in this little palace where we don’t go out and see reality. But Prince Siddhartha went out. He escaped what his father had built up around him, and he actually realized that people grow old. He realized it.
He just didn’t see it. He got it. That everyone grows old, they get sick, and they die. And we haven’t got it. We’re still in this little palace where everything is gonna be hunky-dory forever. It’s not true.
It’s just a fantasy. It will be hunky-dory forever, to use a technical term, when we are a Buddha, but before that—anyway, my talk has now died. That’s it for tonight. Any questions?
Complaints? Contradictions?