Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this two-hour teaching, Venerable Tony Beaumont explores Buddhist approaches to mortality and meaningful living through meditation, philosophical reflection, and practical guidance. He opens with breath-focused meditation, then moves into sustained death contemplation—examining the certainty of death but uncertainty of its timing, the fragility of the human body, and the inadequacy of wealth, friendship, and physical health to protect us at the moment of death. He argues that only ethical conduct and spiritual practice bring genuine peace when dying. Drawing on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Christine Longaker’s framework, he presents four tasks of living and dying: transforming suffering through understanding, developing forgiveness and connection, preparing spiritually through reducing attachment and cultivating compassion, and finding meaning through self-acceptance, authentic communication, and purpose. Throughout, he illustrates with stories—a dying child discovering faith through another’s kindness, a hospice patient discovering meaning through imagining his unborn child, the sixteenth Karmapa’s peaceful death despite severe illness—showing that spiritual preparation in life shapes the quality of our final moments and ripples outward to those around us.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2015 08 20 Ven. Tony Beaumont Healthy Living Healthy Dying 20-8-15.mp3
UUID: 87f723de-389f-47d2-9c02-5e48078a120e
Teacher: Ven Tony Beaumont
Collection: Healthy Living Healthy Dying (Ven Tony Beaumont)
Date: 2015-08-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 117.9 minutes
Words: ~9,209
Okay. So then is it right? Yes. It’s fine. So then again, some meditation.
See if you can do a few minutes of focusing on the breath, and then we’ll just do meditation on death meditation. Okay. So then just check. Place the focus. Focus your mind on the experience of the breath passing in, passing out at the entranceway of the nostrils.
As best as possible to remain there, particularly if you’re able to, hopefully, if you’re able to get a sense of the feeling sensation of the air passing in and passing out and just to remain focused there on the experience of the air passing in and passing out, the various distractions that arise then to note these, you know, just to sense that they’re just events that are occurring, allow them to arise and then pass away again, not to get distracted, not to get caught up in the thoughts. So I’m not getting caught up in the whole story that’s going on rather than to think, okay, our business here is to stay in this and focus on the here and now. And so we’re going to use that breath as a way of letting go of these distractions. Of course, it’s important, you know, we need to plan things. It’s true.
But our business, what we’re telling our business, is to let go of the thoughts of what we should do in the future. Also as well, of course, there are times, perfect times to recall things in the past. But once more, yeah, when we’re in breathing meditation is to let go of these things and our business in a relaxed, diligent way is to focus on the breath. So then like this for the next few minutes.
So then meditation on death. Firstly, how it is that death is definite. We take it for granted since the life span of humans on this world is uncertain. But it’s actually said that there are other world systems of human beings where these beings have set lifespans. So we know, at least intellectually we know, we understand that humans on this life, on this earth have varying lifespans.
But sometimes we, for all this time, maybe we forget about that and even create in our mind ideas that, oh, I’m going to do this when I get old or when I retire or whatever happens like this. So that is just simply a reality that that will happen when we’re a certain age, we will come to that age. And we really hope we understand that there are some beings that are born and they die in the womb or some beings die at the time of the birth. Others die in infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, and then later on, old age as well. And many will not be too old age.
And so we can’t know where we lie in relation to this graph. The reality is this life, this world system, the life expectancy is of uncertain duration. In our lives, we imagine a bit like we imagine like we’re a bubble arising in a fast moving stream. It appears and then it travels down that stream. On the stream, some places it’s tranquil, other times, the water is disturbed very quickly. But a bubble of life is rising and it’s formed, a bubble just like so many other bubbles are rising, like so many beings being born.
And it’s definite that that bubble is going to burst, but we don’t know when. So life is like a bubble, moving in a fast-moving stream. We have looked at it from an aerial point of view. What if we were traveling in an airplane coming in to land over a city at night and look down and see all those lights down below? So each one of those lights comes into existence and it’s just the bulb is placed in the plug in the socket or things like that. And eventually, each one of those bulbs will, you know, burn out like this. And for sure, all of them will. They look like they look down there and they all look very much alive. You’re probably not even aware of ones bursting or being exhausted. But if you look at it and think about it, you’d understand. Because definitely, each will finish. And we’re not sure. Some burst very quickly. Some are short-lived. Others last longer. So likewise, it’s life. We can’t be sure when it will be exhausted, it’s life span.
And there are so many factors that undermine the continuation of our body and mind functioning together. This is life as we say, the body, keeping the mind connected with this particular basis, physical basis of the body. So many things can come in this life unexpectedly. Disease may manifest, but all our systems of our body, a type of cancer, I would think. We never know when these conditions will come together. Therefore, bring it to the end, to our life this way. And then also other diseases as well. Then there’s also the possibility of accidents, whether it be motor car accidents or even airplane accidents, other forms of accidents made in that way. Not all those people in those planes, last, whatever it was, last year, those planes, Malaysian Airlines planes and AirAsia planes. Then people get on those planes thinking how, okay, going to such and such place. And none of those people survived.
So we don’t know. We may plan all the time, but we don’t know. We may be the one that’s going to die, get on the plane. That’s the plane that’s going to crash. And even the things that we take to preserve this body, keep our life functioning, the foods that we take in and the medicines we take in can be the cause of death. Some sort of poisoned substance or allergic reaction. And also, we may die by violence from some other person, an actual violence. We’ll never be sure of what a natural disaster could bring. So death is like waiting. We never know. It’s over our shoulder, right shoulder, left shoulder, just waiting for the conditions to come together. And when the conditions come together, it doesn’t matter what our authority, what our power is, where we are, under the earth, above the earth, distant location, somewhere, can’t stop when the conditions combine.
Then also death is definite. Death is indefinite from the point of view of this body that’s actually extraordinarily fragile. So many working parts and certain parts there, if they fail, then it means the end of this life. If something separates from inside one of the blood vessels that can be lodged somewhere else, also a blockage and ending our life, coming to an end. Or else alternatively, blood vessels we’re not even aware of, a weakness in them bulging. Like we say, a garden hose left in the sun, there’s a weakness there. And our body is so fragile that it can require just a prick from a needle, a needle containing something, and that’s enough for our life to be ended. Or a particular part affected here can end the life. So it’s a dance or interplay of many different factors and continually, we don’t have control of all these different things coming and going, interacting in our life.
And we never know when those factors come together that lead to the end of our lives. And those factors are continually working all the time, twenty-four hours a day. We’re interacting with our environment. So this is really here, as I say, is that if we practice on this now, can that help at the time of death, the time when our mind separates from this body? Is that going to bring us peace? It’s going to bring us peace and security when we die, that knowledge of the Dharma can help us. Imagine two people dying, one extremely wealthy person living in a perfect environment, ten million dollar house, all the rest. You know, one of those in one of the fashionable suburbs of Sydney. And then there’s a destitute guy, street person outside.
That night, both die. So is that money going to make a difference to what takes place when they both die? It’s going to make a difference. The more money that wealthy person has as opposed to the poor person not having any, being destitute, having nothing out on the street. Then are friends going to help us? You can see friends can help us definitely from the point of view of helping us with our practices, like this, supporting us, creating conducive conditions to be able to deal with the separation of our mind from the body. But if our relationship with friends is one of extreme dependency, neediness, are these people going to be of help at the time of death? And the more that we cling to them, you know, if it’s that type of relationship, “I love you so much, I can’t live without you,” and they also have that same attitude. Is that intensity of emotion going to help at that time?
Okay. And especially if it’s a multiplicity of complicated relationships. So they’re saying, it’s like hair being pulled out of butter is the way that consciousness separates from this life. My friends can’t stop that. Then can our body help?
Some people, they dedicate their life to venerating the body. The body is the boss. They become the servant of the body. Looking after the body, making it look really good, nice muscular body, slim body, whatever. And they put a lot of effort into the diets, for the sake of the appearance of the body. They take a lot of steroids to build the body, maybe even have plastic surgery. So with that type of mind that’s really attached to the body, attaching to the body, is that going to help at the time of death? The body is used to support our mind, our consciousness. And then we’re obliged, obliged to separate, to die. So really then, that’s why wealth, friends, body, are not the means of help at the time of death.
What helps at the time of death is how we’ve conducted our life. The extent to which we’ve lived our life according to Dharma. The extent to which we have lived our life in a way which benefits us. So then with this in mind, then we can have refuge.
One of the things that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is, I guess you should call it instrumental in establishing the whole process of awareness of death and the fact that we are going to die, definitely going to die and uncertain when we’re going to die and so on. She is a very strong contributing factor for the sense of alienation in society in general, particularly in the West. Of course, people, you know, pushing away death and not thinking it prominent is what happens is that people then get very much caught up in the past, the things of the past, regrets of the past, and also caught up, obsessed with plans of the future and then forget about what’s most important in the present time and how to use our life from moment to moment in a way that’s beneficial.
But it’s also important to remember this meditation on death, that in the traditional Buddhist texts, the strongest impact is encouraging spiritual practice in general. But although it has its effect of staying in the present moment and practicing Dharma, that does not necessarily mean as a result of that you don’t plan. Someone might say, “Oh, it’s alright for you to say that. You’re a Buddhist monk. You don’t have responsibility for raising your family and all these types of things. You know? Because if I just remain in the present moment, then I’m not going to plan for the future, and I have certain responsibilities and our society has to function. So you can drop out on your own trip, but this isn’t a practical way to live anyone’s life.”
This doesn’t necessarily follow because Lama Zopa says, you know, we need to be prepared both for the possibility that we are going to die in the meantime, also to be prepared that we could continue to live on. It doesn’t just mean in terms of Dharma and your responsibility, you know, if you’re married and you’ve got children, your responsibilities are there. So to abandon those would be counter to Dharma. So that attitude that says, “I’ve got to think about now, what I could do now, because I might die today, I’m going to go and meditate and abandon my responsibility,” I suspect it would be counter to Dharma. Alright.
So last week, you know, started talking on the four tasks. I couldn’t think of the word last week. Four tasks of living and dying that’s been outlined by Christine Longaker, a teacher of Buddhism who’s very much involved in caring and support for people dying. So she’s integrated Buddhist practices, Buddhist understanding into this explanation of how we live our life, four tasks of living and dying.
So, hopefully, the message here in Buddhism is to get that warning bell going already well before the last moment of death. So that one’s life is lived in such a way that at the time of death, the mind’s going to be peaceful. Then it’s actually said that it’s not the case that, or it could be said that if there’s a consistency that how you’re living your life, how it is at the time of death, that if you’re living your life in a very peaceful and beneficial state of mind anyway, it would be a state of mind that would be conducive to happiness in the very moment, at that moment, you’re alive. And so there’s four tasks of living and dying, the first two mentioned last week.
The first is understanding and transforming suffering because whether we like it or not, we can experience problems, difficulties, pain, whatever you like. And so the best thing is to develop the skill to be able to transform it so that through this life it’s beneficial but also as well people have it then at the time of death. Suffering is inevitable, so develop that skill so we’re better able to deal with the situation.
And the second one we covered last week was developing connection and forgiveness and letting go along those lines. I think there might be another time to look at them basically along those lines. Making connection with others, it’s important sometimes to make connection to others. Developing forgiveness, understanding, and then letting go.
And so then the third one tonight is preparing spiritually for death. These four categories, they’re not distinct categories, it seems to me anyway. They overlap. So preparing spiritually for death is indicating this is something that is the wisest thing to do while we are alive. So rather than just living the life in pursuit of pleasure, an important part of life is actually preparing the mind, spiritually, for death.
Spiritually, His Holiness when he talks about spirituality, he says, I don’t know if it’s exactly the same here. But he says religion isn’t essential for people in their lives, but spiritual practice is. So it makes sense to do it in this life because this is what brings happiness in life but also brings happiness at the time of death. So the more that we can familiarize our mind with the Dharma way, then fulfillment is likely in preparation for the time of death.
It’s interesting that, I think probably not in all cases, but I think most people have heard of near death experiences and quite frequently from people who come from these near death experiences, that label near death experiences. But they have experiences there, often talking about light, white light, some white light or a tunnel or seeing some being. But very frequently when they come back, they come back with a changed view about what’s most important in life. And it usually relates to such things as the idea that from which you live one’s life in a way that’s caring.
Kerry Packer. He had a heart attack. People can remember. He was playing, what’s it called? Polo. Yeah. Right. And an ambulance was called and he was resuscitated. I guess it was an emergency ambulance and he survived. After he survived, he recovered. He said, “Oh, I can tell you this. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. I can guarantee you there’s nothing there.” That was his conclusion, and it’s certainly not the conclusion of Buddhism.
But it was still interesting that I don’t think he spoke about seeing a white light or a vision or anything like that. It was emergency resuscitation equipment, one of the ambulances in New South Wales. So it’s a near death experience. I forget to talk about it a bit, but something else says that there was something that’s going on and that they should come back. They’ve been given a second chance to use their life in a more constructive way. To let go, to relinquish attachment.
So, you know, anger, anger is really destructive. Anger comes and grows. The attachment is there, it invades it. And when we, the more we cling to these things like this, the more we cling to them, the more that they feel solid to us. The more that they feel solid to us, the more we suffer, I think. Attachment is, it’s a toxicant. It’s like if your mind, in the morning, your mind’s in space, the space in the mind there and you’re seeing things in a certain sort of way. But when attachment comes into the mind, the conditions come together. It quickly distorts the way you see things. Completely, almost like a hallucinogenic drug. It tells you a different story altogether.
So what have we got? I was obsessed. You know, whatever we can do to lessen attachment. Attachment, working against attachment, is a style of practice. If your activity is working towards supporting attachment, it’s a mistake. So whatever we can do to work to lessen our attachment, we should really rejoice whenever we’re able to do it.
So when events take place in our life, we experience pain, loss, and disappointment. They can be opportunities for us because we can see that what was actually, more of its attachment, is the basis of that anyway, is disappointment because it built up a whole story about whatever it was that you were going to have. That’s a lie because it’s telling us that these things that we see are the source of happiness. That’s not to say that we can’t have some enjoyment in them but when we see that object with attachment, “I can’t do without it. It’s happiness in and of itself.”
Just like, you know, if you go to a shopping center and walk in the shopping center and there’s this really beautiful, you know, coat, or a pair of shoes there. You see, it’s really nice. The softness in the leather. I don’t even have to touch it. I can see what it is, the style and so on. And you see someone go to the shop, “Oh, maybe they’re going to buy them.” Or else it’s going to cost us five hundred bucks. How am I going to tell my partner about that?
And and so then it’s beguiling, right, the whole thing. It’s jumping out of the shop window. Other things are there but all you can see is that object and “I’ve got to have that object.” It’s like mental glue that seizes the whole of your mind and it’s one with your mind. Your mind’s stuck into it like this. And then you can buy that object and wear it and you wear it. And a week later and it’s not worn out or no scratches or anything but you’re not even really interested to see it. It doesn’t appear how it would appear at the peak of the attachment point. How can that change?
We can do this many, many times. This is our custom. And that distracts you from the spiritual practice because it’s also when attachment is there, then you also want to secure and protect that thing. And if it’s attachment in relation to people, then you’re jealous of others. So there’s very little space or, you know, it’s good for practice.
So we see these objects as a source of happiness and there’s a pattern. Then we also see the object, we believe the object exists out there independently of my mind. So those shoes, those boots I’m seeing there that I want to possess and how they appear to me, I believe that that’s how they appear, that’s how they exist. It looks like it’s just from its own side, the appearance on them. I’m not saying there isn’t an external object, but what’s regarding me is not the object in and of itself, but it’s what I’m projecting onto it.
This other person will go, “Where’d you get those boots? They’re terrible.” And then you’ll still believe, “Well, I’m right. They’re wrong because I’m seeing it the right way.” But the attachment always lies to us, telling us what we’re seeing and what we want to possess is so exaggerating. It tells us that it’s actually existing in the side of the object rather than a creation from our mind.
So the more of the time, you know, then the death time comes and if we lessen our attachment mind, there’s going to be less turbulence. Well, because what our life is about is impermanence. The objects don’t last. We’re constantly separated. The attachment creates this wound. So a life lived if we’re able to slowly start with whatever we can do with that through intelligent understanding, not punishing ourselves. “I shouldn’t be attached. Didn’t you learn your lesson from your last boyfriend or your last girlfriend? That caused you a problem. So don’t do it again.”
I hope you’d like that because it won’t work that way. It’s just a matter of trying to, you know, whatever skill we can develop with Dharma, especially, I think, those practices of seeing objects. So if we do this as a part, preparing really spiritually for death. Also, whatever we can do in developing compassion as well is spiritually preparing for death.
In one of Stephen Levine’s works, he’s a Buddhist teacher in America who also supports people who are dying and especially the children as well. His story there, he goes to visit a young girl and she’s about twelve and she has leukemia and she’s dying from leukemia and he goes to see her and starts to talk to her. And he asked about her situation. She said, “You know what? I’m going to die.” And he says, “Well, how does this, you know, it’s not worth it. How does this, how do you feel about this?” And she says, “I think Jesus is kind in heaven, but he’s not kind on earth.”
So I guess Stephen Levine being an insightful guy and he says, “Well, in that case, for this girl, then if it’s a case that Jesus can’t be trusted on earth then it’s pretty difficult to trust Him in heaven as well.” So a person who’s untrusted in one location can’t really trust Him somewhere else and it’s very difficult to have the faith to understand how can I really have faith in this being?
And she says, “I really like her, a friend of mine.” And so the other kids there, they make fun of her or are wearing masks to her or laughing at her like this. And then the girl sitting there, standing there for a few minutes and then she says, “Oh, I think Jesus is kind. Yeah. And Jesus is kind on earth also.” Meaning that. And then she went on to say that this experience, she said, this experience of appreciation of another person and their suffering is something that she found so, so very invaluable. And she recognized she was fortunate through this illness that she got this and the other kids are missing out on. That was something that she didn’t want to, you know, really appreciated.
There’s a guy. There’s something that made me think of the situation where someone who’s diagnosed with terminal illness in the situation that they and they’re in the process of, you know, whatever. It looks like a brain tumor, eighteen months or something like that to live, something like that to die. But this guy’s wife is pregnant. She’s just about to have a child. And then you ask, “Well, so what is the thing that most upsets you? What are you most concerned about in this situation?” He said, “Well, because I want to, I won’t ever be able to talk to my child. My child will die before I know my child. My child won’t know me.”
But actually even in that situation, you can sort of see, you know, it’s terrible. One way you can see how it’s a terrible situation. But from another way, it could be used in a beneficial way that given that he is so concerned about this relationship with the child, that it becomes an opportunity for him to leave something for his child that he keeps a journal or a diary and writes in it every day. His experience, what he’s doing and how he’s going, in such a way that he’s writing it to his son or daughter.
So his son or daughter may never, you know, may not know him. So what a wonderful gift in a sense because this child will have this as a memory of the father, they’ll never know, but even a greater gift because how many people have a situation when they know they will die? So it’s possible that, you know, that which we would see is very negative probably can be transformed into something positive.
As well as that, it’s not only that, but it’s a sense of the despair or the distress of the partner in that situation. The partner who knows and senses that. So I mentioned last week, we’re just talking a little bit today about this thing that an Indian doctor was saying. I read her thing on the Guardian newspaper, an oncologist, said, you know, any person, a person who accepts mortality does an untold favor, an extraordinary favor to others when it comes to their death.
And I think that refers whether you’re the person who’s dying or whether you’re a person who’s a friend or a good person. You have to accept your own mortality within your life. You have to accept mortality from someone else, that’s unfair to the carers and the doctors as well. It makes it very difficult for the doctors. That’s a good point. I don’t know. Do it with acceptance so you can do us a favor. Not like that.
Because it’s also not an exact result beyond that, just that incidence if you die and you die easily, that helps those people there, helps all the other carers, but other people that observe it makes a huge difference as well. So this is describing here the death of the previous Karmapa, the head of the Kagyu Order of Tibetan Buddhism.
So the Karmapa, a great master and head of one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism, died in a hospital in the United States in nineteen eighty one. He was an extraordinary inspiration to all those around him because of his constant shift toward awareness and compassion. Of course he’s an exceptional being, right? So Doctor Ranulfo Sanchez, Chief of Surgery, said “I personally felt that His Holiness was not just an ordinary man. When he looked at you, it was like he was searching inside you as if he could see through you. I was very struck by the way he looked at me and seemed to understand what was going on. He affected practically everyone in the hospital who came in contact with him. Many times when we felt he was near death he would smile at us and tell us we were wrong when anything was wrong.”
His Holiness never took any pain medication. We the doctors would see him and we realized he must be in a lot of pain so we’d ask him, “Are you having a lot of pain today?” He’d say, “No.” Towards the end we knew he could sense how anxious we became for him, and he’d answer only with an ironic smile and such an extremely tired smile and say “no.” All his vital signs were very low. I gave him a shot so that he could communicate in his last minutes. I left the room for a few minutes while he conversed with the tulkus, that is those lamas who had knowledge of the rebirth process. He assured them he was not intending to die that day.
One of them returned five minutes later and he was sitting straight up, with his eyes wide open, and said clearly, “Hello, how are you?” All his vital signs reversed and within half an hour he was sitting up in bed, talking and laughing. Medically this is unheard of. The nurses were all amazed. One of them lifted his sleeve to show me, pointing with wonder.
The nursing staff noticed that the Karmapa’s body did not follow the usual progression of rigor mortis and decay but seemed to remain just as if having only died. After a while they became aware that the area around his heart was still warm. Doctor Sanchez said, “They brought me into the room about thirty-six hours after he died. I felt the area over his heart that was warmer than the surrounding area. It’s something for which there was no medical explanation.”
So that’s, I mean, that’s talking about an exceptional being and control, but it shows at least some idea that, you know, if a person can die in a peaceful way, it’s going to be a support and affects others very profoundly. Alright. So preparing spiritually for death and then next is finding meaning in life.
As I said, these seem to, I don’t know if these seem to be blurred. It’s not a distinct category. So in the discussion here, it goes into three aspects of, you know, really finding meaning in life. There are three aspects of it. First, there’s a sense of self-acceptance, acceptance of oneself as we are at this point of time. But in Buddhism as well we presume having kindness for yourself like this. We have an explanation of why it is we are as we are and the negative things we have come from past lives. So we carry this with an attitude of compassion understanding that although it’s true we have these tendencies which are not healthy they can be eliminated. They’re superficial to how we are.
So there’s this lack of self-hatred. It’s bad for us because of how we are. I’m going to mention, I think last week someone said, I think it might be idealizing things, it’s an interesting one to think about, even the most obnoxious Tibetan has good self-esteem. So I don’t really prove it like that, but there is a certain perspective then. You understand that it’s true that people can have negative qualities, but that doesn’t mean a person is essentially bad. So we hold that up. Positive self-esteem is the basis for developing meaning.
Second thing in support of developing and having meaning in life is to generate or cultivate authentic communication with others. Communication becomes authentic, genuine, where you’re not just making use of people for your own self-benefit. There may be periods of time when we fall apart and so on. But an important part of the journey is the sense that, okay, that the life has meaning.
Viktor Frankl, he was in the Holocaust and he survived. His wife died there. His mother and father died there. So a horrendous ordeal. But his experience there was that there were times there when he was undergoing a spiritual experience, his mind was filled with breathless wonder, particularly when he described his situation, when he thought about experiencing all the suffering, he did this practice, which is a Buddhist practice, really, although he hadn’t heard of it.
I mean, he hadn’t heard of it, but just his own experience. And that was that thinking of his mother, I don’t know then if he knew his mother had died or not, but probably thought about her kindness, but he didn’t know whether she had died or maybe he did know she died, but he thought about whether she was going to be suffering. And he said, “It might be the case that there’s suffering that I’m experiencing now, which is vast, many of us experience a lot of suffering, may it be the case that the suffering, if I take my mother’s share of suffering and by doing this perhaps create merit for her.”
And as he went through this internal experience, his mind was completely at peace. So the irony of being in a place of suffering and opening up to the idea of thinking about someone else, thinking about yourself in the state of heart that you probably would not have thought would happen, it was after that war that he learned this and this is profound. “I have a responsibility.” And he made his purpose, I’m sure, to not become embittered and to bring benefit to others. So he wrote that book, Man’s Search for Meaning.
His basic message was there that if a person has a purpose and or a love for another, if it is love, he’s not talking about attachment, you know, possessive. Real. A true love for another. And this is a genuine heart for another, then a being can deal with virtually any level of suffering. So if you have a purpose or meaning, you can deal with virtually any level of suffering. So important to you is finding some sort of meaning.
A friend of mine who I met just after I left school, the first place I moved into just after I found a house. It was in another way very good. He was quite involved in Dharma. But his life was very smooth and he stayed in the same job. He’d actually migrated from Holland. Very stable. He stayed in the same job as a surveyor. Surveyor. The same job for close on forty years. Raised the family of two sons, two sons, and everything was really sorted. Sort of envied that situation he had because I couldn’t get things together. And I was looking for something that he seemed to have it all put together like this.
Then he came to retire. But during that time up to the leading up to that time when I got involved in Buddhism, he would sometimes talk about Buddhism and say, “Yeah, but because of the dirt in India. It’s not, you know, clean and so on.” I think he felt quite threatened like this. Then he retired and I think he went through a bit of a life crisis and he realized his health wasn’t good. And he died suddenly, not unexpectedly. But in the lead up to his death, only weeks before his death, he said to his wife, “I don’t even know why I’m here. I don’t even know what purpose is in my life.”
Meaning in life is not simply accumulating heaps of wealth or becoming famous and powerful. None of those things are wrong, but just in and of themselves, they don’t give meaning. Okay.
So just to say something, right, about the whole thing to do with. Because it says two points there. So going through this four tasks of living and dying. To do with the whole thing of people dying and our friends dying and going to funerals and establishing the continuity of sentient beings at that point is important for many people. Of course, when it happens, death happens and when the funeral happens, there’s so much distress and despair that applies.
It’s an interesting thing. There’s a role for monks and nuns very clearly in funerals, but there isn’t really a role for monks and nuns in marriages. It will discourage you, you know. Monks say, “No. You don’t go through those marriages.” It seems more and more I think about it and more and more it makes sense. So we say in terms of someone dying, the important thing is to get a sense of the continuity of the person. It’s not the case that this person is, it’s all finished, all over. And that’s how I used to think that a person’s died and it’s finished.
Because if you think that way as well, you’ll wreck your own life. You won’t want to think about your death because then you start thinking, “What was the purpose of it?” It’s all ending. That person’s life is nothing more. And in Buddhism, we say there is a continuity, not just the mental continuity. So even if you don’t believe in the continuity of the mind, you can still believe in the continuity of the person.
But it seems that we would say that it’s important to really sense that there is continuity and our responsibility to support that continuity. So although in Buddhism, it is very much discouraging of attachment, at the same time, there’s a strong emphasis to never forget the loved ones. Never forget the loved ones. So it’s an interesting thing, you know. To focus according to, you know, the individuals and people’s inclinations and, you know, feelings vary and what they believe about what happens takes place after this life.
But even if you don’t believe in future lives, you can’t be for sure, you can’t know for sure that they might have ceased. So give the benefit of the doubt there might be something, a person’s life, and do responsibility with the person who’s died to put your effort in with the others and a heartfelt prayer for this person to have, you know, for Jesus or whatever, like this, or essentially, the person has a good rebirth. Particularly the idea that this person takes rebirth in a family, makes human rebirth to a family, connections to spiritual practice, with conditions allowed for the awakening of spiritual practice, that that person meets teachers into the future and develops their mind, so along those lines.
And as well, in the in-between time of making prayers here together, that you’re influencing that consciousness. So it takes that degree of influence to be more positive. Then also as well, just to think, you know, that we’re in Buddhism. The idea of wishing to meet the person in the future was not good from a Buddhist point of view if it’s purely attachment. That’s not necessarily the case. If you have attachment to the person and you’re clinging and so on, that’s not good because it may be a block for the person to take a rebirth. But what you can do in practice is to make up or create, “May I meet this person or a loved one again in the future? Why? So that I can be of benefit.”
So implied in that is a personal responsibility to develop oneself now in positive ways, wisdom, compassion so that when you meet that person in the future, you can benefit them. You may not recognize them. That doesn’t matter. But if it’s existing, we’ve tried to modify it to direct it in a more constructive way.
Then the other way is the other thing about the continuity. If you don’t believe in mental continuity, then the idea is that this person introduced us to the idea of love, they expressed that in some way. So our awareness of love, that dimension is due to their kindness. So now we carry into our heart the memory of the love that they gave us and they taught us and it continues with us for the rest of our life. So that every time we remember the person after they’ve died, rather than a total sense of loss, that person continues on with you, influencing everyone into the future.
So this is what can be done in the in-between period. So that would perhaps not have been more positive, maybe before, and becomes potentially, as well as that, for those people who are very close to us, then, you know, we have responsibility for their belongings. And we’re not even aware that we can make offerings in the name of the person. Someone who’s died, if they have some activity or project or organization that they belong to, we can make offerings to that activity in their name in a way that that activity in the name of this person so that activity or foundation or charity benefits due to this offering in the name of this person.
And likewise, a person’s possessions when it comes to giving them away, again, not just tossing them out. You know, give them away and think, “Well, maybe this will benefit someone.” Another thing can be done also at that time of death because it’s associated with death, loss of life, is to remember the lives of others and, of course, we can make our own offerings to charities and so on in the name of the person.
But also saving the lives of other animals. It’s a practice from Tibetan tradition of buying animals if they’re to die. You know, they’re like worms that are being raised for bait or other fish that are going to be obviously going to be eaten. Yabbies is another live one that we can buy those creatures. It’s very popular and simple. Buy those creatures and then release them in the name of that person.
So when you do that, when we do that, the action becomes, there’s charity for a start. If you release the, whatever animal it is, as you release it, you know, if you can then you’re going to offer it some sort of food so it becomes a charity of giving something to this creature. And then there’s the charity or giving of love which is wishing the creature to have happiness. So it’s generating that attitude of love for this creature, “May this creature have a good rebirth in the future, may it make contact with Dharma.”
Then there’s a charity of giving Dharma and that would be whatever prayer, whatever prayer that you say over that creature, things like that. And then charity of giving protection, so you’re protecting its life. So all being done in the name of the person who’s died. So that person who’s died, but the memory of the person who’s died then what you’re generating out of this is a wish for life and that life is protected. So you think that?
You know, can be even a start. There’s a funeral at Chenrezig Institute years ago. I was at that center in Queensland before I was a monk. It’s nineteen eighty six, I think. There was a young child there who was killed. I think twelve, thirteen months old, maybe fourteen months old. Probably not a hundred percent sure, but probably hit by a car coming down from the office and kitchen there. I’m not too sure. Anyway, it was, you know, it was a terrible thing. But I was amazed then because it was a firsthand experience going to the funeral, a Buddhist funeral and the parents, parents of the Buddhist, how with the support of Buddhism, how they were able to transform it into something really positive. It was quite amazing. The father spoke at the funeral. Alright.
So any questions or… Oh, yeah. We’re doing, yes. Getting it together. There’s a, I think there’s a basic outline suggesting that it’s, and that would include what I basically said, that kind of view along those lines. It seems important, the continuity and the support and I really kind of said.
Because I don’t really, I don’t think so. Not so much. I’m just even thinking, you know, Margaret, Sandra, her mom, died at Chenrezig. She was in the house just about, she was there for three days after she died. It was about three days. And because she didn’t have a, you know, because there’s no family, there’s only a sister, not a father. Yeah. Yeah. So that was sad. And then there was a cremation thing, but I don’t know what happened there. That happened there.
It was made to do with the Powa. The Powa. The other thing, but what makes it different, the significant thing was the idea of the prayers and so on. One thing was not to touch the body for three days, you know, and then during that time when the body was there, we’d go in there and sing some prayers and get that done. And then for the next forty-nine days, just finished. Finish on the fifteenth. Forty-nine days. Seven sevens. Then they were doing a Tsog practice every day and a Medicine Buddha practice every day. It’s, you know, it’s different than, you know, like, in the straight funeral service.
When you say to do funerals and to really have stuff in place for the lay people here, I think. Well, I was going to say there’s another thing that’s involved with this as well. Is that I think what we would think, but certainly I would be thinking, you should probably take into account whose funeral or which is the person who died and all these different things. So you usually incorporate, you should take into account, you know, other Christian people there, how do they connect if it’s something that they can relate to. So you’re doing something to communicate to them so that they can be involved in some way, remain common ground.
So very often in these Christian, because of this, it’s a different situation to say to that sort of. So it’s a very flexible thing with taking into account certain principles. So what I’m saying?
Yes. May I ask, was there any transformation during those three days? When you say transformation, what do you mean? Of the body. Of the body. I’m not too sure. Myself, I didn’t, you know, the nuns were the ones, I mean, I did some practices there, but the nuns are the ones who were right there and they sort of got to Margaret before and they also, you know, they’re the ones, the nuns who do it. So I don’t know whether, you know, because often they say that unconsciously there’s blood that appears or in the sex orifice down below, but that doesn’t always happen and especially, you know, someone whose parent has been, you know, had a serious illness for a long period of time that she had.
Then was it cancer? Yeah. Cancer. She had cancer. She was very emaciated by the time she died. But I don’t think that was, I think I heard that there wasn’t anything like that. When they made the decision, they did, often they say three days. It was three and a half days. I think maybe the nuns were having a bit of a block. I don’t think it was, a decision was made on the basis of, I’m not sure on the basis of anything they noticed. There was an awareness of, can you smell the body? Yes or no?
I thought I noticed it the first night. That’s my impression. But then I, and it didn’t make much sense to me because I thought, well, because you could, you know, because she’d been, you know, for so long, and then the smell might have changed, but I thought that’s what I just thought. But anyway, that’s what inclinations were that we didn’t need to take. That smell, you mean? Is that just so? Well, I don’t know. That’s what I think. That’s a good question because the body is decaying anyway. Others didn’t, others said that they didn’t notice.
But after the three days or three and a half days, I don’t know, I didn’t go there then. I didn’t ask if they noticed by that time but there was an awareness. I don’t know for how long along those lines if there was anything noticed. And then what they do when they chant in some sense? Then they were doing, I’m trying to think. Certainly, while I was there, were doing practice, right, at that time and probably initially very early on, like the first night or through the first night they were there continuously. And then during the rest of the time, they went there all the time, we went there quite often during that three days, three and a half days.
And then after the three and a half days, then the body was taken away and cremated, I think, a couple days later. Then they followed the practices, which I think must have come from Lama Zopa, and that was to do this Tsog practice with lama guys. Those huge. Oh, vultures. I mean, vultures. Alright. What do you call them? Vultures. Lama guys are huge. They’re bigger than vultures. Oh. The wingspan is about four meters. Oh, okay. No. They live in the Himalayas. Yeah. Okay. Right. Sure.
I, no. No. Here, I don’t think that would be too great, too many people out there. You mean the government? Yeah. Well, I don’t think you’d get permission. I don’t know how it works, but I think that because I’m just thinking myself because who would do this Indian? What’s that Indian group that does this? The Parsis. Yes, yes, yes. Right? So they have that I think as a part of their practice. Right? So I don’t know how it works because now it’s, you know, the government’s trying to accommodate all the different religions, whether they could apply and say to the government, “Look, we’ve got this belief. So could we feed our bodies to the vultures?”
The government clearly doesn’t care about sentient beings at all at all. That’s obvious every day, every hour, every minute. So can’t we go ahead and just carry on? Do it. Oh, well, I think that probably most people who, that would recognize the problems that that would create and I think most Lamas would also recognize that. For instance, you know, previous, this is a different, much more modest sort of thing, of course, previous times in Buddhist countries, especially Tibet, you know, people would wear, monks and nuns would wear their robes till they’re falling off. They’re probably going to wash them, but they’re all patched and dirty and so on. Right? And that was the standard thing to do.
But the message from the Lamas now is you’ve got to have your robes in good order. You’ve got to wash them. You’re supposed to keep them clean. Yeah. Why? Because of that, especially the culture. Yeah. Well, because if you walked around with patched dirty robes, you get smelly. You get what? Smelly? Yeah. Well, that’s, that’d be a point too. That’d be a point. But even if you didn’t get smelly, the patched dirty robes, it wouldn’t look so good. Yeah. So you take into account the culture.
But isn’t it kind of purification to wash your robe daily? I’ve certainly done that. I’ve never heard that. That might be some truth, but I’ve never heard that. I thought I’d read that too. There might be something in the Vinaya about that. I don’t know. Because they make their own robes. They dye them. I think, well, from the point of view, well, I guess, from the point of view, it’s whether it’s beneficial or not depending upon his motivation.
Presumably, you know, he’s, one way I think he’s pretty brief as a business person. But I think there was another element that probably, you know, reached out to other people and a sort of empathy and he wanted to help. So it’s positive from that point of view. He’s prolonging lives. By doing that, he’s helping to prolong people’s lives. And whether those lives, that’s beneficial or not, I guess, from the side of the person, is depending on how they use their lives.
Well, if, well, yeah, I mean, it’d probably have to be their karma to have their karma change. Right. Because when you say that, the risk of that sort of, if you take that type of thinking about not wanting to interfere with other people’s karma, is that what can happen is then, but you’re not saying this, but some people can use that justification for not doing things to help others. “It’s their karma.” Right? And the people who use that word is a way to justify.
So I would think in that situation, if you’ve got the money to use that money to help people’s lives, that’s really good. And in general, yeah, probably save people’s lives carefully. Okay. Yeah. I mean, a question might arrive at all of your other things, but I think…