Living with Old Age, Sickness, and Death

How can you live, in a world of Old Age, Sickness, and Death? Not a treatis on kamma and rebirth, but rather a discussion on the practial understanding of the realities of this life, that all beings grow old, grow sick, and die, and then knowing this reality, what are the choices we make in how we should best live our lives in the short time we have.

Transcript

Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arhato Sama Sambuddhassa Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arhato Sama Sambuddhassa Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arhato Sama Sambuddhassa So,

Just a quick note.

If anybody ever has trouble hearing me during this retreat,

Feel free to speak up.

Raise your hand and I'll talk louder.

I am from New Jersey so I can talk loud,

Just like all you New Yorkers here.

So,

I want to begin this mindfulness of death retreat by telling you guys a story.

Those of you who have been around Buddhism for a while,

You may know this story.

You may have heard it told many different times and many different ways.

And indeed,

It is pretty much the most famous story in Buddhism when it comes to death.

It's a story about a woman named Kisugotami.

Kisugotami is one of the most famous Arhat bhikkhunis of the Buddhist disciples at the time.

And this is the story of before she became a female monastic.

So,

The story begins with her being young and married.

And there was a problem.

She had a problem and it meant a lot of strife and a lot of issues with the in-laws and all these kind of things.

The problem was she had tried many times but yet she could not conceive a child.

And so this caused her a lot of stress and strife and anxiety.

But after a certain time,

She was able to have a child.

She gave birth to a healthy child and this child was the light of her life.

Everybody,

Once she had the child and the in-laws all liked her,

Everything was good.

Everybody was her friend,

All these kind of things.

But then,

We don't know how old the child was but the child died.

And you can imagine what that must be like.

So,

She pretty much went out of her mind.

And she thought,

You know,

At the time of the Buddha,

There were many,

Many teachers,

Many gurus going around teaching a lot of different kind of things.

A lot of them were reputed to do all kinds of miracles and all these kind of things.

So,

She thought,

Well,

I know,

I'll go to one of these gurus to try to have them bring my son back.

And so,

The story goes at the time that obviously the Buddha was one of the most highly respected and well-known of these teachers.

So,

She said,

Well,

If the Buddha can't bring my son back,

Nobody can.

And so,

She went to the Buddha with her son or child in her arm.

And she asked the Buddha if he could bring her child back.

And he didn't say,

No,

What are you,

Stupid?

Go away.

He said,

Yes,

I can.

And initially,

You might think,

Well,

That's kind of mean.

Because you know what the ending is.

But there's a reason.

The Buddha was very intelligent and understanding and compassionate in these regards.

So,

She was so excited that the Buddha said,

Yes,

I can bring your child back.

And he said,

But you have to find me a house.

Go to a house in this town and bring me back a mustard seed.

She said,

Oh,

Wow,

That's easy.

Everybody has mustard seeds.

It's the most,

One of the most common things that we use.

But he wasn't done yet.

He said,

Bring me back a mustard seed from a house where nobody has died.

And so,

That didn't faze Kisugoto me.

She's like,

OK,

I'm going to go do this.

And she started going door to door.

Hello,

Do you have a mustard seed?

Oh,

Yes,

We have mustard seeds.

Oh,

Did anybody die in this house?

Yes,

My mother,

My father,

My aunt,

My uncle,

Etc.

,

Etc.

And so,

She's going through the town and every place,

Everywhere she's going.

No,

Somebody died.

And so,

She starts to get anxiety filled.

She starts to get sad and depressed and worried that she's not going to find this house.

And so,

She keeps doing it.

She keeps going house to house in this city,

Trying to find a place.

And towards the end,

She began to realize that this was a fruitless endeavor,

That she was not going to find a place.

And pushing,

Getting through that period of sadness and depression and moving towards that wisdom and understanding of,

Well,

Everybody else around me has lost all of these relatives,

Family and friends.

So she began to understand.

But she came back to the Buddha and she wept and she said,

You know,

I couldn't find anything.

I couldn't find a house where somebody had not died.

And so,

The Buddha said,

Just so,

Kisugoto me,

There is no way,

There is no one that can escape death.

No matter what age,

No matter where you're from,

Who you are,

Anything like that,

Nobody can escape death.

And it can come at any time.

And so,

It was from this that Kisugoto me decided that she wanted to follow the Buddha and follow his path.

And so she became a bhikkhuni.

And then,

As I said,

She became one of the most well-known bhikkhunis of disciples.

You can go in the suttas and you can read her speaking about her life and all these kind of things.

Specifically in,

There's a section called the Verses of the Elder Nuns.

And you can see her story and her talking about her path to awakening and freedom.

So that's Kisugoto me.

So what I'd like to do is raise your hand if you've lost a family member or a friend or anybody close to you.

I see people with no hands up.

Wow.

I want to talk to you guys after the retreat.

That's amazing.

Well,

You can see,

At least for almost all of us,

If Kisugoto me came to our house,

She'd be out of luck.

That's because we're all part of the club.

Welcome to the Saṃsāra Club.

This is part of our existence,

Part of our fate.

We all have this same fate.

We are all here.

We come into this life.

We come into this life.

We do our best to try to live it as best as we can.

Not knowing what is the best way and what should we do and all these kinds of things,

Beset with doubts and worries.

And then,

Just like everybody else before us and everybody else after us,

We grow old,

We get sick,

And we die.

It's as simple as that.

It's a very bitter pill to take,

Especially at first.

But the more you grow to accept this,

The more you find peace.

The more you are able to be at peace with the world and understanding that all you can do is decide what you want to do,

What you think is best,

With the time you have left.

And so that is really my main message throughout this retreat.

This is,

In my opinion,

This is the focus of doing this mindfulness of death,

Is understanding and moving forward.

And some of you know my story,

Some of you I've known for a little bit.

I come to you as somebody who has experienced much,

Much loss and death and sickness in his life.

Ironically enough,

Not me personally,

But many,

Many people around me.

Family members,

Friends,

Spouse,

All that.

And so I hesitate to speak too much about my personal experiences,

But when I do,

I'd like for you to understand that it's because I feel like my experiences can help other people understand that there is a way,

A better way of handling loss and death and all that kind of stuff.

Normally when we think of these things,

We think of being very sad and our life is ruined and over and we can't live with this person or that person,

But I'm here to tell you that you actually can.

You can choose to do that and that you're stronger than you think.

We can talk about dukkha.

I'm sure most of you know what dukkha is.

This mindfulness of death,

Marna nasati,

Is actually contemplating,

Understanding dukkha.

Dukkha is the first noble truth.

It is the first truth that the Buddha understood and found and gave to us,

Often translated as suffering.

And then today people say,

Buddha said life is suffering.

He didn't quite say that,

But what he did say is that this is the noble truth of dukkha,

That this exists in our experience.

And dukkha is simply all these things in our life that are difficult to bear.

You can think of it as suffering,

You can think of it as stress,

That's another way it's translated.

You can think of it as dissatisfaction,

That's another,

Or disenchantment.

These are all ways that people think of dukkha.

But when you see the Buddha's definition of dukkha,

Then you can understand,

Yes,

This is difficult to bear.

But what is dukkha according to the Buddha?

Old age,

Sickness,

Death,

Suffering,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief,

Despair,

Being separated from who and what we like,

Having to deal with who and what we don't like,

Not getting what we want.

That is dukkha.

That is all really,

Really difficult to bear.

And so this is,

In my opinion,

The reason why doing something like awareness of death is so hard.

Because you are doing exactly what the Buddha wants us to do,

Go against the stream.

Normally we just flow with the stream.

But this Buddhist practice,

The Buddha says that this goes against the stream.

Because most people live an unexamined life.

Socrates said an unexamined life is not worth living.

And the Buddha similarly said something along those lines in the Dhammapada.

He says that those who are mindful never die.

Those who are not mindful are as if already dead.

They're zombies,

The walking dead.

So what we want to do is examine our life.

We don't want to be zombies.

We want to understand and face these fears,

These anxieties,

And these realities of life with courage,

Understanding,

And compassion.

And when you're able to do that for yourself,

You're able to do that for everybody else as well.

Maybe you are not suffering from sickness,

But you might know somebody who is.

You understand what this sickness is about.

You can understand how to help them.

Maybe you are not,

Well,

We're all growing old,

But maybe you're young so you don't know what it's like to be older yet.

And you're around family members and other people who are.

You can see their experience and understand from them.

One of the best pieces of advice I was given when I was young was learn from other people's mistakes.

So I always learned from my elders and learned when they taught me something,

I learned from it.

And so that is also part of,

I think,

What helped me.

So when we practice mindfulness of death,

Watching,

Observing this,

Understanding,

We come to acceptance.

When something happens to us,

We can get really resentful and really hating of people and the world and all these kinds of things.

And so that's a suffering or something that happens to us that we didn't ask for,

We didn't accept or we didn't want.

But it's very different when you voluntarily accept your own suffering.

And that as a Buddhist practitioner,

That is what you are doing.

You're taking responsibility for your own suffering,

Accepting it and following the practice to letting it go.

And the Buddha says that this mindfulness of death gives a foothold into the deathless.

That's what he called nibbana.

So do not think of that this is something like a minor thing or that we do a little bit of contemplating here and there.

This is a very important part,

As we'll see tomorrow more,

A very important part of the overall practice of meditation.

And we can see this as well in the Dhamma.

Those of you who are not familiar with what Dhamma is,

It can mean many things,

But you can think of it as the reality of nature,

The teaching of the Buddha.

And so there's qualities of the Dhamma and these qualities you can see in everything in your daily life.

The first one is Sanditika,

Means it's directly visible.

What's directly visible?

Old age,

Sickness,

Death,

Dukkha,

You can see it.

You don't have to read a book and understand some really intricate theories and all these kinds of things.

You can see it right there in your life.

Okay,

So then the next is Akaliko,

Which is unaffected by time.

What that means is that it doesn't change.

This truth does not change.

Old age,

Sickness,

And death was there for our ancestors and it will be there for the people in the future.

There's people that are scientifically trying to make us immortal and all these kinds of things.

I'll talk about that a little bit later,

But I don't hold too much stock in them being able to do that.

So this is something that no matter what time,

No matter when you're young,

You can see it.

When you're old,

You can see it.

Time means nothing to these truths.

Next is Aipassikho,

Which means come and see.

And the Buddha,

The Dhamma is inviting us to come and see these things.

Normally,

What do we do?

We don't want to see old age,

Sickness,

And death.

We want to cover it up.

We want to put it away.

We don't see,

Two,

Three hundred years ago when people died,

Everything was the wake and the funeral,

That was in people's houses.

These days we don't see anything of that.

It's all hidden away from us.

But we can,

If we want to,

We can make the choice to see because we're being invited to do so.

It's always there.

It's what the Buddha called the divine messengers,

Which we'll get into in a second.

And then Opa Naiko,

Which means leading onwards.

What is it leading onwards to?

It's leading you on.

You follow this path.

You follow what life is showing you.

It leads you to peace and to freedom.

And the final quality of the Dhamma is that it is to be realized by the wise.

So a wise person sees what is being taught to them in their life.

Life is teaching you.

Life,

Everything that happens in your life,

You can view it as something to learn and to grow from,

Or you can view it as something that's oppressing you and life sucks and all these kind of things.

I can guarantee you that second way of viewing things is not going to get you anywhere.

It's certainly not going to help you with happiness and peace and contentment and all these kind of things.

So now that we've spoken a little bit about Dukkha and how the Dhamma shows us these things,

I want to talk briefly about the story of the Buddha.

Most of you know the traditional mythological story of the Buddha.

He was the son of a king and he had three mansions and all these kind of things.

The father did all that they could to make sure that his son,

Gotama,

The Buddha,

Well he wasn't the Buddha at the time,

But the son had no worries of old age,

Sickness,

Death,

No that he never saw an old man supposedly or a sick person or a dead person or any of these kind of things.

And so the story goes that he was getting restless and he wanted to leave outside,

He wanted to go outside his kingdom,

Out of his palace and see the world and see the people.

And even though the father tried to make it all nice and pleasant,

He'd go out and everybody is young and happy and waving and all these kind of things,

Then he sees an old person that wandered in and he's like,

Well what the heck is this?

What is this creature?

And then he goes out again and he sees a sick person and it's the same thing.

And then again he goes and sees a dead person and it's the same thing.

And each time,

Supposedly Chanda is his charioteer,

The guy who was driving him,

His assistant,

And Chanda's answer is,

Chana I should say,

Is yeah this is old age,

Sickness and death,

This is even you,

All kings,

No matter what,

Everybody is subject to this.

And supposedly that got the Buddha pretty depressed and pretty contemplative and he decided you know what,

There's got to be a way out of this and so I'm going to leave everything and go and try to find it.

So that's like really the story.

Although there was a fourth sight that the Buddha saw.

The fourth sight was a renunciant,

A bald headed guy in robes in the woods.

So he thought,

Well maybe this guy is onto something right.

So that's what he did.

The story is that he cut his hair and just went into the woods.

Now that's the traditional story that comes down.

There's a wonderful sutra,

It's in the Anguttara Nikaya,

It's called Delicate.

And I think that this is actually the beginning of where this story built up over the centuries because the Buddha is talking in this sutra about how he did say that he had three palaces,

One for each of the seasons in India and all these kinds of things.

But he was contemplating and when he saw,

He didn't say that he never saw an old person,

A sick person or a dead person.

But as he saw these things he contemplated and he said,

It's not right for me to be disgusted if I see an old person or a sick person because I'm subject to that as well.

If I were to feel that way,

That wouldn't be proper and it wouldn't help me.

So the same thing with a sick person,

The same thing with a dead person.

He's understanding,

He is starting to go against the stream.

He's understanding,

Well this is for me to be disgusted with this,

It's not really helpful,

It's not right.

And so then he says as he contemplated this,

His intoxication with three things went away.

His intoxication with youth,

His intoxication with health and his intoxication with life.

And by that it doesn't mean that he became suicidal.

This is not that he starts to deny life and all these kinds of things.

It's that what he took pleasure in and what he took for granted in before was not the same once he developed this insight and understood.

And so these intoxications were vanished and he was able to start to see things without the normal delusion that most people have.

And so this is an important understanding and showing you how important understanding old age,

Sickness and death really is because these are the divine messengers.

These are showing,

These are the most direct things that you can see in your life to help you understand what life is about.

And this is where the five themes come in that I taught you guys this morning when we did the guided meditations.

If you take anything out of these two days and you make it something that you do on a regular basis,

I highly suggest you take these five themes.

We all teach you guys today and tomorrow I'll teach you guys about body contemplation and corpse contemplation and these kinds of things.

And for some of you that might be a little bit too much.

Some of you might not want to do something like that.

But the great thing about these five subjects of contemplation is that anybody at any level can use these as a tool to help understand what is this reality,

To help accept and understand that all of us are growing old,

Getting sick and will die.

And we do this,

When we do this,

We develop two things.

We develop a sense of urgency,

Meaning that we know that we are not,

You know,

That we don't have forever.

And so we want to do the best we can with what time we have.

And the other thing is we develop gratitude.

I can tell you,

And the reason why I've been harping on gratitude all today so far,

And I will,

Is because when somebody is gone,

You can replace them with memories that make you sad and dwelling on the sadness and the loss and all these kinds of things,

Or you can develop gratitude.

And I can tell you personally that I'm not sad for the people that I've lost.

I have a deep gratitude for them when I think of those people that I've lost.

A deep gratitude for the time that I had with them and what I learned from that time.

So this is always this choice that you have.

And it's much better,

As somebody who knows depression and who knows sadness,

Having that gratitude is much better.

But I can't give you that experience.

That is an experience that you have to see within your own life,

Within your own practice.

So this is why the five themes are very important.

Because even if you don't want to do the other stuff,

Keep these five themes.

When I first came to Buddhism and I saw this,

The five themes for the first time,

It blew me away because I was like,

Yes,

This is my experience.

I understand.

And to this day,

Every day,

I recollect and I remember these five themes.

So these are something that can be very beneficial to your life.

And the Buddha in many,

Many different suttas talks about that there are five things that,

A,

Nobody can guarantee against.

And B,

That nobody that are unobtainable.

And the five things are the five subjects of contemplation.

Nobody can escape old age,

Sickness,

And death.

And in the suttas,

The Buddha says,

Not even just humans,

But the deities,

Even the Mara and Brahma,

Even the highest deity,

The highest,

At the time the Brahmins considered the creator God,

Even the Buddha said,

No,

He can't escape that either.

And so,

And there's nobody that can,

Not even go into the story,

He said,

Go to me.

There's nobody that can change that.

There's nobody that can fix that in all of existence.

So one story is that he,

Buddha's with a king and while he's talking to the king and attendant comes and says,

You know,

Your queen,

Malika has died.

And so then,

You know,

He becomes very sad and crying and the Buddha says,

You know,

Old age,

Sickness,

And death,

This is the way it is.

This is part of life,

Talking to and telling him about these subjects of contemplation.

So that's why it's important to follow these,

To remember these.

And for the rest of my talk,

Actually,

This is what I'm going to be going through.

So the first one,

I am subject to old age and decay.

Why are we subject to old age and decay?

The answer is impermanence.

Everything is always changing.

Everything is unstable.

As I said in the guided meditation,

Everything arises for a time.

It persists with alteration,

Meaning that it persists,

But it's always changing.

I've been around for 39 years,

But 38 years ago I was like this.

Now I'm like this.

Pretty soon I'm going to be like this.

That's the way it is.

So when we actually,

When we see that life,

That we see that our experience,

Everything is impermanent,

Everything is unstable,

That helps us accept,

Let go,

And have peace.

Because I'll tell you what Dukkha is.

Dukkha is when we don't want to believe and accept that things will change,

That people will go in and out of our lives.

That's why I love the Pali word for impermanence is anitja.

And impermanence you can kind of understand,

Although in my opinion it's become like a buzzword these days in many ways.

But one of the other ways that you can,

If you look it up,

Anitja in the dictionary,

One of the other ways to describe it is unstable.

What does that mean?

Everything is unstable.

Something I thought of was you're in a shipwreck in the ocean and to keep yourself from drowning,

You're desperately clinging for all kinds of pieces of wood and pieces of the ship,

Right?

To keep afloat so you don't die.

And as you're doing that,

All the pieces are just breaking up as you're grasping for them.

Nothing is stable.

So there's nothing you can hold and grasp and keep the same.

Nothing.

When doing that and expecting something not to change,

That is dukkha.

That is causing our own suffering.

And so this is why when you practice these things and you learn to let go and accept,

Your suffering is lessened.

It's not easy.

It's a practice that we do day to day as part of the path as Buddhist practitioners.

It's a habit that we build.

And while we're doing that,

We're changing our mindset.

And we're changing our mindset for peace instead of suffering.

And so there's a wonderful sutta called aging.

And normally we think of the Buddha.

We think of the Buddha.

He's flying around and he has all these mystical things and all these mystical powers and all that.

And one of the reasons why this is one of my favorite suttas is because you see the Buddha as an old,

Stooped over man.

The aging is because it's the Buddha.

And it opens,

It's poetic.

It opens with the Buddha sunning his back by the rays of the setting sun.

And Ananda comes up to him.

Ananda was his chief attendant.

And this was the Buddha was like 79.

This was like close to before he died.

And Ananda's like,

Wow,

It's amazing.

I remember when your skin was so tight and shiny and everything,

You had strength and you looked good.

And now you're all old and ugly and stooped over and all these kinds of things.

And the Buddha's like,

Well,

Duh.

Yeah.

The Buddha says,

Yes.

The Buddha says,

Yes.

This is those who are those who are those who are no,

He says with health,

With youth comes old age,

With health comes illness,

With life comes death.

And so we see that it's such an amazing thing.

And it's funny because there's a little verse that the Buddha exclaims and he says,

Fee on you,

Old age.

I had to look up what fee was.

It's an old like from a hundred years ago.

And it basically means it's a humorous expression of disgust.

So today you might say the Buddha said,

Screw you old age or something like that.

And then he talks about how old age brings us the loss of our body and our freedom and all these kinds of things to be able to move around and all this.

It's just a funny,

A wonderful sutta.

And by the way,

All the suttas that I'm mentioning,

Like I did from my method retreat was here.

I have a list of them all.

So at the end of the retreat,

I'll post it up for anybody who's interested.

A lot of these suttas I found in just my own reading.

They're not something that I've heard.

There's so many gems in there that you won't hear of if you don't read it yourself.

So you can see in your own body,

Like I oftentimes I'll look at,

You know,

I can see my veins and all these kinds of things now.

When I used to,

I used to,

When I was young,

It was all nice and flat and all.

You can just look at your own body.

Even if you're young,

You can see the changes that are going on.

It's right there.

It's directly visible.

It's calling you to come and see.

If only you actually do it.

So this is why it's important.

I am subject to illness and disease.

Everything is subject to illness and disease.

It's the nature of having this body that we are subject to illness and disease.

I usually talk about this in the forest,

But there's enough trees around.

If you walk around in the trees,

You might see some trees that have these big tumors and all these kinds of things.

Even trees subject to disease,

Animals can get cancer,

All of these things.

All of us,

All of us living beings are subject to this.

And this can be something that is very,

Especially if it's a major illness,

That can be very devastating to somebody.

I was just in New Jersey yesterday.

I went home for my niece's wedding and I visited a friend.

She's only a couple years older than me.

She has two children.

And a year ago,

She was diagnosed with ALS,

Lou Gehry's disease.

The last time I spoke to her,

She was what you'd consider normal.

We were able to sit and talk and move around and all these kinds of things.

When I saw her yesterday,

The disease had progressed where you could barely understand what she was saying.

Within the year,

Her voice will be gone.

She won't be able to talk anymore.

She needs a walker.

She needs people to help her to get up and to move.

This is not a 70 year old person.

She's 42,

43.

And before that,

She was healthy her whole life.

That is illness.

And it can strike all of us at any time.

The first memory I have of a strong,

Serious illness is actually right here in New York City.

I went,

I was eight years old and I went with my father to pick up my grandfather at Sloan Kettering,

If you know Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital.

And I remember as an eight year old walking into Sloan Kettering and seeing my 62 year old grandfather,

Who had just gone through chemo and all that stuff,

Slumped over and emaciated in the waiting room,

Waiting for us.

That was really impactful.

Unlike the Buddha,

Old age sickness and death was not hidden from me.

And I say that not with a wish that it was,

But with gratitude that it wasn't.

And I would say that was only the first time I had been to Sloan Kettering.

Both my parents are cancer survivors.

I've been to Sloan Kettering many times with them.

I was married in my early 20s.

I took her to Sloan Kettering for years.

She died about 10 years ago of cancer.

So I know Sloan Kettering very well.

As a matter of fact,

I joke about that when it's my turn to get cancer,

That's where I want to go.

Because it's one of the best places in the world for cancer.

The doctors are amazing.

But that is old,

That is illness.

All of us are subject to that.

We can be the healthiest person.

I remember a joke from a comedian talking about this guy,

Jim Fix,

Or something like that,

Some runner from the 70s,

Who is a really health nut guru kind of guy and he's running and then he just drops dead of a heart attack.

This is the nature of illness.

We don't know.

We can do the best that we can,

Eat the healthiest,

Exercise,

All of these things.

But we can still get sick.

We still will get sick.

That doesn't mean that I say,

You know,

Go to McDonald's and not exercise and all that stuff.

You still should do that because that allows you to have as healthy of a body and mind as you can.

But that is in armor against sickness.

It's only a help.

And so I am subject to death.

Everything in the universe is subject to death,

Including the universe itself.

Those of you who know me know I'm a big astronomy buff.

I love the stars and space and all these kinds of things.

And scientists,

As far as I know,

Are pretty much all in consensus that the universe is going to end.

They just don't know how yet.

And there's many interesting theories.

So if you think,

You know,

One day,

There's this interesting professor,

Audrey DeGray,

I think his name is,

And his sole purpose is working with genes and stuff to try to find a way to make humans,

If not immortal,

That we would live for thousands of years.

And so the way I think of this is,

Even if we became functionally immortal,

Even if we were half robot,

We could live for billions and billions of years.

One day,

The universe is going.

So we're not going to survive the universe no matter what.

And even if you think,

Oh,

Living for trillions of years,

That sounds fine.

In the cosmology of Buddhism,

In terms of the different existences that a person can come into existence,

There's existences that last through multiple expansions and contractions of the universe.

So you can be in an existence that lasts a long time,

But even those existences one day will end.

So there's nothing that you can point to that says this is going to be forever.

Nothing at all.

And so when the universe dies,

We die.

The interesting thing about it is that for us to live,

Stars had to die.

Because everything in our body is made from stars that blew up millions or billions of years ago.

It's the cycle,

The cycle of life.

Things live and things die.

Simple as that.

And so,

Yeah?

Why does the stars die?

We live,

Stars die.

That's a very complicated.

.

.

It's because the elements,

All the stuff like iron and all these things that are part of our body were created in the star.

Other than that,

It gets too scientific and I'm already well over time as it is.

So I'm trying to.

.

.

So there's nothing that you can point to.

So you can say,

Okay,

So now we accept that there's an end.

What do we do about it?

And so there's a sutra called the simile of the mountains and the Buddha's talking to another king.

And the simile that the Buddha says is this,

Suppose that you had messengers come in from all directions and they said,

Great king,

A mountain of land is moving towards us in all directions,

Crushing everything in its path.

So the Buddha says to the king,

What would you do then?

And the king says,

The only thing that can be done,

Practice Dhamma.

Do this practice following the Noble Phopet,

Doing the best that you can to live skillfully with the time that you have.

And so the Buddha likes the answer and so he points to the king and he says,

I exalt you great king,

Old age sickness and death are coming for you.

Do what you think you must.

So the Buddha is pointing us to once we understand that this is the reality,

What we should do.

And so all that is dear to me,

I will be separated from.

Not only in death are we separated from people,

But in modern times,

As families grow,

People separate,

They get married,

They go different places,

Different states,

All of these kinds of things.

When you're with a significant other,

Maybe sometimes people grow apart or people lose their feelings.

There are many,

Many ways that we are to be separated from those things that we hold dear.

And the Buddha gives a simile of,

He asked the monks,

He says,

Which do you think is greater?

The water in all the great oceans or the water from all the tears that you have shed throughout samsara and they say,

Well,

Obviously all the tears that you've shed throughout samsara.

And so the Buddha says that long have you experienced the death of loved ones.

Long have you been separated from people,

Places,

Experiences,

Things that you hold dear and you treasure and you cherish so much so that they can fill the great oceans,

Your tears.

He also says so much so that you would be disenchanted enough if you understand this to want to put an end to that cycle.

Whether you believe in rebirth and samsara and all of these things or not,

It's a pretty telling,

Pretty emotion building simile that this is part of life and we will be separated from people.

We have all come together for this weekend.

Tomorrow afternoon,

We're going to go away.

Some of you I'll see again.

Some of you I won't.

It's just the nature of life.

And I heard a simile from a therapist once years ago,

Even before I was a Buddhist,

That was very compelling to me.

And he said,

Imagine life like a dam.

People will flow into your life and people will flow out.

We want to leave that river undamned.

We don't want to close people coming into our lives and we don't want to close people leaving our lives.

Both of those cause suffering.

That last part is my own added thing.

You can see that trying to ask from life what it can't give us is causing our own suffering.

That's as simple as that.

So we understand old age,

Sickness,

Death,

Separation are part of life.

The final one is that I am the owner of my actions,

Heir to my actions,

Have my actions as my arbiter.

For whatever I shall do,

For unskillful or skillful to that I shall fall heir.

Implicit in that,

Amazingly enough,

Is a choice.

There were people at the time of the Buddha,

Lots of people believed lots of different things and if you read the suttas you see the Buddha and the disciples debating with other people about the nature of things and all these kinds of things.

And there were some people who said that your choices don't matter.

There's no result of your choices,

Nothing comes from your choices.

And the Buddha really did not like that.

He was very much against that.

The reason being is because if you don't believe that your choices matter,

You don't take responsibility for your choices and you can do whatever you want.

And when you're doing that,

You're harming yourself and you're harming others.

The simile is that the people believe that they could go up and down the Ganges killing people until everybody is just a huge pile of dead bodies and then it doesn't mean anything.

Nothing will come of it.

You don't even have to think of rebirth and karma to understand all the suffering that would come from that.

All the relatives of the people that you killed,

All that kind of suffering.

So our actions matter.

Our actions make a difference to us and to others.

And when you accept that they matter,

You accept that you have to take responsibility for those actions.

The simple is that.

You can see out in the world there's many people not taking responsibility for their actions.

You can also see that most likely they're suffering because of it.

So doing this is important.

Recognizing that your choices matter.

The Buddha tells us we have a choice.

We can rail against old age,

Sickness and death.

We can hate it.

We can try to hide it with all kinds of surgeries and makeups and hair dyes and all these kinds of things.

Or we can take our head out of the sand and we can accept it.

We can choose to grow old gracefully or we can grow old struggling.

You see elderly people,

You can see happy old people walking around enjoying life even though they're at the end.

Or you can also see miserable old grumpy people.

Which one do you want to be?

You can have this aversion to sickness and illness or you can accept it and do the best that you can with it.

Helping yourself in that regard and also helping others.

Being the caregiver for somebody who is sick is a wonderful hard experience.

But the lessons that you can learn and the gratitude you can gain from that is very,

It's worth it.

It's a great thing that you can do in your life and it can teach you how to live your life.

There's an old song I remember from around the time that my wife was dying and it was a song that says live life like you're dying or live like you were dying.

And that really imprinted in me that it was because yeah,

When you live like you're dying then you don't waste time on all kinds of stupid silly things.

The Buddha says in the Dhammapada,

There are those who don't know that one day we must die.

Those who do settle their quarrels.

When you practice this mindfulness of death,

You're going to waste time with stupid things,

With fighting and grudges and all these kinds of things.

So I said yesterday when I was talking about if you knew that you were going to die,

Who do you feel like you need to forgive yourself,

Others?

Letting go of these things that don't help us in life but cause us to suffer.

So we can view death as meaning that life is precious.

The Buddha says that this human life is very rare and very short.

Our life,

Every life is precious.

And so don't waste this life.

A quick simile that I love.

You see this glass?

Do you see the crack in this glass?

You seeing?

You're looking.

I see some people looking going,

What the heck?

What crack?

There's water in there.

The water should be falling off if there's a crack.

There's a crack in this glass.

You just don't see it.

And this glass was created.

It was created with little impurities and fissures and all these kinds of things.

One day it'll drop and it'll break.

You can see how glass breaks along these lines.

Just like that,

We're already dead.

We just don't know it yet.

We just don't want to accept it.

One day we're going to crack.

Our life is going to be over.

And so it's up to us to make the choice how we want to live with the time that we have left.

And so when old age,

Sickness and death are rolling in,

What do you do?

You practice Dhamma.

You live skillfully.

And in doing so,

You live your life for a good purpose.

And in doing so,

You help others and yourself.

And in doing so,

When you are on your deathbed,

There's nothing to regret.

You can look back and you see that you live the life that most people would,

I can't say would die to live.

But most people would,

If they had the choice to change their life,

Would love to live.

And if you do that,

To have no regrets,

To have no worries,

You can die with a mind that's peaceful and happy and content,

Knowing that you did the best that you could.

So we're a couple minutes over time and we'll end it there.

So friends,

I hope that we can continue to contemplate these thoughts.

I hope that these thoughts have given you some future things to contemplate and to think about and that they will bring benefit to your life in the future.

Reviews

Thank you. 🙏🪷

This was invaluable. Thank you so very much!

Well done! Approachable as opposed to arrogant. Down to earth instead of condescending. 😀☯

That was amazing! Thank you.

Excellent, thank you!

Some people accept their time is nigh. Others don't. And others of course, have no time to prepare. I have a friend battling with the inevitable at present. It's hard for all concerned. I am finding meditations on Metta very useful, and talks on death very interesting. I wish I could share these with my friend but he won't. Anyway, thank you for these teachings. So good. Namaste 🙏

Thank you, Bhante. I'm an old man . I don't know how long I have before I get off this treadmill and then jump onto another. The Five Recollections are part of my daily practice. They are not just words. They are the real deal. So thanks for reenforcing the practice. I wish you all the best, Venerable Sir.

Thank you , very insightful

Well said. Living a skillful life is what I try to do everyday. Some days are better than others. Love these talks. I wish you could do a retreat or talk on Staten Island. 🙏🏻🌺