Talk: The Buddha's Five Recollections On Ageing, Sickness, Death, Change & The Consequences Of Actions

This is a talk on five recollections encouraged by the Buddha. These are reminders of ageing, sickness, death, being parted from what we hold dear, and the fact that we are the owners of our actions. The aim of the five recollections as a practice is to let go of clinging and to find peace with the realities of ageing, sickness, and death.

Please be warned: this talk addresses the fact that we will all die.

Transcript

So tonight's talk is on five recollections.

And I thought I'd follow along Matt's lead about giving a talk on a reflection practice before we actually do the reflection practice like we did last week.

And so the five recollections are recollections about impermanence and also about cause-effect relationships.

First I'd like to talk a little bit about some personal experience.

Many years ago,

When I was the ripe old age of 21,

I traveled to Thailand to become a monk and I ordained at that age.

And I took on the practices that were recommended,

Which included reflections on death.

And I'd done,

I did the practice that Matt guided us through last week with Tibetan Buddhism.

And I found it very,

Very powerful.

So I decided to,

When I arrived in Thailand,

I was continuing with that practice as well.

And I also took on a practice that is part of the Satipa Dhatnasuta,

One of the foundations of,

One of the establishments of mindfulness,

Mindfulness of Body,

Which is contemplating corpses.

It's a mindfulness of body practice.

It's contemplating corpses in nine stages of decay from freshly deceased corpses to ones that have decayed to corpses of skeletons.

And I was fortunate enough,

Because I was ordained,

I was fortunate enough to be permitted into the morgues and to watch more topsy.

So that's what I used to do whenever I was in Bangkok.

I used to go to the morgues and sit and watch.

Well,

I didn't sit actually,

I used to stand.

I used to stand for hours just looking at a corpse.

In all the stages of decay,

It was quite profound.

It had a really profound effect on me.

There's something about,

There's something different about a corpse with no consciousness and a body enlivened with feelings,

Perceptions,

Mental formations and consciousness.

There's something conceivably different,

And I'm sure you must have all seen someone who's died or a dead body.

And this is a,

I found that this,

That very distinction was profoundly helpful on the path to awakening.

I think,

I remember I used to go to one of the hospitals across the river in Bangkok and I spent a couple of hours just looking at the various corpses,

Reflecting on that.

And then I'd walk back through the markets,

Live markets,

And it was really,

It was really,

It wasn't quite surreal,

But it was like a slap in the face of reality.

Like this is the way it is,

And these bodies are alive,

These bodies are not alive.

This is the difference between,

This is a difference between life and death.

It was very,

Very,

Very interesting.

And I mean,

There was other emotions involved with that,

Of course.

There's a lot of sadness and compassion for the families and the deceased individuals.

And another thing that I did was,

Used to reflect just as the Buddha instructed,

In the sutta,

The Sadipatthana Sutta,

When you do the reflections on corpses,

Or contemplations on corpses,

It is to sit in a place or stand in a place where there's a corpse,

Reflect on that corpse,

And say,

Not only say,

But reflect that I am also of this nature.

This body,

Meaning the body that we call I,

Mine,

And myself,

Is of the same nature as that body.

One day this body will be like that body.

It will be subject to decay.

It will,

There'll be dissolution,

And it'll go back to elements,

In some way or other.

So that's a reflection on impermanence.

It's very powerful.

So when I was a monk,

I also became ill,

Quite often actually.

This was in the mid 70s.

Well actually I went to Thailand in 1970,

Late 1976,

Early 1977 I think.

And you know,

Thailand was a developing country,

And part of the practice of,

When I was ever in Bangkok,

I did what monks do in Bangkok,

And that's go on arms round.

Arms round is,

You know,

With a kinder part,

With a bowl.

And I,

One time I was wandering around the alleyways of Bangkok,

Where the monastery I was staying in,

And I thought I was being very mindful,

Watching where I was going.

But one day this,

I stepped on a fishbone.

It was quite a large fishbone.

It felt like it went right into the bones of the soles of my foot,

My sole of my right foot.

It was agonizing.

And it was a fishbone,

So it was a slice in and a slice out.

You know,

There wasn't much else.

It was just a small pierce into my body,

Into my bones it felt like.

So it got infected,

And got very very painful,

And swollen.

I ended up having to go to the hospital,

And get it lanced,

And a lot of pus and stuff coming out of this hole in my foot.

And I had to,

I was on crutches for I think a couple of weeks,

As it healed.

I can still see the scar in my foot now,

Like some 45 years later,

Something like that.

Nearly 45 years later.

So that was a taste of illness.

And then I spent a punter in the forest,

Well I'd go to Bangkok and do the business in Bangkok.

Get fishbones in my feet,

And having to stay in Bangkok for a while.

I eventually went to a forest monastery,

And spent a long time in satchews in the jungle.

And then there was one time I went to a very isolated forest temple,

There was just about three or four such huts,

Kutis we call them,

Sometimes just platforms in the jungle.

And I was meditating there for a while,

And eventually was able to go north,

In the northeast,

To stay with what became my main monastery,

Doidama Chedi in northeast Thailand.

And I wasn't there long,

And I was sort of having a trial with Ah Chan Ben,

So I started to feel very very ill.

Headaches and fevers and a bit of delirium,

And incredible fatigue,

With a lot of really bad headaches.

So the doctor saw me and eventually went into the hospital,

And I had malaria.

I got it from the southern states,

Down near the borders of southeast Thailand,

The borders of Cambodia.

So that was quite a bit of suffering.

Having malaria is not fun.

And I didn't think,

I wasn't sure whether I was going to survive or not,

But I did.

I managed to,

I'd had malaria before from Timor,

When I went to Timor,

Before the war in Timor.

And I knew how to heal it with particular medicine,

And at that age,

It was only the 1970s,

So there wasn't many resistant strains of malaria,

As many as there are now.

So I managed to get over that,

And then about nine months later in the same monastery,

I started to feel very ill again.

Nalsious,

Headachy,

Incredibly fatigued.

Doctor saw me again,

And I happened to have hepatitis A this time.

So by this time I was pretty thin and weak,

And I now was in the monasteries,

And it was quite a rigorous practice.

I was the only Westerner in this particular monastery.

And it was quite harsh.

Northeast Thailand,

No air conditioning,

Very hot,

Very difficult,

Harsh,

Harsh environment.

And my meditation practice,

Sometimes it was good.

I'd sit up all night in the,

No cushions,

We were just sitting on cloth floors,

On tile floors,

Overnight,

Every four-minute night we'd do that.

But something that really brought a lot of peace,

My meditation worked that good.

I couldn't concentrate because I was a bit weak and all the rest of it.

Very very skinny.

And I'm pretty skinny now,

But I'm about 75 kilos,

74 kilos,

Something like that.

Back then I think I got under 50 kilos.

So it was 25 kilos lighter than this,

Which is pretty thin.

So the point I'm making is that even though my meditations weren't very concentrated,

The one thing that would bring me peace was reflections and contemplations on death.

And I would take the reflections that I took from those more visits with me and I would reflect on death.

But I also took a valuable tool from Prak Andypolo.

Prak Andypolo was my main teacher while I was in Australia leading up to going to Thailand and ordained as a monk.

I spent quite a while with him as his attendant back in Australia.

And during that time,

We used to talk about the suttas,

He used to do a sutta a week or a day sometimes.

A lot of basics of Buddhism.

So when I arrived in Thailand in this quite harsh environment into a country that I couldn't speak Thai at that time when I arrived,

I could speak Thai by the time I left.

But I needed to rely on some really fundamental tools that I really was grateful for Prak Andypolo giving me.

One of those tools was the five recollections.

The five recollections are these.

I'm of the nature to age.

I've not got beyond aging.

I'm of the nature to have illness.

I've not gone beyond illness.

I'm of the nature to die.

I've not got beyond death.

All that is mine beloved and pleasing shall one day be parted from me,

Shall one day vanish.

I'm the owner of my karma and karma means actions so I'm the owner of my actions,

Heir to my actions,

Born of my actions,

Related to my actions,

Supported by my actions.

Whatever actions I shall do of those actions I shall be the heir.

Now these reflections were very very powerful for me and as Prak Andypolo said when we used to do these reflections he said the Buddha recommended that everyone contemplate these reflections on a daily basis.

And I found them very very peaceful.

I found them sobering.

It's often,

There's nothing wrong with enjoying life until we start to cling to it.

And by contemplating these five recollections it's like we don't get intoxicated with the lights of life.

And again nothing wrong with enjoying life.

In fact as I spoke about last time I was here,

Enjoyment and pleasure can be a way of,

Can be an important factor on the path to awakening in that it can cultivate states of concentration.

But when we are intoxicated with life then when change eventually happens it can be very very distressing.

So these recollections are a way of being sobered up with our intoxication with life.

And the other thing about these recollections that I find really useful is that often in our society we feel ashamed about illness.

Sometimes we feel ashamed about having an illness like we shouldn't be ill.

It's not the right thing to do but when we can reflect on these realities and realise that everyone gets ill.

The body because it's impermanent is prone to get ill at some stage or other,

Prone to have accidents.

It actually normalises it.

When you can reflect on this and really take it in,

It normalises the fact that we are of the nature to grow ill.

It is just a natural phenomenon.

The other one is ageing.

Look at our society.

People when they age become invisible.

I don't know if you noticed that.

I hear women talk about becoming invisible when they get older.

I think I'm starting to feel a little bit invisible as I get older but I don't really feel like that.

Moreover I think that I do have a resistance to seeing my balding head,

The amount of wrinkles that come up and the rings under my eyes.

I wasn't grey about ten years ago.

More and more grey hairs and my stomach starts to come out.

There's a resistance to growing old.

In fact when we can realise that it's actually quite a natural thing,

We're actually quite fortunate to grow old and that we're all in it together,

It takes that sense of stigma away from being aged.

Anyway that's my thought as one way of thinking about this.

The other thing is that death,

We tend to be in a death-fearing culture.

Death is the worst possible thing.

It's kind of really weird because every one of us is going to die in some stage or other.

In fact as we talked about last week,

The more we can be present for death,

The more we can wake up to the reality of this inevitable occurrence,

The more we can be at peace with it.

In fact the more we value life,

The more we treasure every moment we have alive and we value it even more.

So the other thing is that everything we own,

Actually we can't own anything.

If you think about owning anything,

Everything is going to go.

And the more we get trapped into this idea that this is mine and this is last thing and so on,

The more we are prone to great grief when we lose something.

As you know I'm in a relationship,

I've been in an intimate relationship for now 33 years.

Often when I hop into bed my partner usually goes to sleep before me,

She's sleeping away and I might be aware of her sleeping next to me.

I think one day,

One day we will be parted.

Sometimes we do get parted,

I went to the UK for 6 months and I didn't see her for 6 months.

But one day there will be a parting and we won't see each other ever again.

One of us will die.

More than likely it's probably going to be me first.

All that is mine,

Everything that I own,

My car,

My computer,

My video camera,

Everything is going to fall away.

We have no possessions that we can really call lasting.

So this recollection that all that is mine beloved and pleasing shall one day vanish,

Shall one day be parted from me,

Is a kind of waking up,

A waking up to the reality.

And this last recollection,

Recollection about ownership of actions,

It's about equanimity.

It's about understanding cause-effect relationships.

That again we can't own anything other than our actions.

Our actions are our true belongings,

I'm just quoting,

Did not harm me.

There is nothing we can hold onto except things that we've done.

Cause actions have consequences and no matter what action we do,

There will be a consequence,

Whether it be a good or helpful action or a harmful action.

There's always going to be a consequence from it.

And I think to cite the Dharmapada,

This is the reality of karma or actions have consequences.

Just like the wheel of a cart follows the hoof of the oxen pulling it,

That's the saying in the Dharmapada,

There will be consequences to actions.

And it's this kind of understanding that everyone is the owner of their own actions,

Everyone is on their own life trajectory.

We can't kind of go in and change anybody else,

Just as they can't come in and change ourselves.

You know,

Many of you know that I'm a clinical psychologist,

I deal in the occupation of change.

People come to me because they want to change.

And there is a joke I've seen,

It's a cartoon and it's got this,

It's in a clinician's room,

It's a psychiatrist's room and there's certificates all around the world and diplomas,

Around the walls,

Sorry,

And diplomas and degrees and doctorates and all this sort of other thing.

And the patient is lying back in the lounge on the couch and the psychiatrist is standing over the patient going,

Snap out of it.

And underneath the captions are saying,

Brief interactive therapy,

And it's kind of like,

Snap out of it.

So if that worked,

People would come to see people like myself for one session only.

If I could change someone else,

They would see me for one session only.

Because I'd just tell them to change.

I'd say,

Snap out of it,

Stop doing that,

Get on with it.

But in fact,

People don't change.

People only change through their own efforts.

And their own thoughts,

Feelings and behaviors are their own responsibility.

They own the consequences for their own actions.

So this is a kind of an understanding,

It's a wisdom quality.

And it's not all of what equanimity is,

But it's one aspect of equanimity,

The understanding that every individual is the owners of their own stuff.

It's your stuff and this is my stuff.

And I could talk about the near and far enemies of equanimity,

But it's not a talk on equanimity right now.

I just wanted to make that point.

So I think that's about all I'd want to talk about in the little talk.

So I'm going to invite you to a guided recollection of the five recollections,

If you're willing to do that.

I'll just add this,

When I was 21,

22,

23 in Thailand as a monk,

The five recollections were a powerful way I could find some peace.

By the time I left Thailand,

The five recollections just became thoughts,

Because I was kind of present with the way things were.

But they're still very powerful,

They're a conceptual way of coming to a sense of understanding.

And it works.

These days,

Now I'm in my 60s,

Almost 65,

I still use them,

I regularly do them as a way of being grounded,

As a way of reminding myself not to be intoxicated with life,

Enjoy it,

But not be intoxicated with it,

And to be grounded and centered,

And be prepared that any day,

Any moment,

Any breath,

I could die.

This is the reality of it.

One day,

It will be my last breath.

Okay,

So I invite you to a practice,

And I'll just.

.

.

Reviews

Interesting. I have never considered some of these subjects. Especially, the part on illness. I'm always apologizing to everyone if I become ill. I'll be more aware from now on. Thank you.

I woke up way too early so I decided to listen to this talk. I have finally made it to the end after 5X. Each time I drifted into the most wonderful dreams where I had joined a sect and all was well where there were children too and beautiful fabrics and pure happiness and love. It was delightful. Also I had no interest in having wine. Interesting. Time for change. Anyway thank you for the talk. Would have enjoyed a meditation too. 🙏🏼🙏🏼❤️