Aware of Death – Appreciating Life

Here Ajahn addresses this subject with striking examples yet in a manner that exhibits both tenderness and humour.

Transcript

When I was a young monk,

My twin brother came to visit in Thailand.

And at that time he had a very big and very powerful Italian motorcycle.

And I remember that motorcycle.

I think I remember the previous one.

Because he picked me up from the airport when I was visiting my parents once.

And I was a layman and I was sitting on the back of his new bike.

And he was saying,

So do you want to see how fast it goes?

And I said,

Oh alright.

And I think within a few seconds we were going 220 km an hour.

And I thought,

Okay,

Yes,

It's fast.

But I remember thinking,

I don't particularly want to die at this point in my life.

So then I went to Asia and became a monk and he came to visit and he got an even bigger bike.

An even faster bike.

And I thought,

Oh oh.

And so I was in Bangkok and we were visiting some of those beautiful ancient temples in Bangkok.

But also another thing that forest monks in Thailand sometimes do when they're in Bangkok is make a visit to a morgue.

Because in a Buddhist country this is tolerated,

Allowed.

And so I said to my brother,

I've got something to do this afternoon,

Would you like to come along?

And he said,

What is it?

I said,

Well,

You know,

Buddhist monks.

At that time we were just about to go off for the two month jungle retreat.

So it's good if you're a gamatana bhikkhu,

You want to meditate on death and dying.

It's good to see some corpses.

And then you recollect that memory of the bodies that you actually saw.

I was hoping to go and get some fresh images.

And it was about 24 at the time.

You want to go to the jungle and you're going to get enlightened and you want to see tigers and all that.

And I'm not enlightened yet anyway,

But still trying.

But anyway,

So I was going to the morgue and he said okay.

So he came.

And no,

I did have two intentions.

I also,

I was pretty sure that there was going to be a motorcycle victim there.

Because every time I've been to the morgue there has been.

And so we were looking at these various bodies and I said,

Troy,

His name is.

There was a young man.

He had just one mark here where he'd fallen off his bike and he'd hit,

I think,

A post.

And he looked perfectly healthy and quite good looking and young.

I called my brother over and said Troy,

Look at him.

I said look at him.

That was a motorcycle accident.

Really.

And he's got the,

That sometimes happens.

The sweat gets on the brow and your face goes pale when you see these dead bodies.

And he said,

Okay,

Well,

I'm going to go outside now.

I said,

Okay,

You go outside.

It's very interesting what he did.

He was,

He went to the shop and within a couple of minutes he was talking to a young mother with a child.

Now from the point of view of someone cultivating mindfulness of death,

This is very interesting because there's that in the mind that wants youth and birth.

And he found it within about two minutes and he stuck to that and was already trying to forget that.

But what happened was when he came back to Australia within not very long,

He sold the bike and he bought a sensible Japanese sedan.

Now I don't think to this day that he realizes that what was going on,

I think it probably was a factor that he really saw.

Look,

A young person who that morning didn't know that they were going to be dead by the afternoon.

And I think he,

You know,

This is the heedfulness,

Isn't it?

So another way to talk about heedfulness is to be careful.

The heedful sounds a bit strange.

So one who is careful,

Careful with their speech,

Careful with their thoughts,

Careful with what they do with their bodies,

Is one that's on the way to liberation.

Another friend,

We were in Nepal on pilgrimage with some Thai people.

This was many years later.

And Nepal is predominantly Hindu.

There's about maybe 15% Buddhist.

It's predominantly Hindu culture and they have this small little creek which they believe eventually meets the Ganges.

So that's where they burn their bodies.

It's a muddy little creek,

But anyway,

And full of litter.

But to them it's holy and sacred.

And so they have these burning ghats,

Small burning ghats.

And so I was with my Thai friends and a couple of them were interested to go and see.

There's this beautiful temple behind,

Actually a very beautiful temple,

And Hindu music and the kind of sadhus in their very orange robes.

It was quite an exotic scene.

And one woman didn't want to go.

She was frightened of ghosts.

And another man didn't want to go because he didn't want to see anything not beautiful.

And I said,

Well,

You don't have to go.

We are here and I'm going to go.

And there were those other people in the tour who wanted to go,

But they decided that they would go.

So we all went together.

And so she was sure that there were ghosts,

But being a bit superstitious,

And she was also sure that because there was a monk it wouldn't be a problem.

So she came too.

But what happened,

That changed her life,

Is that before then she didn't meditate or chant.

But ever since that day,

Just going and seeing the truth of death,

Because there were a couple of corpses.

You didn't see anything too ugly.

There were nice bright cloths put on them and flowers sprinkled on them and people dancing.

There was a bit of wailing and crying.

But overall it was quite beautiful,

Dignified,

And beautiful ceremonies and some chanting and some ritual bathing.

But just to see that body and say,

Okay,

That's a dead body.

And what happens in that exchange,

That there's a humbling,

Isn't there,

A humbling of that assumption that this body,

We assume that this one's just going to go on for a very long time.

And that death will occur when we're very old,

That's the assumption.

But when we see a dead body which looks just like other bodies,

Except for that absence of consciousness,

It has an effect on us.

It's like,

Yeah,

Right,

I too am of this nature.

It's also a phrase from the sutta that the Buddha said,

I too am of this nature,

Thus I will become,

Thus the body will become.

And ever since that day she started to chant and meditate.

So it's like you can see that kind of awareness of death can make people more heedful,

More careful,

More mindful.

It's like you suddenly appreciate your life more.

And as a monk you hear many stories and you meet many people.

You hear a lot about death.

And so it's good in a way.

It keeps your mindfulness of death contemplations going,

Keeps them fresh.

There's always something to contemplate.

I'm just going to talk about a little of those experiences just because we're talking about death.

So one is I knew a,

When I met him actually,

I think he was an eight-year-old boy who had a bone marrow disorder called thalassemia,

Which is occurring in cultures where there's a lot of malaria.

A lot of malaria through generation and then something goes wrong in the bone marrow that it can't produce red blood cells very well.

So if you have that condition you have to keep getting blood transfusions and then you usually die prematurely.

You die fairly young.

But there's a process where you can decide to have a bone marrow transplant.

And what happens is they have to take out all of the bone marrow and put in a close match.

And then hopefully that bone marrow makes red blood cells.

So there's a 20% fatality rate.

So by the time I think he was about 11 that his parents decided and they asked him,

They said okay there's a one in five chance of death here.

And they asked him,

He was 11,

What do you want?

Do you want to have these continuing blood transfusions and a short life?

Or do you want to take the risk and possibly have a normal life?

And the little boy,

His name was Todd,

Decided to go ahead and have the procedure.

And so long story short,

Unfortunately all of his bone marrow was removed and a new bone marrow was put in and the body didn't accept it.

And so we have this scenario of a very sweet,

Kind,

Good-natured boy who's going to die slowly because his body isn't producing red blood cells.

And he did.

He died in hospital.

And it was very sad.

Because you just have this,

Who would think if it had anything to do with this lifetime,

Who would think that nice little boy with that sweet character would be in that situation.

But he was the one in five.

And what was interesting about this boy seemed to have quite a bit of good karma.

He became a novice monk before this procedure for a little while.

He paid respects to many monks.

He was a Thai American,

But when he visited Thailand he had a pair of specs just like very good monks.

And the night before,

A couple of nights before he died,

He dreamed of the most senior monk that he'd ever paid respects to.

And that senior monk came in the dream.

And behind that monk was all the other monks that he'd ever met.

And they were chanting for him.

And he told his mom,

He said,

Mom,

Longpor Opat and Ajahn Anan and Ajahn Pasno and Ajahn Achalo,

They all came and they were all chanting for me last night.

And she said,

Very good,

Todd.

It's that sense of even though he had to die,

There was that sense of he probably went to a good situation.

And then I lived in America some time ago,

About eight years ago,

For a year and a half.

And there was a neighbor in the branch monastery there,

A Vaingiri.

There was a neighbor,

She had interesting karma.

She used to be Catholic and then she became a Buddhist.

And her husband used to be Catholic and he became a Buddhist.

And her name was Mary.

And some interesting karma.

Their property,

There was a Catholic monastery right next to the Buddhist monastery.

And their property was on this part of land in between.

So they have this interesting Catholic Buddhist karma.

And they were living between a Catholic monastery and a Buddhist monastery.

But later in their life they became practicing Buddhists.

And at one stage her husband died.

And then she was alone for some time.

And I think she was traveling.

She used to teach conferences.

I think business skills,

Management,

Something.

She was teaching something,

But she had a strange fever.

And she wasn't hungry and she felt feverish.

But she didn't have any particular pain.

But she did have a very high fever.

She wasn't sure what it was.

And so in ordinary waking consciousness she's sitting in a chair.

And she sees a being made of light approach her.

She said,

Looked like a Christian angel.

Maybe her past karma.

And said,

Mary,

You have a choice.

You can die in three days.

Or you can go to the hospital.

Reviews

Such a beautiful talk. Thank you Ajahn 🙏

Thank you Brother. I have been looking for this type of teaching and you have given me a place to start.

Lovely♾️☯️⚛️⚘️☄️🖤🪔
Thank you kindly✨️🕯
Namaste✨️🙏🏾✨️🙏🏼🌟

You are amazing! Thank You! I wish you could upload more talks, more often. Sending you the merits of my meditations. Hope to see you in your monestary. 🥰🥰
With metta
❤️❤️❤️

Thank you for sharing this intriquing talk 🙏

Thank you dear Ajahn for your teaching! 🙏

Particularly appreciated the reference to taking refuge in the context if death and impermanence.

I'm glad to have listened to this talk, about why Buddhists practice awareness of death. The stories are brief and reveal the flavor of the monks' beliefs. I did not find it traumatic, instead more enlightening. Thank you.

🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻Thank you, my eye "fell" this morning on your talk about impermanence and death, and yesterday I listened to a talk and was reminded of my own mortality, it seems to be a theme for me, and one that is helping me in my grieving process of my husband’s transition 🙏🏻🦋😇💙🌅🌟✨💫

Thank you for sharing these teachings.

Thankyou Dear Teacher for this very helpful lesson 🙇‍♀️💚

It's interesting now that I've listened to this because there's part of this poem which has been stuck in my head from late this afternoon which goes, "won't you come celebrate with me that everyday, something has tried to kill me and it has failed." that takes on a whole different level of meaning. Thank you for this. November is also the month of my mother's death, so thank-you even more for this 💛

Fascinating namaste 🙏

Gives good food for thought about being here today and gone in the next moment. 🙏🏽

Very interesting beautiful stories 💕🙏☘️🦋✨🙏✨

I really loved this. It wasn't a meditation per se, but a meditative space in which he discusses death and how to die in peace. I've never felt as comfortable with death as I do now after listening. Namaste.

I could listen to his talks every day. I am learning so much from him.

careful with our words and bodies. screen the world-teach and practice forgiveness. sunny. continence. Walk

Beautiful storyteller.