Welcome. We are Death and the End of Death Practice module learners. This is Class 1, November 5th, 2023. 

Usual Opening

Let's gather our minds here please, as we usually do.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

Now, bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and see them there with you. 

They're gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy, great compassion. 

Their wisdom radiates from them. That beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light. 

And then we hear them say, 

Bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way.

Think about how much you would like to be able to help them 

and recognize how the worldly ways we try fall short. 

How wonderful it would be if we could also help in some deep and ultimate way, 

a way through which they would go on to stop their distress forever. 

We're learning, maybe that's possible. 

If it is, would you want to be able to do so? 

We even conceive of what it might be like.

Yet, deep within us it's something that does know, does know that it's possible. 

So invite that little knowing inside you to grow, to grow that aspiration into a longing, even into an intention.

Then turn your mind to that precious, holy being before you. 

We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn, what we need to do to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. 

And so we ask them, please, please teach us that. 

They are so happy that we've asked, of course they agree. 

Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite. 

And so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. 

We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer to make our promise.

Here is the Great Earth filled with fragrant incense 

and covered with a blanket of flowers. 

The Great Mountain, Four Lands wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon. 

In my mind, I make them the paradise of a Buddha 

and offer it all to you.

By this deed may every living being experience the pure world.

Idam guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do

In sharing this practice and the rest, 

may I reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do

In sharing this practice and the rest, 

may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of ever living being.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do

In sharing this practice and the rest

may all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every other.

Introduction to the Course

This course is one of the several practice modules that Geshe Michael offered throughout the 1990s. You'll be relieved to know that there's no homeworks and quizzes and final exams that are required. 

There are homeworks if you want to follow along, if you downloaded the materials from wherever you got them from, there are homeworks in there, but that's just a study guide, if you want to look at them. Don't feel obligated. 

I do ask you to read the readings though. 

Once we get a class, read some of the reading, then we'll get the next class. You can read some more. Just to help jog your thinking about what I share. 

Each class will be part me talking ahead and then part guided visualization, kind of meditation, so that through the course of the classes we'll build this practice into a movie that you'll play in your mind, and you'll know the movie well enough that you'll be able to put yourself going through the movie, and stop at different places in the movie to think about, ‘What is that really teaching me and how do I use that in life?’.

The death and the end of death comes to us as a very early step in our Lam Rim. 

This course presupposes that we've already come to some understanding of the ongoing nature of what we call our mindstream, our consciousness, and so that we have some general understanding that there's been past lives and that there will be future lives. 

That first practice module that some of us have learned together—the Lam Rim module—it did not presume that. We were starting from the beginning. It gave us this overview of what it takes to transform ourselves from suffering human to fully enlightened being, a being made of love, compassion, wisdom for others benefit.

We've learned what's called the Lam Rim, at least some parts of it, which means the steps on the path to enlightenment. The first half of the steps of the path to enlightenment, if you recall, is finding a teacher. But there's a precursor to even that, which is reaching the point in life where something is not making sense anymore. 

We've already gained a certain amount of renunciation that sends us looking for a spiritual path. Like enough yak poop has hit the fan for us, over and over again, until we ourselves come to the conclusion there's just something wrong here and I don't know what it is. Surely somebody knows and we start on our search, our spiritual search.

Then, at some point searchers find the fit, their fit. And maybe these teachings are the fit for you. Maybe they're not, in the long run, right?

It's okay if that turns out to be the case. You all have learned a lot along the way of trying the shoe on. My guess, however, is that you've already decided this is the one that fits me, and that's why you're here. 

But technically this course comes very, very early on in the Lam Rim, after we've gone searching and we've found a teacher. We've learned what it is to take a teacher, to believe in a teacher, what their qualities are, a vague idea of what they're going to teach us. We've used logic reasoning, clear reasoning, to come to the conclusion that this teacher knows what I need, personally what I need. With that arises a certain amount of devotion or trust, a deep, heartfelt trust that this one is meant for me to help me.

Now, we can have many teachers who teach within a lineage and they aren't all looking like that one.

This course comes in a series of courses that are helping you grow your goodness to meet your heart teacher, and that teacher will take you again through the steps of the Lam Rim. 

Once we find the teacher, we are following what they teach us. They finally actually teach us something, right? It's like they say, you find your teacher and you ask them, please teach me—which is why we do it at the beginning of every class. 

They're so happy that we've asked. 

What they say is, ‘Get the essence of your life’.

They won't say anything more unless we ask, ‘Well, what do you mean by that?’

Then the next step is, ‘Look at what leisures and fortunes you have’. Look what extraordinary opportunity you have right now.

There's a whole list of them. I'm not going to go through it, all of which you all have because you're here.

They then say, ‘Alright, go work on recognizing what an extraordinary opportunity you have. When you get it, when it sinks in, come back.’ 

It sinks in, we come back. Wow, I have such an extraordinary opportunity. Please teach me. And what they teach us is, ‘And you know what? You have no idea how long this situation's going to last. Like you don't know when you're going to die.’ 

They teach us about impermanence. The first part of impermanence is our own obvious impermanence. 

This amazing teacher who loves us so much says, ‘You know what? You're going to die, and you don't know when. How lucky are you to have lived as long as you have. Are you making the most of it? Or are you just frittering away this precious human opportunity to be in the Dharma, to learn what to do, what to think, what to say, to stop the suffering of the world.’

It's kind of rough actually that they hit us with the truth of our own impermanence when we're still really babies on the path. 

I think it's kind of intentional. If that's scary and you run away, they say, yeah, you'll be back when enough people around you are gone, or you have your own close call, you'll be back. Because without that deep realization, we could go on in these teachings going, Yeah, yeah, someday. Yeah, yeah, someday. Then we don't know when we're going to be flying through the windshield of our car, or suddenly diagnosed with some incurable thing we don't know.

To say, ‘Well, I've got 30 years left, I'll get around to it later‘, it's the teacher's job to knock that out of you. So early on, we get this beautiful teaching about what it is to become keenly aware of our own impermanence. 

I like that Geshe Michael calls it ‘Death and The End of Death Awareness’, because as we'll see as we go through this course, it's not actually inevitable that you will die if we apply ourselves well to the teachings that we're given over the course of our training.

But without that application, it is inevitable that these lives will wear out, and we don't know when.

Again, this is not a course about scaring you into submission, and it will not be a course about what it's going to be like when we die so we won't be scared. 

It's a course about being so well prepared for dying that it in fact is never experienced. Which, I don't know, my own mind hears that and it's like, nah, nah, that's not possible. But we'll see what's really meant by that as we get closer to the end of this.

At each level of the Lam Rim, each Lam, we are supposed to practice with it until we gain some realization of it, some experience that for us makes that message real, shifts from something we heard the teacher say to something because of an experience we know to be true.

You're not going to have to die for this one for you to know it to be true. 

That's the whole point of death and the end of death: It's about growing this clear awareness of the fleeting nature of these beings that we are. Then, the ramifications of that understanding show up in our behavior, our choices of behavior.

This particular teaching comes to us from our hero, Je Tsongkapa (1357 to 1419), from his text the Lam Rim Chenmo, the great something on the path to enlightenment. 

This practice has three aspects, three parts that bring us to the realization. Each of those three have three rationales that we contemplate to come to the conclusion of its truth. 

Then there's a set of resolutions, meaning, well, if this is true, and this is true, and this is true then… 

Then Geshe Michael gives us dessert at the end, that is partly why this is my favorite thing to share, is because of the twist that comes at the end. That's all I'm going to say about it. You have to stick around to get it.

Meditation Training

My teacher insists that in order to reach meditative realizations, we need to be able to meditate at a certain concentration level, a certain platform of mental concentration. In order to reach that level, we need to be training our meditation muscles an hour a day.

It doesn't mean you're at that meditation level for an hour a day. It means you're training, training, training such that when circumstances come together for the meditation that's going to give the realization, you actually go into a deeper level of meditation than you usually do. 

It's like athlete training. They train much longer and harder so that they can put out their 110 maximum effort during the competition, and the competition is shorter than the training session. Is generally, except for Shayla's 50 mile race. But still she trained 150 miles a month in order to race 50 miles.

Meditation is the same. The training is about doing the drills just like any other training. 

This tradition says, build your meditation practice up. Start with five minutes a day no matter what. We've all heard it. 

Add a minute every week, in a year you're meditating for almost an hour, and everything about your life has adjusted by one minute a week. 

Come on, how hard is that? 

Then they say, in that time that you're actually meditating, split it into three. 

Actually there's four, because your preliminaries don't count. 

You do those first, and then you start your actual timer for meditation, and split that meditation time into three.

1. Imagine Your Holy Angel Before You

The first third, you've got your amazing holy angel being in front of you and you're thinking about their amazing qualities. It doesn't sound like a single pointed meditation, but you're just talking to yourself about how wonderful they are.

When your mind goes off, you bring it back. When you get dull and sleepy, you brighten it up. We'll learn that next course. 

If you're meditating for 15 minutes, 5 minutes on your holy being.

2. Focus Their Amazing Qualities

Then 5 minutes where you park yourself on one of their extraordinary qualities. You zero in on that one, and just feel your admiration, your aspiration to be like that.

Again, checking on or off, agitated, dull. 

3. Do Some Analysis

Then the third one is, you do some kind of analysis. That can be a review, or it can be a logical argument about some topic or about that holy being, in which you're analyzing, coming to a conclusion and then parking your attention, your focus of attention on that conclusion, until you lose it. 

Then you go, Oh, lost it. Go back, analyze again. Catch it, park until your timer goes off.

Then you do your closing the way we usually do in class. 

Slowly these three will weave themselves together into a system of meditating that you can then apply to other objects of focus. 

This particular practice that we're going to learn, the thing that you'll analyze or review, will be these different steps of the meditation that we're going to learn. These three parts with three reasonings to the conclusion.

I'll guide you through the visualization, and what we talk about in learning it is how to be thinking it through, applying your own reasoning for, ‘Do I believe it or not? How have I seen that show up in my life?’ So we'll learn all of that.

Again, I'm presupposing that you have some belief in past and future lives, some understanding of karma and emptiness. 

Is there anyone who has not heard the pen thing more than a thousand times? 

No? Good. Everybody knows it.

Keep in mind, that the essence of the fact that we can see a pen, and Tracy's little dog, hello little dog, look at my pen. She goes, let me chew on that thing—tells us something about where the identity of the object comes from. And we all go, Oh, there's something about the observer. 

Same with death and the end of death, and these realizations we're trying to gain—nothing in them from them. Which is how we experience them coming from us, can be magical or not.

My job is to help you plant the seeds so that when those realizations come, they are magical. They are life changing.

Looking back, this particular practice module, when David and I were taught it, we were going out to the Diamond Mountain that Geshe Michael and the others were doing their retreat on. We would help do dishes and so forth there. 

Then those who were in charge would teach during the day and evening. When they weren't in the kitchen cooking, they were teaching these courses for us.

We would gather on a Thursday, so we would have Friday, Saturday, Sunday in order to learn these practices. We'd get classes two, or three, or four times a day. 

This particular one that we received, it was life-changing for me, really. 

I can't remember well enough to describe exactly why, but it was deeply moving and profound. 

So I'm hoping that you'll get just a little flavor of that, if not even bigger than I did. Because it really encourages us to look at ourselves, look at our lives, look at our choices of what's important to us, and to reevaluate those decisions that we make. Not meaning in the next month, but meaning as you work with these ideas. We're putting into motion what will help you make some profound choice changes in your future, when it's time.

Geshe Michael’s Airplane Experience

Let me lead you through a little guided meditation. 

It is not the practice. This is an intro. 

Just put your pens down, relax, listen, and go along. 

You're the one that you're doing what I'm saying. It is happening to you, what I'm saying.

So don't be rigid, be relaxed, but try to stay awake.

Imagine you are 16 or 17 years old and you're traveling by yourself, maybe for the first time. You've rushed to the airport to get on your plane. There was all that uncertainty and nervousness and bumping up against people that knew what they were doing and were sort of pushing other people out of the way. 

Just the ordinary human struggle that we experience getting on our proper flight to where we're going. 

You give your ticket, you're going down that long hallway, you put your luggage up, you settle into your chair, and you see that the person next to you is one of those really big ones. You're feeling a little bit squished and they barely look at you because you're a young kid, and they're complaining about something already. You overhear other people just why this, why that?

It goes on through your flight. People arguing with the stewardess, complaining about the movie, complaining about the pretzels, just standard travel experiences. 

You're about at your first destination, you have a flight, a transfer, and you're feeling that nervousness build up. Will I be there in time? Will I know where to go? What if I miss my transfer? What then?

The closer you get to your destination time, you notice it's like we don't seem to be getting close somehow. We're noticing that the stewardess seems a little bit distressed, and people are still just acting like normal people. 

Then the captain comes on the radio and he says, ’We have a problem here. We have a trouble light that says our landing gear won't come down. We can't tell whether it's true or not. We think the landing gear has gone down. We thought we felt it, but the trouble light knows all. 

We flew by the airport, but the fog was so thick they couldn't see.

So their order was that we are to circle Chicago for 45 minutes to use up our fuel. And when we're down to the last little bit of fuel, they'll guide us onto the runway, which will be prepared for a crash landing.

We need to teach you the crash landing position, and what you'll do when we tell you is take your shoes off so that they won't impede you being able to run. Take your jewelry off so that it won't burn through. We will instruct you to put your head down on your knees, and put your arms up over your head and stay there until we tell you differently.’

We do that as the test position, just for two or three minutes, and we feel how lonely and isolated it feels. Then they let us back up and they say, okay, we'll tell you when to take that position again.

There's 45 minutes and an extraordinary thing happens. 

All the struggling and the complaining ceases. 

The big guy next to you actually turns to you and asks you, ‘How old are you? Where are you going?’ He suddenly cares about you, and he tells you that he's got a 15 year old at home. And you feel for him what he must be feeling. 

You notice that people are caring about others. They're concerned. They're wanting to share a little bit about themselves. They're wanting to know a little bit about these people that they expect to die with within the hour.

The airplane's full of love and concern, and it goes on for 45 minutes.

Then we are instructed to take that crash position, and we do. 

All we can do is listen, and we feel the airplane descending, and the engine's changing the way they do. We can tell it's getting lower and lower and lower, and then bump and roll. 

So we come out of our position and we look out the window, and as the plane is coming to a slowing down, we see the ambulances and hearses lined up.

We see the runway is all foamed to protect us. But we know the landing gear was down. We did not die together.

A great cheer goes up, but then that feeling of love is lost.

When the doors open, there is pushing and shoving to get off that airplane. It's back to ordinary living. 

Same for you, but now you've had this extraordinary realization of what it is to be close to dying. What it is to be with others who believe they're close to dying, and what is within the hearts of those beings that comes out when the time is right. 

So, let that go. 

Come back to your room. 

This is an experience Geshe Michael had when he was 18 years old. 

He was traveling from Arizona to Washington DC to accept the presidential scholarship, which means he scored the highest on the exams that you take finishing high school. He scored the highest of all students in Arizona that year. So they flew him to the President to accept the medal. And he had this extraordinary experience, which–he was not Buddhist, didn't know anything about Buddhism, but he says that it was the best death meditation he's ever had before or since, and he was still saying that 20, 30 years later. I predict he would still say it now because it was so experiential.

The Kind of Death Meditation We Are Studying

This is the kind of death meditation we're studying. 

One that leaves you caring about others more, concerned about others more.

Not, oh no, what's going to happen to me.

Lama Tsongkapa says in fact, that kind of death meditation—Oh no, what's it going to be like?—we don't need to study that. We don't need to practice that. That will come naturally.

We'll be scared. We'll want to avoid the pain. We don't need to learn about that. 

We all know we've done it many times before. Which they say is why we are so ingrained to fight against it, because we've done it mistakenly before. Which means it's been a terrible experience with a terrible outcome.

But it doesn't have to be, because it's just like the pen: no nature of its own. It can be terrible, it can be wonderful, it can be anywhere in between.

What it is for any of us, is a result of karmic seeds ripening 65 per instant. Those karmic seeds are planted 65 per instant by way of what we think, say, do towards others, what we're aware of ourselves thinking, saying, doing towards others. 

If every seed planted is planted with that misunderstanding, that holds. If those seeds have been planted with selfishness, self grasping, self cherishing, me and mine are more important than you and yours. And so what I do to get what I want, what I do to push away what I don't want, that's what I'm supposed to do to protect me and mine against you and yours. 

Those seeds planted are going to come out with those same kinds of coming at us.

It would be really difficult if in the last hours, or weeks, or months, or even a year of knowing when we're going to die, that we're going to die. It would be very difficult to change our behavior enough to override eons of wrongly planted seeds to be able to affect the ones that are going to ripen as me dying and moving on. 

Is it impossible? No.

Is it unlikely? Yes.

There are practices where the Lama comes to town and they give us a Powa, a practice of transferring our consciousness. They go, okay, now practice it and you'll be ready to die. Those practices do work, but only when we are practicing them regularly and using them to choose our behaviors differently under the guidance of the teacher who gave us the Powa. 

This class course is not a Powa, but it will give you the tools to plant your seeds differently, and that's what makes Powa work anyway. You won't even need a Powa, because you'll have been planting your seeds differently, that when they ripen, ripen as a whole different experience of what we call the end of me and mine.

So this death awareness practice is more like a life awareness practice, motivated by this realization of ‘I don't really know how much time I've got.‘

I haven't got a diagnosis that says I'm going to be dead in six months yet, but I don't know for sure I'm not going to get that tomorrow, do I? 

Well, it hasn't happened yet and I'm almost 70 years old, so I think I'm good to go. 

Oops. I know a lot of people who didn't make it to 70. 

I know a lot of people who are still going strong at 98. But which one am I going to be?

These practices inspire us to be training our attitude to shift from this constant concern about me and mine to expanding that concern about me and mine to include all of mine. Meaning every perception I have, and every being who's part of that perception. 

Training ourselves to expand this ‘I want/I don't want’ concern to care about others' wants and don't wants, to the point where we are so ingrained with this thought, ‘I want to take suffering out of my world. I want to give happiness’, that that's so ingrained within us that even as we're flying through the windshield of our car, we're still thinking that.

It's hard to imagine, but it's just by habit.

Our state of mind is popping up the things we do with great frequency, with automatic pilot. They keep being automatic pilot.

This training is about retraining our automatic pilot.

It won't happen in four classes, eight classes, but it will give you the basis for growing that new automatic pilot as you continue to work on it, so that then, if you do find yourself on your deathbed, whatever that might look like, you're using that experience to take with you all the suffering of the world. May my death take all pain and suffering with me. 

Somebody else did that 2300 years ago. We can do it too if we've planted the seeds for that state of mind to be so ingrained in us that of course we're still thinking of it as we're going through this most dramatic change that we can go through as a human being.

Our death meditation is really a practice for everyday life. 

It's not a practice for on our death bed. It's too late by then. It's for now. 

I heard Geshe Michael at Medicine Buddha (referring to the Medicine Buddha Retreat October 2023) say over and over again, fix your own death first. Fix your own death first. 

He didn't explain it. He didn't go on about it, but I kept thinking, ‘Perfect, because that's what we're going to do next.’ So this does not draw away from your Medicine Buddha practice. This training helps you to apply it. 

When we apply our realizations from our death meditation to life, we actually won't ever reach that experience of having that pain and suffering that happens at death ordinarily. We will have transformed it. 

Does it mean this body lives forever? 

I hope not. I'm pretty fed up with it. 

But the Me experiences the end of this thing in a different way that you could even call as not the end of this thing. That's rather the transformation of this thing.

Again, this practice doesn't take us all the way there, but it helps us build the foundation that will carry us through the realizations that will bring us to that place, that place of total transformation. 

It helps us build this state of mind where we're living life with a vibrancy and an enjoyment, and an eagerness because we have our attitude redirected.

A death meditation does not make us morrose, subdued, uninteresting people. Oh, I'm just going to die, so I'm not going to do anything fun because I'm just going to die. 

That's a mistaken understanding of the Buddhist path.

Let's take our break now and we'll start into the specifics of this death awareness practice. 

[break]

4 Parts of Growing My Death Awareness Realization 

These are the four.

This is Lama Tsongkapa‘s outline of a proper death awareness practice. 

I'm going to give you all four and then we'll talk about each one.

1. CHIDREN MA GOMPAY NYE MIK

2. CHIDREN GOMPAY PENYUN

3. CHIDREN LO JITABU SHIK KYE PA

4. CHIDREN GOMPAY TSUL

We see CHIDREN GOMPAY several times. 

One is MA GOMPAY. 

You know the term DRENPA.  DRENPA from the meditation module that you haven't taken yet. 

DRENPA = recollection, meaning holding onto, pulling back

CHI = death

CHIDREN = death recollection or death awareness

GOMPAY is…

GOM = meditation, meaning getting used to something. They use it for the word meditation, but it means familiarizing oneself with, getting used to something. 

CHIDREN GOMPAY = getting used to a death awareness, getting used to being aware of my death in some way

Lama Tsongkapa's outline says there are four parts of growing this my death awareness realization. 

1. CHIDREN MA GOMPAY NYE MIK - The Problems of Not Cultivating Death Awareness

NYE MIK = the problems. The problems that come from MA GOMPAY—not getting used to my death awareness, the problems that come if we don't cultivate this death awareness that we're going to be taught.

What are those problems that come?

It's like we already have them, because we're not living life with a death awareness. Which means we're in that group of humans that are grumbling and irritated that things aren't going my way. Grumpy because we don't feel good. Maybe not so grumpy on a day we do feel good, but we know it's not going to last. We don't get grumpy very much, how we used to be.

We still have days like that. I still have days like that.

It's like life getting on to, and in the airplane before that 45 minutes. Just ordinary life, even for those of us that are already kind, already helpful, already being moral—we think. But still have this attitude that I'm supposed to do certain things to get what I want, and do certain to get away from what I don't want.

It‘s supposed to work like that. So of course I yell back at the yelling boss, because I didn't do what they're saying. Everybody expects me to yell back. There's nothing wrong with that. 

I'm not lying, right? I'm not cheating. I'm not going to kill him. I just… 

But when we know the pen, it's like, No, you don't do that. You might as well just jump off a cliff, because you're killing yourself by yelling back—in the long run. Because we're letting our ignorance run the show, run our decisions.

So life just goes on without a good death awareness practice. Life just goes on as decent human beings. What happens to decent human beings? They die. 

If they live long enough, they usually get old and grumpy, and mean, and then die. 

Maybe it's better to die before you get old and grumpy, and meaner.

But that's not what we're talking about here. 

We're talking about changing the whole experience, the whole process. 

Not meditating on death hurts us in two ways, says Lama Tsongkapa.

It hurts us now, because we continue to go on in this state of constant discontent, always wanting more.

It hurts us later, because our worldly efforts to stop the discontent makes karmic imprints that in the long run bring worse discontent in the future.

Then we die, and we will have missed the opportunity of this human life to transform that whole process. 

The human life, regardless of the being, to have a human life means we have all the things that are necessary to apply ourselves to practices through which we could transform that body in that very light. 

How many do it?

Don't know.

Have we ever seen anybody do it? I don't know about you, but I haven't directly seen.

Does that mean it's not possible?

To the puppy pens are impossibilities. So don't say impossible. 

But without this realization of our death awareness, it will be impossible. Because we'll just go on in the same old way that makes our reality the same old way, that will bring this life to an end in the same old way. 

We have to do something differently: think, say, act differently.

Without a death meditation we just go on preoccupied with petty things in a worldly life, is the harsh reality.

Once the people in the airplane were pretty sure they were going to die in 45 minutes. Were the pretzels still stale and the movie still lousy? Yes.

Did they still not have enough elbow room and leg room? Yes.

Did they care? No.

Do you see the difference?

With our new attitude, there's still going to be crappy things that happen, but we won't care like we used to care.

If this is your last day, night, would you care how rude the waitress was at the restaurant? Would you care?

Yes, she was rude, but who cares? I'm going to be dead tomorrow. In fact, maybe I would want to leave her a bigger tip, because I don't need it anyway.

Our decisions will fly in the face of what ordinary reaction would say, if we knew that we were going to be dead by the next day. And our minds are going to fight with it.

But that's the essence of this practice, is what would you be doing right now if you knew you were going to wake up dead.

I have to honestly say, I would be here teaching this to you. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you would be here taking this from me. There might be something more important to you. But would it be a Netflix movie? Probably not. 

So that's where this is going to take us step by step. Don't go too fast.

Second step.

That first one is the problems that come if we don't cultivate a death awareness practice. We just go on the same old way. 

2. CHIDREN GOMPAY PENYUN - The Advantages of Cultivating Death Awareness

PENYUN = the advantages

Death-awareness-get-used-to-it-advantages step. Considering the benefits of meditating on our death awareness, cultivating a death awareness.

We already have some. If you ask any human, do you know you're going to die someday? I think they would all say yes. But it's a stillborn death awareness.

We go through that period as kids. Oh my gosh, my parents are going to die.

At some point we go, Oh my gosh, I'm going to die too.

But somehow our parents reassure us, and it's like, okay, we get through it. And we go on to grow up with this ‘Okay, I know it, but sometime later’.

We're not taught to use it to motivate our choices. Our society doesn't know that.

I didn't grow up in a Tibetan society. I don't know if those kids get taught ‘Take care of your death now by way of your meditation’. I'm going to guess maybe not.

As we are working with this stage, recognizing the benefits of having a strong death awareness as we go through our life, our daily living, as we see the benefits of that, we'll notice a change in our behavior. We'll be choosing responses differently, and that's how we see the benefit of our practice actually.

It‘s more than a nice meditation. It's how I respond to those unpleasant and pleasant situations of daily life that shows us how keen our death awareness practice has become. 

One of the benefits of this second step, cultivating the benefits of a death awareness, is that it helps us recognize what is petty in our lives and what is helpful in our lives.

We already have many helpful things.

That idea of ‘Would I care about such and such, if I was dying tonight?’

Even as our minds say, Yeah, but I'm not going to die tonight.

But regardless, if you were, would you get upset at the snippy waitress?

Would you get upset about the person cutting you off in traffic?

Would you waste your precious few last moments on being upset at something, or somebody?

Intellectually we get it. When we get it here, it won't be a struggle to not get upset at being cut off, or choose your favorite what makes you upset. It just won't be there anymore.

In a different way than burn it off and plant new, which is what we learn in other places. This is an attitude of ‘Those things will just water over the duck's back’. You know that term?

Secondly, it helps us recognize the useless activities that we spend time on. 

Again, when you're doing anything, our death awareness is, Gosh, if I'm going to be dead tomorrow, do I really want to spend my time doing this?

I have to admit, I spent all afternoon studying for this class, but also watering the few plants that need deep watering twice a year. Today was the day.

It never once occurred to me, is this really what I should be spending my last precious moments on? The studying (for) the class? Yes. But watering the stupid plants? It didn't occur to me. I probably would've chosen yes. But I didn't do it intentionally, consciously. Do you see? 

We're trying to have this growing level of ‘This is my last chance to do what I'm doing’.

Is what I'm doing really what I want to spend my last moment's on?

I can feel my mind going, Man, that's going to make life really intense.

But as we work with it, that intensity becomes really uplifting, and playful, and joyful, because we've just cleared out all the crap that just doesn't even hold weight anymore. 

As we get deeper, we're going to see that it's not so much the things we're choosing to do or not do. It's the state of mind with which we do them. That's going to be the key. 

But we start out really evaluating, ‘Is this really benefiting me and my world, worth the time I'm spending, if I've only got eight hours left?’ It's our new criteria.

There's a third benefit. It benefits us by reducing our interest in getting and keeping possessions.

All the things that we own take up space in our minds. They all inhibit our ability to concentrate deeply enough to see emptiness directly, technically. Not meaning, go through your house and throw everything away.

But as our death awareness state of mind grows, our interest in gaining and keeping, and holding the Me and mine, shifts to where you have stuff, you see that somebody might like it or benefit, or have some use for it, and it's like, Here, please. 

Geshe Michael is so bold, he says, just go through all those knick-knacks and throw them all away.

Throw them away? What? I can find somebody who would enjoy them.

But then I've cluttered them up. 

Yeah, well, they're just not ready. They'll throw them away when they're ready. 

I wiggled out of it for a while. Then eventually, did actually give everything away, and then it came back three years later, some of it, a lot of it. 

Then new stuff came back, right? Anyway, I'm getting distracted. You're getting the idea.

We're looking at things in our life in a different way, a new way.

We'll come to see our possessions as liabilities, not assets. 

When we get to that point, it's no effort to give them up. 

Sumati and I had this beautiful house on three acres in northwest Tucson for 9 or 10 years, and wildlife and ponds and gardens. It was just paradise for us.

Then we met the Dharma and we were driving out to the desert, and it was like that beautiful house we love so much became a burden. It was just too much. I couldn't do it anymore. We came to the same conclusion together. We got to sell this house. We need to move to the other side of Tucson so we were 45 minutes closer to Diamond Mountain than from where we were. We just sold it. Take it, somebody. 

Looking back, it's like, wow, were we nuts? At the time it was like, well, get rid of this thing.

It is a shift, just a shift.

It's not a sit down and make the decision and weigh.

It was just like ‘no more’. 

Then the fourth benefit of a clear death awareness is we do the same thing with our extraneous relationships. 

That doesn't sound like a benefit of death awareness. That sounds a bit harsh.

(Ale) What type of relationships?

(Lama Sarahni) Extraneous, meaning you've got that group of friends that meet every Friday at the bar to just, pardon my French, bitch and moan.

I had a women's group, and we called it the ‘Bitch and Moan Club’. Because that’s what we were supposed to do. Get it all out of your system, and the rest of the week, cork it. Then bring it to our group and vomit it all out. It was useful in my worldly life, but not once I understood Dharma. 

It's like, ladies, I love you, but I'm bowing out of this group. That kind of thing. 

When our viewpoint changes, if our people can't see our new viewpoint, then respectfully, lovingly bow out. Willing to do so, even if they get upset with us, which probably they won't actually, but that often stops us from acting out of fear. Oh, they'll stop liking me.

3. CHIDREN LO JITABU SHIK KYE PA - Identifying What Kind of Death Awareness We Seek to Develop

KYE PA = to gain or develop

SHIK = which one

LO JITABU = what kind of state of mind

What is this state of mind death awareness we're trying to develop

Je Tsongkapa tells us first, it is not seeking to develop the fear that will come to us as we're about to die. That will come naturally. We have no need to practice it, he says.

The state of mind we are cultivating is this state of mind that holds, ‘I'm going to die tonight. So what's the most important thing I could do right now?’

First thing in the morning: I'm going to die tonight. So what's the most important thing I could do right now? And right now? And right now?

Imagine, would your day be different? Maybe yes, maybe no.

My guess is to some extent, yes.

‘I die tonight’ is the mantra for the next four weeks as we explore this. 

Not morose, but: I die tonight, so I'm going to make good use of my today. 

There are things I have to do. I've got obligations. Of those things, what are really obligations, and what are self-imposed obligations?

How do I interact with others expecting that I'm going to see them again and again and again and again? How would you interact with them if you think, this is the last time I'm going to see them.

That's probably the most important shift in state of mind, our choices of what we think, say and do. 

Do I want to say this to them?

If I'm dead tomorrow and I can't take it back.

If it upsets them, how do I want to say this to them if I know it's planting seeds in my mind that's going to affect me in my next life, which is starting tomorrow. Oh.

Geshela says, when we're exploring this level, we might want to start with, ‘Did I do all the worldly things that I really wanted to do with my life?’ 

What's still on your bucket list? Look at those things. There may be things that you can now say, alright, that one's not so important. But if you find some that are like, no, no, I really, really, really would like to do that, see that. Then please go, do it. Get it out of your system. 

I don't mean tomorrow, the next day, but soon, so that it isn't hanging over you for when you die tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day after that. Don't wait. 

Geshela says it may also happen that you end up changing careers. Because as our death awareness practice becomes really keen, if there's a part of us that's thinking, ‘I really don't like what I'm doing, I really would rather be doing such and such, or it would be more useful to the world if I did that…’

Death awareness is going to crank up the power of those choices.

Don't quit tomorrow and go bum off your friends. 

But don't be surprised if a year from now you're doing something completely different, and you're feeling really empowered by that new situation. Even if it's maybe not so prestigious, even if it's maybe not so lucrative, but empowering.

Don't force it.

But we're blocking it with our expectations. One of those expectations is, ‘I'm going to live long enough for the next better job to come along.’ Or ‘I'm going to live long enough that I'll just get through this and then retire.’

It's a false expectation that we can't rely upon. 

Without a death meditation we die with regret. 

We've been taught that regret is the only negative virtuous state of mind.

And that's true when we're regretting some negative thing that we did. 

But the regret we're talking about here is as we're getting closer and closer to our actual death, we're thinking, Oh, I regret I didn't take that opportunity. Or I regret that I didn't do, say this to my person. Those kinds of regrets are a negative state of mind, that is a negative seed, that is an influence that we don't want.

Living with a strong death awareness, we won't have that kind of regret.

We'll reach our death time with this conviction that we were using our lifetime to our highest ability at any moment. There's nothing to regret, even if we didn't say such and such to someone. Or even if we didn't manage to climb that mountain that we always intended to do.

4. CHIDREN GOMPAY TSUL - How to Actually Do the Death Awareness

It comes in three steps—or three principles they are called.

Each of the three principles has three reasonings to apply to come to a realization of the principle. Then those three resolutions at the end.

We will learn these three step by step. We're going to build them, build the nine steps, and then step into the resolutions, and then the dessert at the end. 

That's the talking head part of class. 

The last part is the guided visualization of the first part of this practice. 

It's recorded, and we will repeat it multiple times. We'll learn this one in long version, and then we'll shorten it. It'll get repeated each time, so don't feel like, as you're listening to me, your mind's going, I have to remember that, I have to remember that. 

First: it's on the recording. Rachana makes transcripts. Thank you very much.

And we'll do it again and again. 

So let yourself open up to the guidance and the pictures that come to you, without this. 

I know my own mind would be going, Oh, I have to write that down. 

Let it pour into you.

Wiggle and get refreshed, because my voice becomes monotonous, and it'll put you to sleep if you don't at least start bright.

Guided meditation

Get yourself placed, feel the weight of your body solid on your seat. 

Feel the rising energy of your mind, eager to learn this practice. 

Then bring your attention to your breath to shift the mind into neutral. 

Recall that precious holy guide there with you, helping you.

Recall your refuge. How worldly refuges fail. 

But the refuge of karma and emptiness guides us in our choice making through which we create our future. Take your refuge in your choice to be here in class. 

Now, shine the light of your Bodhichitta. 

Think of that person that we wanted to be able to help.

Think of the problem they're having.

Feel your wish to be able to help in worldly ways, and in worldly ways that would work, and the wish to be able to help in that ultimate way as well. 

Turn your mind to that precious being before you. Mentally honor them. 

One good quality that you see in them. 

Tell them of your aspiration to become like that. 

See them smile and then make them an offering. 

Tell them of something that you thought, said or did because of something they taught you. 

Then clean your mind of some negativity.

Tell them of that, of your regret at that habit. 

Offer this meditation as the antidote, and make your determination not to repeat it in some specific way. 

Then rejoice. Tell them of some other goodness that you've done recently. 

Ask them to please, please stay close to you, to continue to teach you and guide you, especially to gain insight into this meditation.

Then bring your attention back to your breath. 

Now, see yourself standing at the edge of a thick forest, looking out. 

You look across a clearing and you see in the distance a building.

The building looks familiar. It's attractive to you, beautiful to you.

You see that it has a courtyard in the center, but can't quite see what's in that courtyard. 

You see it has a beautiful flower filled meadow in front and to the sides. 

You see that there's a moat around it, a deep ring of water that protects it, separates it, and you see a bridge that crosses the moat. 

On your side of the bridge, there's a table full of food and drink, and people milling around it. You've been struggling through this thick, nasty forest. 

You have a heavy backpack full of your important things. 

So full, it's overflowing and things are hanging off of it.

You're hot, you're scratched up, you're tired, and you're hungry and thirsty.

You see all that food and drink and all those people, and of course you go to get some. 

As you move through the crowd of people, they're pulling at your backpack, at the stuff in your backpack. 

They're pushing you away from the food and drink, and you're pushing against them, slapping their hands away, just trying to get some food and drink. 

This is life as we know it. Ordinary suffering human beings struggling against others to get what we want, burdened by the things that we thought we wanted, we think bring us happiness.

And something shifts in our mind. 

Something's wrong with this picture. I can't do this anymore.

And although we didn't get anything to eat or drink, we withdraw from the crowd and move to the foot of the bridge. 

We step onto the bridge, we walk to its highest point, standing at the railing, looking down at the water. 

The water is streaming like a river, even though it's a moat. 

And with this thought, ‘There's something wrong with this picture.‘, we recognize ‘My backpack is such a burden, the things in it‘. 

Take a moment and pick three of those things in or on your backpack. 

See how they represent something in life right now that you recognize doesn't serve you in your new path.

My flashlight, my People magazine subscription. 

I'm ready to throw it away into the moat. 

Throw it. Good rinse. 

Find another. Throw it over. 

Check carefully, ‘Can I really do without this?‘, before you throw it over.

If that answer is yes, let it go. 

If the answer is, ‘I'm not sure‘, put it back.

Now, move on across the bridge. 

At the end of the bridge, you suddenly see there's a gauntlet of scary guys, like warriors, huge, muscular. They've got weapons. 

And you see that to get to the building, you've got to get past these guys.

You're kind of quaking in your boots.

But then you think those guys just represent the wrong kind of death awareness. 

I'm not going to learn that kind. I'm learning the kind that will help everyone in my world. 

With that thought, you're able to burst right past them so quickly that they can't react fast enough to grab you. 

And you find yourself in this flower filled meadow. 

Somehow your backpack is magically gone. 

You're clean, your light, you're dressed in silken clothing. 

You're dancing through this fragrant meadow, joyful, unburdened.

And you dance your way right up to the entry to this building. It's a big golden yellow door.

Now turn and look back. 

You see the meadow, and the dancing through the meadow represents the advantages of a proper death awareness practice.

Feeling light and clean, and unencumbered and joyful. 

You see the gauntlet of scary guys as the death awareness we don't do, the one that's scary and painful. 

We see the bridge, and throwing our unnecessary or burdensome things, and habits, and beliefs, and relationships as being the advantage of a good death awareness, a fullon death awareness, allowing us to reprioritize our life and its activities. 

We got there because we finally got sick and tired of the struggle trying to get what we want and avoid what we don't want in those ordinary human ways, struggling against others to get the food and drink.

And we got there because we finally managed the goodness to get out of the forest, a forest with no path, hardly any light, tangled and scratchy and dangerous. 

Somehow we reached the end of it. 

Somehow our renunciation woke up, and our ignorance showed itself, and we chose to do something different. 

So we stepped onto the bridge and up, and grew some willingness to give up some old baggage. 

We faced our fear of death, which allowed us to scoot right by that gauntlet of scary guys and find ourselves in the meadow, dancing up to the door to the building that will take us to freedom.

We'll sit here for four minutes. 

Run your mind through that scenario, and stop wherever your heart feels called to explore a little bit more. 

Every now and then, I will say ‘check‘. That's a trigger for you to come back to your object in case you had gone off, or to check your level of clarity. 

Okay, go.

Check. 

Check now. 

Bring that session to a close. 

Bring your attention back to being in your room. 

Dedication of Class

Think of that person that we wanted to be able to help. 

We've learned something that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way. And that's an extraordinary goodness. So be happy with yourself.

Recall your precious holy guide there with you. 

See how happy they are with you. 

Ask them to please stay close, and offer them this goodness that we've done. 

See them accepted and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart. 

See them there, feel them there, that love, that compassion, that wisdom. 

It feels so good we want to keep it forever. 

And so we know to share it.

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom 

and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. 

So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every being you've ever seen or heard of. 

See them all filled with happiness, filled with wisdom, and may it be so. 

Your exploration can be any part of this practice that we've met so far. 

I remember spending so much time on the bridge. 

Some things went and some things didn't. 

Don't just dump it all. We're not ready. But please have fun with these ideas and we'll build on them again on Thursday. 

Okay. Thank you again so much for the opportunity. 

CHIWA NYEPA = death certain

NGEPAR CHIWAR SAMPA = the time of death uncertain

NAMCHI NGE MEPAY SAMPA = at death time, the only thing that helps is Dharma

For the recording, welcome back. We are Death and the End of Death Practice module group. It is November 9th, 2023. 

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. 

Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

[Usual Opening]

Review Class 1

Last class we had left the forest. The forest represents Samsara. 

We were stuck in Samsara with that heavy load. Our backpack representing our possessions, our relationships, our habit patterns, our belief systems, really representing everything about ourselves and our lives within Samsara. 

We stepped out into the clearing. Like by some magic we got in a place where we could get a glimpse where up until then we were just in the dark, scratched up, struggling. 

As we're in that clearing, hot and tired, and hungry and thirsty, we see in the distance the table with food and drink, and all the people. 

It's easy to feel that, whoa, I want what's there, because that's where my comfort's going to come from. 

We're attracted to the stuff on the table. But in getting to the table, we have to struggle against all these others who are struggling to get to the table. And they are after this stuff on our backpack. You can feel it, like struggling to get on a crowded bus and you're almost late for work. That feeling, it's like yikes.

That whole piece—coming out of the forest, seeing the table, struggling against others to get what's there—that all represents the disadvantages of not growing a keen, proper death awareness practice. 

It represents the struggles of staying within, a being in a samsaric world with samsaric habits, meaning just continuing to be grubby, little selfish beings trying to get what we want and avoid what we don't want.

Then we had that scene where it's like ‘Something's wrong with this picture‘, and we break out of the crowd. We turn and we see the bridge over the moat. 

That really represents the awakening of our renunciation. 

Just that thought, even if it's fleeting, there's just something wrong here. It's enough for us to go searching, looking, the willingness to find something new starts this process. And in this practice it takes us right to the moat.

Step onto that bridge over the moat represents this growing level of renunciation that we learned about in the Lam Rim practice module, and we'll learn more and more about as we continue our studies, as our own seeds shift. What we mean by renunciation shifts more and more deeply or broadly—I am not quite sure how to describe that.

On the bridge, we got to the apex of the bridge and we stopped, and had the thought, ‘This stuff in my backpack, it's just burdening me. It is keeping me tied to my old way of life, my old habits.‘ And our task during the week was to just think about what are those things in the backpack, hanging off it, overflowing. Just to identify some of them. And then of the ones we identified, are there already a few that you can see are really not your interest so much anymore, and not really benefiting you anymore. Not really benefiting the others that they seem to have benefited before.

You don't need to share, but just think. Did you recognize that there were some things? Maybe it was just the extra 50 pairs of shoes. Okay, I only need three. Give the rest away. Something. It maybe seems like trivial at this point, but it's something. 

The idea of going across the bridge, and pausing there and reaching into that backpack, pulling out something this represents. This is my magazine subscription. Do we even have those anymore? Chuck, good riddance. 

This is, I don't know, that particular scrolling that I always check. It doesn't inspire me anymore, but I still do it. Chuck. Symbolically finding things that hold us back from this shift that we're just getting a glimpse of what we can become. 

Yeah, it would be wonderful if we could just take that whole backpack and chuck the whole thing over. But don't do that. Because two minutes later there'd be something in the backpack that you would regret having just chucked over. So don't push.

I mean push, urge, be brave, but not too fast. Because too fast will lead to regret. It will lead to a break in our practice.

Rather prepare ourselves well. And then when the time comes, the thing will just leave us. Which if we're not prepared yet for the thing to leave us, we get all upset. If we've already prepared ourselves, and we just haven't figured out how to get rid of it, or how to stop it, and now it leaves us: Thank you. That just made my life easier. 

It's really an attitude shift. But that attitude shift is promoted if we really physically find things that it's time to give these away.

So I encourage you to find a few things, no matter how trivial, and get them somewhere else, so they're not part of your backpack burden anymore. 

Just doing that to begin with will reinforce this whole process of the willingness to change, the willingness to become the change that we say we want to do but something in us is going, nah. 

Spend some time on that bridge in your meditations if you're doing this practice on a regular basis. Don't be in a big hurry. 

That bridge and throwing off the stuff is representing the benefits of a proper death awareness practice.

It allows us to see the benefits of preparing ourselves for this change. 

Then by the end of the bridge, there was that gauntlet of scary guys, remember? They represent the death awareness practice that we're not doing. They represent the fear and the pain, and the disorientation that comes out of ordinary death. There's no need to practice that. 

We've done it many times before. It will come naturally. 

Yet, as we're looking down the bridge towards those guys, we remember, Well, that is not the kind of death awareness practice I'm doing. I'm doing a death awareness practice that changes that whole scene.

So our confidence is such that we just shoot right by those scary guys, and they can't react fast enough to get us.

We find ourselves in the meadow: light, supple, clean, refreshed, the backpack's gone, silken clothing, dancing towards the building. It represents the proper death awareness practice that we're going to do, and how it leaves us feeling confident and unencumbered, and eager, and fresh, and uplifted. That's the kind of death awareness practice we're doing.

So the forest and the clearing is like preliminaries. 

Breaking free from the table is our renunciation. And part of the renunciation is recognizing: If I stay in that old scene, then I am just going to end up going through being dead. And then who knows what comes next. 

So our renunciation grows. 

We're getting onto the bridge, recognizing what death meditation is not about, recognizing what it is about, what the one we're not going to do and the one that we are going to do.

We ended up at the building's eastern door that was beautiful golden yellow, and we were standing there, looking back. 

This building, we said, it has a courtyard in its center. And in the courtyard is our fully enlightened being. In the Lam Rim practice module we said, they're already there. They're already there waiting for you.

It was like, I'm not so sure about that. 

But, by the time you get all the way through the building to the courtyard, they will be there, because you'll be there. Going through this building represents all the stages of the path from suffering human in the forest to fully enlightened being in the courtyard.

This course does not get us all the way to the courtyard. It will meet up with the Lam Rim practice module and then you weave yourself through those rooms, and it shows you the way to the courtyard. 

So we're only going to get part way there from this one. 

But in the Lam Rim practice module, we never actually entered the building. We entered it from the courtyard and we went backward. 

So here's where we enter this building through this golden yellow door, the eastern entry to this beautiful building.

This building, the series of rooms we're going to learn about, represent the three principles of a helpful death awareness practice. 

Each of those three principles has three reasonings within them to help us investigate the truth of the principle. 

So each of these rooms within the building represents these principles and reasonings. And there'll be things inside the rooms to help trigger your reasoning process as you explore the meaning of these different principles and reasonings, so that you can gain your own sense of truth about it.

Each one builds on the next, and we'll learn it through the course of this training. 

So we'll have the whole thing in this visualization practice through which you remember the outline. Then you get to explore it if it speaks to you. 

The 3 Principles

Let me give you the three principles, and just for fun, I'll give you the Tibetan in order to keep the language alive. 

CHIWA NYE PA

NGEPAR CHIWAR SAMPA

NAMCHI NGE MEPAY SAMPA

1. Death is certain

CHIWA NYE PA = death certain, the words just ‚death certain‘.

Which we all go, yeah, yeah, I know. But say these words instead: My death is certain.

Oh, that holds a bit more power than just death is certain. 

So really this first principle of death awareness is: My death is certain.

We'll have three reasonings to help us decide whether we believe that or not. 

2. The time of death is uncertain

NGEPAR CHIWAR SAMPA = the time of death uncertain

Which yeah, we get that. That's why we get away with saying, death is certain. Yeah, yeah. So what? Because the time of our death is uncertain. And so we go, ‘Not for a long time, I'm sure, thank you very much‘.

But say it this way: My death is certain and the time of My death is uncertain.

That feels a little more powerful to me. Even now when I know the punchline.

My death is certain, the time of my death is uncertain. 

We'll talk about how to prove that to ourselves. 

We all know it, but we try to wiggle out of it. 

3. The only thing that helps is Dharma

NAMCHI NGE MEPAY SAMPA = at death time only—I don't know how the words actually play—at death time the only thing that helps is Dharma. 

At the time of my death, the only thing that can help me is the Dharma.

That means a lot. 

The meaning of that is different than what the actual words say. 

So we'll get there. 

Each of these three has three more reasonings that I don't have the Tibetan for, and we'll learn them as we go. 

So the three are:

1. My death is certain

2. The time of my death is uncertain. And 

3. At the time of my death, the only thing that can help me is the Dharma, meaning my spiritual life.

I had mentioned before that the way to use this as a meditation practice was to combine the visualization of the holy object, thinking about their qualities—I think I remember talking about that—then doing an analysis of them, and then fixating on your conclusion. 

In the way we would use this practice is that we would first do what's called a review meditation, which means for the five minutes that you're doing your death meditation practice, the first minute you talk through what you've learned about it so far:

• Okay, Samsara sucks. 

• Renunciation has got to kick in. 

• Renunciation is going to require some change. 

• That proper death meditation's not the scary one, it's the one that's going to leave me happy and free. 

• The first principle is my death is certain, eh gads. What does that mean? 

Right? 

And you just have memorized the outline. 

Go as far as you've got it. 

Do it forwards, do it backwards.

Do it forwards, do it backwards.

Then take one of those principles or reasonings, and for your second minute or minute and a half, you do a reasoning, clear thinking about that topic. 

• Do I believe my death is certain? 

• How do I live according to that? Well, I'm really careful crossing the street because I know I could fall down and get hit by a car. But there are other ways that I'm not so careful. And does that mean…, right? We just analyze. 

• And when you come to a conclusion for which you get this sense of, oh, I get that a little deeper now. Park on that feeling of the conclusion. That's called fixation meditation. 

So your reasoning meditation, your CHEGOM, find a moment or three where you're fixing on your Aha, and then you'll lose it, and you go back to the reasoning to get it back. Then park on the conclusion with fixation.

So you're doing all three kinds of meditation in one session. 

You're spending more time on the thinking part, because we can't hold the fixation very long. 

But our effort to hold it, and then repeatedly return to it, is the seeds that we want to plant that will grow into a meditation in which our fixation gets stronger and stronger.

Reasoning of the certainty of death

The first reasoning to check whether or not we truly believe and live by the first principle, which is: My death is certain. 

The scripture says „The Lord of death is unstoppable.“ 

So why is it true that my death is certain—number one?

Because the Lord of death is unstoppable. 

What's meant by that is that when the time of our death arrives, there is nothing and nobody that can stop it. 

Our minds say, that's not true, because my uncle so-and-so was having a heart attack and he got to the ER in time, and they gave him that aspirin and TPA, and they stopped his heart attack and they saved his life.

So his time of death was not unstoppable. He was dying, and then he didn't. So see? It's not true. 

When we come to that kind of conclusion, we automatically think, ‘And so that will happen to me too‘, right? Of course, when I get close to death, I'll get to go there and they'll fix me too. 

But understanding karma and emptiness, we check more deeply into that experience of my Uncle Sam. Our life itself is empty of its nature in it, from it. Our life is a projection of our mind’s forced results, of forced results of causes made by how we acted, spoke and thought towards others. When we experience ourselves dying, that too is a projection of our mind. 

It's really hard to hold that because we hear ‘projection of our mind‘, and we think there's some mind shooting this projection out that's separate from it. 

So these really need to be worked with to understand more clearly what we mean. Dead or alive, it's projections happening. 

Geshela would use the terms ‘perception‘ and ‘projection‘ interchangeably, and he was doing it on purpose to sort of shake us up. Because we're pretty comfortable with, Oh, my perceptions, I'm having perceptions. 

We don't think of those perceptions as being projected. 

We think of ’That's just how we experience things. We perceive them.‘ 

But as we learn more and more of causes, ultimately, any perception is projected, any experience is projections, because there is nothing we can experience that's not projections. But it's useful to slide between those two words to help us loosen our grasp on perception, meaning something out there that I perceive that includes it in it my perception. So I'm going to do the same thing intentionally, kind of slide between those two words. But I'm telling you now what I always mean by it, is projected meaning ripening results of our own past deeds. And if I ever use perception in a way different than that, I will tell you I'm using it in the old way.

So when our karma for this life wears out, ripenings still happen. 

But karma for life wears out. Karma for something else is ripening. Karma for death ripens the instant the karma for this life all wears out. It's like, flip.

Some of us have been working with Arya Nagarjuna and this mutually exclusive thing, like life and death are mutually exclusive.

They don't overlap even for an instant, because they're opposites: life or dead.

It's like, no, no. But we die slowly, most of us. It's like, well, if we deteriorate slowly, but dead is dead, and no more life. No more this life, not no more life at all. But no more our human life, presumably, if we're talking about human. But whatever the life is that is being dead, those purple hands. 

That death is also not self existent. 

Although I just said the instant your life karma wears out, you're dead. It's you're dead because you're being dead karma ripens.

There's no other way for that to happen. 

To hold to death as a self existent thing prevents us from this kind of death awareness that empowers us instead of encumbering us. Is that a word? Encumbering, holding us back. 

Geshela explained, as long as we have the karma to see our purple hands moving, we have the karma to see ourselves alive. And at some point we no longer have the karma to see our purple hands moving. No matter how much we might still want them to move, although I don't think you have that thought in death, they won't.

Because if we don't have the karma for a functioning body, we don't have a functioning body. If we don't have the karma ripening to have a live body, we don't have a live body. 

The karma to have live bodies, human bodies, are karmas that are called dirty good karma. 

It is extraordinarily good to have the projections being human, is extraordinary goodness, results of extraordinary goodness. 

To see ourselves as a samsaric human, a suffering human being, an ignorant human being, is because those extraordinary kindnesses that we did to get here were done without an understanding of emptiness. 

So yes, they were extraordinary kindnesses, but they were missing the little piece of the deeds, the perception of doing the deeds that would have made that kindness ripen us into a Tara, or a Chenrezig, or whatever, right?

A deity, not a worldly deity, but a fully enlightened being, is made through the accumulation of merit—good deeds done with an understanding of emptiness. 

Technically good deeds done with a perception of emptiness, even if it's not direct at the moment, which of course it couldn't be. 

We're riding upon lots of dirty good karma. 

Don't take that wrongly. We should be happy to have dirty good karma that makes us human, because we could be gnat, worm, bug hell being, and theoretically could yet be. 

We're using up this extraordinarily powerful goodness moment by moment.

Which means it's going to wear out. Dirty good karma. What's meant by dirty is that it wears out. That's why death is inevitable. Because our goodness for this life, there's only so much of it, and we don't know when, right? That's next class. 

We don't know how much we have yet. 

We understand karma well enough, I believe, that once a karmic seed has ripened, it is hard cement. Until it's ripened, it's still influenceable. But once ripened, it's done. It's done its thing. 

And our response to it, our reaction or response to it, is planting new seeds. 

So if the doctor stops our heart attack, our karma for life was not wearing out. 

Our karma to have a heart attack stopped was ripening.

We didn't know that until the heart attack got stopped. 

But it's not like death was ripening and then somebody interfered and changed it.

Death wasn't ripening until it is hard cement. 

Once our karmas for this life run out, our karma for death ripens and nothing can be done. No Buddha can interfere and change a dead karma ripened. 

No Buddha can turn it backwards. If Buddha can't turn it backwards, then neither can anybody else. 

All the time we spend taking vitamins, finding the best cosmetic for my skin, doing the right exercise, eating the right vegetables, we're just aging. 

As we do that, we do those things for other reasons. But if we think our yoga is going to make us live longer, we'll be sorely disappointed.

What's the proof that nobody can stop our death when we're headed to it? 

Geshela says the proof is that people die. 

I just learned today somebody I knew, I didn't know him very well, but I knew, had died last week. And somebody else's wife, who I knew fairly well, had died last week. 

I live in a community where most of us are, not me, but eighties and above. 

But it doesn't make it hurt any less for somebody that you were involved in on a regular basis for him to lose his wife, when he was expected to be the one to die first. That's what the surprise in this particular couple. He's living on borrowed time and she's the one that drops dead.

If a Buddha is totally compassionate, and a Buddha is omniscient, and they could do something, they would stop our death. They would stop our headaches, they would stop our wrinkles, they would stop any kind of suffering, and they don't, right? Duh.

But that either means they can't, or they can and they don't want to. 

So can a Buddha be omniscient and all powerful, and me still suffer? 

No, because if they're omniscient and they're all powerful, they would have to not care to not do something. 

How do we know that that scenario is impossible? Not just, no, they wouldn't do that, but impossible. What do we know about what makes omniscience? 

Do you remember?

(Luisa) The obstacles?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, the obstacles. To?

(Luisa) Omniscience.

(Lama Sarahni) Omniscience, right. So the subtle obstacles to omniscience being removed and they have to all be removed. Which means there's a component of the compassion for all beings and all their suffering. That is the necessary piece that allows us to remove all those subtle obstacles to omniscience. It requires compassion for all, ALL—big capital letters—to even reach omniscience. So if a being is omniscient, it's because they have this whopping compassion. Which means if they could fix our problems, they would, but so they must not be able to. 

So what good is being a Buddha if he can't help anybody? Tell me, somebody.

(Luisa) Because they're supposed to teach us.

(Lama Sarahni) So how are we going to know what to teach? Because we're omniscient. 

How do we get to be omniscient? We wanted to be able to help everybody in that deep ultimate way. 

It's a beautiful upward spiral. 

Then, we also had to do it ourselves. Which is a really big selling point for a teacher, is if they had to go through it themselves. Because that means they know how hard it was. They know how lousy Samsara is, and they know what hard work it is to change. So the point being that a Buddha can't stop our death, even standing by our bedside holding our hand, praying for us. They can influence our mind. They can help guide our mind. But even that only if I have the seeds, right?

(Luisa) But then why is it that, I mean if they cannot stop it, they can still kind of take us in another path so we don't get to that. Or let's say maybe when you age naturally, let's call it that, then it seems to be someone is kind of helping you not to die. 

But what about all those living beings, or babies, or I don't know, who just die, or get shot, or… It feels a bit like, well, where was Buddha? Where were they in those moments? Why they didn't help those people? And I know it comes from the karma of those people, but then, what is the help of the Buddhas and their omniscience if they help everybody at least to guide them through another path. You know what I mean?

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Yeah. And so can we really say that there was no Buddha there with or for that child who gets shot? No. We don't know.

(Luisa) No, or at least not me.

(Lama Sarahni) We don't know what the child's seeing or experiencing. Which this really isn't helpful for someone who doesn't already know karma and emptiness well. But we don't know what that child's experience was. 

A Buddha in their compassion would be right there with them to help and guide. But that Buddha can't stop the speeding bullet. That child's karma for life ended. 

So could we say they were born with the only six years worth of karma for life? 

You could say that, although it's not self existently that way. 

No. We learned, somewhere along the line we learned that karma can ripen in three times. Do you remember that one? It seemed like, so what? 

1. But we can do karma in this life that ripens some lifetime in the future. 

2. We can do karma in this life that will ripen in the very next lifetime and 

3. We can do karma in this life that will in fact ripen within this lifetime.

And that's the purpose of the Diamond Way practice, is to learn the sneaky ways to make our karma in such a way that it ripens in this lifetime. And because life and death are not self existent, those karmas that we learn to make in this more powerful way ripen within what we call this lifetime, and do seem to function to stop our death. But it doesn't. What it does is transform our very being and all our seeds.

So that is what would've been called the end of seeds for this life. And so the seeds of death are called something different, it is experienced differently. 

The projections are different. That our projections are not what they are until they ripen. So because they're not self existent, it is true for a samsaric being: my death is certain. But because it's not self existent, it's changeable. It's certain and it's changeable—but not in the moment of the ripening. 

Even tantric seeds, when they ripen, they've ripened and they are cement. 

So, my death is certain, why? 

Because the Lord of death is unstoppable. 

When my seeds for this life wear out, my seeds for dead ripen. And dead seeds ripened are hard cement, and we're onto something else. Better, worse, in between. We'll learn a bit. 

(Natalia) Okay, sorry to interrupt, but you said that even if Buddha appears when the Lord of death is there, I will still die. But isn't Buddha, only when somebody is Buddha, they only see people not suffering. So the people are not dying.

(Lama Sarahni) They have no suffering themselves. If they can't see my suffering, I'm in trouble. So Buddhas do see me suffer. And it twists their compassionate heart, because they see me. That's beyond that suffering already. 

(Ale) Can we say that they are like the parents with their kids that sometimes you can just watch them, and let them hit their head, and the bicycle or a teenager to rebel, and go to the opposite way, and just wait for them to come back and look? What you said in the beginning, it was the correct path and it is not because you don't want to help them. It is because you are just guiding them?

(Lama Sarahni) Right. You really can't interfere.

(Natalia) I thought the Buddha is able to, that's why we try to become Buddha so that we can save everybody from suffering,

(Lama Sarahni) Right. And the way you're going to do that is you're going to teach them how to stop making suffering themselves. You're not going to be able to reach into them and go, I will suck your migraines out. We pretend we can. That's what Tonglen is about. But we won't ever be able to actually do it. Well what good is Tonglen then?

(Natalia) So the only thing they can do is teach. Not like the Medicine Buddha retreat that we learned their prayers and their promises. They can take this and that suffering. It's not that, it's just they only can teach,

(Lama Sarahni) They can show by example. They can teach like this. They can give you a really lousy experience to get you to wake up. Some do that. But they can't make you do anything. They can't take anything away.

(Natalia) Even if I call on them and I do the mantra, they cannot do anything.

(Lama Sarahni) Yes and no, right? That's why Geshe Michael is teaching Arya Nagarjuna. It is not that Medicine Buddha prayers don't do anything. They don't do anything from their side, in them, from them. The way they help us is if we use them in order to change what we see, change our seeds. They don't work by doing it. They work because we do it. It's a really slippery thing. It's okay to believe that saying the prayers will do what the prayers say. But to really understand why doing the prayers makes us see a change in our world, makes saying the prayers infinitely more powerful.And yeah, that was his effort for Arya Nagarjuna to show us that. 

Okay, let's take a break. 

(Break 62:12)

Geshela says, our death is the simultaneous wearing out of all the karmas that project this life. He says, if you get upset seeing that new wrinkle, or that new gray hair, multiply that upset by the number of things, and people, and beliefs that you're attached to, because the end of this life is, all of those disappear. 

And if we're upset by one little bit of indication that we're aging, then brace yourself for what an ordinary death would be like.

We know it enough that we suppress it, and we're able to go through life making our choices based on other things, and we just keep it in the background that we are inexorably. That's too big a word for me. We are on the conveyor belt to the end of this life in every moment. We're wearing it out from the instant of conception. 

The birth of a samsaric thing is the beginning of its end, they say. That one still throws me.

That whole process of losing everything is not in it, from it.

The process is reversible—which is the point of spiritual practice. 

So the Lord of Death is unstoppable, means karma once ripened cannot be changed. No self existent Lord of Death that is self existently unstoppable. Which is why the Lord of death is unstoppable. Because it represents the wearing out of all those seeds of life.

Reasoning of why we cannot add extra time to our life

So reason number two is, our life leaks away continually. 

My death is certain. Why? Because the Lord of death is unstoppable, number one. Because my life is flowing away moment by moment. I'm using up my life moment by moment.

Not like we have a choice here, in the sense that we can't say just time out, I'm going to go on vacation and stop using up my life for a little while. Thank you very much. 

It is happening with every perception, with every projection. That projection includes our me or this life, and we've just burnt 65 of them off, and 65 more. 

It's a wonder we've lasted as long as we have.

We cannot add extra time. So reason number two is our life is leaking away continually and we cannot add extra time. 

Even when we say with the Diamond Way practices, you can transform the whole mess, it's not that we're adding time to this life. It's that we're changing our seeds that change our mind and winds such that the perception of me and my existence changes dramatically.

My guess is, you don't even talk about me and my life anymore. Because it's not separated by these different episodes anymore. This life, that life, next life. 

Geshela said, our life is leaking away and there's no way to add time. It does not matter how wealthy you are, how famous you are, how smart you are, how gifted you are. None of those factors can be called upon to add time to life. 

We can use all of those factors to plant great seeds for future.

The seeds that we plant for long lives is giving life, protecting life, supporting life, helping life. And we can be experts at protecting life and supporting life, and avoiding harming life as seeds that we're planting that will ripen in the future.

If we have a little bit of wisdom, that little bit of wisdom's going to grow with them, but those seeds aren't going to add time to the seeds of this life that are wearing out.

It does not mean to not take care of our bodies and our situations. Because if what we do to take care of these bodies does in fact help our body be stronger, healthier. We have a more reliable tool to use to help others, or to use for our practice. 

So the conclusion of, ‘We can't add time and nothing we do adds time‘, does not mean okay, just eat chocolate, drink alcohol, just go ahead and use up your time and have fun. We could come to that conclusion, but then we are very unlikely to have future situations where we are ripening the seeds for the secret, for the method of changing the whole system.

So thinking about this one, I can't add time, again, intellectually we get it. But deep in our heart, I don't know. I still think, well, I have these conversations with myself. If I were diagnosed with cancer, would I take treatment or would I not take treatment?

And of course I can't answer that, but I can argue with myself based on what I've seen, what I know. My conclusion is different on different days, but it's because my thinking is that the treatment could add time to my life.

If I say, well, no, treatment can‘t add time to my life, so why should I bother doing any of it? That's not right either, because maybe that particular treatment would ripen as what was necessary to clear that cancer. We get a glimpse of what a pain in the butt it is to not be omniscient.

If we were omniscient, we'd know that treatment, not that one, and liberate earthworms. We would just do it and we'd get that result. 

But I don't know about you, I'm not omniscient yet, so I have to just guess, it seems like, or do other things. 

So we have a tendency with these rationalizations to go, yeah, yeah, I believe it. And that's not the point. 

The point is, pretend you don't believe it or really find the part of you that doesn't believe it, and investigate. Really look at your own behavior to see, is my day-to-day living indicating that I understand that I am one day older, one day closer to dead today.

And even though I was preparing this class for you, it still just sort of went over my head as I was doing what I was doing the rest of the day. 

Work with these ideas, please.

Reasoning of why Dharma is the only thing that helps

The third reason for investigating ‘My life is certain‘, is that they say, we'll die without ever having had enough time to practice the Dharma. We'll die without ever having had enough time to practice the Dharma.

It seems funny that that comes up here, but I don't know, if we take an honest look at ourselves: Do we feel like we have enough time to do anything? No. 

It's like we're always somehow, I can't finish this, I can't do all that…

There's just not enough time in the day. And yet, how much of it honestly do we waste?

We have this schizophrenic kind of idea, it's like, Oh, I have so much, so much to do. And then it's like, Yeah, but I'm going to do another jigsaw puzzle, because it helps my focus, it helps my mind.

No, really I'm just avoiding doing the stuff I know I need to do.

Little teeny things, great big things, we do it. It's just some kind of weird habit, and it is insightful to figure out what drives that habit. 

Is it avoidance? Is it fear of failure? Is it fear of success?

Is it like deep, deep, deep.

There's probably three wrong beliefs we have about our own capacity that keeps us in this cycle of, Oh, I have so much to do, I can't ever get it done. And then we watch movies instead of just doing it.

I'm not criticizing us. We all do it.

But this practice is about digging a little deeper, digging a little deeper.

But they specifically say, we'll die without having had enough time to spend on our Dharma practice.

How much time does it take to spend on our Dharma practice, on our spiritual life? 

When we first start on a spiritual life it just seems so impossible to find that 10 minutes to meditate. Then you start with the five minutes and add a minute every week. A year later it's like my hour is dedicated to that, and your life adjusted such that now it's built in most days, not always, I have to admit.

All of our routines are like that. They've been built up through time and experiences of what worked and what didn't work. And then we stay with what worked 10 years ago, and somehow it's not working so well now. But we're still stuck in that belief, it worked 10 years ago, so it's still working. Even if it's not working, we just can't break out of that habit pattern, many, many of us. So what would it take?

Geshela, he says we need to be able to train in deep meditation. 

We've heard him say it before, it takes an hour of deep meditation daily in order to be able to sustain the kind of focused attention that's necessary for 20 minutes of direct perception of emptiness.

So an hour a day, which really translates to about an hour ½ because it takes 10, 15 minutes to do your preliminaries, and five or 10 minutes to do your ending session. The meditation time is the hour he is talking about.

We need to be able to study. He says a lot. Hours and hours of hearing the pen thing over and over again, studying emptiness and karma, and how compassion is necessary within those two in order to plant the seeds with enough numbers and enough understanding to grow into wisdom seeds.

So hours and hours of formal classes, study time, contemplation time—which is different than meditation, reasoning time, hashing it out time.

TU SOM GOM, it’s called. Study, contemplate and meditate.

Then he added to do retreats, to spend intense time, immersion time into the Dharma. Like being at Diamond Mountain for the Lam Rim, or the Medicine Buddha. 

It's just like every moment of your day is focused in some way on the Dharma and everybody there is doing the same thing, and 10 days is about enough, isn't it? We want more when we leave, and that's a good thing. 

It's like no, 10 days is not enough.

But if you had stayed two weeks or three weeks, it would be starting to get to be a strain, and you don't want to leave with a bad taste in your mouth. So we cut them off earlier.

But then to do your own retreat. When I do those classes, I don't cross off everything else from my agenda and do the four sessions a day. I just listen to the classes and I go on about my life, I confess. 

But we could use those Lam Rims done online as an immersion retreat ourself. Where you just spend the whole day reviewing what you just learned using the practice, meditating. We could do immersion retreats in that way.

Then, as we get more in tune or more sophisticated, we do our own solitary retreat, and you get trained to do that. That's really immersion. Because in those retreats you're taught how to do the four sessions a day, that are long sessions. You're really not doing anything but Dharma except when you're eating and going to the toilet. And even that can be part of it. 

So we think, oh, there's no way I'll be able to do retreats like that until I'm old enough to retire. But Geshela said just start to have the idea that that would be a valuable component of life, a way of serving the beings in your world by taking yourself out of it for a certain period of time on a regular basis, minimum twice a year. 

First, having that as an idea starts to grow. 

If you find there are other situations where you can support somebody in being able to do that, those seeds will grow. 

This death meditation practice will help you see what's in your life that is outmoded, out needed, because all of those things are things that are making it not possible for you to build those retreats into life.

You'll see little by little what can be changed, what can be pulled away, what can be let go of that will adjust your living circumstance such that it won't seem so impossible to get away for 2, 3, 4 weeks, twice a year.

Don't decide you're going to do it and push everybody in your life out of life in order to do these two retreats. You've got obligations. But have this higher idea in mind that I'll be able to meet my obligations and do these retreats, because that's how I meet my obligations in a higher way. Just start thinking about it.

Okay, good timing. Let's get refreshed again, and I'll guide you through the meditation preliminaries more slowly than before. 

We'll do this second section of the death awareness meditation for the rest of class. 

It'll take a half an hour. I promise not to go past time, so get yourself refreshed. 

If you need to stand up and do some jumping jacks or something.

Guided Meditation on the Preliminaries of the Death Meditation

(84:53) Okay, so settle your body in.

Get comfortable in your meditation position, whatever it is right this moment. 

Feel that body strong against your cushion, that earth energy holding you. And feel your inner body light and rising—not rising off your cushion, but lifting, uplifting.

You feel very nicely balanced between heaven and earth.

Bring your attention to your breath at your nostrils.

Exhaling, inhaling, fascinated with those sensations.

Our first step is in recalling our refuge. 

Think first of things that you use that are worldly from this expectation that they will help you. 

Recognize, sometimes they do what they're supposed to do, and sometimes they don't. 

So they really are not sources of our refuge. 

So recall what is. Understanding emptiness and karma protects us by helping us make our choices.

How would making wiser choices help us, protect us? 

Is there anything else that can?

Next, grow your Bodhichitta.

What would it be like to emanate those bazillion bodies, helping all beings, helping them all gain their renunciation, their refuge, their Bodhichitta.

Recall your own precious holy guide there with you.

See how happy they are with you.

Recall who they are for you.

That being who is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom.

Mentally bow down to them, admire them.

Feel your aspiration to become like them.

Make them an offering. Something from your practice where you went out of your way to be kind because of your Bodhichitta.

Then confess some negativity, something specific and something recent.

See what a karmic mistake it was.

Tell them.

Tell them of your regret.

Tell them of your determination to not repeat it specifically.

And offer this class and this meditation as your antidote.

Then know that by the end of class, that seed is damaged.

Then rejoice in the goodness of damaging that seed. 

Rejoice in some other kindness that you've done.

Rejoice in some kindness you saw someone else do.

Ask that holy being to continue to teach you, both formal teachings and everyday teachings.

Ask for the long and healthy life of all your teachers, all your spiritual guides, all those who help you on your path.

Then see yourself standing at that front door of that beautiful building, golden yellow door.

You recall that to get there, you danced through that meadow.

Having gotten there by way of shooting past the gauntlet of scary guys.

Having gotten there by coming across the moat on the bridge, divesting of things and relationships and beliefs that no longer serve you.

Having gotten there by way of your awakening renunciation at the distress of Samsara.

Put your hand on the doorknob and as you do, you see letters show up on the door that says: My death is certain.

Is there some hesitancy to open this door?

If so, admit it to yourself and decide: I'm going to go through anyway—or not.

It's up to you.

If you decide, then turn the doorknob.

The door swings open easily.

It's darkish inside. You step in.

It's cool. And as your eyes adjust, you see yourself in this circular room, and just off to your right, chained to the wall is this huge, vicious angry dog-like beast, straining at its tether to get at you.

You're just outside of its reach. And you know if this beast gets free and gets a hold of you, it will rip you to shreds and nothing can stop it.

When karma for life wears out, nothing can help us.

Now turn to the center of the room.

You see there a big hourglass standing on a little round table.

Look at the sand.

How much has flowed from top to bottom?

For me, it's a whole lot more than when I first learned this practice.

Our impulse is to go turn the hourglass over.

So we go to it and try. We find it's fixed to the table, and the table is fixed to the floor.

There's nothing we can do to slow that flow of the sand down, to stop it, to add more sand to the top. We can't get into it.

This represents the reasoning. We can't add time to our life.

We are using it up moment by moment, even while we sleep, eat, rest, meditate.

Look back at the snarling beast. The Lord of death is unstoppable.

Look at the hourglass. My life is flowing by. I can't add time.

Then you look up past the hourglass, there's a hallway going off the back of this circular room.

Suddenly you're compelled in that hallway, you're running, compelled to run through this long corridor. 

Along the walls of the corridor are mounted these beautiful lighted paintings of teachings and teachers that you've experienced in this lifetime's past.

You want to stop and think about them and appreciate them, but this compelled factor pushes you past them.

Pass one, pass the next, pass the next.

In our lives there's never enough time to study and practice.

Even with spiritual teachings, they come one after the other. 

If we stop to assimilate one, we miss six more.

It seems there's never enough time.

Our running stops short at a beautiful green door.

At that green door, turn back and look.

So far we've had six parts of this practice:

1. Coming out of the forest burdened with stuff. Fighting for food at the table represents what happens if we never think about our death.

2. Pulling out of that, crossing the bridge, throwing stuff overboard is our renunciation. The benefits of thinking about getting used to dying, getting used to death.

3. The gauntlet of scary guys, the wrong kind of death meditation that we're not going to do. Dancing through the meadow, the kind of death awareness will cultivate that leaves us light and unencumbered. Reaching that golden yellow door of the actual death practice.

4. The first principle: My death is certain. This round room with the corridor. In that round room is that vicious beast. The Lord of death is unstoppable.

5. The hourglass, the time of my life is continuously passing away.

6. The corridor of teachings, there's never enough time to study and practice. 

It's feeling a bit desperate at this point.

Allow yourself to stay in that discomfort. 

Recognize that so many beings never even get the chance to recognize the situation that they're in. And so recognize that recognizing this discomfort is a step forward on the growth of your wisdom.

Allow that scene to fade away, and see instead before you that precious, holy guide. 

Recall too that being that you wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class. 

Recognize that we have learned something that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way, and that's an extraordinary goodness.

So please be happy with yourself.

And think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Inside of it is the end of death for every being.

Gaze again at that precious holy guide.

Feel your gratitude for their guidance.

Ask them to please stay close, to continue to inspire you, and help you.

And then offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accepted and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart.

See them there. Feel them there.

That love, that compassion, that wisdom, shining like a tiny light deep within you.

It feels so good we want to keep it forever, and so we know to share it.

By having that thought, that light glows ever brighter, filling the inside of your body and shining forth from you.

By the power of the goodness that we've just done, 

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom 

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies 

That merit and wisdom make. 

So shine a beam of that light from your precious guide in your heart to that one person. See it fill them.

Shine more beams of light to everyone you love. See it filling them. 

Shine countless beams of light to countless suffering beings. See them all filled with this light, the light of the wisdom of kindness. 

And may it be so.

All right, when you're ready, open your eyes, stomp your feet a little bit to get yourself grounded. 

We have a couple of minutes. Are there questions or things needing clarification?

Your job between now and Sunday is to work on these stages.

So maybe you're still going over the moat, throwing stuff off.

Just add in your review these other pieces so they're familiar.

Go to the one that you (are) like, ‘I don't think I really believe that‘. What would that be like to really live with that understanding? 

The one that catches your interest, spend your time investigating.

So there's no right or wrong way to do it. The wrong way is to just not do it at all. Just explore.

For the recording, welcome back. We are Death Awareness meditators. This is class 3, November 12th, 2023. Happy Diwali, for those who know.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. 

Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

[Usual Opening]

Review Class 2

Let's review. In our death awareness sequence, the first thing we do is recognize the problems of not meditating on death. Someone please give us a one or two sentence explanation of what's meant by that. What problem do we have if we don't get familiar with our death awareness practice?

(Joana) The problems that we have is that we actually don't even recognize that we have kind of all the petty things around us, that we are doing activities all the time that won't help us when we are dying. So we kind of waste our precious time here in this life, with relationships that are not useful–is a weird word for it, but we won't contribute in a way that we could with our potential.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, we just go on struggling against each other to get what we want, thinking that's how we get what we want. Life as usual. And the imagery is coming out of the forest, burdened down, hot and tired, going to the food and drink, having to struggle against people to get it, and then something like there's something wrong here.

The next step was meditating on the benefits of the right kind of death awareness practice. It's the bridge. What are the benefits of training ourselves in our death awareness?

(Victor) I think one of the benefits is, you try to disconnect ourselves with those friends, which you think is not, I mean, how things in term of our learning, and then you also will reduce certain desire for things. You'll start to throw away things and keep less things for yourself. And I think the petty things are, just now one the friends mentioned, about that you are try to not doing those petty things like people make you upset. You are cutting your mind all this, you reduce your tendency to get angry easily.

(Lama Sarahni) So the imagery is throwing the stuff from your backpack over the bridge. But not until you've identified this is important to life or not right now, my new direction that I'm wanting to go. If you decide, no, no, this is still necessary, put it back in your backpack. Find something else. No matter how small it seems. The benefits of a proper death meditation helps us reassess, reevaluate what's important. It’s like what is it that you either own, or believe in, or have done that would weigh heavily on your mind if you find yourself on your deathbed tonight or tomorrow, wherever you are in your cycle of your day. What would weigh heavy? 

It's really a useful question. Even regardless of a Dharma practice. 

I have a diamond ring that was my mom and dad's wedding ring. It was given to him when he was a young man from his mother to use in that way.

I don't know the history beyond that, but it's this diamond ring that's precious because the ring itself is so old and it's been in the family, and I have no kids to give it to. It's like, do I want it to just end up in the landfill? No.

So somewhere in my papers I have to say that particular ring, I want it to go to this particular niece. Or if I were really ready to throw it over the moat, I would take that ring now and give it to the niece. And I'm just close to doing that. But I'm still attached to it, and I admit it. 

But there are other things that I have given away, that I used to be very attached to. This going over the bridge isn't something to take lightly and it's not something to do fast, but to revisit from time to time.

(Victor) Teacher, I have this question because throwing the things, I think throwing physical things is much easier for us, but I have some confusion. Attachment, does it refer to our relationship with our spouse? I mean our wife, our kids? I mean to be a Dharma learner, ultimately do you already need to throw away those relationships or you should keep it as your practice?

(Lama Sarahni) So if you're on the bridge and you've pulled out of your backpack, your relationship with your wife and you're thinking, oh, I don't think the Dharma really wants me to throw this wife over the moat. I'm not understanding that one. I will put her back, your kids. 

But what if, just suppose, when we're in a relationship that hadn't been good for a long time from both sides and neither partner is brave enough to come up and say, this just isn't working out. You know it, and it's hindering both of you. Like worst case scenario. Maybe it's very appropriate for the metaphorical throw it off the bridge to actually happen. To be brave enough to be the partner that says, let's amicably end this relationship so that we can both find something better.

This class is not saying give up everything and go live under a bridge, like under the moat. It's not saying that. And we'll see why when we get to the end of tonight's class. For sure by the next one, that we'll see that it's not really so much the things or the people or the relationships, it's really the attitude towards them. 

Once we get all the way through the death awareness practice, and you've worked with it for a while, when you go back and go over the bridge again, whoa, it's completely different experience. It is belief systems that we're throwing over. 

But when we're first learning, don't… 

Really take the time to look at material things, actual relationships, actual priorities in life, and really assess: are these–fill in the blank–serving everybody in the highest way? 

If the answer is, well, maybe or maybe they could, don't throw it over.

But if it's like, yeah, yeah, I really have outgrown this, and I just wasn't willing to admit it, it's time. Okay, all right, thank you.

The benefits of a death meditation.

Then the next step is there's a wrong kind of death meditation, and there's a right kind of death meditation. What is the wrong kind of death meditation talking about? Rachana, remember?

(Rachana) The one that's scary about when our elements collapse and we're going to be terrified anyway. We'll be terrified anyway so we don't need to actually practice that.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Which doesn't necessarily be true, but we don't need to practice that. That's represented by the gauntlet of scary guys, because we know that's not the meditation we're learning to do. It's right through them, and then what's the right kind of death meditation? Yeah, the one we're going to do. But the point is that it leaves you light and unencumbered, and stress-free. So back to Victor's question, if my death meditation practice is leaving me anxious about whether I should throw this over the bridge or not, we are not doing the right kind of death awareness practice yet. Because when we've got it right, it's like, yeah, easy to throw this one and keep that one. Because I know what I need to do now by the time we get to the end. 

Alright, so the right kind of death meditation is that dancing through the meadow. A death meditation leaves us free, and unencumbered, and joyful, and really knowing that what we're doing with our life is powerful and useful, even when we're just at the grocery store buying tomatoes.

Then we reached the door to the building. The first principle was what?

(Clare) Death is certain.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, yours is. But what about mine?

(Clare) Everyone.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, say it like this: My death is certain. My death is certain. 

You're correct. The words are ‘death is certain’. But when my own mind hears me say, yeah, yeah, death is certain, it keeps it at arm's length. When my mind hears me say ‘My death is certain’, it catches me in the throat a little bit. And that's what we want. My death is certain.

What are the three reasonings that we use to convince ourselves that that's true? 

We stepped into the room, and immediately to our right was that vicious beast straining at the chain to get at us. What does that represent?

(Clare) The lord of death is unstoppable.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. Meaning when our karma for this life wears out, we are dead and nobody can do anything to help. And then hot on the heels of that, we look to the middle of the room and there's the hourglass with the sands flowing down through. And I don't know, my first inclination is to grab it and turn it over, because my hourglass has got about this much in the top. But you can't do it right? So whoah, that second reasoning to come to a strong conclusion, my death is certain is what?

(Clare) I cannot add time.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. The sands of time are flowing, faster and faster it seems to me. Like the older I get, the quicker it is that Easter and Christmas they're going to touch pretty soon, it seems like. 

And then we look up from the hourglass and we're compelled through that hallway of teachings. Do you get that sense? It's like, no, no, I want to stop and think about it, and review, and what did I learn from them? And something is just pushing us. Like Lama Sarahni's schedule is just pushing us past the teachings, past the teachings, past the teachings. But you could just as well put images in that hallway of your own life. It's like I haven't even shown all my Malaysia pictures to my best friend yet. And here it's been six months since we were there, almost. It's like just there's never enough time to do the things you want to do when you find them to quote Jim Croache. But especially with the Dharma, never enough time.

How do those three–Lord of Death is unstoppable, my sands of my life are moving and I can't add more, and I'm pushed somehow to never have enough time–how do those three convince you of ‘My death is certain’? 

It takes some work with it. You wouldn't necessarily have the deep Aha of how those three prove the first principle until you've worked with them a little bit. 

And we think, well why do I need to work with them, because I know my death is certain.

We need to work with them because we know my death is certain as up here. But if we don't have it in the back of our mind with our choices of what we do in life, then it's a stillborn ‘My death is certain’ awareness. And that's not enough to help us transform that experience from the wrong kind of death meditation to the right kind of death meditation.

So I hope you will take a little time to really think those through and examine them.

If that beast gets free of the wall, what's going to happen? And what's going to happen when the last little sand goes out? The beast gets free.

And how is running through the corridor of teachings going to help if we don't really ever utilize them?

Don't answer those questions yet. 

The Time of my Death is uncertain

We came to rest at the green door. 

The green door represents the second principle of death: The time of my death is uncertain. 

My death is certain. The time of my death is uncertain. 

This is behind the green door. 

It also has three reasonings to use to help to convince ourselves of the truth of that statement and then help us reveal the ramifications of it. 

So the time of my death is uncertain. 

1. Lifespans are not fixed

The first rationale or reasoning is in our world, lifespans are not fixed. 

It's stated like that: In our world, lifespans are not fixed. 

It's a MAYIN GAK, for those who have done course 13, a negative statement that implies something else. So it implies that there are realities where lifetimes are fixed.

We've understood the desire realm, long life gods live a certain period of time, and everything's all beautiful and wonderful until the last week. And then rotten stuff starts to happen to them and they get all upset. 

There are other realms that we can't see because they're operating in physical wavelengths that humans can't perceive. But the beings who do exist in those wavelengths see themselves, and see a reality. And apparently in those realities, lifetimes are fixed. 

And I dunno if that'd be good or bad. 

Maybe they're fixed, I don't know, for three days, and you get into them and you have three days. What can you do in three days? Or maybe you have a thousand years. But as you're getting close to the thousand years, you can't do anything to change it. I don't know at what point in getting close to the thousand years do you start to panic?

In our realm, lifespans are not fixed. Which means we don't know when any one of us is going to die. Is that better or is that worse?

Really not better or worse. But we could use it to our advantage in one way. And in another way we could use it to our disadvantage and just be terrified. I don't know, maybe I'm going to get hit by a car today, so I‘m just going to call in sick. I don't think I can get to work safely. I'm so scared, because I don't really know how long my life's going to go.

That's our wrong kind of death meditation.

This isn't about getting scared. It's about motivating our growing understanding of what karma and emptiness can help us understand.

This leads into the concept of life expectancy. 

I think to help us cope with this idea that lifespans are not fixed, we have this idea of an average life expectancy, or an average lifespan, giving us a life expectancy. Statistically, somehow they count up how old everybody was when they died and they average it all out. It changes from year to year, decade to decade of course. And I looked it up. Last time I taught this class in spring 2023, the average lifespan worldwide was 72.58 years. Which was surprisingly high I thought. Apparently in the year 2000, so a little less than 25 years ago, it was only 66.

So we've made a little bit of progress apparently in how long humans live. 

Now that's an average of all countries. They say that average of developed countries, whatever that qualifies, is 76. So four more years. And women in developed countries, they get a little more time like 81 or 82 over men. But these statistics, they're meaningless for the individual, aren't they? 

What they mean is half the women in developed countries die younger than 81, and half the women die older than 81. How do we know which one we're going to be? So it's pretty useless to say, oh, I live in a culture where I'm going to at least live to 81, because the average lifespan is that, and I'm an average kind of person. It's like, really? Do we know that?

I thought my parents were pretty exceptional kind of people and they died at 65. It's like, wait a minute, that's not fair. They should have at least died older than the average, because they were really nice people. But we know the answer to that, don't we?

Nice people die young. Selfish slobs die old. Selfish slobs die young. Nice people die old.

There's something else going on. Do we know how much life we have in our karmic pocket?

No, we don't. Not yet, anyway.

So the time of my death is uncertain. One way we prove that to ourselves is to think, well, they tell me the average lifespan is 76? And do I have this expectation that I'm going to live at least that long because that’s the average?

What's your expectation for how long you're going to live?

Years ago I went to a palmist and she looked at my lifeline and she goes, oh, 93, you're going to live to be 93. And my grandmothers lived at 93, and some of my aunts lived at 93 or 94. So it's like, okay, I'll buy that. I've got till I'm 93. But I don't know, it leads to complacency, doesn't it? Because I don't know if that's true or not, even if she's a great palmist. I don't know if I haven't used up karmic seeds, not made new ones. I don't know where I am in my karmic pocket.

Even I've had a glimpse more recently that I'm not going to last that long. 

2. Things that kill us are many, things that keep us alive are few

Second principle: Things that kill us are many, and things that keep us alive are few.

So the time of my death is uncertain. 

Why? Because lifespans here are not fixed, and because the things that kill us are many, and the things that keep us alive are few. 

There's more stuff that can kill us than stuff that can keep us alive. 

We're told from the scripture that what a human being needs for life is food, water, clothing, shelter and hope, and everything else is superfluous.

It's like, well, if that's all we need to survive, we should be sitting pretty. 

But the mechanisms for having access to those few things—food, water, shelter, clothing, hope—are fragile, like really fragile. 

They depend on so many other things. If we don't grow our own food in the backyard, and the ability to transport the wheat to the factory that makes the bread, to the people that make the bread, to the grocery store that sells the bread, I'm not getting bread, no matter how much I want it. And I can't grow wheat in my backyard.

I can't grow enough lentils to feed my husband and I lentil soup once a week for the rest of our lives. I depend on other people. I depend on those systems, and those systems depend on so many other things. And who's in control? Who's in charge here? 

When Geshela first taught this class, he said, unless we live through the depression, we don't really know what it is to not know where our next meal is coming from. 

Now, I don't know your personal backgrounds. Maybe you have had that experience in your life. My parents did live through the Great Depression. They were adolescents at that time. My dad's family didn't struggle too much regardless. But my mom's family, man, they were tooth to nail as they say. They would take the chicken eggs out and try to sell them, and they would make cookies and try to sell them.

The girls, she had eight girls in her family, all ages, and they were out just trying to get an extra penny in order to help the family have food. It was a struggle. 

And that karma shifted.

I kind of felt that my mom was always very frugal, but I personally never was. There was always enough. Then Covid came, and we still always had enough.

But we saw how fragile the delivery system was, and it still not back to what we call normal. We just need to ditch that idea of normal.

Finally, it's somewhat back, but we see how fragile this is, the system that we rely on really for life.

So what if that system makes it to where grocery stores don't have the food that we need? How long are we going to last personally?

Again, not to scare us, but to wake us up to our assumptions that we live by.

That's the part of: There's so few things that support life. And their delivery system is fragile.

The first part of this statement was, so many things can kill us. 

For that consideration, they say, look, if our own body doesn't kill itself, not meaning shoot itself, but meaning something go haywire. If that doesn't happen, some outside thing will be the trigger for the end of our karma for this life.

Not meaning it made the end of life, but meaning as our seeds are coming to an end, part of that seed shifting reality is something that needs to trigger the end of the body.

Technically we don't need any trigger. We could just go along and drop dead. Many people do that, and we say, oh, they had this heart attack, or their heart fibrillated, and we have a reason. Okay, yeah, that was the trigger.

But the real thing that happened is their karmic seeds for life wore out, and they didn't know when it was going to happen. Just like we don't know when it's going to happen for ourselves.

They say, any exterior thing, meaning material thing, could be the trigger for this end of life sequence.

Again, it's like unless we think about it carefully, we know it in the back of our minds. But it's like, come on, hasn't happened so far, it's not likely to happen again. 

This practice is about getting off that automatic pilot and really looking at our assumptions.

We have things, material things, that we've worked hard to get. We value, we use them, we need them. And any one of them could be the agent of our demise.

Like our car—car accident.

Like some fancy staircase that you went to a lot of trouble to get in your fancy home. You could fall down.

Like the gourmet meal that you're eating. You can joke on.

Anything that we rely upon for our pleasure can also be the trigger for the end of life.

Geshela says this part of this practice, it is good if it leaves us feeling a little bit paranoid. The comfort around my bed, are you going to smother me tonight? I hope not. Not to not use it, but just to think.

We're so complacent about this expectation that we're going to wake up the next morning exactly like we have every other morning.

Again, it's not about getting scared. So I hope I can get past that. It's about being realistic, which I hope will make us a little more careful.

If my wonderful car could be the agent of my being dead, I need to use it really, really carefully. I need to drive as carefully as I can to protect me now, to protect everybody else on the road, so my car can continue to protect me and whoever's in the car with me.

3. My body is fragile

Third reasoning in ‚The time of my death is uncertain‘ is these bodies, my body is so very fragile. My body is so very fragile.

Technically, if you plug your nostrils on your mouth for four minutes, your body will die. It only takes four minutes. Isn't it a miracle that these three orifices have not clogged over for four minutes all at once in the however many years you've been alive? It's like, wow, I must have done something good. Because that’s all it takes. Our food needs to be digestible. We're really quite limited in what we can eat to sustain our bodies. Because one wrong digestibility factor and we can't digest it or it's spoiled in some way and it poisons us.

Or the water is tainted or fouled, and we get too sick to recover.

Or we get exposed to the cold, too cold, or even too hot. We have a pretty narrow range between what this body will survive.

Or one radiation exposure hits one particular cell, damages that DNA and ding, ding, ding, and we've got a cancer that we don't know till it's too late. 

All of those little things that we hear happen to people, that we go, yeah, yeah, I'm so sorry it happened to them. And it's like the unspoken end of that sentence: but it's not going to happen to me. I don't have cancer in my family, so I'm not going to get cancer. How do I know that?

A tiny little sliver, a sticker in your foot draws the bacteria from the dirt and from your own skin in, where it doesn't belong, and within two days you can have blood poisoning. It doesn't happen to everybody, but it could happen to anybody. Because our human bodies are so fragile.

We don't think so, right? We've been able to use and abuse them in our youth, but not because the body was so resilient, but because we had the karmic seeds to still carry on life.

Not everybody has those karmic seeds to carry on that resilience. It's not in our physical bodies.

So the second principle, the time of my death is uncertain. Why? Because here in Dzambu ling, our lifespans are not fixed. And because there's so many things that can kill me, and so few that keep me alive. 

And third, because this body is so fragile, it can't do it on its own. It relies on other stuff. And it relies on a certain kind of balance of its five elements as well, that are constantly in this shifting balance. But if one overrides the others, the whole system goes kaputt. So it's a miracle that we're as healthy as we are. Even for those that maybe have chronic illness. We're still, if we're lucky enough to have a chronic illness that stays chronic, it means it hasn't killed us yet.

Let's go on to the third principle. 

Third Principle: Nothing but the Dharma can help me

When I die nothing but the Dharma can help me.

It has three reasonings. 

Reason #1 My people can't come with me when I die

My relatives and friends cannot help me when I die. 

If we are the relative and friend for someone who's dying, we gather around the bedside. Well, we try to help in various ways. Maybe we're still in the mindset of begging them not to go—hopefully we're more sophisticated than that. 

But we're hoping, we're intending to help them, to help them in some way.

We can and we can't. 

But we have this expectation. 

If we didn't have the expectation, we'd hear of our loved one on their deathbed and we'd go, well, there's nothing I can do, so I'm not going to go.

That would be cold, and not a seed we want to plant.

But it is true that there's nothing we can really do for them.

While they're still alive, yes, we can give them some comfort. But once they've died, we can't go with them. 

From the dying me side, that expectation that I had, oh my people around me, they're giving me that comfort. It naturally flows into, When I'm dead, they're still going to be able to give me some comfort. It's like deep, deep in there.

We'll still be aware of them, and we'll still be able to draw some comfort from having them close by.

These teachings say, actually, very shortly after the true moment of death—when the mind separates from the body—which is not at the moment that the brain stops, it takes a little while after that. But when the mind actually completely stops ripening any seeds for this life, then your awareness of you is gone. Which means your awareness of the people that were part of your life are also gone. And there's this short period of time where you're going into that awareness, that experience, where you still have some vague recollection of me and them, and we're finding them not there to help. And this sense of anger and abandonment comes up. It's not rational at all. It's probably not even in those words, but it's a negative state of mind that arises because there's this failure of an expectation. 

That negative state of mind influences of course where that mindstream is headed. It's not something that we want to ripen. If there's something we can do to prevent it.

Nothing but the Dharma can help. 

Our people can't help us. 

It's again, because we're thinking that they can somehow. And then when we find that they can't, we feel like, well, after all I did for them, they're not helping me now—as if they're not by choice. We don't understand when we're in that whim of ripening.

Reason # 2 None of our things, none of my belongings can help me

None of my belongings can help me when I die. Nothing but the Dharma can help me. 

Why? Because my people can't help me, and my material things can't help me. 

Why? Because they can't come with me. They were all the things that brought me comfort, that said who I was, help me with my identity, and I want them close to me. I want them to be taken care of, I care about them and now they're not there. 

(Luisa) I have a question to the previous reasoning. Because you say, my family or my friends don't come with me. And then at the moment of death, I have this timeframe where I just realize they are not there to help me, and then I feel frustrated. But how do I know that? I mean, I know you say the scriptures say that, but then it's a bit of belief that they are right. I mean, there is nobody who can, I cannot see that that really happens now. I'm just thinking of this reason.

(Lama Sarahni) And dogs can't see pens. It does not mean that someone hasn't seen that, experienced that, and now teaches us about that. So you're right, it's a certain level of faith that we accept. Those who are, not meaning me, those that are teaching, but the lineage of teachings is coming down through those who have experienced it, and do know. Because there are those who do take rebirth and remember the process.

(Luisa) So the point of when I am using this reasoning to internalize the third principle is also thinking that there have been beings who have gone that way. I mean…

(Lama Sarahni) If that would help, right? If that would help. Otherwise you can do it by way of really thinking critically about seeds planted and seeds ripening. You can come to the conclusion that way as well.

(Luisa) Okay, thank you, Lama.

(Lama Sarahni) We can't take our stuff with us either. Yet there is still something in our minds that wants to. I mean, even historically, they bury people with their things, everything that they need for their next life, for their journey, even to the point of killing their pets to put them in there with them. But it's like, I don't know. Does that mean that historically there is part of us that believes that we should rely on our stuff? 

I'm not giving you an answer to that, but we can recognize that what motivates our pretty much every moment in an adult human life is to do what we need to do to get the stuff we think we need for ourselves and our families.

We go to work to earn that paper. I mean, we don't see it in paper anymore.

Somehow we earn some electronic transfer happen that then can do an electronic transfer later on, that can end up with a package of something at our doorstep or a bag of groceries that we can take home. We hardly even pass money back and forth anymore.

But the idea is we seem to have to go and do this for somebody in order to get that. 

And that's not really so far from the truth. We don't connect the dot. 

We work so hard to get more of those things that we expect to bring us comfort, and happiness, and a healthy body, and a nice long life, when in fact they can't do any of that from themselves, in themselves, the way that we think. 

Yet we act in ways to get those things thinking that what we do to get them actually brings them to us. And within that belief is, okay, within the framework of my world's legal system, I can do this to get that, and not this to get that. 

But maybe that's not an actual valid choice maker. 

We're still thinking that I can get what I want out by getting this thing.

Then that thing doesn't go with us, doesn't help us. In fact, it contributes to some level of upset when we expected to have it help us in some way, and it didn't. 

So really, with both the people and the stuff, there's this factor that turns in our minds apparently, which is something like, after all I did for you, you're not there when I need you. After all I did for the stuff and the stuff's not there when I want it. 

That state of mind is a state of mind that's driven by ignorance and perpetuating ignorance. It makes an unstable and upset state of mind, a negative state of mind, which you don't want in the bardo. Because that negative state of mind ends up being the trigger for the next life.

Those things will go looking for new owners, Geshela always says. And we're left with the karmic seeds we made in trying to get them. The people will be gone, and we're left with the karmic seeds that we did on behalf of those people. Most of which were good, but dirty, good karma, either flat out negative karma, or dirty good karma. And the karma goes on with us—not the people, not the things. And that's the crux of it.

(Ale) I have a practical question. So everything that we study is a personal practice, and this particular practice is mostly in our mind. How can I teach Jam about this practice, about this awareness?

(Lama Sarahni) Let's finish it, so you have the whole picture, and then ask that question again. Because it's a great one, right? 

(Ale) Let‘s finish the course?

(Lama Sarahni) Let's get the whole practice under your belt, because that will give you insights into how to do that for him as he's growing up, to help him through that period of time when it's like, oh no, my mother's going to die. Because he is going to get there in a couple of years.

Let me finish the last reason, and then we'll take a break. 

Third reason for when I die, only the Dharma can help me is…

Reason #3 We can't even take our own body with us when we die

What they're pointing out here is how shocking it will be when you reach this experience of looking at this dead thing, and realizing that you don't recognize it. 

Like you know it was your body, but it's becoming very, very quickly unrecognizable.

And with that, your memory of that You, it's just slipping between your non-existent fingers like a dream. A dream is so clear when you're in it, and you wake up and then it's just gone.

The expectation that we'll have some memory of the body that carried us through that whole life, and we'll be able to rely upon that for some kind of stability as we go through death, is a mistaken state of mind. 

When we get to the point where we realize that this thing, our body, that was like the foundation of our identity, is unrecognizable, no identity. And we have this, well then  who am I? What am I?—disorientation piece.

We again can have this sense of resentment. After all I did to take care of it, it betrayed me in that way. It's not in words, it's in some kind of shifting, fleeting, experiential ripening that is a negative state of mind. 

The only way to describe it is to describe it in these ways of seeing your body and then not recognizing it, and then not really having any idea of who you are, what you are, and the disorientation that would come with that.

So if we can't take our people, and we can't take our things, and we don't even take our body, me, what in the world goes on? 

We know the punchline, right?

Our mindstream goes on.

What's our mindstream, actually?

It's karma, our karmic seeds. Our karmic seeds go on. All the karmic seeds that we planted in this life, and past ones on behalf of our people in order to get those things, in order to keep those things, in order to avoid things we didn't want. You get the picture.

In order to take care of these fragile little bodies, all of that karma goes on. But those we did it for people, stuff, body, they're gone. Gone. 

Do you see the dilemma?

So why does that prove to us, nothing but the Dharma can help? 

Let's take a break there. I'll answer that and then we'll do this all as a visualization.

[break]

(Chrys) I just want to know if you have any suggestions for people who have no visual imagination. I've got what adventature or whatever you call it. Nothing.

(Lama Sarahni) I do too. Don't worry.

(Chrys) I try to imagine something, and it's like a polar bear in a snowstorm. I see two eyes and a nose.

(Lama Sarahni) Well, you've got more than me. But you know, right? When you think something out, there's a knowing (that) it's happening. You trust that knowing, and use that knowing, and run the video just like that even though you're not seeing anything. Yeah. It's really frustrating in this tradition that's so visual, to have that. But it works. I'm telling you it works anyway.

The third principle is: When I die, nothing but the Dharma helps me.

Because the Dharma, what's meant by the Dharma, is the teachings on karma and emptiness through which we come to understand the power of our behavior choices—what we think, say and do towards others is what creates the circumstances of our future. And that the Dharma goes on to say, even before you've seen that directly, here are some guidelines of behavior that you can work with. 

You can eventually take vows to work with such that doing those behaviors, and avoiding their opposites, will plant the seeds in our mind to create the future circumstances for this beautiful transformation that we're wanting to create for all beings‘ benefit.

The Dharma means that teachings through which we make our choices in this more informed and wise way. So the Dharma doesn't mean the books, it doesn't mean the teachers, it doesn't mean our own prayer practice. 

None of that can help us either at the moment. But what they do is they've taught us what seeds to make, and they've taught us that what goes on is those seeds. And so we use our remaining lifetime to burn off the negative ones and to plant with wisdom to the best of our ability, such that if, when we find ourselves at the end of this life's karma, we are so sure of our having planted, purified and planted, that there's no need to fear.

We know we're not going to be upset because our people can't help.

We know we're not going to be upset because our stuff can't help.

We know we're going to go on without this body, this identity.

We know all that.

We planted the seeds carefully to be able to experience those same shifts, but in a very different way.

When I die, nothing but the Dharma can help me, because it was the Dharma that taught me how to choose my behaviors so that I'm happy to die. And I'm actually happy to use my death to make more good seeds, to take all that suffering out of my world as I go.

So the three principles 

1. My death is certain.

2. The time of my death is uncertain. And 

3. When I die, nothing but the Dharma helps me.

gives us a glimpse of where we're going in order to choose our behaviors differently enough to create this transformation. 

This experience requires this willingness to really look at our attitudes towards our own death, our beliefs about our own death. And this gives us this outline through which to really check that out. Because we really wouldn't know how to do it otherwise to come to this conclusion that what goes on is my karma and nothing but. And so, what I want to use this life for is making great karma.

That shifts our whole attitude about me and my life, and what it's about.

I want to make the highest karma, right? 

We're going to go there. 

Guided Meditation

So let's do this meditation so far.

We'll go through what we know already quickly, and then we'll spend a little more time on parts two and three. 

Get wiggled enough that you can settle down in.

Get firm in your seat, mind alertness rising.

Bring your attention to your breath. 

With each outbreath, your physical body relaxes. 

With each inbreath, your mental body gets more alert, more eager. 

1. Recall that precious holy being before you, their love, their compassion, their wisdom.

2. Recall that person you want to be able to help, their distress, their suffering, and feel your wish to help them stop it. 

3. Recall your refuge in karma and emptiness. There's nothing we can't change by way of changing karma. Feel a little glimmer of determination to live according to that. 

4. Make an offering to that precious being. Maybe offer them this intention, this determination. 

5. Confess to them some negativity. Offer this meditation as the antidote and establish a power of restraint. Feeling the power of your regret, informing your restraint. 

6. And then tell them of some goodness, something you did or thought or said. See how happy they are with you.

7. Ask them to continue to guide you and teach you. Ask them to stay close. Ask them to bless you to learn this meditation, to gain insights that you'll use to help those in your world. 

And then find yourself standing at that big yellow door, the entry of the building.

Look back and review what you must have done to get there.

You see the forest with a sense of relief.  Oh, I got out of the forest.

See the beings milling around the table.

Think of how fortunate you were to be able to break out of that. So many are still stuck there. 

You are growing renunciation.

Recall going over the bridge, reducing your burden.

Things that were holding you, holding you back, holding you small, holding you limited.

And recall whooshing past the gauntlet of scary guys, knowing you're learning a death meditation that will help you and all beings.

Experience the pleasure of the meadow, the eagerness to learn this practice. 

You reached this place at the door, the golden door. 

You put your hand on the doorknob, and the letters shine onto the door: My death is certain.

You step in.

Right there to the right in this darkish room is that snarling beast. 

You recall, when my time is up, my time is up. 

The Lord of Death is unstoppable. 

You turn and see the hourglass. Yikers. 

The moments of my life are pouring away. 

My death is certain. 

Being compelled through the corridor of teachings. 

There's never enough time and I waste so much of it. 

My death is certain.

You find yourself before a green door.

You put your hand on the doorknob of the green door and letters show up: The time of my death is uncertain.

And as you push the door open, you find yourself standing at the apex of a triangular room. The wide part of the triangle is ahead of you.

And there right in front of you is a garbage can. The lid is off.

You look down inside the garbage can and you see a calendar. And across the calendar are big letters: 72.5 X-ed out with a big red cross.

This is meant to remind us that here, in our world, lifespans are not fixed. 

That idea of an average lifespan is nothing we can rely upon.

The time of my life is uncertain. I don't know if I'll be on the front half of that average or the back half of that average, I don't know.

As you look beyond the garbage can, you find yourself in your own living room or kitchen.

Look through that room at all those things that are familiar to you.

Recall how hard you had to work to get that.

Maybe some of those things you feel really fond of.

But now look at them with this sense: Any one of those things in my own living room can be the trigger. If my seeds for life wear out, what one's it going to be?

And sort of tiptoe yourself through that room with a sense of, can I trust you so far? Can I trust you, fireplace? 

I don't really know. 

In the kitchen you see a sandwich on a plate and you think, surely that food will help sustain me. But then recognize, oh my gosh, not necessarily.

And so you move on through the room towards the door at the back, a beautiful red door.

As you slowly move out, you get a thorn in your foot.

When you reach down to pull it out, you see some blood has come out. The thorn went into your skin.

This is to remind us that our bodies are so fragile that one little sliver could be the source of an infection. And that infection could go so fast, it's untreatable and, oh my gosh.

The time of my death is uncertain.

Lifespans are not fixed here.

So little keeps me alive. So many things could kill me.

And in the end, this body is so fragile. It's a miracle (that) I’m as old as I am.

And we find ourselves at this red door, the third principle of a proper death awareness.

As you put your hand on the doorknob, the letters appear: When I die, nothing but the Dharma can help me.

Nothing but the Dharma will have helped me.

And you push the door open. You enter into a large greenhouse like room.

It's longer than it is wide, all made of glass, bright inside.

As you first step in, you can see outside the glass on either side your people, your loved ones, closest friends.

They seem to be having a good time together and you wave to them. But nobody responds. You knock on the glass, and nobody looks up. You pound on the glass either side, trying to get their attention. 

They're either ignoring you, or they don't care anymore, or they can't see you. And they're treating me like that after all I did for them?

Our people can't help us.

Move a little further in this greenhouse room. 

Now you see on either side all your material belongings.

They're kind of disheveled. There's strangers walking amongst them, picking them up, looking at them, leaving them or taking them. 

And your sense is, wait, wait, that's my stuff. 

Wait, wait, take care of that computer. 

And of course we can't get to them. 

And again, our sense is, after all I did to get that stuff, somehow I had expected it would bring me some comfort. 

It has betrayed me. 

And we move on a little further. 

We see a dead body there ahead of us. 

As we move closer, we recognize, oh my gosh, that's my body. 

But as you peer at the face, its features are not distinguishable. 

And quickly as you look, it's fading. Even the body itself is fading.

The identity of the body is fading. 

Your own identity is fading away like a dream. 

But you are not disappearing. Seeds are still ripening, but so different. 

What goes on is karmic seeds ripening and planting, ripening and planting. 

There'll be one that ripens into your perception of your next life.

Which is why when we die, nothing but the Dharma can help us. Because it was our Dharma practice that taught us what seeds to plant so that when we get to this place, we're so full of goodness that there's no need for concern about what seed will ripen.

There'll have been none of that upset that we've just recognized could be our experience of death, but doesn't have to be.

When I die, only my Dharma practice helps me. Because it taught me how to plant the seeds of goodness that will direct my next being. 

So we find ourselves in front of a pearlescent, white door.

Standing before that white door, turn around and look back: 

My body betrayed me. 

My stuff betrayed me.

My people betrayed me. 

And now I know why that could have happened.

When I die, nothing but my Dharma practice helps me.

And I reached that by coming through the room of the realization that the time of my death is uncertain. 

My body, so fragile. So little keeps me alive, and so much could kill me. 

And I don't know when this lifespan will end.

And I reached it there having run through the corridor of ’There's never enough time‘. Having passed by the hourglass of ‘My life is slipping away moment by moment‘. 

Having reached there by way of wiggling past that snarling beast of the Lord of Death who has not yet gotten loose from the leash. 

And I entered that room of ‚My death as certain‘, because I came to that conclusion that learning a proper death awareness practice could benefit myself and all beings.

Again, find yourself standing outside the building in front of the yellow door. 

Shift your perspective to that precious, holy being who's there with you to help you.

Recall that being you wanted to be able to help in that ultimate way and recognize that what we are learning, we will use someday to help them in that deep and ultimate way.

And that's a great, great goodness.

So be happy with yourself.

Think of this goodness, like a beautiful growing gemstone that you can hold in your hands.

Recall that precious holy being. See how happy they are with you.

Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them, and offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accept it and they bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart.

Feel them there, their love, their compassion, their wisdom, like a little glow or a little tingle.

It feels so good we want to keep it forever.

And so we know to share it.

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. 

So use those three long exhales.

Share this goodness with that one person.

Share it with everyone you love.

Share it with every being you've ever, ever seen or heard of.

See them all receiving this deep Aha about how their behavior towards others is their power to create their future.

And may it be so.

Okay, so any questions needing clarifications on this next piece?

We added two rooms.

(Ale) What is the meaning of each color of the doors?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. They have to do with the different Buddha families and the different directions and the different chakras. It's all very intentionally set up, but not yet explained.

(Ale) Is that correct that each time that we open the door, I visualize there is an aura or something, like we go to a next level instead of going, like the rooms are in the same level, or when we open the door, we can go to another level. Or should I stay in one level?

(Lama Sarahni) I think stay on one level until you have the whole practice, and as you're getting the insights into the practice, that's when you can go to other levels.

(Rachana) Are we going to end up on the ground? Are we going to go to upper levels if we're going to end up on a ground?

(Lama Sarahni) Let Ale do her upper levels, and you stay on the ground. Okay. That's just fine.

Anything else? Good. 

Okay. Please learn it. Try it on for size. Just get little insights that you write down somewhere. Just explore, right? Don't expect to get deep Ahas right away, although I hope that you do explore the ideas, please. 

Welcome back. We are Death Awareness Meditation class—I'm not sure which session we're in, but it's November 16th, 2023. That's session four. 

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do.

We'll do our opening prayers and we'll slide into a slow, nice guided practice of what we know so far. So bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again please.

[Usual Opening]

Guided Meditation

(9:10) Bring your attention back to your breath in order to settle in.

Let your exhales settle your physical body solidly into relaxation,

and your inhales brighten your mental body, your awaring, to a state of alert eagerness, very, very present.

Now, let's recall our refuge.

Whatever understanding of emptiness and karma you have that inspires you to choose your behavior choices more carefully.

The understanding of the connection between our experiences and our choices of behavior empowers us.

And a nice death meditation then helps motivate us to be more careful in how we spend our time, choosing things we consider more meaningful.

And how that process is in fact protection from future suffering, future distress.

Understanding that for ourselves, we also understand that it's true for everyone.

Wouldn't it be amazing if everyone in my world understood that same thing at least well enough to be trying to plant seeds for a happy future for everyone? 

Think about how happy you feel when you've seen yourself make someone else happy. 

Think of how being happy around others seems to help others be a little happier.

Think about your own level of happiness now.

And certainly there's room for more happiness, isn't there?

Then turn your attention again to that holy precious being before you. 

Whoever, whatever they look like today.

See them seated, there're facing you. They're actually a little bit higher than you.

And think of some good quality that you see in them. 

Whatever little bit that you yourself perceive, grow it and think: from their side they have that quality perfectly.

And knowing that they had to think, do and say things to make the causes for that good quality that they see in themselves, that we don't actually see, but we think we are seeing. 

We think of that good quality, and think of how wonderful it would be if you yourself had that quality, and could help or uplift others in the way that this being seems to do for others in my world.

Admire what you see in them, and aspire to grow it within yourself.

Then out of your admiration for them, make them a beautiful offering.

The scripture says, it can be something you own, or something no one owns. 

But even better, offer them something that you did, or said, or thought, or even plan to do that shows them that you are trying to put these teachings into practice. Something you didn't say that you ordinarily would've said, because you just knew you didn't want to replant that seed. 

No matter how puny that effort seemed to be to you, when you tell them about it, they act like the mom with the kindergartner who shows her the weird looking little ashtray that they made out of clay, and it's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. 

They fuss over you.

Then, with equal openness and admiration to them, tell them of some mistake that you made, something specific, something recent. 

Maybe it was even just the thought to say that thing that you didn't end up saying, Hooray.

Admit some negativity. 

Think of the other similar seeds for that negativity. 

Replay the video with that precious being watching, and feel a sense of just simple regret. 

Not judgment about yourself. Just I realized I replanted seeds that will hurt me and others in the future, and that's just not acceptable to let those seeds flow on.

That regret damages them. 

Offer this meditation and this class as your antidote.

And make some kind of determination to catch that negative thought sooner, and stop it with your emptiness understanding.

And follow that with a rejoicing, another offering of some goodness that you saw yourself do.

Some goodness you saw someone else do.

Some goodness that you saw recorded through whatever our avenue of learning about news. Find some goodness that was reported somewhere, and tell this precious being about those things.

They are seeing how those goodnesses are coming out of you. Not just you're telling them about it, but how you in fact made them in the past. And they're so happy with you.

We can't yet see things like that. And so we ask them again to please continue to teach us, both formal classroom teachings, and to teach us in those day-to-day experiences that we have through apparently other people, other circumstances, that gives us the opportunity to try their teachings on for size.

Give them permission to appear to you in that way too.

Isn't it possible that those people in your world, that are the most challenging, could in fact be this precious holy angel guide appearing in those different ways so that we can learn to respond differently?

How else would we recognize our own pride, our own jealousy, our own stinginess, our own laziness, whatever your current specialty. Their job is to show us and to help us, and to inspire us.

And then ask for them in whatever form they take to stay close and to live long, long and healthy lives.

We ask for long and healthy lives of those people around us, who inspire us to be better people.

We ask for the long life of the Holy Dharma, and for our own long and healthy life so that we can use it to help and inspire others.

Then dedicate just these preliminaries so far to seeing some shift in the behavior choices of someone you know, by shift towards kindness.

And then return your attention to your breath.

Shift and wiggle if you feel the need. 

And then settle back in. 

Use your focused attention on your breath to settle your body again, 

to brighten your attention again, 

to grow an eagerness to hear something different, to see something differently, to feel something differently, 

to gain a little more insight.

(29:38) And so we'll step into the awareness practice, starting with the problems of not meditating on death.

Finding yourself having just stepped out of that forest.

Struggling against others to get what you want. 

Feeling life as we lead it before we've met the Dharma, much before we have a keen death awareness. Thinking this is just what life's all about. 

Then looking ahead to the benefits of a proper death awareness practice. 

Your renunciation come about through the frustration of all the struggle, and you break free.

You move to the bridge across the moat, pausing again to see if there's anything more that you're ready to divest yourself of, to separate yourself from, something that takes up your time, something that takes up your strength, something that uses your thoughts, your emotions, your resources in a way that doesn't serve anyone.

Be as specific as you can.

Even maybe a belief that no longer serves you.

Find something in your backpack that represents it, and maybe not tonight, but when you're really ready, good riddance to that belief.

The benefits of a proper death awareness is, those decisions become easy, not meaning dump it all, but willingly, intentionally, ready to allow ourselves to change. 

We look from there to recall that we won't do a wrong kind of death awareness practice. 

The one that would leave us practicing the scary kind of death. 

And that was represented by the gauntlet of scary guys, that by understanding that's not what we're practicing, poof, you pass right by them.

And you're in that beautiful meadow of the right kind of death meditation practice, where you're feeling joyful and unencumbered, eager and light.

You find yourself at the entry to the building leading to your own enlightened self.

And you think of that first principle of a proper death awareness practice: My death is certain.

With that, the door swings open. You step in into that darkish room.

To the right, representing the first principle of „My death is certain“ is that snarling beast, fortunately still chained to the wall.

The Lord of Death is unstoppable.

My own karma is unstoppable.

I don't know when that beast will get free.

Second principle: ‘My time of my life is so swiftly passing.‘

The hourglass with the sands flowing through. 

We can't add sand. We can't turn it over and start again in this life. 

And then the corridor of teachings, where we're compelled to rush. 

That third principle of „My death is certain“, ’We never have enough time to finish anything.‘

We never have time to really internalize anything, it seems.

Somehow bringing us to this conviction: My death is certain.

And we reach that red door of the second principle: The time of my death is uncertain. 

With that thought, the red door swings open. 

You find yourself in that triangular room at the apex with that garbage can with the number 72 crossed out to remind ourselves that in this world, in our world, lifespans are not fixed.

In case we thought they were, in case we thought our own was somehow even in a world where the people we know, theirs aren't apparently.

That even as we know intellectually, ‘My life span’s not fixed.’, we still assume that I have tomorrow, I have next year.

We're already making our plans for the 2024 schedule.

I don't know what my own lifespan is. 

Look further into that room.

The second reasoning for ’The time of my death is uncertain‘, is that ‘So much can kill us, and so little keeps us alive.‘ 

All those things that we've worked so hard to get and keep, any one of them could be the agent of the end of this life.

Can we possibly know?

Being in this room, it can be like being in a dream.

Your car is in your living room, and it's no big deal.

Is my car going to be the agent?

Is the quilt of my bed going to be the agent?

Is my own phone going to be the agent?

Then look at the kitchen counter. You see a piece of pizza, mhhh, pizza.

Is that going to be the agent? 

Intending to give us this sense of uncertainty, why would holy beings do that? 

And as we move on through the room, we catch a sliver in our foot. Ouch. 

And when we pull it out, we see a little blood come out and we think, oh man, that could have introduced one of those bacterias that doesn't respond to antibiotics, and such a tiny thing could kill this body that's so strong.

Our bodies are so fragile.

No wonder the time of my death is uncertain.

And we come to the red door of the third principle:  ‘When I die, nothing but the Dharma can help me when I die.‘

Nothing but my Dharma practice can help me. 

And as we step into this section, it's like we're within a greenhouse.

At that first entry we see our loved ones outside on either side, they're enjoying each other.

We're trying to get their attention and they seem to be ignoring us.

Try pounding on the glass. No response.

Try jumping up and down. No response.

How does it feel to be ignored, to be left behind after all we did for them?

When I die, none of my people can help me.

Move a little further along this corridor and you see all your belongings out there, but now they're sort of scattered about. 

Strangers are looking through them. 

They pick up something you really, really like and then they just throw it away. 

Wait, wait, wait. That's important!

Get out of my stuff! 

I took care of that stuff. Take care of it. 

Imagine what it would be like to still have attachment to our material things and go through this very brief period of time where we're aware of them and can't get at them.

Even the stuff feels like they're betraying us. 

When I die, not an atom of my material things can help me. 

We go on, we see that dead body a little ahead. 

It's looking only vaguely familiar, and as we up close and as we gaze at the face, we know it's our face. But in fact it's blurred or undistinguishable. 

As you gaze at this dead body, you're trying to think of your own self and you're just losing. You can't really remember who you were, what you were like. 

It's all fading away like a dream. 

And yet there's a you that's going on. 

When I die, not even my body can help me. 

In fact, it's the worst of the betrayals. 

It's the one that killed me. 

My people didn't help me.

My stuff didn't help me.

My body didn't help me.

And yet, I'm not gone.

There's a next moment after the last moment of this life.

Something still goes on, an awareness me-other.

And what is going on is the ripening of our karmic seeds.

Karmic seeds keep ripening.

Karmic seeds keep getting planted when I die.

Nothing but the Dharma helps me, because the Dharma was what taught me about making mental seeds, about the behavior that plants seeds in my mind, that when those seeds ripen will be pleasant experiences, and what kinds of behaviors plant seeds that when that ripen are unpleasant experiences.

The Dharma guide taught me, gave me instruction. I didn't have to figure it out myself. 

All I had to do was try to live according to it.

My people didn't teach me that. My stuff didn’t teach me that. My own body didn't teach me that.

But what goes on with me are the seeds I planted in my mind as I try to take care of those other people. A lot of good seeds made.

But also seeds where we were willing to harm another to protect our loved ones. 

And we take that karma with us, even when the ones we protected can't go with us, can't help us.

Our things, we made karma to get those things, to keep those things, to protect those things.

Those seeds go with it. The stuff does not.

Our own bodies, we plant seeds to take care of them, to protect them.

Good seeds and not so good seeds.

All those seeds go on with us.

The body does not.

The body leaves us high and dry, on our own, just with those seeds.

When I die, nothing but the Dharma protects me. Not in the moment, but by way of how it has influenced our behavior. Because all of the results of that behavior influences your next lives.

So you find yourself standing at a white door, like opalescent white. 

It's very beautiful.

And you've been thinking of all of this.

You're not you, your personality anymore so much.

But you're definitely a you, a self.

And you're thinking of these three principles of death awareness:

My death is certain.

The time of my death is uncertain.

When I die, nothing but my Dharma helps me.

And we see on this white door the letters appear: Three resolutions.

Meaning three resolutions that you can make when you are ready.

The resolutions in your own mind that come from understanding the ramifications of these three principles.

So the door swings open.

As you step in, you find yourself in this turret-like room. It's circular and dimly lit. 

Up high are windows around it. And from in front of you, sunlight is streaming in those high windows at such an angle that it makes a spot of sunlight in the middle of the floor.

The spot of sunlight is about the diameter of the width of your body, shoulder width.

And you see on the wall to your left, hanging on the wall is this stuff, like a walking stick, tall. It's a bit taller than you are.

And you look at it and you have the impulse to reach up and take it off the wall.

And as you do and you take the handle, the fit feels so special in your hand.

It feels familiar and perfectly weighted to your own hand.

As you take up this stat, the thought occurs to you: If it's sure that I'm going to die, then I decide to start a spiritual practice. Now.

Now I'm going to start a spiritual practice.

And so our staff, it feels familiar, feels nice, represents this decision.

I then take one step forward towards the sunspot in the middle.

Don't reach it yet.

As you step toward it, you think, If I don't know when I'm going to die, then I must start my spiritual practices now! Today!

And when we finish that thought, we wrap our staff on the stone floor.

You hear it go, gong, like the Netflix, gong.

Making this imprint in our heart: My death is certain, so I'll take up my spiritual practice. I don't know when, so I'm going to start now.

Then we look to that sunlight in the center of the floor ahead of us, and we think, Well, if nothing but my spiritual life can help me, then I'm going to devote myself to my spiritual practices.

Step with your left foot into the middle of that sunlight, and look up to the windows that sunlight is pouring in.

Feel that sunlight of wisdom shining onto your body, filling you with the strength and the determination to follow this impulse, to take up your spiritual life, to do it today and to grow it into your first priority, whatever that's going to mean.

And then as you think about it further.

You think about the people in your life who appear to you to have no interest in all of this. You love them so dearly, you want them to have the results of all of this.

But they won't even engage conversation. 

Look into that sunlight, raise your staff and point it to the sunlight, and think to yourself, There's no time to horse around here. If I'm going to devote myself to my spiritual practice, I want the highest spiritual practice. I don't want to waste my time on lesser practices.

And as you're pointing into that sunlight, something tells you to look to your right.

You see there on the turret room wall, suddenly there's this beautiful, shimmering peacock blue door.

The lettering on that blue door says: The highest spiritual practices.

So take your staff and point it to that blue door and feel a determination:

If I'm going to start my spiritual practice, because my death is certain, I'm going to start it now because I don't know when that certainty will happen.

I want to devote solely to my spiritual life, then I want the highest spiritual life,

knowing that only my spiritual life can help me, let alone others at the moment of death. 

I want what's behind that blue door.

So stand there thinking about it, feeling about it.

Recognize that maybe there's a certain amount of hesitancy, or doubt, or fear.

And there's a certain amount of curiosity, and maybe even a certain amount of determination regardless. Accept all of those thoughts, those feelings.

Let it all percolate.

And imagine from that spot in the sun looking at the blue door, you can also see back through your journey of this death awareness practice.

All the way back to the You before you even met the Dharma.

See how far you've come, and then leave some part of you there in the sunlight, looking at the blue door.

And bring some part of you back to awareness of yourself in your room right now. Don't open your eyes yet.

Be aware of that precious holy being.

See how happy they are with you.

Offer them this goodness that we've done.

Ask them to please stay close to you and to continue to inspire you.

And tell them that you'll use what they teach you to help that one other get free of their pain.

So let's leave that holy being before you for now.

Bring your focus of attention back to this physical body in this physical room.

When you're ready, open your eyes.

Take a deep breath, a nice stretch, get up and move around.

If you need to, we'll take a little break.

So that was 40 minutes with the preliminaries. You did great. 

Not so hard when we're engaged to stay still and focused.

(Break)

Advice for our personal practice

(63:00) For your personal practice, you don't need to go so slowly through all of it.

If you've got a day where you've got time to do, it's nice to do.

But you can go the first three and jump to the yellow door.

But don't just disregard them. Think, man, I used to struggle, and then I got a little free, and I've been doing the thing over the moat. I'm getting a little bit looser about stuff. I've danced across (the meadow). Now I'm at ’My death is certain‘.

Do I really believe it? Is it scary or is it empowering?

So you're going to use this yourself, I hope, to really get beyond benign steps, et cetera, and you'll explore it a little bit deeper.

Then you'll find that you don't really have to spend any time at all in the ‚My death is certain‘ room, because you are pretty convinced.

Then you get to the time of ‘My death is not certain‘, which we all already know, but we don't live it day to day, because have some expectation.

So you might spend a little time in that room, we say. But whatever reasoning that you need to apply, the three classical ones can get us started.

Find what works for you. And then you would spend some time when you're ready in the ‘Nothing but the Dharma helps me‘, and maybe you go through the three—my people, my stuff, my body—and that gets old. But there's so much to explore about how and why is it that nothing but the Dharma helps me? And how does it really help me? If we die with a Dharma book in our hand, we don't go to the hell realm? 

No. It's not that. 

Can the beloved Lama be there with us and put their hand on our heart, and we get 10 more years? No. Right?

Can they say prayers for us? Yes. But how do we know that's really going to help? 

It takes more than just hearing me talk the rationalizations through to really get them into a sense of what it means to devote ourselves to a spiritual life.

When I first was taught this practice, the thought of devoting myself to my spiritual life, I wanted to do it. And I had this whole different idea of what it meant.

Now looking back, part of me now goes, well, I didn't really have to give up that beautiful house in the foothills, and I didn't really have to do this, I didn't really have to do that. Because now I see that it was all a state of mind. It was all a belief system that I was needing to learn to live by.

But then I recognized that if I hadn't given those up, when I had the impulse to do so, I wouldn't have likely made the progress that I made to come to the conclusion that you don't have to give all that stuff up.

I did, but it doesn't mean everybody needs to.

But if we're feeling like that beautiful house in the foothills is now a burden, which is how it became for us. It was like, of course we wanted to give it to someone for whom it was not a burden. And that allowed us to build a home at Diamond Mountain. With the proceeds from it we built at Diamond Mountain and were able to live there for a few years.

Whereas if we had kept the house, we would've had to keep working to be able to keep the mortgage up. So it was like that path was right for us.

The path isn't about giving everything up.

The path is realizing when things become burdens and being willing to (throw it) into the moat when it's a burden to us.

And yet it's so common to resist allowing something that we used to really, really love, to shift. We say, no, no, I have to love it forever or else my love for it was somehow wrong. It wasn't at the time that we had that big beautiful house and property. It was perfect for us. And then we changed.

And if we don't allow ourselves to change, we end up burdened old people with a beautiful house in the foothills that we now hate. And we don't want to get to that.

A lot of stepping onto our spiritual ract is this willingness to change, to change ourselves that maybe the people around us are not so happy about.

Our circumstances can change. Our people may or may not change with us.

All depends on our own seeds, which is why we say: Nothing but the Dharma helps us. Because it gives us the guidelines and the advices for how do we deal with that.

It's not saying everybody needs to become a monk and a nun and give up everything and go live by begging.

It's not saying that at all, especially on the Mahayana path.

And yet it can sound like that: Oh, I'm going to devote myself to my spiritual life, which means I cannot be a worldly person anymore.

But we've all had these beautiful teachings from Geshe Michael that shows us that the best Dharma laboratory is a work environment and a home life.

So to go live under a bridge or out in a forest, come on, that would be a slower practice than to stay right where we are and change our own mind as we interact with these others. Instead of giving them up, interact with them in a different way.

That's what we're talking about. I'm going to devote myself to that, and so I want the highest one. I am pointing at the blue door, which for me is always over there.

Q&A from Geshela‘s original group

The rest of this evening's class is question and answers that Geshe Michael's original group were asking. Part of that was, well then how should we be with someone who's dying?

Khen Rinpoche sat down with Geshe Michael at this time, the first time he taught this course, and he said, okay, it's not really written anywhere, but let's just make a list of this is what they teach us in the monastery about how to serve people who ask us, the monks, to come and attend to someone at the last day's moments of their lives and afterwards. 

According to Geshe Michael, this information, that was the first time it was actually presented outside of the monastery. I don't know for sure, because since then it's been disseminated through all of the ACI people who have taken this course.

So it's part of your reading, this list of how to be with someone who's dying.

We'll go through it if I stop chattering away about it.

So let me get to the Q&A‘s first.

How do we help people who deny their death

One of the questions, you guys have already asked it, how do we help people who reject or deny their death?

How do we help people who really aren't interested in any of this, and they just don't want to talk about dying at all.

Ronpoche said, well, don't talk about dying with them. But do get them to review their lives.

Get them to forgive themselves for mistakes they've made.

Get them to forgive others.

Get them to recognize the regrets in the sense of ‚I wish I'd done that and I'm never going to be able to do it now‘, versus the regrets of ‘I hurt somebody, I'm sorry about that.‘ That's part of the forgiving.

This other is, have them look at the things they never actually did, that they really wanted to do and help them recognize, well, it just was never the right time, instead of beating themselves up for it.

Then they'll die easier.

One framework of this is, there's somebody you know, and they are chronically ill or terminally ill, and they don't want to talk about it specifically. But they're willing to have you visit them, and you guide your chitter chatter conversation with them.

Just tell me about your life. And get them to talk about themselves, which is easier, some for others.

But often people want to tell you about themselves, and we are taught not to. It's not impolite to just talk about yourself. But if we're invited to, whah, out it comes. 

Then as the listener, a skilled listener, you guide them towards: Are there things that you wish you'd done and you never did? Tell me about those. 

Did things happen to you that you were blaming other people, and you feel like you never resolved it?

Rinpoche didn't mention, but I'm going to add: Also get them to tell you the good stuff, because they're not likely going to do that by themselves.

Something about us says you don't brag on yourself even when you want to.

But you, the listener can say, well, tell me. I don't know how you say it. Don't say, Tell me the good stuff about you. Because it implies they just told you all the bad stuff.

But who were you close to? What kinds of things did you do together?

And you'll get out from them ways that they actually helped other people.

Then our opportunity as the listener is to say, wow, that's so cool.

That's all.

Wow, that's so cool. 

Because they hear that and they go, well, maybe that was cool.

They're planting seeds, and you're helping them plant these good seeds, adding to goodness that whenever they die, whether it's 20 years from then, or 20 minutes from then, you've changed their experience.

So not so hard.

Easier to do with someone who has a spiritual life, a Dharma life.

But not hard to do with anybody, because you're not saying, You're going to die soon, you know, and you don't know when. 

You're just saying, Well, tell me about yourself.

How to help someone who has no awareness or understanding of the mind going on? 

In our modern world, there are many, I think, who truly believe when the body stops, the being stops.

Then there are others who believe that there's a soul or something that goes on.

What we're talking about here is the person who believes that when you're dead, you're dead.

Which maybe they are very, very happy with that belief. And why rock the boat? Really! It's not our job to say to them, you know that's mistaken. You're going to go on. We want to, of course, but that's not really our job. 

If they're asking about it, then we have a window of opportunity. 

We can say, well, if you're driving your car and your car all of a sudden whatever they do just die, do you the driver die?

And of course they're going to go, No.

And if you're riding a horse, you're the rider of the horse and the poor horse drops dead, do you die? Well, no, of course not.

Well, are you so much your body that when your body dies, you're going to die too?

And they're going to go, what do you mean? Of course.

And then where would you go from there?

It's like, so your awareness is your brain?

How does something so physical as a gooey, massive stuff that looks like cauliflower with lots of little wires inside that looks like fiber optics, how does that become love, the feeling of love? Is it this sparkle, and that sparkle, and that sparkle, and that sparkle, and that's love?

Probably we won't have an answer to that. And probably they'll go, yeah, but still when my body's dead, I'll be dead too.

No need to fight with them. Just that little bit of directed wondering is planting seeds. 

Then you still encourage them to share with you their life story, and their negativities, and their positivities, and encourage them to focus on the way they've helped others. 

Then it doesn't really matter whether they believe their mindstream goes on or not. We'll have planted seeds for clearing out the negativity and being happy with their goodnesses.

If we're close enough to them to see them more than once, we can do that again. 

Tell me what you've done in the last two weeks? The tendency will go, well, I didn't do anything special.

How do you ask somebody, Tell me, how you help somebody—without saying it like that? I haven't actually figured out a way. I say that to people who know me. But otherwise I don't.

Tell me how you helped somebody.

Because if I know how you've helped somebody, when you get in trouble, then I have something to rejoice about. 

Well, Sheila's having trouble, but I know about the time she told me when she helped so-and-so in this such and such a way, I can rejoice for that and send my seeds to seeing her get better.

Share me some acts of kindness you are a part of. That's nice.

Share with me some acts of kindness you are a part of that touched you deeply.

Geshela often says, we can ask people, What kinds of things have you done that really seem to make you happy?

Often the story you'll get is some way in which that person helped another.

It's not so much, well, I surfed this big wave in Hawaii and I was so happy. Maybe we'll get that.

But tell me more. Well, there was this time I just out of a whim bought lunch for a homeless person. And you know what? That just made me feel so much happier than any success at work.

They're not really going to say that to somebody who doesn't ask.

Tell me what kind of kindness you were involved in that touched you deeply. That was beautiful.

Geshale used that question about „Does the mind go on?, to hop to talk to his group about this ongoing nature of our own mind string, and how our awareness is part of every seed ripening.

We have a tendency to think, there's me in my mind, and I've got this bowl full of karmic seeds that are spewing out of me, that make my experience.

But our me and our very mind is part of every seed that's popping out.

So with every seed that pops, there's that me and my awareness, and the other, and the experience in between. It goes, and it goes again, and it goes again, and it goes again. With each one ripening, there's a slew of plantings, and the ones that have been planted carry along as the ones that ripen ripen. And the ones that are carrying along are multiplying, so we are never going to run out.

We will run out of seeds for this life. But the instant the last seed for this life ripens, there'll be a next instant of 65 more, of still awareness of a me and another, different.

It seems like they're the same, the same, the same, the same for 70 years.

But they're not either, are they? Different, different, different, different.

Some kind of continuity, that's in those, that finally gives way.

But it's not like there's a pause and the seeds stop ripening ever for an instant.

The awareness is the process happening of seeds planted, seeds ripening. So there can never be a moment of no awareing happening.

So from the last moment of one life to the next moment, which we call Bardo, to the next moment of Bardo, one of those is going to be the next first moment of the next life. Which for it to be a human life will be the first moment of in a womb.

But it's not like there's a fetus there, and a womb there, waiting for a mind stream to get stuffed into it, to be stuffed into it. It's all this ripening, ripening, ripening.

Tracy asked, what if you actually Kaladanda? Which is like stop death. 

A transformation happens. The same process is still happening of ripenings, plantings, ripenings, plantings. 

What they mean by Kaladanda is that instead of that sequence of ripenings that we ordinarily call ‘coming to the end of this life and then moving into bardo‘, what is ripening is this transformation of this, what we call our physical being, and our mental being.

So the end of death does not mean this lasts forever. (Pointing at her body)

Thank God. It means this gets transformed. My perception is, it transforms from flesh and blood, to light and sound. And the limitation of this gets transformed into no limitation at all. Transformed into what are called the five wisdoms.

So it's transformation, it is not end.

But it is end. Because it's the end of me, mind, physical body.

But you don't go through what you call death to get there.

You go through transformation to get there. That's what they mean by Kaladanda. 

So our mindstream does go on. It has no first moment, but it does have causes for every moment. And because it has no nature of its own, its nature is part of every ripening seed, it is infinitely changeable. Which means it can be changed from a mind that perceives itself as ignorant, to a mind that perceives itself as omniscient.

We know that the causes for that is that infinite love, compassion.

Without that infinite love, compassion, we don't reach the result of omniscience.

Someone asked about karma and intention

Karma, we understand that a karmic imprint is complete at the conclusion of our action that we're doing.

So if we use a physical object, Does anyone have a pen? I have one. And then, as we let go and we see them have it, that's when the seed is full, like fully planted, like the little tomato seeds got the dirt over it.

But then our sense of completion, yeah, I shared my pen, I'm glad I did.

That's what prepares the little seed to be strong enough to carry on.

If in that moment we have some kind of regret, oh man, I wish I hadn't given my favorite pen away. Maybe I'll never get it back. That changes the imprint.

If we actually have done a negative thing, and we regret, it's like, oh man, I wish I hadn't had that negative thought about what I just did. I wish I hadn't done what I just did, because it was negative in some way. That negativity damages that little seed. 

So swift regret, and swift happiness for a goodness, really help influence the power of the seed that's just planted.

The other thing that influences the information inside the seed is the intention within which we did our deed. Mostly we don't really have a very high or clear intention as we go about our day interacting with other people. 

When we have our high intention… When they teach four steps, have that high intention that when I do this for another, my intention is that everybody in the world will learn how to live by seed so that everybody can reach happiness as I'm giving them the pen.

Then all of that intention is included in the little seed, in the seed of my giving the pen. Now it's a different seed than the one: Anybody have a pen? I do. Here. 

Versus, anybody have a pen? I do. Oh my gosh, I have a chance, about seeds with intention.

So it changes, having a high intention is included in the seeds so now the seed's a bit different, isn't it? 

If our high intention is, Bodhichitta, which means I want to reach my total enlightenment for the sake of everybody reaching their total enlightenment. Now that's in that little scene, just by having it in our awareness.

So, intention is a big piece.

Our human worldly intentions are usually not so clear or not so kind.

Our intention may be: I need to teach them a lesson. Or: I'm getting back at them.

I mean they're very subtle, our intention, usually.

Intention is a big piece of learning to manage our karma, because it colors that seed so strongly.

Geshela says, that's partly why to have projections of being human is such a goodness. Because as humans, we have the capacity to learn about the power of intentions and to apply, to choose to apply the power of intention. 

Not all existing beings have that capacity of self-awareness and self choice to change our self-awareness. It's unique to humans.

So again, a reason for (why) a powerful death awareness is useful is, because just because we got a human birth once, there's no guarantee that we've done sufficient goodness that we can be sure we'll get another one next life.

There is a point of understanding karma and emptiness beyond which you will not get a lower rebirth. But it is still possible that you could get a jealous God or pleasure being rebirth, and that would not be conducive to furthering your spiritual path.

If we have to have another rebirth, we want a human one. Thank you very much.

So, to work with our intentions—not meaning, I intend to do everything so I can get a human rebirth. But to have as our intention our Bodhichitta as clear as we can will help us ensure at the very minimum a human rebirth. 

When we took our Bodhisattva vows, we also got those six black and white deeds. 

Avoiding the six black deeds and cultivating the six white deeds are specific behaviors that help to ensure that in whatever our next life will be, we'll be connected to our Bodhisattva vows. Because Bodhisattva vows go on.

So we want to do something that will help us reconnect to our Bodhisattva vows pretty early in life if we don't succeed in this life in reaching Buddhahood.

And those six black and white deeds are the key to that. And I'll just let you work on those.

I have to get to Khen Rinpoche‚s dying help.

Here's the oral transmission from Holy Khen Rinpoche Lobsang Tharchin about:

What a Buddhist can do when a person is dying

Already our little outline needs to split, because maybe the person who's dying is a Dharma practitioner. Maybe they're a spiritual practitioner in their own right, with their own belief system. And maybe they're a person or a being with no concept that we're aware of about them going on at all.

If we are the one in attendance with a person that we know has a Dharma practice, particularly if it's similar to ours, then we can use that common theme to help guide them in their what to help them keep their mind focused on as they're going through their experience.

We're not their bedside caregiver. We're the friend who comes in to spend some time with them, like the hospice volunteer for instance. We're going to be there with them to give comfort. Not to tell them what to do, not to teach them, but to guide their conversation, so that they can hear themselves clear out negativities, rejoice in their goodnesses. 

As a spiritual practitioner, they'll know what you're doing as you're encouraging to do that, and hopefully they'll cooperate with you.

If they have a mantra practice, use their mantra for them so that they can hear it.

If they have a diamond way practice and you can find a recording of it, play the recording for them to hear, if they don't have the strength to do it.

Help their mind stay calm, comfortable, and direct it towards thoughts of the Dharma, whatever that means.

If you're there close to them, do it in a whisper. Do it verbally.

If you're not close to them, do it mentally.

It's maybe more powerful mentally from a distance than right there with them. 

It does work both ways.

They say, if you can keep the room that they're in, the ambience, really calm and beautiful, Geshela said, like the ambience of a fine restaurant.

The light's are a little dimmed, candlelight, although you wouldn't have candlelight, but some light there, a little low music in the background necessarily, but calm and comfortable and mellow.

We understand that what's on the mind at the moment of death determines the circumstances at of the next rebirth.

The thing is though, the moment of death is not when the body stops breathing, or the heart stops beating, or even the brain stops functioning. That's the western medicine determination of death. But that's not the moment of the karmic seed ripening that we're talking about.

There's some span of time from the outer person's perspective before the mind actually leaves the body. What that mind is experiencing is completely different. It's not like, oh, I'm hanging out in a dead body and I can't get out. But what's happening in that experience, we see from the outside as the body's dead, but we don't have any indication that the mind has left it yet. 

The indication that the mind has left the body is that these very subtle fluids leave drip out of the body. It looks just like snot. It's not snot, but something leaks from the nostrils, something leaks from the urethras, sometimes even from the anus. 

It's not stool, it's not urine, that's already long gone. It's something else.

Western medicine, I haven't seen anything in western medicine or mortuary where they've ever said, what is that stuff?

But in our tradition, it's like that's the indication that the mind has fully exited.

Until that mind has fully exited, there are still karmic seeds, ripening, ripening, ripening. But they haven't gotten to the point where the projecting karma has gone off, until the mind leaves.

The leaving of the mind, from our perspective, is that projecting karma that is going to color it into its whole next life. 

So from that moment of projecting karma, that being is then the state we call Bardo, which just means in between. It means it's in between the end of that body, and the birth of the next one. It takes up to seven cycles for that mind's karma from having ripened the projecting karma, to having filled in the details of that projecting karma, such that its perception of itself is its next rebirth. Which is in human terms the instant the egg and sperm touch.

From that mind's perspective, we're told, it's when it finds itself trapped in a womb. Although I think if you were to ask it, it wouldn't be saying, I'm trapped in a womb.

But, whatever its experience is, we describe as: it's now trapped in a womb. Which we'll learn more about in future ACI courses.

But so from human perspective, the Bardo cycles take seven human days.

Every seven human days, that being who has left their life, that life dies in the Bardo.

And each of those seven days, they have opportunity to reach their rebirth, whatever it's going to be.

If they do within the first seven days, boom, there's no more Bardo for them. They have another seven, and another seven until by the end of the seven they are reborn. I don't know why seven sevens, but it turns out to be that 49 day thing that we learn about.

So when the monks are doing prayers, they do prayers on the day of death. They do prayers at the 7th day, because it's like each one of those death and rebirths in the Bardo, they're the closest that they could shift something.

Then, I guess they even go for the next five, and at the 49th day, they do prayers to help direct them into a rebirth.

So typically, if you are one or two, ask for prayers. You need to have your ducks in a row so the prayers can start on day one of death, repeat on seven, and then repeat on 49 just in case that the being hasn't made it somewhere by that time.

Back to being with the dying person who's a Dharma practitioner, you try to guide their mind to be thinking of goodness, to have cleared out its negativity, and holding in its mind on its Dharma practice as it's going through this experience of the dissolutions.

Then once the breathing and heart has stopped, you cannot touch the body, have no one touch the body, until you see these liquids drip. You give the mind the opportunity to leave on its own accord. Which is the best way to go.

In our world, they say that that can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, up to a week.

There's nobody that keeps their dead ones in their home or in their hospital for a week waiting for the liquids to go.

If I understand properly, the body does not start to decay until the liquids go. 

So it's not like it's going to get stinky. But can't keep a body that long. 

So they say, anywhere the body gets touched when it's in this timeframe of dead body but not gone yet, the touch, the mind is going to go to attention there. It's not like, oh, I've been touched, but the attention will go there, and then it will get pushed out of the body at that spot.

We tend to go, oh, are they dead or, oh, are they dead? 

And then that's going to make them go out from here or wherever from here.

Where they go out from has some influence on what level of Bardo they're in, but it's going to affect them.

They say, well, if you're going to be in a situation where somebody's going to touch them, and you can be the first one, then touch them on the head. Give them a little wrap, so that the mind will go, oh and out the top of your head.

Because they say that's the best way, best place to go out.

I don't know why going out the heart isn't the best place, but they say head.

So really, technically, if you ever come across an animal dead on the road and you're going to stop to do something, first thing: touch their head. 

You're near a person. Just wrap them on the head and then check, are you breathing any? I saw you fall.

Nobody's going to notice. It's not going to delay you at all, and it just helps that on the off chance that they're dead, and are going to get touched by the paramedics or somebody who's going to grab their wrist, or their neck, or thump them on the chest.

It's just one of those things that our tradition suggests that we do.

They say, don't refrigerate the body, especially when the mind is still in it. Because it will have the awareness of the cold, and it's likely to send it in the direction of a cold world. Same with heat, right? Don't let it get burnt until you're sure that the mind is gone.

Again, it's like in our world, it's like we don't have any control over that. 

Yet, technically, if you have a situation where there's hospice people, you can say, please, please, this is really, really important to us when they're dying, can we just agree to leave them there for maybe even a couple of days? We can sometimes get approval.

If not, then you do the touch the head thing, and you ask the staff, if you think they're dead, please touch their head to us.

In hospitals, again, it's a little harder, but you can arrange it if you're forward enough to talk about it.

If not, there's prayers that we do. The monks are specially trained in doing them, but we can do them too. That's another story. I don't have time for that right now. 

So, calm environment that holds for everybody, Dharma practitioner or not.

Before they get to that place, let them talk about their regrets. Let them talk about their goodness. Help them do that life review. 

Ask them, do you want a priest or a pastor, or somebody to come hear your confession? Encourage them to do that. 

Encourage them to talk about the good things. 

Encourage them to talk about, or just think about the beings and people they love, and the ways they've helped other people be happy. 

If there's nothing else we do for a person towards their end of life, then encourage them to tell us about how they helped others. That's more important than anything else. Because it helps their seeds grow for kindness.

Rinpoche said, really, that goes for anybody. 

If someone has their own spiritual path, ask them about it: Who do you pray to? Do you pray to Jesus, mother Mary, Moses? Who do you pray to?

And then when you're talking to them using their prayers for them, use those.

Don't impose your Tara on their mother Mary. Know that the holy being that they're praying to is as empty as our Tara, and is made of love and compassion and wisdom, just the same as our deities are. We don't need to say, you know, your deity can't do anything for you except teach you. Just help them pray. Use their prayers. Give them that comfort.

When there's been a violent death

Apparently in a violent death, the mind is shocked out of the body. Yet it isn't in that process of withdrawal, withdrawal, withdrawal. It's like blah. And it doesn't really even know it's dead yet. So it tends to hang around in familiar spaces. It's not really like a ghost necessarily. But in a violent death, everybody's focused on the body and not many realize that that poor mindstream being is hovering around here somewhere, like bewildered about what's just happened.

Rather than getting involved in the fray—let other people do that—hang back, and talk to the person in your mind. Look, something terrible has happened. You have this opportunity to go on. Look to the light, look for Mary, look for Jesus, whatever, whoever. They're waiting for you. It's good. All is good. You're going to go to love. 

And send them, send them before they actually get stuck where they are. 

It doesn't occur to us to do that unless we've heard that they're probably still there. And then it doesn't freak us out when we go, oh my gosh, I see them there. Right? I don't see, but some people do. Then you don't know. Should I pull 'em back into the body or what should I do? Just tell them, go to the light and they'll decide whether it's time for them to go or not.

What to do with the body? 

Once the mind has left the body, it really doesn't matter how you dispose of it according to our tradition. Many people care about disposal of the body, in which case, for our own seeds, we would want to follow their wishes. But from their side, they have no connection to that thing, the body anymore.

In our meditation, it's like you don't even recognize it. Vaguely, what's that? Who's that? We're way beyond physical body. 

If the person has determined that they want their organs to be donated, Buddhism says, that's a great thing, to use your body to help others, would be fabulous. 

The difficulty is that in order for the harvesting to happen, it has to be taken from a not dead yet body. So they have to put you on life support. They put your physical body on life support. Even though you're, you would be brain dead without it, like you're dead, but your physical body is being pumped full of fluids, and air to give them time to harvest whatever they're going to harvest.

So then, as our own being, if we decide that's what we want to happen, then hopefully we're well trained enough that we can get ourselves out of the body before they put us on that life support, so that we're not in there when they're starting to cut the thing apart, and having this wrong perception of what's going on.

It really is one of these trade-offs. It's a great idea, but in terms of the dying process, it kind of fouls us up a bit. Because it's going to interfere with the smooth transition of that mind, because the body has to be kept alive. But not impossible. I guess it would just take special training, and I don't know what that would be quite yet.

Then they say, a Buddhist practitioner would not ask for life support measures, because it would mean putting somebody in the position of having to decide when to stop that life support.

So usually the criteria is, if you're mostly dead, and they think that they can help you, they put you on life support to see if your body can respond.

If it does, you come off life support. If it doesn't, your body will stay on life support. Because it's on life support, it's not going to kill itself. Then somebody has to say, okay, don't treat the bladder infection. Don't treat the pneumonia. Let this thing die. 

Or they have to say, stop the life support. Which in our tradition then says you've put somebody in the position to decide to kill your body. And you don't want to do that to someone else.

So then it's like, well, what if I had been put on life support and I would've gotten better if I have in my paperwork, no life support, no matter what, haven't I killed myself? I don't have an answer. That's something we work out on our own, to decide what do we want done if we're in the position where we can't make our own medical decision. Well, if we're in that position where we can't make our own medical decision, at least in the United States, the paramedics and the emergency rooms are obligated by law to keep you alive, to do all they can to keep you alive.

So if we can't say no, they're going to do everything that they can.

There's legal paperwork that you can have prearranged that says, I don't want that. This is what I want in this circumstances, this is what I want in that circumstance. But then that paperwork has to be known to your doctors, to your ER, to your paramedics. And of course, they don't know that about you if you're in a car accident, unless you've got it plastered in your car somewhere.

In the US, at least in Arizona, you put it on your refrigerator and theoretically, the paramedics are supposed to look to this thing on your refrigerator to see whether they're allowed to treat you or not.

But then it's like if you're not going to want treatment, why call the paramedics at all?

So maybe you and whoever you live with have this agreement, but it still needs to be put in writing. Because if you end up dead, you've got to call somebody and then that somebody is obligated to call either your police department or your sheriff's department. Because it has to be established that there wasn't foul play. 

So this whole thing about end of life, it seems simple when we're just playing dying. But when we're not close to dying, but we could be at any moment, then it is important to have these things thought out, and some system already arranged so that your loved ones know what you want or don't want, and you have it somehow posted so that if somebody does call 911 for you, the paramedics would know. 

There's a form called The Five Wishes in the United States, which is a legally binding document once it's witnessed, and sometimes notarized, that goes through these ideas, and you establish who you would want to make be your decision maker, and then you tell that decision maker what decisions to make.

That decision maker that you choose needs to be someone who will agree to follow your wishes that you've written down on the further pages. 

So you're not asking somebody, You decide what should happen to me. 

You're asking somebody, Will you follow what I have written here? 

If the person says, No, I'm going to decide what's good for you. It's like, No, you're not the one. Find somebody else.

That's a whole different class to learn about how we doing that.

But I'm asking all of you, do you have your end of life wishes made known? Do you have it written down somewhere? Is it legal?

In the state of Arizona the attorney general's office has a file, that you put your information on their file, and then any hospital, any paramedic can get to it.

I don't know in your own country, I'm guessing there are similar things.

Wherever you are, do not leave it up to the powers that be. Because that powers that be say, we keep you alive at all costs. If that's what you want, great. But maybe some of us are closer to not wanting that, in which case we need to have it clarified.

As we prepare for our own death, worldly preparation as well as mental emotional preparation, we are better equipped to help others do the same thing. It's an incredible service to the people you love to have that all taken care of, no matter what age you are now. 

It requires sitting down with them, and saying, This is the information I want you to know. Then they from their side, help them do it too. We should all have that. 

Remember that person, we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class. Between the meditation and this guidance about how to help them at their end of life, we have learned a lot. 

It‘s such a great goodness to spend one's time like this, that maybe it is what you choose to do if you were dying tonight.

So think of this goodness like an extraordinary glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands, that looks like a little boy. 

Recall your own precious holy being there with you. 

See how happy they are with you. 

Grow your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. 

Ask them to please stay close, to continue to guide you and help you. 

And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. 

See them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart. 

Feel them there, that love, that compassion, that wisdom. 

They are a being glowing with light and feel that loving light, growing and glowing within you.

Filling you so full you can't contain it, and so to share it with others, we redirect it with our intention.

Sending a big beam of it to that one being, seeing it filling them with loving kindness. 

Sending more beams to everyone you love, seeing it filling all of them with the happiness of being kind.

Shining more beams from every direction, touching every existing being everywhere, seeing them all suddenly with this insight into how happiness comes from helping others.

And may it be so.

Thank you so very much.

Welcome back. We are class 5 of our Death Awareness practice. It's November 19th, 2023. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual Opening]

Guided Meditation

Bring your attention back to your breath. We'll do our quick preliminaries.

Now return your attention to that precious, holy being, a being who's made of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and think of what you understand to be their emptiness.

No inherent nature of being that loved.

And think of what you know of your own emptiness, no inherent nature of being suffering human.

Think of how because their emptiness and your emptiness are identical—not one in the same, but identical—you can just as well become like them, as they became them from your side.

And how that works is our protection.

Grow our Bodhichitta a little bigger yet.

That person who's hurting, their nature is empty too.

Their suffering is as unnecessary as mine, as everyone else's, all driven by this great mistake. 

And I understand that that mistake can be stopped.

Grow your wish to stop that mistake so that every being in your world can stop it too. 

If we can even imagine it, we are closer to creating it. 

Turn your mind back to that precious holy being. 

Recognize that they had to have done all the things, we need to do, for them to see themselves as this being made of love, and compassion, and wisdom.

And so they know what we need.

So admire them.

We're just one of those great qualities you see in them.

Aspire to grow that quality in yourself.

Make them an offering, something from your practice. Some kindness that you shared because of your understanding of karma and emptiness.

See them so happy with you.

And with equal openness, share with them some human mistake you made.

It maybe didn't seem like a mistake at the time, but then thinking of our mix seed planted and how it can come back.

Tell them of your regret.

Promise some antidote to make up for it. It could be this class.

And establish a power of restraint, how you will refuse to repeat it, given the chance.

Then fill that space in your heart with rejoicing.

Tell them of another kindness that you did, and maybe what you saw someone else do. Some kindness you do so repeatedly you don't even think of it as a kindness anymore.

Think of all that goodness you're adding to your world.

Again, see how happy they are with you.

Ask them to please stay close, even in the form of your Dharma friends.

Ask them to stay long, to live long and ask them to continue to teach you, both formal classes and those everyday teachings.

Ask them to help you recognize that every time your button gets pushed, it's them helping you to become a fully enlightened being.

And dedicate these prayers so far to recognizing some change, changing yourself for changing your world that will help you gain the confidence in your practice.

Then bring your attention back to your breath, shift and wiggle if you need to and then settle back in.

Now bring to mind what you mean by ’My death is certain‘, meaning your own.

Say to yourself, ‘My death is certain‘. 

Say to yourself, ‚The time of my death is uncertain.‘

Say to yourself, ‘When I die, nothing but the Dharma helps me‘, and recall what's meant by that.

All that goes on as me is my karma.

My Dharma study and practice makes the karmic seeds that I want to go on as me and my world.

Dharma means that which teaches me what to take up, and what to give up, to create that future of freedom from suffering for everyone.

Nothing but my spiritual practices can help me when I die, because nothing but those karmic seeds can help me.

And so I want to take up a spiritual life, because my death is certain.

I want to learn what seeds to plant that I want to take with me, because the time of my death is uncertain.

I will take up that spiritual life now, not later.

And because nothing but my Dharma life helps me, I determine to make my spiritual life my priority.

Making my spiritual life my priority, I don't even want to waste my time on lesser practices.

There are beings in my world who are suffering.

I'm determined to take up the highest practices.

But what are those highest practices? 

Find yourself again in that turret room in the sunlight with your staff pointing to the shaft coming out the window, and turn and look at that beautiful peacock colored door that already has the letters, ‘The highest spiritual practice‘.

Point your staff at it and ask yourself, do you really want to go through those doors? 

Maybe we're eager, maybe a little hesitant, maybe we're not ready yet.

Any level is just fine.

Let a part of you stay there receiving that sunlight of wisdom pouring down onto you, into you, while you look at that blue door.

Then bring part of you back to your breath, back to this body in this room.

And when you're ready, open your eyes. Take a stretch.

The Pen and the Traditional Example from the Scriptures about Emptiness and Dependent Origination

(28:50) Before we go through the blue door, we need to revisit karma and emptiness, because it's so critical to what's behind the blue door, the highest practices.

We've all heard the pen thing, right?

There's nobody here who hasn't heard it so many times that my guess your mind goes, Nah.

Send that mind packing, and let's do the pen thing together.

I want to find one that you can see pretty well.

Which do you like best? I think this one right? Number one, number two, number three? Number one, okay.

Help me do this.

Here's our friend, the pen. 

Don't let your mind jump to the conclusion. Kick back and help me do this.

What do we ask when we first start to explain the pen?

Rachana, what's the first thing we say?

(Rachana) What is this object?

(Lama Sarahni) What is this object? Victor, what is this object? Wait, I'll show you.

(Victor) Yeah, it's a pen.

(Lama Sarahni) It's a pen. Okay. What's the next question we ask?

What if a puppy, what if I show this pen to a puppy? What is the puppy do with it? 

Okay, don't ask, What does the puppy see? Say, What does the puppy do with this?

So Claire, what does the puppy do with this?

(Clare) It would chew it.

(Lama Sarahni) Chew it, it sniffs it. So, human sees a pen here. Puppy sees a chew toy here. Who is right?

I'm reading Luisa's lips. See how good, I'm getting good at? She said both.

Why can we say that they're both right, if there's only one object here? Can one object be a pen and be a chew toy—both? From it? Can it be all pen, and all chew toy at the same time?

(Luisa) Yes.

(Lama Sarahni) You are saying it can be all pen, and all chew toy at the same time for one observer. 

(Luisa) No, I didn't say that.

(Lama Sarahni) Oh, you didn't say that. So you're saying that whether it's a pen, or whether it's a chew toy depends upon the observer.

(Luisa) Well, it can be for a person a pen, but also something to hold the hair.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. So, it again depends on the person's experience. So you fine tune it. It's not just the person, it's the person's experience of it. Because when it's the hair tie, it's a hair tie. I'm experiencing it as hair tie. Or we could say, a pen that's tying my hair. When the puppies experiences it, this object is a chew toy.

What does that say about the identity of this object?

(Luisa) That is mutable?

(Lama Sarahni) That it's mutable. It's changeable. Depending on what? How it's used?

(Luisa) No.

(Lama Sarahni) How it's perceived? How it's experienced?

That fact, that this object's identity is dependent upon the experiencer’s experience of it for its identity for them, is what we mean by the pen's emptiness.

Its lack of its own identity in it, from it, is what's missing when we recognize, oh, I can see pen, puppy can see chew toy, and we can both be having a valid perception.

We're looking at what we think is the same object, and I perceive it one way, they perceive it a different way. That says, and so the object's identity can't be all in it.

It can't be in it at all, technically. But if you have a skeptical audience, you can say it's not all in it—which will be helpful.

Then the next question is, why? Why do I see pen, and puppy see chew toy, and fly sees landing pad, and baby human sees something partway between pen and chew toy, aren’t they? They actually see chew toy first, and then they grow up a little bit and they write on the wall with it, and now they have a writing object. But that just verifies that it can't be in it the way we believe it is.

(Luisa) Yeah, I just wanted to ask that when sometimes you tell this to the people, and then they say, yeah, because the puppy is not intelligent, and then of course they don't see a pen. And I don't know how to reply to that.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Because if the pen's identity were in it, the puppy's intelligence would not bring anything to the party. And so the very fact that they say, well, the puppy's not intelligent enough to see a pen proves our point, that it's not in the pen.

It has to be in the intelligence of the puppy. They just said that. Oh, okay, so you believe the puppy's ability to see the pen is in the puppy's intelligence. It's still not in the pen.

So technically they proved your point with their argument. Arya Nagarjuna loves to do that. Your argument proves my point. Let me show you why. It is very fun.

But I agree there are many people you can take through and they'll agree, agree, agree, agree, and you point out the conclusion and they go, no.

Because this whole argument also is, guess what? Coming from seeds.

But then, when you think that, oh, it's just coming from seeds, so it's not true. Right? 

Did your mind go there? Mine did.

So of course not everybody's going to believe it, because it's not really true.

But that's not the right conclusion, right?

It's not true, in it from it.

But whether the person comes to the conclusion or not, guess who is that coming from. Okay.

We asked the question, why pen for me, chew toy for a puppy? And for a long time the tradition just gives us the punchline: Because of what we've thought, seen and done before. But like, that was so unsatisfactory for me. It still is.

But it’s because the answer is so long.

But the short version of the answer is to perceive this as a pen is a result of a cause. And the cause, we already showed, can't be in the pen. The cause has to be in the mind of the observer to get the result from the mind of the observer. So something that the mind of the observer did, made the cause that became the result, Oh, me seeing blue and white pen. Same for puppy, Oh, nice chew toy.

Something put into our own mind.

And then, how do we get those imprints in our mind?

By what we perceive ourselves thinking, doing, saying towards others. Also long story, how to derive that. So we'll just leave it there.

My seeds make me see, this is a pen.

Puppy seeds make puppy see, this is a chew toy.

And if I persist in saying, the pen is in the pen, then I'm mad at the puppy for chewing on my pen.

If I can really clearly relate to the puppy as chewing on a chew toy when I see it as my favorite pen, I could be as delighted by the puppie‘s enjoyment of chewing the chew toy as I am when I have my favorite pen to write with. 

Because I'm perceiving their world and my world at the same time.

As a human I cannot do that. I can imagine it. I can pretend. But human seeds don't allow us to perceive directly that being's experience and my experience at the same time.

We've learned that example. And we've learned it well enough, I hope, that we can apply it to other circumstances of life. That's the idea, to go beyond just pens and go into other arenas of our behavior to inspire ourselves, to catch where we're planting our seeds, how we're interacting with others.

That's where we start to make the changes in our pool of karmic seeds such that we're building up more and more seeds that when they ripen we'll be happy with them. We don't have to know what they're going to be like.

We just know whatever they're like, it will be good, because of the way I've planted them. And we work on weeding out the ugly ones from before we knew any better, or even once we knew any better, but we still couldn't do it.

We work with the numbers, pulling out the negative, planting more and more with our baby wisdom growing.

So, the pen, the chew toy, it's such a beautiful simple example to use and to keep coming back to, and it gets richer and richer.

Classical Example from the Scriptures

My task for this class is to also share with you the classical, the scriptural tradition’s explanation of the emptiness of this pen, and its dependent origination. Which is our seeds making it be what we perceive, and its nature of being that not in it. 

The emptiness—not in it. The dependent origination—what it is for me, from my seeds.

The classical explanation comes from Master Chandrakirti, and he's one of the logic masters. And so they use this example where they say, suppose three beings from three different realms can gather together.

Technically, that doesn't happen because the three different realms can't perceive each other. They're happening on different wavelengths, you could say.

But let's just suppose that gathering in somebody's basement around a table is a human and a hungry ghost and a worldly pleasure being.

I think we've learned a little bit about worldly pleasure beings.

Their existence is all pleasurable until the last week before they've used up all of those pleasurable seeds, and then yuck starts to happen. But until then, everything's pleasurable for everybody in their realm.

They have no inclination to share it, because everybody's got everything you need. You don't take a wealthy person out to lunch, you expect them to take you out to lunch. You're just going out to lunch together as didi. So you're not sharing.  You're using up, but you don't know.

Everything's really beautiful, and pleasurable and extraordinary.

Hungry ghost. Stinginess and pride gets us into a hungry ghost realm, makes us see ourselves in a hungry ghost realm.

Hungry ghost realm is a state of mind where we cannot get our needs met to an exaggerated point to where anything that would look like something that you could eat or drink, when you actually go to eat or drink it, it's just disgusting puss and blood, they say.

Then, human realm we're pretty familiar with.

They say there's a human, there's a hungry ghost, and there's a worldly deity sitting around this table.

Somebody comes along and they place this object in the center of this round table, and these three beings are looking at this object.

Okay, you see it? (holding a glass of water) I'll prove to you something. I just swallowed it. I didn't die, so it is not poison. I'm not fooling anybody. 

It's a glass of water.

For humans, the human sees somebody set a glass of water on the middle of the table. The human looks at it and is like, okay, water.

The hungry ghost goes, argh. And the pleasure being goes, whoa.

Because human sees glass of water. Hungry ghost sees puss and blood. Worldly deity sees nectar of deathlessness, something so delicious.

Who's right?

Wait, all three are right? There's only one object here.

One object can't be all water, all puss and blood, and all nectar at the same time.

It can be? From it, in it, can be three different things?

No, right? I didn't say that.

Oh, but it can be three different things if three different beings are experiencing it?

Yes. Well then, that means there's nothing there from its own side.

Wait, nothing at all?

No. From its own side, nothing at all, yes.

But there's an object there on the table. Is part of it, like this part of it, the puss and blood, because that's the part the hungry ghost sees? And this part is the water, because I'm here and I'm looking at it from this perception? And deity is here and so it’s this part?

So you're saying it's part nectar, part puss and puss, and part water?

No, it's all water for me. It's all water for them. It's all nectar for the other.

Doesn't that scramble your brain a little bit?

No. Good, I'm glad.

It does, it makes sense, doesn't it?

Of course the hungry ghost is going to see the whole thing as puss and blood.

I see the whole thing as water, or I think I do. All I really see is this much.

And guess what happens when I turn it around?

Okay, I'm looking at the front. Now I'm going to look at the back. Wait a minute, it's not the back, it's the front.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, right?

Also proof that it's coming from my mind, not the thing. 

Or there would be a back and a front, and I'd be able to go, Oh, back. Oh, front. Oh left. Oh right.

But either way I go, son of a gun. I can't tell the difference. Our own mind.

We would have to say, who's right?

All of them for them. But none of them for the object.

Why would I say that?

Because none of them are perceiving the object correct in the way it truly exists. Which is by way of their seeds, and not from its own side.

I'm perceiving this water as a glass of water in it, from it—as a ordinary human being. 

Hungry ghost, puss and blood in it, from it.

So valid puss and blood, but incorrect puss and blood in it, from it. Because the puss and blood is from them, onto information. We'll just call it onto the object.

Nectar of the gods, from that worldly deity, not from the stuff.

So they're perceiving it their own way and not knowing that they're perceiving it their own way. So they're perceiving it validly, but inaccurate to the way it truly exists, which is by way of their seeds ripening.

So, we have the empty nature of the object by way of the three beings seeing three different things. And we have its dependent origination of the object by it being what each of those different being sees. Karma and emptiness.

Dependent origination means karma

Because what's forcing the worldly deity to see it as nectar is their seeds ripening.

What's forcing human to see it as water is my human seeds ripen.

You get the idea.

Same as the pen and the puppy. But do you see how much simpler pen and puppy is? It doesn't need to describe three different realm beings, because what if you didn't believe in those? Right from the get-go it's like, I don't want to talk to this lady. 

She's talking about ghosts and worldly gods…

But puppies. I know puppies. I know dogs. I know humans. 

So it really is a brilliant example.

But this is where it came from. This description called the CHU‘ BOB from logic school.

(Rachana) I'm sorry, can you please spell chupa?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, CHU apostrophe and B-O-B. It means waterfall, which I don't know how they get from waterfall to this, but maybe the original is, they're all standing around a waterfall and the humans seeing a waterfall, and (the hungry ghost sees) the puss and blood, and the other is like, whoa, nectar waterfall. But it ends up being glass of water, which don't mind if I do.

Here's one cylinder.

Pen for human, puppies chew toy.

Here's another cylinder with five more little cylinders.

Is there a difference between this cylinder's existence and this cylinder's existence in the sense of its nature in it, from it, versus not in it, from it? And so from whom, right?

No, this cylinder and this cylinder, I see it as human hand, flesh and blood, getting wrinkly, getting stiff and sore, getting weak. It must be true because it's my hand. Right? It must truly have that identity of an aging human hand, because it's mine.

No.

Because it's my seed's ripening, it is true for me. When my seeds are better, a whole lot better, this same object, this same information will be ineffable wand of light, made of love, compassion, wisdom, with all kinds of amazing things that it can do, and no limitations in what it can be.

Same with this cylinder. Here's another one. When those karmic seeds are ripening with sufficient goodness, this object is perceived as this ineffable, holy, enlightened being's body that doesn't die, that isn't limited, that doesn't have wrong view or mental afflictions, is made of radiant love, compassion, wisdom for the benefit of me and my parts—which is everything in my enlightened world.

Because my body is empty, because it depends on my seeds ripening what it is for me, then it is changeable, completely changeable.

In fact it's changing moment by moment when we come to the conclusion that it's nothing but karmic seeds, and we understand how swiftly karmic seeds are shifting. This thing is.

When we have that as part of our identity, (shift, shift, shift), then this thing called death changes completely. Because where does it actually happen if this is all, I don't mean this is all only, but this is what makes up existence. It‘s just changing. The scene is changing, changing, changing, changing.

That's both the fear of death, and the ramus of the end of suffering.

Because our seeds ripening is all that's driving everything. 

And those seeds that were ripening, themselves don't have their own nature, which is why our behavior plants new, that adds to the ones that are already there, subtracts from the ones that are opposite, and everything is changing even after the seeds have been planted. They're still shifting, shifting, shifting.

Tracy asked, how come if an enlightened being is in a human body, their body would and die?

They aren't an enlightened being in a human body. They are an enlightened being that other beings are perceiving as a human body, so that they can interact.

And if that body is being seen to age, it's coming from those that are seeing it, not from the enlightened being—who knows that the others are seeing them as a human, and they're probably using that on purpose. But they are not perceiving aging and dying. Even as that body that the others are seeing is aging and dying, they're not perceiving that. They're having a different experience.

Okay, why are we going through all of this?

That deity that we will be forced to perceive, when our seeds are full of that, is in the courtyard of your building, waiting for you to get to the courtyard.

You can think of it literally, they're already sitting there. Or you can think of it as their potential is there, and as soon as we get there, bing, will show up.

Whatever works best for you.

I like knowing that they're there, because any enlightened being who's looking at my courtyards seeing me there already. So I choose to use that one, and they're just in the courtyard going, What is taking you so long? Come on, would you?

But you can say they're not quite there yet. But I find them being there more helpful.

How we get there is by going through these different Lam Rims, the different stages, the different realizations, things that become real for us as we learn and practice this truth of things including me are empty of self nature. And what is there is a result of my own past deeds.

And we start at certain levels, and we work amongst those levels according to our ability at the moment to stop blaming others, until we burn off all those ignorant seeds and are then forced to perceive ourselves as this fully enlightened being.

It can't happen any other way.

When we reach that, you don't need your death meditation binder anymore.

You give it away. And that's the point.

We use it to motivate ourselves, to learn the new behavior, to give up the old behavior, in order to make it untrue that my death is certain, to make it untrue that the time of my death is uncertain, and to make it very true that nothing but my spiritual life helps me. Because it was that spiritual life that guided me in what to take up, and what to give up.

Okay, so what do we give up and what do we take up?

We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can follow the example given by those beings. Well, at least the one Shakyamuni who has taught in our world, 

Give up the 10 non virtues. Take up the 10 virtues.

Try to follow the refuge advices.

When you're a bit more motivated, take the vows, like the five lifetime lay vows, maybe even ordination vows if you're into that. And then the Bodhisattva vows. Which even with Bodhisattva vows, we can learn them and work with them even before we take them as vows.

Then, when our seeds shift sufficiently, there are even tantric vows after that.

We are given vows not as restrictions, but as a simplification for our lives so that we don't have to figure it out. Like, oh, here are the behaviors to give up and take up.

Thank you. Now I just need to know them, and then recognize, here I'm in a situation and this has to do with this vow. I'm going to act like that, instead of that.

It's supposed to make life easier, not more stressful, to have vows.

When we do behaviors and don't do behaviors that we've vowed to not do and do, we also keep the goodness of having kept our vow. Which is an additional power to the goodness that we did.

So to have a vow to not lie, first of all, we're keeping the vow every moment we're not lying. And when we might have, and decided not to, that seed is even more strongly not planted. You can't really say that. The not-telling-lie by saying something else includes that doing so, because we have a vow. It strengthens our vow.

But you don't have to have vows to benefit from using them as our guidelines.

So this tradition says, stop and check your behavior. Like learn your vows so well, you don't have to stop and check. But the way we do that is stop and check six times a day. They say three times in dark and three times in daylight, but just any time, six times. And that's where keeping the book came from.

It was just a method of doing that. Now we have the Keep My Vows app on your phone. If you don't have it, it's fun. Get it. Keep my Vows app. There's no excuse, except you ignore your alarm.

Okay, let's take a break because now we're ready to know what's behind the blue door.

(Break)

The Practice of Exchanging Self & Others - The Blue Door

(67:07) So there's that part of you standing in the sunshine.

You've been peeking at that blue door, right? For me, it's over there. 

Highest spiritual practice is that this class lets us peek inside there and then learn about it. And then I think I'm going to run out of time for us to actually do a meditation on it, but we'll see how it goes. 

You're looking at that blue door, you're pointing at it with your staff in your left hand.

You're thinking to yourself, if I'm really going to commit myself to, ‘My whole life is my spiritual practice‘, I want the highest one.

Do I want the highest one? 

Let's say we say I think so. Then those words on our blue door change to DAKCHEN NYAMJAY.

DAK = me

CHEN = other

NYAMJAY = exactly the same

Me, others, exactly the same.

It's called the practice of exchanging self and others. 

I think you've all learned it already.

But imagine if you were really in your ACI between course 2 and 3, and you were learning this for the first time.

There are three depths of this practice, and within each one there's a physical level, a mental emotional level, and a spiritual level. 

So three depths to each one.

Exchanging self and others is the practice.

Me, others, are exactly the same.

At the beginning level, it's the very basic level of having enough distance between ourselves and our immediate experiences with others in order to have in mind that idea of putting myself in their shoes before I judge them, before I react to them, before I interact with them.

Even just this baby level of the highest practice is what we exchange the things in our backpack for.

Eventually we got rid of the backpack altogether, but as we were taking those worldly things that distract us, take up our time, make us react badly, and we're throwing over the bridge, we weren't putting something in to replace them yet.

I mean technically, what we put in was the whole death awareness practice. 

But here it's like, if you're going to carry anything with you through life, carry this DAKCHEN NYAMJAY practice.

At the first level you carry with you this idea: I'll put myself in their shoes before I react.

Probably we're already doing that to some extent in some circumstances, but not all. 

When we first hear, oh, I'm going to devote myself to my Buddhist practice, and Buddhist practice means TU SOM GOM, hours and hours of classroom hours, and hours of study contemplation, hours and hours of meditation.

We think, oh, the stuff I'm pulling off my backpack needs to be all those things that make me have to go do things during those hours that I would've been in class, or I would've been contemplating doing my homework, or I would've been meditating. But I can't do those things, because I have a job that starts at 7:00 AM, and I have to pack to leave tomorrow, so I can't come to class.

We have all these different other priorities.

It seems like we're saying, okay, what we put instead is these hours and hours of study, contemplation and meditation.

That's as big a burden when we're thinking of it wrongly as the magazine subscriptions, and the football tickets, and all that other stuff that we pretty happily said, no more of.

But this practice is saying, DAKCHEN NYAMJAY practice, even at this baby level is that having this equal concern for another's needs is our spiritual practice. 

Now, to be able to do that in more and more extreme circumstances, we do need to continue to study, receive teachings that challenge us, make time for our homeworks, make time for some meditation to remind ourselves. But the hours we spend being concerned for this other being and serving them, make it such that when we study, when we contemplate, and when we meditate, those seeds will actually grow the wisdom that we want.

Because we can study, we can contemplate, we can meditate, and we can go out in our world and be the same old selfish jerk, and the study, meditation won't have any effect. All of a sudden this thing called ‘I'm going to focus on my spiritual life‘ is starting to take on a new meaning.

Geshela says, the holiest practice that you can do today if you're going to die tonight is practicing this exchanging oneself and other. To do that, we need to be around others.

We imagine we're around others on our meditation cushion, which is great.

But being around others is where we get the laboratory experience to see if what we tried to do on our meditation cushion sank in deeply enough to allow us to do it in physical reality.

Sometimes we'll be successful and a lot of times we won't.

We regroup and the next day we try again, if we're lucky enough to wake up alive.

We try again exchanging self and others.

These other beings in our world, they are like our wish giving gem, our Aladdin's lamp.

They are the ones through whom we interact in ways that plant the seeds that create our own Buddha Me in Buddha paradise emanating with all those other Buddhas in paradises. It's only through our interaction with others that that can happen.

So now our devoting to spiritual life only does, it less means giving everything up and going to live at the base of a tree. Now it means that we've given up an attitude towards our stuff, towards our people, and we're replacing that old attitude with this new attitude. We haven't given them up. We've given up our old attitude.

Let's see how that goes. 

Beginning Level: What do they want or need right now?

(77:48) At that first level, we are just trying to think, What would make this person happy in worldly but moral ways right now? Just physical comfort happiness.

Now, Ale asked, she's raising this small child. And of course Jam wants popsicles and peanut butter. And Ale knows he needs to have a good proper meal, or he's going to be cranky later. So it may be that part of this practice is, well, I should just give him popsicles and peanut butter, because that would make him happy. But knowing that two hours from now, he's going to be really unhappy, and more popsicles and peanut butter at that point is not going to happen. 

It's going to take some judgment. But there are ways that you can feed him healthy things and it be giving him some happiness. It doesn't have to be, You have to eat these healthy things, because I say so, because I make the decisions, because I'm the mom. Right? Old parenting styles weren't so effective.

It's still a delicate practice to say, okay, I'm going to put myself in their shoes and give them what they want. Because maybe what they want isn't really what's going to bring them even worldly happiness.

But still, just the idea of being with another person or more, and thinking, What would they need right now?

Mostly our thinking is, What do I need right now and how do I involve them in that? Rather than what would they need.

Are they sitting in the dark? You don't have to say, turn on the light. Just turn it on for them. Just do what would give them a little bit of pleasure. 

When you're in a group of people you don't know very well, Geshela says, watch their eyes. Their eyes will go to what they're interested in. 

And so you can watch a group of people and this one person keeps looking at the apples in the bowl. Just go pick up an apple, go to the kitchen, cut it up, take it to them.

If you were that person, how would it feel?

Whoa, they must be psychic.

But they went to the trouble to get me an apple, how sweet.

They didn't say, what can I get you? What would you like? I mean, that's nice.

But this practice is, just notice and try.

Easy enough. Easier when we know people, less easy when we don't know people. 

But a little more astounding to both, our own mind and to their mind, when we try with people we don't know.

Geshela used the analogy of the programs on our computer. We expect them to work seamlessly, that we shouldn't need to be aware of what's cranking inside there to make it do the things we ask it to do. A Bodhisattva, even at this level of DAKCHEN NYAMJAY, the other person Is totally unaware that they're your focus of intention and of giving. You just show up that way for them.

Just at this first level, bringing them a little bit of healthy, moral, physical, pleasure, happiness. If that's all we did differently, that's the best karmic thing that we could do on any given day should we die tonight.

Just pay attention and try.

If they are pleased with what we do, that's not what we're watching for.

Because that's a result of something else.

What we're watching for is the us trying to attend to their needs.

Now, still at this beginning level, but at the second section of that is, we can become more sophisticated and make our effort at the mental emotional aspect of this other. Making our purpose be to give them some mental, emotional, healthy, wholesome pleasure at the moment. What we mean by that is that we're intentionally giving someone an opportunity to express themselves, to express their need.

Like we're asking, how's your day going? Really asking.

When they say, oh, just fine. We might ask again. Really our everything on time?

But giving someone that feeling of safety to open up.

If you know their mother is ill, how's your mom doing?

Almost nobody asks someone about their sick mother's, sick child, because you just really don't want to know the answer.

In this exchanging self and others, you are not intending to give them a solution, or to make a suggestion. You're just giving them the opportunity to get something off their chest.

Oh, she had a really hard night. I was up all night with her.

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope today goes better.

That's all.

But they feel seen, and heard, and touched. And those are the seeds we're wanting to make to be in our mind, because we're going to die tonight.

We cared. We showed somebody we cared. 

You don't get personal at all. You just give them a chance to be heard, to be seen, to be felt.

The grocery store checkout clerk. You've been on your feet all day, man, you must be tired. When normally we're just, Did she get it right? Did she miss anything? Did she, did she…? Okay, I've got to get out of here.

It takes nothing to just pay a little attention, and it gives a warm heart to both of us.

People like to be asked about their kids. People like to be asked about their grandkids. People like to be asked about… Figure out, what do you like to be asked about?

Then still on this beginning level, there is a spiritual aspect. This one is trickier.

Geshela says on this one, what we do is in our meditation cushion time, we think about what it might be like to recognize an opening, a little open opportunity to slide in something about karma and emptiness without using those words.

In my experience, I really find that what I sow really come, I really do reap what I sow. And just leave it at that. Or just these little one-liners that might help somebody.

I find those always fall on deaf ears. I wonder why.

But some seeds have been planted. It's enough. It's enough.

Just the thinking of when I have a connection with somebody and they are in a position where they're questioning, they're searching, they're wondering, will I be brave enough to share with them the pen thing? 

And prepare for that on your meditation cushion, and be willing to try. But only when the time is right. Because again, we're exchanging self and other. Do you want to be told the truth of something that you don't believe in yet, that you're not ready for, you're not interested in? No.

But when your heart's aching and you're searching for something, there might be some little nugget that we could help them with.

Helping on the spiritual level is a powerful thing to try at the right time.

At this baby level of exchanging self and others, there's still me, there's them.

What I'm exchanging is my priority of me-first habit and saying, no, them first. 

Let me just try to be in them-first mode for a little while today, because I'm going to die tonight, and I want those seeds in my mindstream for when I die tonight. 

Because without that, I would've gone through my whole day just me first, me first, me first, me first.

So, our little opportunities, or not so little opportunities to shift that—intentionally—are powerfully planted seeds, because they're so different. They're negating all the others, because they're so different. Not negating them completely of course, but helping to negate our selfishness.

Medium Level: How can I uplift them? Empathy

(89:46) Then, at the medium level of exchanging self and other, at this point, we are wanting to engage some level of empathy.

Sympathy is, I'm sorry for you having a hard time. 

Empathy is, I feel your hard time.

People who are empaths, they really struggle. Mostly because they can't tell the difference between feelings that they're having that are their issues, and feelings that they're having that are somebody else's issues. And it's very confusing, and you just don't know how to respond.

Empathy is a really, really powerful tool if we have it and we're trained to use it. But otherwise it'll make you crazy.

So don't wish for yourself to be empathic yet. But as a fully enlightened being, you're going to be. You are going to be directly aware of every being, and what they're experiencing. Kind of scary, when you put it that way.

At this level of exchanging self and others, we're trying to get a sense of what is that person in fact feeling right now?

What kind of mental affliction are they having?

What kind of emotional response are they having?

The main exchange self and others here is involved with, How is my behavior influencing them?

What our empathy is trying to develop is, How are they perceiving me so that I can adjust my behavior towards them such that we will be aware that it's uplifting them instead of down pulling them.

It‘s not just exchanging self and others empathy to really see how much they hate apples. But it's to be aware of how our body language, how our word choices, how our tone of voice is influencing them.

Is it uplifting? Is it feeling loving? Is it feeling attended to? Is it feeling criticized?

Are they feeling me-jealous? How are they experiencing me?

It sounds very self-involved. But the idea is the willingness to adjust our interaction, our personal behavior towards them, based on getting a sense of, Are they perceiving me negatively or are they perceiving me positively? Because I want to be an uplifting, helpful experience for them.

That's less about exactly what you're doing, as it is about these nuances of how you're doing whatever you're doing, and this concern for its impact on them.

It's part of those two states of mind. You remember NGOTSA and TRELYU, where it's like holding our own behavior, because I think highly enough of myself that I won't let myself do that, even if nobody knows.

And TRELYU is, no, I care so much about my impact upon them that I'm going to fine tune my behavior to be concerned about how I will influence them and their decisions in life in the future by my behavior.

That's this level as well.

How am I influencing them by my behavior, right now?

Whether it's directly with them or indirectly with them. Say we have a whole bunch of people in our office, and we're not interacting with anyone right now, but they're all vaguely aware of me. Am I concerned about how I'm being perceived by them?

Not from self, what is it? When I was a little girl, I was just so self-conscious that I was so shy. I just wanted to hide, because how they were looking at me.

But it's just the wrong side of the pendulum of this same attitude. It is like, I can be a positive, uplifting influence even as I move through my office.

How do we do that?

(Luisa) I have a question to that, because I struggle with that a lot. You can see in my face very fast if I am angry, if I'm happy, whatever. I am like an open book. Then I feel like, okay, in theory I should not disturb others' minds. But then I feel all the time forcing myself to be fake, to kind of pretend everything is okay and I love everybody, which is not true. If someone is doing something that I don't like, then I just show it in my face, and then I am being, how to say, criticize or pointing out. They can see very clearly, if I'm happy or not, and put it as a weakness, or as something that I have to change. And then what you're saying is exactly the same. I should kind of all the time pretend everything is happiness, and then I feel super fake. So, I don't know.

(Lama Sarahni) I think that's a critical issue that you want to delve into, because you're hearing them say, ‘You have to change, because we need you to change.‘ And you're even hearing me saying, ‘You need to change, because the Dharma says you have to change.‘ You shouldn't change until you've convinced yourself, that that seeds ripening in which you instantly show what you're feeling, is seeds ripening and it doesn't have to be like that. And, those feelings that it is showing, they're coming so quickly as a result of what kind of judgment? Of what kind of situations?

Whether it's showing it on your face or not, it's those mental afflictions inside there from the get go. Working on this whole cycle, in order to change you, to help you become a naturally happier person, you decide at what level it's important to fake it until you make it. Or to be genuine until you don't have those mental afflictions anymore. Find that fine line, and then work with it.

It's not okay to say, I'm just being authentic to let my emotions flow. That's being authentic and it's perpetuating unhappiness. You want to stay being unhappy? Perpetuate it. Otherwise, how are you going to change it?

It's a great question, and it applies to more of us than just you. So thanks for being willing to ask.

So, at this level, we are still me versus you, only I'm trying to go to this deeper level of awareness of how my me is affecting you, and have my concern for you be a little bit higher than my concern for me.

It's still a powerful thing to do, if we're going to die tonight.

On this level, I didn't go through the three—the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual—of the three of the concern for how we are affecting them.

Master Shantideva goes into that a bit when we get to course 11, I think.

For right now, think of this second level is how my behavior influences them, impacts them. It could be our physical behavior, it could be our emotional behavior, as Luisa has given us that kind of (example). They're going together. 

Then the spiritual level would be becoming more and more aware of our ignorance and their ignorance as the source of this whole mess to begin with. Becoming more and more aware of how because of our belief in things‘ nature is in them, we hold to the arguments that we have.

Can we set an example by way of our understanding the no self nature of the issue we're fighting about. Not meaning just concede, but work cooperatively to come up with an alternative to both.

Deepest Level: Remove the Distinction Between me & the other

(100:47) Then the deepest, deepest level of exchanging self and others is where we remove the distinction between self and other.

When they say self-other, exactly the same:

• exactly the same in wanting happiness, 

• exactly the same in wanting to avoid suffering, 

• exactly the same in being my seeds ripening and nothing but, including the me—without falling off that cliff of, well then nobody and nothing exists but me. Because that lends us right back into, well then my needs are the most important. It is sort of where we started.

This third one is training ourselves to just try to expand our sense of self to include them. 

We can start with just one other, one special other, and see how it goes. 

It'll be a struggle no matter how much we love them. But we can see that we're already doing it to some extent, especially with a small child.

Right Ale? You naturally have expanded yourself to include Jam, and as Jam gets bigger, part of the struggle is as Jam separates himself from you, right?

There's this wah, what's going to go on between the two of you and any others.

But they're great seeds that are being made while we're in that natural arena of self versus other with a small child.

Yet, if we're doing it without wisdom, we're just missing some big opportunity, that once we're doing that same being with wisdom, our seeds are planted differently.

Which again gives us another clue to Ale's question, is like, how do I make my spiritual life my priority when I've committed to being a wife and mother?

I've got 20 years to go before I can say, see you guys, I'm out of here. But that's not committing to a spiritual life.

This is saying, your commitment to your spiritual life is to interact with these two relationships in such a way that dying tonight or not, you've done the highest spiritual practice by working with these different levels of exchanging self and others.

Even just the first level is a great level to work at. 

And a little bit of second level—empathy side, really concerned with how my behavior is influencing them.

Then this third one, expanding self to include others. We can't always hold that.

This exchanging self and others, this part of exchanging self and others, the practice involves finding ways to remind ourself that this other being that we're serving right now, I can consider them a part of my Me.

We can decide that me stopping with this body is a limited level of me, and I can choose to decide that I'm just going to pretend that they're a part of this thing I call me.

When I choose to decide that, then, when I feed them a meal, I'm feeding me a meal. In the moment this body [Sarahni] is not eating, that body [other person] is.

But functionally, Geshe Michael says, when you feed that other mouth, you're feeding your own in the future more than once.

Like you're assuring that there'll be something going in this one by assuring that something goes in that one now.

Our mind goes, yeah but, I could feed them, feed them, feed them, feed them, and this one would starve to death.

But seeds say, not actually possible.

Our self existent me goes, no, that can't be. If this one never eats again, it has to die.

Wait a minute, what did we say about that death thing?

Transformation, right?

If I'm feeding me, that me, that me, that me, that me, my seeds for this limited me are wearing out and not being replanted.

When we say I want to be Buddha, I want to emanate to countless beings, and be what they need. And then to say, yeah, but if I feed that mouth, this one won't get fed. We are not being consistent with our understanding of karma and emptiness.

The way we create a fully enlightened being who is paradise being, emanation being, wisdom being, and emptiness being all at once, is by doing this expanding self and others practice.

There are different levels of that one too, that I will take us through in the next class.

Let's stop at this point so that you can think about and explore these first two levels, and the idea of the third one as being the highest spiritual practice that we want. 

Because nothing but our spiritual practice helps us when we die. And so we want to take it up.

And so we want the highest, and now all of a sudden the highest puts us right back into life again, because we need those other people.

But our attitude towards all our stuff, and all our relationships that we're going to do this practice towards, is now fine tuned to be driven by ’because I want to stop the suffering of all beings‘, because of our Bodhichitta.

[Dedication of Class]

Okay. So thank you very much.

Welcome back. We are still learning the details of the death awareness practice. Today is November 26th, 2023. 

Let‘s gather our minds here as we usually do. 

Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

We'll just do our opening prayers for this section.

[Usual Opening]

Review: What's that behind that blue door?

(7:48) The highest spiritual practice to do if we're going to die tonight. 

Like here we are tonight at my house, a little late now, but maybe tomorrow I have a chance to do it.

We were looking at that blue door and the letter showed up, ‘self, other, exactly the same‘.

They said, well, you can think of that on a worldly level: Everybody just wants to be happy. 

Maybe they have weird ways of thinking, they get happy. But really, they just want happiness. Some physical happiness, emotional, even spiritual at some level—just some nice wholesome pleasure.

They want to be listened to. They want to be appreciated. They want to be respected. Maybe they even want to understand a little better about their place in the universe, their purpose in life.

How do we know that another person wants that stuff?

Because we want that stuff.

I'm human. They look human. It's reasonable to jump to the conclusion that they want the same kind of stuff as I do. Not the specifics, we all understand that.

Then if you extend that even to animals, really, they want the same thing too.

Any conscious being deep down wants happiness and wants to avoid suffering.

What they call those things is different, unique. But nonetheless.

We understand that by just being our own suffering self, if you are.

Just the baby level exchanging self and others is to recognize this fact, and to pay a little closer attention to those other beings, and just try to give them something that helps them feel seen, and heard, and cared about.

Just hold the door open for somebody, it is really that simple. We all probably do it already and aren't thinking that, whoa, I just did the highest spiritual practice by holding that door open for somebody. But we did, if we think of it that way.

Then the medium level at this baby level, still the baby level, but the medium part, is having a greater level of concern for how we, our behavior, impacts them.

We only know by watching their reaction to us, their facial expressions, their body language. We don't know their mind.

But if we're concerned, ‘How am I coming across to them?‘, now, if I was me coming across to them, would I like it?

Master Shantideva gives us three different levels we can play with here. 

What's it like to be the recipient of my pride and arrogance, or stinginess, or jealousy? What's it like to receive somebody else's, those mental afflictions?

It's unpleasant, it's ugly. And so this level is, why care about how I impact another being?

I'm willing to work harder to withhold those behaviors born of those mental afflictions so that I don't have this negative impact on them.

In fact, maybe I could try to do the opposite of those.

Which we can see how that helps us, because here's this mental affliction that arises that we would ordinarily yell at the person and we decide, no, I don't want to influence them in that way. So I'm going to find some other way to be.

We're not denying that we're pissed at them. We're just deciding we're going to respond differently. Which is a big change in our own seed planting. Which is what this is all about, of course.

We're caring about the impact we have on someone else, and wanting it to be uplifting when we can. But both of those levels is still me and you, me versus you. I'm just deciding I'm going to try hard to put the you a little more important than the me for right now.

Then we left off before we got to the deepest level.

The deepest level, or the highest level, is to remove the distinction between self and others.

To remove the distinction between self and others.

Did you catch what your mind or your heart just did when you heard that?

It's like, I always get this. Well, cool. No way. So fast. Love to do it. Ain't going to happen, right? I can't even conceive of it.

I love to deliver this class, because it's like it makes my own ‘whip, whip‘ show up, so that I can work harder on intellectualizing it, proving it to myself, so that I can then drop it into my natural reaction. The growing a natural reaction.

So this one we're learning how to expand our sense of self to include the other, expanding our sense of self to include the other. And then when we serve them their favorite cup of tea, ’me is getting their favorite cup of tea‘. 

Instantly my old me goes, No, I'm not. I don't like that kind. In fact, I didn't even get tea, I just gave it to them.

But it's like functionally, says Geshe Michael, you put their favorite tea in their mouth functions to bring us our favorite tea in our mouth. Not really exactly tit for tat, but you get the idea.

Put someone else ahead, give them what they want—moral, legal, we have to add that—it creates our own future of having our own needs met, our own pleasures met.

Now, it doesn't sound like, well, the only reason I'm taking care of others is so I can get my needs met. That does not sound so high. 

But we start there, because our own selfishness is so overwhelming, so powerful. We need to learn to use it.

We're not ever going to destroy it. What we'll do is use it, and eventually transform it.

But to say, I'm going to get rid of my self cherishing me, it's like that self cherishing me will come out with such power that we will fall off track.

But to use it, that's another matter.

This level, Master Shantideva teaches this in his chapter. It goes into DAK SHEN NYAM JE.

He says, first of all, get yourself out to a wild desert place. He says a forest, but to an isolated place where you really have nothing to do but your prayers and meditations. No distractions.

Yeah, you've got flies going up your nose, and ants walking on you, but other than that, you have no worries, no concerns.

It's like, come on, that's impossible in this day and age.

But what he means by that is to make space in our lives for these new priorities.

If we already have full lives, and now we say, and now I have to add an hour of meditation and …of practice prayers. How am I ever going to do it?

We wouldn't do that if we took up a new hobby.

If you decided, oh, I want to learn to ice skate really well, you wouldn't just add that to your schedule. You'd have to let something else go to make place for it.

So when we were going over the bridge again and again and again, it was about looking at our priorities in life. We've allowed them to accumulate, really not by choice probably. And now they all seem so important that we can't possibly get rid of a single one. And now you're adding all this new commitment. It's not reasonable.

What is reasonable is to go back and look, what of that old life, that old me, is useful enough to my becoming enlightened in order to keep doing.

It's really a different question.

Technically, everything in life could be useful to getting enlightened.

But there are some things that are more easily used, and other things that are less easily used. Just ditch the less ones—when you're ready, not before.

Really, what Master Shantideva is talking about is reaching this mental space of willingness to change our attitude towards our activities, our people, our beliefs, so that we have the space within us to change, to make change.

If we're clinging, clinging, clinging to our old me, it's not going to change and we'll get frustrated trying, making a little space inside there.

Here's a way that I'm being that I don't need anymore.

It doesn't want to go, but I'm going to take charge here.

They may be little things, they may be big things.

A mental space we're trying to grow is this availability to consider this DAK SHEN NYAM JE as a state of mind that we can have as we move through our daily life. You can't really very well DAK SHEN NYAM JE when you're sitting at the base of a tree with only flies and ants. We need people. We need kind people and we need the pain in the butt people. Eventually the pain in the butt people actually get fewer and fewer. True, it took 30 years. But come on, it happened.

When I first started, it was like, no way. I am always going to have those pain in the butt people. Because they show up every volleyball team I was on, every there, there they are again. And it's like all of a sudden, I can't find them.

Well, now I'm not around a lot of people. But change happens when we're willing to make the change.

(22:20) So the mental space that we're being recommended to make space for is this mental quietude that's able to put making others happy as our priority. 

This state of mind that has shifted from me, me, me, to others happy, others happy, others happy, or call it uplift, or call it helpful, or call it kindness. Find a word that inspires you. Maybe happy is just too big or too unattainable.

Geshela says, like the attitude on the plane when everybody expected that they would be dead within the hour. The pretzels were still stale, the movie was still lousy, the seats were still uncomfortable, but nobody cared about that stuff. They wanted to connect with each other. They wanted to support each other. They wanted to be special for each other.

Now, it's probably helpful that they had none of those cell phone things.

I don't know, I maybe wager that, even if with the cell phones we might ditch them, or maybe make a pact that you'll ditch them, and look after the others. 

But why did they all have this response?

These teachings say, because when we become aware of another suffering, a common suffering that we recognize. We only recognize it as suffering, because we can feel it, not theirs, but we know what it's like. And so we feel for them. 

It doesn't necessarily mean becoming empathic, but you know what it feels like to be in a crashing airplane. Maybe you do, maybe you don't.

But we can imagine and we know that the other person is feeling similarly, simply because they're human.

We can either close down further: oh me, I'm going to die, me, I'm going to die. Or we can choose to open up: Well, if we're all going to be dead, what's the use of struggling? 

These teachings say, well, we all are going to be dead, tomorrow or the next day, or two weeks from now, or 10 years from now, or at least 50. 

Well, maybe, Svetlana is pretty young, 80 years from now, we're all going to be dead. 

Everybody we struggle with is going to be gone in a 100 years, like gone.

What's the use of struggling?

We go, well, because in that 100 years, my 50 years of it, I want things the way I want. And if we didn't have some idea of the going on this of each of us, we probably could use that logic to say, well then me is most important, because I don't know how long I have. I should just be as selfish as I need to be in case I die tonight.

But when we understand that that selfish slob me is going to be in a world of selfish slob mes, it becomes a little bit more important for us to think these things through.

So by way of knowing suffering, we know others‘ suffering by way of knowing our own, is how they describe that.

(27:00) When we aspire to the highest practice, we first try on that baby level of attending to their physical needs, attending to their emotional needs, attending to their spiritual interests, just to the best of our ability. Caring about them enough to pay attention.

If we're on the receiving end of that, it feels really nice.

We have a friend who twice a month sends us dinner, and it just feels so nice that they go to the trouble to do that. I'm not hinting, I'm not saying please do, because twice a month's plenty. But, it feels so good.

We all know what it feels like when someone cares enough to see what we might like.

(28:03) Second level is trying to get into the other's actual thinking, actual experience, to feel what they feel, to know what they need. 

It's not really to become them. We don't ever merge with others.

But just in the sense of knowing more clearly what would help them.

They probably don't really even know. 

This takes a more clear-minded, more astute being aware of the other that we're with, with this interest in the things they like, in the experiences they've had. It's just a little deeper level than the first one.

May I really know what would bring you the greatest pleasure?

It's growing the seeds to be able to be what they need someday.

Which is part of what we're saying we want to become as Buddhas.

That's what our emanation being is about.

Not just, oh, I'll go sit and hold your hand when you're scared.

But you are what beings need.

If we think that through, if someone needs a good kick in the pants to get their spiritual life rocking, then you, the Buddha, is willing to be that one that gives them the big kick in the pants.

It's not so pleasant to be that. But the love is so strong and overwhelming that your emanation being can't not be that for them, because your omniscience knows that's exactly what they need.

It's hard. It's like, no, no, I want to be the fairy godmother Buddha, right?

Just bing, you get what you want. Bing, you get what you want.

But come on, ultimately, is that really what helps people?

So just this starting to expand our sense of how we interact with others out of concern for them is planting these seeds for our ability to become what they actually need worldly, emotionally, mentally, and ultimately.

(31:14) The third level, the deepest level, where we are training ourselves to identify a more inclusive self is redefining this boundary of ourself.

Here's my boundary, there's your boundary, and it's always been like that.

It's ridiculous to say I can grow my boundary to include an other.

I can pretend, but come on, I can't really do it.

Master Shantideva is going to go through those resistances that we have that come because of our self existent me, self existent you thinking, that blocks our ability to go, oh yeah, duh. They are all part of me. So when they eat, I eat. When they cry, I cry.

Just because they're suffering, or they're getting some pleasure, they're a part of me. 

We already do it with our kids, to some extent with our pets, we can do it. 

Master Shantideva says, all the arguments we give for not being able to do it, is just because we don't want to really. Because our ‚what about me?‘ shows up so strongly that it blocks our willingness to take it seriously.

(33:05) Death meditation can lead to this expanding sense of self because we've shown ourselves that we don't know. Like our death is certain, and that we don't know whe. And that when we die, what goes on are the karmic seeds that we made on behalf of ourself and people, ourself and things, and even ourself and our identity. 

And that when we realize that those we're going to lose those. But there's still something that goes on unique to each of us.

We see it's like, oh man, how much of the karmas that I make all day long are karmas that will hold me back? That will keep me suffering?

And how many of the karmas that I make all day long will actually uplift me?

If we were collecting black rocks for every selfish instant, and white rocks for every unselfish instant, wouldn't our pockets be just full of black rocks, and maybe a couple of little white ones from when we did our practice and had to like, oh, aha, kind of thing.

But that's all changeable, and changing moment by moment of course.

When we really clearly understand, oh my gosh, my behavior creates the future, and oh my gosh, that's true for every conscious being, and it's extraordinary that puny me now gets a glimpse of that. And it appears to me that almost nobody else in my world is even interested in that, let alone gotten a glimpse of it. Ah, it's unacceptable.

All those mental afflictions that I have, and that I apparently see in other people by way of their behavior, is all because of this big misunderstanding of where things really come from. Now that I get a glimpse of that, it's like, ah it just chokes me that I can't take people and, ‚Wake up‘. But who do I really need to take… myself, wake up!

Master Shantideva‘s Arguments for Exchanging Self & Other

(36:10) Those others that we see with mental afflictions, we are seeing them do certain behaviors.

What we are seeing is coming from us.

We really don't know what they're seeing.

But if they're seeing anything similar to what we are seeing, we know that they're planting seeds for future somebody doing that to them.

We don't have to get into the details of whose karma is it to see this or that.

If we see a behavior that's driven from a mental affliction, we understand that that's going to come back.

It's my seed's ripening, and it's going to come back to them in an ugly way.

And so our mental afflictions and their mental afflictions become the enemy—not just ours, but theirs as well.

But our mind habitually rejects and Master Shantideva knew that they would, so he goes through those arguments. Some of you have taken that class, I think it's ACI course 11.

1. The Boundary of my Body is Arbitrary

He says, the first reject we have is that we hold to the idea of the boundary of me stops at this visual thing, my body.

We relate to ourselves visually to a great extent, if we're not blind.

And we say, well look, my body stops here, your body is over there and stops there.

We can't be, I can't exchange myself for you. I can't expand myself to include you, because I'll hit up against your physical body. Right?

They don't can't touch, says Arya Nagarjuna.

So Master Shantideva says, yeah, we say if you poke that arm with a pin, I don't feel it. If you poke my arm with a pin, I do feel it. So see, we are different people.

Master Shantideva says, fatal error. Because our establishing the boundary of ourself is arbitrary.

To say, I end here and you end there, and so we are different and separate, is not in fact accurate.

My own mind goes, how can it not be accurate? 

If we use a little logic, we can say,

Consider you and me. 

We are different. 

We are separate, because when you poke that foot, I don't feel it. 

So let's use logic.

Poke that foot. I don't feel it. That's true.

If 3, then 2: If it's true that you poke that foot and I don't feel it, it must be true that when you poke that foot, I don't feel it. 

If not 2, then not 3: is not true. If you don't poke that foot, I don't feel it.

(Luisa) No, it has to be different. You have to say, if we are not different. Because this is the second. Considering you and me, we are different.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. If we're not different, because when you poke that foot, I don't feel it. What if I have numb feet, and you poke my foot and I don't feel it? 

That negates the whole argument, because we're just saying he feels it. I feel it.

That way we're separate.

Well, if I don't feel it and they do feel it, how can we be separate according to our logic?

It's like, wait a minute, that doesn't prove anything.

The point is to establish, this is me and that is you, is something that we've come up with. Like eons ago. But it's arbitrary.

He says, and the reason we know that is because parents of a new child. Anything unpleasant that happens to that child is as unpleasant to the parent as it is to the child. They're not feeling exactly what the child is feeling necessarily. But they've established that that suffering in that being is as unacceptable as my own.

We even do it with our stuff. 

You've got your brand new car. It's parked in the parking lot, and you go out and you see all the cars have been scratched. They better not have done that to my car. Like, too bad for them. Then we see they did it to our car. Whoah! Right? They hurt me.

Because our identity has expanded to include our new fancy car. 

Shantideva says, it's not that we can't do it, it's that we don't want to. And that's our fatal mistake. Because we continue to plant the seeds of “me more important“, and that continues to plant the seeds for suffering.

The boundaries are arbitrary.

Then we might say, yeah, great, but too hard. I can't possibly do it. 

Master Shantideva gives us that line: 

Anything's easy to do when you do little bits at a time, make a habit of it.

2. Think of suffering as the common enemy

(43:21) When we're thinking of suffering as a common enemy, it inspires us to care for the other’s suffering that we see to the same extent that we care for our own suffering. Whether that's suffering is the back pain, or the headache, or the mental affliction that they appear to be having by way of their behavior.

Now how we influence them is the skillful training. You can't just step in the middle of something: ‚I see a mental affliction in you. You've got to stop it and I'm here to stop you stop it.‘

It doesn't work like that.

But to recognize this situation, and to rather than get drawn in to the mental affliction side, you rather stay the one who holds the space. I don't exactly know what that means, but somehow we all get it.

The one who doesn't react, that stays open, presence. You’d be the space for everybody to calm down without saying, „Now calm down. Don't be upset“, right? That doesn't help.

Just hold that openness. 

If suffering is unacceptable, then mental afflictions which are the cause of suffering are even more unacceptable.

If we have any in our mind, if we have any in our karmic pool, then we're going to see them in our outer world.

And by way of knowing how they make us feel and act, we have a clue as to how that other person is feeling and likely to react. And we can apply the understanding of doing the opposite to help them. Be in a position where somebody responds differently to their mental affliction and behavior than what they expected. To behave, to react with more kindness instead of the usual get involved.

3. Apply the democratic principle

Third argument he gives is: Apply the democratic principle.

There's one me and there's, I don't know how many you‘s, Diamond Cutter Sutra says 840 billion billion Buddhas that there are.

But I kind of take that to mean that's how many mind streams there are. Because they say, there's a finite number. I don't know that I believe that. But, a lot.

So come on. Whose happiness holds more weight? Them or me? Them or me?

Yeah, but they're just one of many.

Yeah, but…. there's two now, three now, four now.

Ale spent Thanksgiving with 31 other people. That's a big one.

They outnumber me.

So what I want should come last. Right?

Did you feel: ‚What about me?‘ go? I did.

It's like, what about me?

Geshela always says, a Bodhisattva‘s career path is to eliminate all mental afflictions, and to bring about a little happiness, eventually, ultimately, every happiness.

So we train ourselves to hold that state of mind: We are all alike. No one wants suffering. Everyone wants happiness.

We all have this same state of mind.

Every human, every animal, every hell being, every hungry ghost. Any being that has a me wants that me to be happy, and to avoid suffering.

(Luisa) Sorry Lama, I got a bit lost with the train of thought. Master Shantideva was giving us arguments for what? For avoiding to think that expanding yourselves boundary is impossible? And this third one is, I didn't get it. There is only one me experience of others or what? I didn't understand.

(Lama Sarahni) There's so many others. This one is not so much about expanding self, but just recognizing that there are more of them with needs and wants than there is me. So their needs and wants, because of numbers, is more important. So a justification for turning our concern outwards.

We make this distinction between self and other as projections forced by karma, and by no other way, no other reason.

That's actually a deep and profound thing.

It's all a result of habit, and so for no other reason than it's always been like that, we continue to believe it, and perpetuate it.

So learning to conceptualize those other visual beings as an extension of myself, just to imagine it, is changing how our seeds are being planted.

It will change our interaction with them over time as we work with it.

Those are the seeds that help perpetuate learning the practices that continue to plant the seeds that will grow into your fully enlightened being who is omniscient and emanating.

This one, learning to exchange self and others, learning to expand that, to expand self to include others and take care of others. You can get a glimpse of how that seeds for your emanation being.

You can't do emanation being without being fully enlightened.

They come hand in hand.

So it's an important, powerful, open sutra practice that will lead to this beautiful shift in our own perception of what used to be me and mine. Now has a whole different meaning. You can hardly even use those words anymore. Because me so automatically means this me (pointing at herself).

It's not what's meant when you reach that enlightened being, a being of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom.

This exchanging self and others, expanding self to include others, we can see why it's the highest karmic seeds to just try to make if we were going to be dead in the morning. Because it seeds for your wisdom, for your Buddhahood.

So now death meditation just took a little switch. Because before we might've been saying, well, why go to work at all if I'm going to be dead today?

Especially if it's like for sure we're dying tomorrow. I'm not going to go to work today.

We might go, whoa, I'm going to work early today, because that's where my people are. That's where the people that I need to work with exchanging self and others are. Or maybe go to the grocery store, or go shopping or wherever it is that you're going to be around the people that push your buttons the most. 

That's the highest practice to do if you're going to die tonight. 

Man, that's a big switch, isn't it?

Our own mind goes, no, no. I want to be peaceful at home all day. 

I just missed an opportunity.

Then if you don't die that day, great, go do it again tomorrow.

Great, go do it again tomorrow. 

The ‚What's going to happen? Did it go well? What did I do at work?‘, it just all shifts to this, How well did I exchange self and others today?‘

I don't know. You're going to become a different kind of employee, and they may not like it, or they may like it better.

Highest thing to do: exchange self and others.

Geshela says, we may need to change our priorities, still need to change our priorities. He says, if you've seen that there are some worldly things that you just really want to do, he says, go do them now. 

If you really want to see the leaning tower of Pisa? Just go, do it now, so that it's off your bucket list. Don't you love that term?

But then when you've got these checked off, then get down to business with this exchanging self and others.

Technically you can do the exchanging self and others on your trip to Italy.

So it isn't really like you have to check them off and be done, and then go take nuns vows and put yourself in isolation. It's not at all.

This practice allows us to practice with everything that we do. That's cool. 

Alright, let's take a break. That's about good timing. Then I'll lead you through this in a visualization where you can explore the feelings. Like put you in a situation and you can explore the feelings that come up so that you have a tool to work with it on your own.

We use our meditation cushion imagination time to try out different scenarios that we then actually try when we get to work and see how they go.

We're a little bit better prepared if we've worked it through in our mind, „I'm going to try to do this instead“.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

The next day in meditation, you try it on for size again.

It plants the seeds in meditation that can help us make the changes in our daily life. So let's take a little break and we'll go through this.

(Break)

Guided Death Awareness Meditation on Exchanging Self & Other

(56:57) Alright, so let's add this piece of the exchanging self and others.

Thursday's class, we'll go through the whole meditation. There's nothing more for me to tell you. But we'll just do the meditation together. If there are questions about going forward, that's what will happen on Thursday. But we're finishing the actual class and meditation tonight.

Also, this particular session, we will do what's called the (…) something like that, which means relying on the Lama as the precious jewel. Which means when you're guided in this way, you can just recognize the angel in your heart as your preliminaries in meditation.

Geshe Michael always says, never do this at home. Always do your preliminaries.

But then he goes on to say, do your preliminaries like this.

So I'm repeating: don't do it this way on your own.

Okay, so let's bring our attention to our breath. 

Set your body in comfortably.

On every exhale, your physical body settles in, relaxes.

You become less and less aware of it.

With every inhale your attention gets brighter, more clear, interested.

Bring your attention to that precious being before you.

That one who is love, compassion, wisdom manifesting there.

Ask them to help you gain insights through this practice.

Ask them to help you become a being expanded to include all.

See them reach out and touch the crown of your head, 

then your throat and then your chest,

blessing you with this meditation.

Now find yourself in the middle of that turret room, standing in the shaft of sunlight thinking:

I am devoting myself to my spiritual practices, because they are the only thing that helps me at death and beyond.

And I want the highest practice, the holiest practice.

I'm suffering, others are suffering. I can't stand it.

You turn your head to the right, you point your staff to that beautiful blue door.

As you step towards it, you see those letters:

DAK SHEN NYAM JE—me, others, exactly the same

The door swings open. 

We enter this oval room, a large oval room.

In its center is a beautiful big dining room table with chairs. 

It's set for two people across from each other at one end.

And someone you know is sitting there.

You say hello, you sit down and you see that on your side there's a cart with various main dishes, various things to drink, various desserts.

You and they are having casual conversation.

And as you do, you watch their eyes, and you see that it keeps going to the food cart.

You watch more closely to see if you can determine which of the meals they look at the most, which of the drinks they look at the most, which of the desserts they look at the most.

And you keep chatting with them until you decide, Ooh, I think I know.

You pick up the plate of spaghetti and set it before them, and see their face light up. ‚Oh, how did you know that's what I wanted? Thank you. That was so kind.‘

Feel how good it feels.

This represents serving others simple physical pleasures that are wholesome, that are helpful.

Then again, watch their eyes to choose what they'd like to drink, and somehow it's the lemonade. Set it there before them.

Again, they look delighted and surprised.

It represents your ability to ask them about themselves, to give them an opportunity to be heard and respected, to be cared about.

Then you do the same with the desserts.

Handing them that piece of pecan pie.

Again, they're startled and delighted.

It represents skillfully sharing with them some insight into their purpose.

Feel how good it feels for them to be enjoying their dinner.

Then help yourself to your own, continuing to ask them about their kids, their parents, their hobbies.

Recognize at this level we are still me. They are still them.

We're just attending to them more than we do ourself—intentionally and enjoying the pleasure they seem to receive from it.

Now get up, move to your left.

There's an opening in that wall and you go through.

You're in another oval shaped room with another dining room table set for two, and there is another person there.

It can be the same one, or it can be a different one. Whatever pops into your mind.

You greet them and are having this casual conversation with them as you sit there.

This second room is the room where we try to know them so well that we choose the dish they want out of knowing, not guessing.

So pretend that you can send a copy of yourself that goes and stands behind this other person, and is able to see through their eyes to be aware of their mind.

That copy of you then is aware that this person would like the tomato sandwich, and the glass of root beer, and the bowl of ice cream.

So the you at the table again just spontaneously serve that person.

You're aware too of what they'd like to talk about.

You are aware too of what would help them feel a little uplifted.

You are aware of the pleasure that they feel from having been paid attention to, having been paid attention to in the way that you seem to be doing.

This represents trying to think like someone else, trying to see the place they're in the way they might be seeing it, and acting from that awareness of their needs and desires.

But still there is the distinction. I'm really me. They are really them.

I'm just trying to understand them as if I were in their body, as if I knew them well enough that I could know how to help them.

Then you look up and again to the left you see that there's another room.

You go to this third room, which is like an ice cream parlor.

Those little wire and glass round tables, brightly colored.

One of those little tables has two chairs, and there's a person sitting there.

It can be the same or a different, whatever comes to you.

And you see there's a lovely cake sitting in the middle of this little table, one cake with one fork, poised on its plate.

You greet the person, and you pull out of your left pocket a ball of red string.

You lay that red string on the floor, starting behind your own chair. 

You string it around counterclockwise going behind the other person, and around the table, and tie the two ends of the string in a pretty little bowl.

You are outside the red circle, and very deliberately step into it and sit down on your chair.

This represents breaking down the distinction between self and other person.

Now you have the sense of having two bodies.

You have the sense they are an extension of you.

But the other person asks, „That's weird. Why didn't you put the string between us?“ 

And your answer is, „You know, it's just arbitrary. If I put it across the table between us, it would wreck that beautiful cake. When I put it around us, it's so much better.“, meaning karmically better.

And so simultaneously both you’s reach up with the ring finger of your left hands and tap on each other's foreheads at the three third eye area. Tap three times. This represents the recognition of the common enemy: suffering and the mental afflictions that cause it.

Recall that it's not enough to struggle with the mental afflictions in our own minds if others still suffer from their own. We want to help them with theirs too.

Because if we can experience another having a mental affliction, they are a part of our own seeds ripening.

Anyone's mental affliction will sooner or later hurt others, all others in fact.

So it doesn't matter whose mind the mental affliction is in. It's going to hurt you.

It is hurting them, that part of you. And so we want to help stamp it out.

With that thought, your two bodies pick up the one fork and dig into the cake, eating a big bite of yummy cake off the same fork at the same time.

This represents the democracy principle.

It's incomplete to make efforts for our own happiness when everyone, limitless beings, are equal in their wanting to be happy and not wanting to be unhappy, we are all the same really.

When one eats, all eat.

But we're not done yet.

You look past that other you, and you see that there's a silver door at the back of the ice cream parlor, and that silver door beckons you. 

So you get up and as you approach that door, you see the letters shine forth: Bodhichitta.

The door swings open and you step into a hexagonal room.

In its center is a big incense burner.

There's a beautiful fragrance, and blue smoke billowing from the sticks of incense. 

This is the Bodhichitta room, the ultimate love room, but it's really more specific. 

In this room we cultivate the benefits of this exchanging self and others.

I want to be happy to be free from suffering.

Everyone wants to be happy, to be free from suffering.

I now know what prevents them and me from being totally happy.

And so I will try as hard as I can to become a totally enlightened being myself so that I can really be of service to others.

I will try to mold myself into a happy person, an ultimately happy person, so that I can have the influence on others to lead them to that same state of happiness.

Not leaving a single one out.

This is Bodhichitta.

In doing so, we stop our own aging, illness, death and rebirth.

We do reach ultimate happiness, but only so that we can help others learn to do it too.

And the way I reach that is by trying to help others do it even before I've done it myself.

This is the upward cycle.

Think of the influence that you would have on others‘ unhappiness, that you will have on others‘ unhappiness when you accomplish this goal.

Imagine actually accomplishing it.

We'll stay for two minutes imagining that being who you will be, a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, vast, unlimited, being what every, any being needs.

Now turn your mind back to that precious, holy, being there before you.

See how happy they are with you.

Feel your gratitude for them.

Enjoy them there with you.

Think of this goodness we've done, and see it as a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands here inside it.

See the happiness you have created, the abundance, the safety, the beauty, the enjoyments.

Then offer it to this precious being, your most precious thing, you are offering to this karmic object.

See them accept it so happily.

They bless it and they carry it with them right back into your heart.

See them there. Feel them there. That love, that compassion, that wisdom.

It feels so good we want to keep it forever.

And so we know to share it.

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom 

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. 

So use those three long exhales. 

Share this goodness with that one person.

Share it with everyone you love. 

Share it with every being you've ever, ever seen or heard of, human and otherwise. 

See them filled with this wisdom of exchanging self and others.

See them really, really happy to use it.

And may it be so.

All right, so we have some time if there's questions. Otherwise I'll let you go early.

Again, next class on Thursday, we'll just go through the whole thing. Okay? 

So you'll be able to get these new glimpses of what the meaning is by hearing it.

When I guide you through it, you can be open to stuff. It's a little nicer when you're guided than having to do it yourself.

I want to thank you. I love teaching this course. I know I say it about all courses, but this one's really my favorite. This and 11 are my two favorites.

So thank you for the opportunity. Anybody have comments, quizzes, questions about the meditation and the practice?

All good? Okay, great.

Then have a nice week. I will see you Thursday.

(Tracy) Yeah, I just wanted to ask a quick question. In regards to the tables and the rooms that you went in. Does it matter if all the beings that were there were people who've passed?

(Lama Sarahni) No.

For the recording, this is November 30th, 2023, our final meditation of Death Awareness study. We'll just do the practice. It's not the practice, but it's the whole meditation. 

We'll start with our opening prayers, go into the preliminaries, take a wiggle break, settle in for the rest of it. 

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. 

See them there with you.

They're gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy, great compassion, their wisdom radiating from them, encompassing you in its light.

And then we hear them say,

Bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way.

Think about how much you would like to be able to help them,

and how the worldly ways we try fall short.

How wonderful it will be when we can also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever.

We understand a little about how that could be possible.

And so we grow that wish into a longing, and that longing into a determination.

With that determination, we turn our minds back to that precious, holy being.

We know that they know what we need to know yet what we need to learn, yet what we need to do yet to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way.

And so we ask them, please, please teach us that.

They're so happy that we've asked. Of course they agree.

Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite and so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. 

We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer.

Here is the great earth 

filled with fragrant incense 

and covered with a blanket of flowers. 

The great mountain, four lands 

wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon. 

In my mind, I make them the paradise of a Buddha 

and offer it all to you.

By this deeded may every living being experience the pure world.

Idam guru ratnamandalakam niryatayami

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in leading this meditation and the rest, 

may I reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in leading this meditation and the rest,

may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this meditation and the rest, 

May all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every other.

Bring your attention back to your breath. 

Use that time to settle your body, brighten your mind, focus your attention.

Now begin your preliminaries.

Recall your refuge.

No worldly thing, no worldly person can protect us from anything really.

And we use our understanding of emptiness and karma to direct our own behavior, that too can't stop or change things in the moment.

But that's the only way we change our future experiences into something that promotes happiness.

Your greatest level of understanding that principle, but your reliance in it.

And then think of how wonderful it would be if every human knew that truth too. 

Not only every human, but every existing being.

Understanding what we can of karma and emptiness, we understand that a world like that can only come from us.

So grow that wish for your own happiness.

Grow it so big that it will be the source of happiness for every existing being.

Then holding that sense, show it to that precious holy angel being before you, and ask them to help you realize this.

Of course they're very happy to do so.

You mentally honor them.

Think of their good qualities, what you admire about them, aspire to become like about them.

Tell them.

Of course they know it already. They want you to hear you say it to them for your benefit.

Then make them an offering.

See how happy they are with you.

And feel safe enough with them to tell them of some negativity.

Tell them why you're confessing that, and establish this meditation as your antidote.

So by the time we're done with class, the seeds of that deed will be damaged, and establish a power of restraint.

Then fill that space with rejoicing.

Tell them of some kindness that you saw happen in your world, because you know it came out of your seeds.

Tell them of another, and tell them of another goodness you did. 

Again, see how happy they are with you.

Recognize your progress that you're making has come through the power of their teachings.

And so ask them to continue to teach you formal ones, informal ones, and especially those exquisite private teachings we get when some jerks push in our buttons.

Know that they're there to help you.

And ask them again, please, please stay close.

Please bless all my teachers and Dharma friends to live long and happy lives, to stay close, to help me.

Then ask them, please help me to learn this practice, this meditation.

Help me to gain some insight.

Then shift and wiggle if you need at this point.

And settle back in and pretend, not visualize here, but just pretend you're at the cinema, and you know the movie's going to be an especially long one.

But there you are in the seat of the movie house.

You can stay there through the whole movie, no problem.

So settle back in, three nice breaths.

The movie starts to play.

Find yourself standing outside that big beautiful yellow gold door.

The entry to your building, looking out from over where you have come.

You see past the meadow, the close meadow, the bridge, the farther meadow with the table and the crowd, and the forest.

Recall yourself and your life before you met the Dharma, before you heard the pen thing for the first time. Like being in the forest.

Now think of what life would be like if you had just stayed like that.

Continuing to struggle in attempts to find some happiness.

This is the table and the food, and the crowd of people struggling.

Everyone's struggling against everyone else. 

Think of how you've already changed by way of your learning and practice just so far.

Notice how you've changed, and be happy with those changes.

This was crossing the bridge, letting go of some of those old habits, those old ideas, those old beliefs that were keeping you the same in the struggle.

Consider how learning this death awareness practice has started to shift your ideas around death and dying.

So now you're able to pass through that gauntlet of scary guys, the old fears, the old uncertainty, the old struggle.

You're gaining freedom from that.

And so feel that sense of eagerness arise for progressing along your path, there at the entry to this building of rooms that represent your path to freedom from all pain.

Turn to face the door and think about it:

Do I really believe there's a path to freedom beyond all pain?

Do I believe I could do it?

Do I believe there's someone who can help me do it?

And if your answers to any of those three questions are, I think so, then put your hand on the doorknob.

Don't feel obligated. You are welcome to stay there at the entry and keep thinking about the forest, the table, the bridge, and just ignore what I say.

But if you're inclined, when you put your hand on the doorknob, you see the words show up: My death is certain.

You push the door open.

You're in that darkish room just to your right is that snarling beast, the Lord of Death, drooling, snarling to get at you.

Does your death feel that close by?

Turn to see the hourglass.

There's less sand in the top of it now than there was a month ago when we started these classes.

My death is certain, the Lord of Death is unstoppable.

The moments of my life are passing away.

Then you find yourself compelled to run past all those images of teachers and teachings.

There's never enough time.

You arrive at the green door: The time of my death is uncertain.

Step in and the first thing we become aware of is here in our world lifespans are not fixed.

There's something that reminds us of that.

Then you gaze into this room and it's full of familiar things, your own things, even food and drink.

We're reminded so much can kill me and so little keeps me alive.

And as we move through this room, ouch, you catch a sliver deep into your foot, reminding my body is so fragile.

My death is certain, the time of my death is uncertain.

We come to that red door: When I die, nothing but the Dharma helps me.

As we step into this long greenhouse like room, you're walking into it, on the outside you see your loved ones seeming to ignore you, or to have forgotten about you already.

You see your beloved belongings just trashed and unattended, or maybe taken by others.

You even see an unrecognizable dead body, but you somehow know it's yours.

It was yours. What you thought of as you then anyway.

My people don't go with me.

My stuff doesn't go with me.

I thought I was a me that would go with me, but even it doesn't.

And after all I did for them?

I was willing to be unkind to get them what they wanted.

But then what does go on—our karmic imprints: good, bad, neutral.

Those make up the me that goes on.

So how does Dharma help me now? I'm already dead.

Think of this while you're standing before that silver door at the end of the greenhouse room:

What does Dharma mean to you?

And what is it about that Dharma that can be helpful for the future You, that one the moment after death and forever after that?

Let's stay three minutes thinking through those questions.

What does Dharma mean to you?

How does it help you?

My death is certain.

The time of my death is uncertain.

When I die, nothing but the Dharma helps me.

You may wish to stay here contemplating that conclusion.

But if you have a sense of the power of that statement: When I die, only the Dharma helps me. Only the Dharma goes on with me—then step into the next room, the turret room with the sunshine spotlight in the center.

On the wall to your left is that walking stick.

And as you reach to take it off the wall, you know, because only the Dharma can help me. And because my death is certain, I determine to take up my study and practice of this wisdom.

The staff feels familiar, and comfortable, and safe, and reliable.

Then think, because only the Dharma can help me, and because the time of my death is uncertain, I determine to take up this study and practice now, today, not put it off until it seems somehow more convenient.

So take one step towards the sunlight and bang the staff on the floor to make your determination impactful.

Next, think, because nothing but the Dharma helps, and because nothing but the Dharma helps me, step into that sunlight and point the staff up to the window through which that sunlight of wisdom is streaming.

Think, I will give up my worldly life to instead make living by the Dharma, living by karma and emptiness, living by love, compassion and wisdom my priority.

Feel the warmth of that sunlight of wisdom giving you the strength, the power and the guidance that you need.

And maybe you'd like to just stay right there absorbing that sunlight.

Or maybe you go on to think, if I'm going to prioritize my life according to karma and emptiness, and I want the highest practice. Thank you very much.

Turn to see that shimmering peacock blue door.

And again, you may wish to just stay here, thinking about that wish for the highest practice, giving yourself time to grow the motivation, to grow the experience with the practice, or go through with me now. 

As you put your hand on the doorknob, you see the letters: DAK SHEN NYAM JE, me, others, exactly the same.

You step into that beautiful dining room.

Your friend is there at the opposite side of the table.

On your side is the cart of different meals, different drinks, different desserts.

And during your casual conversation with your friend, you are paying close attention to them, trying to ascertain what they might like.

Listening for clues, watching for clues, paying such close attention to them that you suddenly know, oh, they want the chef salad.

They want the glass of water, they want the piece of fruit.

And you set it before them, and you see how happy they are.

They feel so seen, so understood, so cared for.

It feels good to do that for them.

Simply paying more attention to them than to our own wishes or needs at that moment.

There's a deeper level.

So you can stay there, or you can go to the next dining room.

And again, a friend is there, same one or different, as you wish.

And this exchange goes a little deeper as if a part of you can be aware of how they are perceiving and reacting to you.

This You wants for your impact upon them to be helpful, to be uplifting. 

So you are willing to adjust your behavior according to how they are perceiving you. 

Are they perceiving me as wanting to serve myself my favorite thing?

Are they perceiving me as being impatient with them?

Are they perceiving me as jealous of them, or condescending, or disinterested?

We don't usually pay that close attention.

You see on that tray of food, your own personal favorite dessert. and you become aware that that's the dessert your friend wants.

Feel the struggle.

Surely they'd enjoy any of the other desserts.

Surely I can convince myself that they really want that other dessert.

This You, that's aware of how you impact them, instead takes your favorite dessert and puts it in front of them.

See their face light up.

This is still DAK SHEN NYAM JE on the level of self and other, but now we are more aware and concerned for the impact that we have.

We are more willing to adjust our behavior to have a positive impact instead of an unconcern about our impact.

But it's not the highest practice.

And so if you feel ready, you can step on into the ice cream parlor.

See that small table with the one cake, the one fork and a friend seated there representing the practice of expanding self to include other level of DAK SHEN NYAM JE.

So stand there looking at the one cake, the one fork, the them and the you, and feel the conundrum.

How do we both get what we both want?

This light bulb goes off in your mind, wisdom, the emptiness of the three spheres.

You lay that piece of red string around the outside of your chair and them, and the table.

Tie the two ends together and step very deliberately inside that circle representing the expanding of your sense of self to include them and the cake.

They wonder why you did that.

What might be your answer?

You might end up teaching them the whole ACI curriculum to answer that question.

Then together you reach up with the ring finger of your left hands and tap on your foreheads at the third eye, representing this determination to overcome mental afflictions everywhere, to overcome all ignorance, the common enemy.

And with that You, this more inclusive You, enjoys a big bite of cake, both of yous from one fork.

Imagine it.

Now look up and see that silver door, the Bodhichitta room door.

I will reach my total enlightenment so that I can really help all beings reach theirs, their ultimate happiness.

What's the connection between this exchanging self and others and the wish?

We will stay for three more minutes.

What is this connection between expanding our sense of self to include others and the wish?

Nice.

Now bring your attention back to your breath.

Think of that person you wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class.

Recognize that the seeds we've planted by doing this practice will someday help them in that deep and ultimate way, and that's a great, great goodness.

So please be happy with yourself.

You also completed your antidote, or your purification.

Think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands.

Recall your own precious holy guide.

See how happy they are with you.

Grow your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them.

Then offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accept it and bless it and they carry it with them right back into your heart. 

See them there, feel them there, that love, that compassion, that wisdom.

It's there for you, for your guidance, for your support, for your comfort.

And it feels so good, we want to keep it forever, and so we know to share it:

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. 

Use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person,

to share it with everyone we love,

to share it with every being we've ever, ever seen or heard of.

See them all filled with happiness, filled with wisdom.

They don't know where it came from and it doesn't matter.

And may it be so.

When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch, have something to drink.

Congratulations. You did very well. That was 50 minutes, five, zero. 

No sweat. Right?

All right. I have nothing more to share.

Well, yes I do, but I have nothing more to say tonight.

Q&A

(Ale) Thank you for this amazing course and the meditation. I've been thinking, definitely thinking about death changed my perception after this course. But I am not fearing death, but I fear about, for example, Jam dying.

How I could pass on this practice, like maybe baby tools?

(Lama Sarahni) For your interaction with Jam, you mean?

(Ale) Yeah.

(Lama Sarahni) If you, heaven forbid, if you're ever in the situation where Jam's in the situation where he's passing, I would suggest that you call somebody who knows these practices, right? And say, I need your help because you as mom, it's going to be really, really hard to hold that sense.

But if you could, or what that other person would do would be to connect with his, let's just call it mindstream, you call it soul. And would just keep saying, recognize the light is your true nature. Go to the light, go forward, reach the…all positive statements, directing that mindstream to recognizing that we call it the clear light. It's not a light, but they all understand. And what you want to say again and again, recognize it as your own true nature, and just a lay person method to connect with them, and continually repeat that again and again and again and again, is how we can give some direction to that.

(Ale) So this practice is personal basically. 

(Lama Sarahni) Very. 

(Ale) Yeah, we cannot not unless there is the Dharma, right? Unless the other person has the seeds to have these teachings.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. But I have another angle, which is you interacting with Jam as he grows up. And is there a way to not keep death under the rug or not talk about it, but just very casually talk about how the mind or the awareness or whatever word you'll use as he's growing up, that it goes on, that it goes on, that it goes on, and that it loses access to this old way of being, but it has access to new ways of being.

And when the momentum that carries it is kindness, then that new way of being is going to be more and more amazing than this one even was.

And when the momentum that carries it is ugly, well then that's going to be ugly later.

You can talk about that. I mean, that can be your underlying sense so that he grows up with this: Wow, dying is a transition.

Which wouldn't it be wonderful if we all could have grown up with dying as a transition. It would be very different.

So again, you enlist Eric in that discussion, because the two of you have to be on the same page. But that's another way to use this practice. 

Then, say you have a Christian friend and they've got a month to live, and you desperately want to teach them about karma and emptiness before they die and learn to do this practice. And they don't want any part of it. They want to hear about Jesus. So you just change your vocabulary, watch for Jesus. 

Know that when you get there, your nature and Jesus' nature are one and the same.

Just change your words that you use, and then once they pass out, then go to the clear light, go to the clear light. Use your own, because it'll be more meaningful from your side for them.

Don't impose our belief system on somebody else. It won't work for them.

I tried it once. I gave that book of the dead instruction to a friend of mine whose mom had died, and they are Jewish. She was reading the book of the dead, and she said her mom came to her and she said, Will you quit reading that stuff? That is not my way. She said, okay, and stopped.

We taught what we knew was going to be the best. And of course it's not.

Okay. Yeah, good question.

We do change our whole world by changing us. That's that connection about growing self to include others and the connection to Bodhichitta. It's worth really working with that, working that out.

(Ale) Can I make another question? When we are in the restaurant, in the dining parlor. It was parlor, an ice cream shop, the other person is ourselves? It could be ourselves.

(Lama Sarahni) No, it doesn't start out ourselves. It starts out somebody else

(Ale) Always?

(Lama Sarahni) There's them and you. You're outside the circle. 

You make this circle. When you step in, yeah, your bodies are separate, but by stepping in, you intentionally say: What I consider me is now this big.

So what's relevant to me, what pain is relevant, what pleasure is relevant to me now includes these hands and those hands.

It's like we have four, right?

So we start out separate, we step in.

They don't become me, and this doesn't get bigger.

It's this Me mindstream that gets bigger, different.

(Ale) And because we are, that parlor is passing the blue door, correct?

(Lama Sarahni) It's inside the blue door. Yes.

(Ale) It's inside the blue door. The Me that is outside the red circle is my enlightened being or is my present being?

(Lama Sarahni) It's your present you, your present still ignorant You.

(Ale) Dead, kind of, formless.

(Lama Sarahni) No, no. In this whole death meditation, you have not died yet.

When you're going through the green house room and you see your dead body, that's not happening. That's your understanding that when it happens, it's going to be like this.

Okay, I'm sorry that I never realized that that would've been not understood the way I intended.

So you're still, it’s still you, living you in the turret room, making your determination, and then you living ordinary me on my spiritual path wanting the highest practice. Okay. Yeah, yeah, good.

We don't reach enlightened self until we get to the courtyard.

(Rachana) Actually, just a question came to my mind, which didn't come in during meditation. Which is in the first two dining situations, it was like my mindstream and their mindstream. And then in the last dining situation, once I went into the circle, it was sort of just my mindstream then? What happens to the other mindstream?

(Lama Sarahni) Right? But see, we're still thinking mine versus theirs. 

So when we step in and become bigger, then there's this mindstream and that mindstream, but it's all included in this.

We need a different word. This being, this existence, this existing.

We don't ever merge mindstreams. We know that, right?

So even when we say, I'm expanding self to include others, now I've got two mindstreams to deal with.

It's seeds for omniscience, do you see?

(Rachana) Like emanations?

(Lama Sarahni) Like emanations. Right.

What we mean by Me needs to change big time.

And I think it's a clue that in the Buddha sutras, the Buddha almost always refers to themself as one gone thus, or the destroyer of the foe, or… 

Buddha, when he is talking about Buddha, almost never says „Me“. 

And they point out, I think in Diamond Cutter sutra that he does say me when he says my begging bowl.

But that's about the only time that you'll catch Buddha saying „Me“.

And I'm not sure Buddha really said that rather than the one who, ‘once I heard this teaching‘ said it. Buddha doesn't perceive themselves as a me versus you. Which is why we use the word „Me“. Something to think about.

What else?

(Tracy) I never had this experience in this meditation before, but something happened to my this, and if it was happening to me in real life, it would've freaked me out. It felt like some kind of mechanical door opened and this huge ginormous spider came out of my forehead.

And I literally, if I didn't know that I didn't have you here with me, I would've probably freaked out or something. But I felt like a presence and a support. So I stayed with it. And then some crazy stuff started happening. My staff transformed and some things happened, and it was like I could see all these planets, and I was in a whole other dimension. But then I had this feeling where it felt like maggots were all over my body, and that's where I didn't know if I was dying, or if I was alive. But it was like they were fluorescent and I felt like it was light.

And then I had some kind of, I don't know, magical stuff that I was throwing all over planets, and it was kind of freaking me out. Because I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know where I was. I kind of lost sense of everything, and I no longer had a staff. I was using my forehead. So what do I do with that? I don't even know what the flip was going on.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not prone to that kind of amazing stuff, but all of it, we always fall back into seeds ripening, purify, make merit.

So when we can hold our lucidity about it, meaning you do have an awareness that all of this is going on, then as you're starting to freak out about it, try hard for that awareness to say, whoa, crap ripening. Crap ripening. Get it out and replace it with Bodhichitta. Think Bodhichitta, and all that that means, and all that stuff is just goo, right? Goo coming out. Technically, even when it seems really, really cool and blissful and amazing, it can be sucking us in the wrong direction. And so again, just Oh, burning off, burning off, burning off, Bodhichitta, and it'll bring you back to the center.

(Tracy) Thank you. And I had this really weird, crazy dream the other night, and in the dream there was all these monks and one of them died in the dream. And then all of a sudden, it was like, I've been having a lot of crazy dreams and you showed up in the dream. But you were an owl and your eyes were there. It was like you were piercing through in the dream. When I saw your eyes, I was like, that's Sarahni. So I don't know what that meant. You (as) an owl in my dream.

(Lama Sarahni) Yay. Bless you.

Again, dreams are similar. It's all ripenings. And Boshichitta is always the fallback.

(Tracy) I have chills. It felt very safe having you show up, your eyes, it was just like, thank you. I don't know.

(Lama Sarahni) Whoa, thanks. May it be so, yeah.

Anything else for anyone else?

(Ale) So thank you for your time. This meditation, this needs to be done only when we are practicing the death practice. Correct? 

This whole meditation is just when we are practicing the death meditation, or is it, could be that the continuation of the Lam Rim?

(Lama Sarahni) Right. So the place that it comes is very early on in our Lam Rim. And because the usual conclusion of a death realization is, Oh my gosh, what could happen next? Lower realms. Oh my gosh, I need refuge. Oh my gosh, right?

Refuge helps me by way of karma, et cetera.

So this comes really, really early in our Lam Rim.

But when we're taught the Lam Rim from the Mahayana perspective, it skips grades, right? Because we go right to the highest practices, which means we skipped a whole lot of Lam Rim.

Once you have a sense that you've, what do you call it, internalized that, "my death is certain, I don't know when and only the Dharma will help me“, there's not much need to go through this meditation again and again and again.

It's great to revisit it from time to time, because your insights about it will go deeper. 

But in terms of using it every single day, if you have been over the month and you're going into Kyoto teachings, and we'll be distracted,. I don't begin to think that it'd be useful to force yourself to do this before you're working with that. 

But make some notes to yourself about what your Ahas have been from this month of working with your death awareness.

And there'll come a time when, I don't know, you'll get to teach it to somebody, or somebody else will be teaching it another time, and I invite you to revisit it from time to time.

But you don't need to keep doing it unless you find a little part, like at any of those parts where I said, if you're not ready to go on, don't go on. Well, you might want to use that. Give yourself a weekend and you just spend that whole weekend working on that one little piece to see if you can push through.

You have it as a tool that you can use in any way that helps to keep you inspired.

(Luisa) Lama. But then if someone hasn't internalized it, didn't have, how to say, a clear impact, then it's recommended to do this until you internalize that the Dharma is the only thing that is going to save you, and that my death is uncertain.

(Lama Sarahni) I would hesitate to say, because you've taken this class, you should keep with it until you've internalized it. But if it feels like you are grasping to something and you are getting there, and you just haven't finished it, then yes, keep with it. But if you feel like just another part of the superstition, then put it on the shelf for later.

(Ale) I just want to share something personal. Because of this meditation, today Jam is very sick and usually when he is sick and I have a lot of work to do, I just freak out and have a lot of stress, and I try to divide myself. And today I just thought, if is my last day or his last day, how I want to spend it? And I did work, but the mindset and I think my heart and his heart were aligned and we spent a beautiful day dancing and playing together. Now I have a lot of work to do, but…

(Lama Sarahni) It was worth it.

(Ale) I just want to rejoice that we have a, at least I could hold six hours of this way of thinking that if it is my last day, or his last day, how I want to spend it and thank you for teaching it.

(Lama Sarahni) Yay. Yay. Good. Nice. Alright my dears.

(Luisa) Maybe before we say goodbye, just Lama in the name of the group, we want to thank you for your teachings and always thinking what will help us to improve. We have a small offering for you that I'm going to transfer now from all everybody here. So thanks a lot. Please stay.

(Lama Sarahni) Thank you so much everyone. Appreciate it. I love you so much. Happy holidays. I'll see you in January, if not before right? For other stuff, but ACI 3 in January. Okay. All right. I love you. Bye-Bye.