Buddhist Attitude to Death | Ajahn Brahm

Attitude To Death Transcription Today I've got a request for a talk. As usual, I encourage people, if they want me to talk about the Buddhist attitude to this or that, I'm very happy to do so. And the talk which somebody suggested this evening was a subject we've covered before here over the years. But it will always come up again and again and again because it's a subject of death. It will come up again and again and again because all you guys and girls sitting here are all day, all going to die one day, and that is for sure. So wonder when it's going to be. So here we're going to be talking about the Buddhist attitude to death and dying and grief and all of that. But it also illustrates the attitude towards life as well, because you cannot take away one from the other, no more than you can separate night and day. You can separate sort of heat and cold. The two go together, life and death and. But in my own story as a monk, as many of you know, I spent nine years, the first nine years of my life in northeast Thailand. And at that time in northeast Thailand, it had never been colonized by any Western power. And it was a remote area, so remote that in many places where I went, I was the first Westerner some of the Thai people had seen. Now, as a monk, you d go on arms round every morning. Remember a couple of times going into these villages on arms round and the villagers were supposed to actually to put food into your bowl. And the rule was that you're not supposed to look at the monk. You're supposed to pay attention to what you're doing, take out the rice and put it in the monk's bowl. I remember a couple of times in these villages, these young girls who are putting food in the monk's bowls. They've been doing every day since they were very young. When they saw a white monk, they couldn't help but so looking up with their mouths open. I didn't mind that so much. But when they tried to put rice in the bowl, they missed and it fell on the ground. Put a lot 30 puts of other rice in afterwards. That was that the remote area which I went to. And also, secondly, that because it was a culture which had never been Westernized, it was actually a completely different way of looking at many things. I always tell people that one of the things which I learned in my first months in northeast Thailand, because it was a completely different culture, we used to go from place to place in, like, utes. These are pickup trucks. And the pickup truck would have a metal railing sort of over the top on which a canvas was stretched. And that was actually just supposed to protect you from the rain or even the dust, because all like dirt roads, but there are roads were being dirt roads and being a monsoon or land. Those roads were always needing to be repaired. There's always potholes and ruts in it. And being a young monk, you had to sit in the bank. The senior monks could sit in the front, in the cab. They were okay. But sitting in the back whenever you went over a pothole and the ute went down, the car went down. I went up and you hit your head. You cracked your head hard on these metal railings and, my goodness, it hurt. And you didn't have much padding on your head, like many of you have. So every time I hit my head, just like any Westerner would do, you swore. But I swore in English, hoping that the Thai's would understand me, which they didn't, but they understood I was upset. But when those Thai monks hit their head, sometimes the pothole was so deep, even those short ties would go up to the roof and hit their head as well. And they laughed. They just thought it was hilarious. And I couldn t understand what they were up to. When I saw it happen two or three times they hit their head and they laughed. I came to the conclusion that those guys must have hit their head too many times. They were crazy. But being a scientist, being a rationalist, I decided to do an experiment. The next time I hit my head, I decided I would laugh and see what happens. You know what I found out? I found out if you hit your head and laugh, it hurts much less. It's true. It hurts much less. And if you don't believe me, ask a person sitting next to you to give you a big crack on the head it and laugh and see if it works. It's true. What was actually happening there was a completely different attitude to one of the things which I was a different attitude to one of the experiences of life which was quite common, like pain, hurt, even sickness. I don't know where this came from. Maybe it was Buddhists, but it was certainly culturally embedded. They would laugh when they hurt themselves. And instead of swearing, it was a different cultural response. And similarly, I was fascinated to see at the time of a death again, there was no tears, there was no grief. There was no swearing in their heart. It was a completely different cultural response. And to see in a death, there was a sense of peace and a sense of acceptance of what was happening. It wasn't that they were crazy or mad from hitting their head in the back of tracks for too long. It was actually real. And the monastery in which I lived for most of the time was the local cremation ground for all of the villages around. That's why there's heaps and heaps of ghosts in that monastery. Probably more ghosts than there were monks. But we live together in harmony and peace. Because there s so often that they were hoarding people in to get cremated in the cremation grounds in this monastery. And of all the cremations I saw, there was only in nine years, only once did I see a woman cry. And that was only just one or two tears. And she was quickly wiped away. There was never of grief there. And it wasn't as if they were holding anything back, because you would see the whole families in the village day in, day out. It was almost like your family, the village was your extended family. After coming to Australia, I remember going back there after four or five years. They missed me. I'd been in that place for nine years and I'd gone way for about five years. When I went back on the first day on arms ride in the village, the ladies once again looked up and started crying you're back. It was a very, very sweet and touching experience, because in all those years, you became part of the family, part of the village. And so I knew all those people, and when somebody died, they just didn't cry. They didn't feel sad. They didn't have that grief. What I learned from that experience was grief is a culturally addition to loss. It was actually powerful to know that that wasn't always necessary. Not that you should feel guilty if you feel grief, but you shouldn't feel guilty if you don't feel grief as well. There may be another way of dealing with it. And in the years I've been in Australia now, giving many, many funeral services, I know all the funeral directors well, by name, because I spent so much time with them, and they're very funny people. Actually, some of the funeral directors have funeral stories. Again, when you do a funeral service, because they're always dealing with people in pain and sorrow. I suppose they overreact because they always tell me they're jokes. And it was so funny. Some of these one funeral director in particular, sort of, I always remember him, he was an Irish funeral director and I was going to do a funeral and once he saw that I had a sense of humor, he didn't let up at all. He told me joke after joke after joke and my goodness, some of them were funny. So when actually we got to that to the crematorium, I was in the hearse and he was sitting next to me and I told him, please be quiet, I've got to do a funeral now. But he wouldn't. As we led the funeral cortez in the cemetery to the graveside, he kept on telling me more jokes and every now and again, nudging me in the arm. I said, look, there's a family behind here. They're grieving, they're dead. But he wouldn't stop and it was very difficult for me. I told him about 1 minute before we actually got the crematorium to the chapel and said, look, shut up, be quiet. I can't go in here just with a big smile on my face. But in some countries you can do that. In Australia we're supposed to grieve. It seems to be accepted in many, many places. And because I ve been going to so many funeral services, what I ve noticed is that when people go into those chapels, those churches, or wherever they perform a ceremony, there s always, every now and again, young kids come in. No children, four, five, six. They're full of life playing, they're teasing each other, being mischievous, and they come in with a smile, with life, with the energy of a young person. And then they see their parents, grandparents, uncles, all looking sad and morose. And how many times I've seen this. This child just looks up and sees this sadness in their parents, in their elder's eyes, and get all confused and afraid, and then they cry as well. That's actually how children learn grief from their parents and elders. I can see how it is culturally added on. If parents, elders would only act more peacefully, they would give the children a chance to understand that death is part of life. And as such that we can look at the whole experience in a far different way in all traditions of religious tradition. Now we know that something happens after death. And what happens after death in Buddhism is like rebirth. If it's Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism. Hinduism is also Reincarnation. And other religions is just one reincarnation up to some heaven world somewhere, or up to some hell realm or whatever. It's amazing in those religions no one ever says about out someone going down to hell a lot of times, because obviously people don't deserve that. But certainly we understand that there is something which happens after death. And I was telling people, some person just today, just this evening, the people I was talking to before I came in here, the reason why I was a bit late was some old friends. And a pair of, like, twins, and one of them died just a couple of days ago. And they were coming they just came here to visit me during their wake they were having for their brother. So again, it's fresh in my mind stories about sort of death and how to cope with death. And again, that I quoted an article in The Lancet that he journal of the British Medical Association entitled Sort of Consciousness Survives Death written by some doctors in the Netherlands who had done an in depth study about what actually happens to you when you die medically. And they've found so much evidence that when the brain stops, when a person is medically dead, some people actually remember and recall, and they recall so clearly. There's no way they can imagine those things, what they're actually saying, that according to their research, that. Consciousness survives death. It's important for us to know that because once we understand what actually happens at death, then perhaps we won't be so afraid of it and we won't have so much shock at death and we won't grieve the death of another. It's not only sort of doctors, but people have so many anecdotal experiences of what happens when a person dies. Either because they die and get brought back to life again, they're diaried temporarily, thanks to advance in modern science and medicine, they get resuscitated and they learn to tell the tale. Or that sometimes people remember their past lives and actually say what actually happens. And it's standard that when a person dies they leave their body floating up outside of their body. When you actually leave your body, it is a very pleasant experience. I remember reading an article in the I think it was the Australian about one of our politicians, I think Graham Edwards, who stepped on a mine in Vietnam while helping a friend and blew his legs off and. The next thing he knew after this incredible pain of stepping on a mine in a Vietnam war and having his legs completely reduced to jelly was actually floating up. This is his words, which I remember from the article. Floating up above the paddy fields of Vietnam without a care in the world, so happy, so peaceful, so blissful. That's an experience which just about everybody has when they leave their body, either because of some accident or because of some injury or because of some operation which goes wrong. Floating up outside and feeling so peaceful, so light. For those of who practice Buddhist meditation and get deep into your mind sorry, into your mind, exactly the same thing is happening in meditation. What we're doing, we're consciously. Settling down the five senses and the body to the point where the body just almost disappears. We get to the realm of the mind, which is so peaceful, so nice. It's as if this body is a big burden. And in meditation, we leave that burden behind. We free ourselves, we free the mind from the body. Same thing happening at death, freeing your mind from this very hard and heavy body. And this is actually what happens in Buddhism. We call this the mind made body. A mind made body which leaves a physical body. And this is actually explains why many people see ghosts and what ghosts actually are when a person dies or when they leave their body, that's actually the same as the ghost body. And one of our members, some time ago, he could leave his body at will. So when he went to Darwin to do some work on contract, he would come back to Perth every now and again to check up on his wife. It. And his wife knew he was around. He said, Get out of here. Go back to Darwin. There s another guy. He was one of the prisoners I used to teach meditation to in incarnate next to our monastery. He also could leave his body. His interesting case that when he was he was Yugoslavian. When he was a young boy back in Europe, in Yugoslavia, he had some terrible sickness. Not doctors had to operate on him. And as the operation was going on that he died, he left his body floating up above the body. And one of the interesting parts of this that he knew intuitively that what what was wrong and that the doctors in the operating theater were actually looking, observing in the wrong part of the body, so they couldn't actually see what the problem was. And he just willed the doctors to look somewhere else. He was only about seven or eight year old boy at the time. As soon as he willed the doctors to actually to look where he knew the problem was, one of the doctors turned their head, saw the problem, alerted everyone else, and they saved his life. He. From that time on, he said he could always leave the body at will. Which was why when he was in prison in Western Australia he could go and watch the movies whenever he wanted and no one could stop him. That s what he told me. He said didn t really matter being in jail. He could always leave and they couldn't couldn't catch him. But this is what happens when a person actually dies. You may have seen movies about this, you may have seen documentaries. You may have even had experience of that yourself. Please understand. If you haven't had those experiences yourself, please read of other people's experiences because that shows you what happens when you die. And it's not just Buddhists or Hindus who have these experiences. Everybody doesn't matter who. And what actually shows you is that consciousness does survive death. And again, the ghosts are very great examples of that. Because what happens very often when a person dies what would happen when you die? What would you want to do? First thing is because of your attachment, your care, your love you want to go and make sure everybody else is okay. A big shock has happened in the family and you want to make sure that everyone feels you're okay and everything s okay. That s why that very often people see ghosts or hear them just after a person dies and all that is is that person is just died. Just want to make sure that everyone else realizes they're okay, that they're at peace. They want to just make sure everything is settled. One of those ghost stories just happened in this suburb some years ago. One of our members, he's an English man, when he was sleeping at night woke up in the middle of the night midnight 01:00 a.m. Or something. It turned on the bed lamp and the end of his bed was his mum standing there. His mother lived in Essex. In England. In the middle of night there was his mum standing at the end of his bed. Remember him telling me it's the only time in his life he's seen a ghost, a real dinky dye ghost. Not imagining it there with the lights on, seeing it as clear as could be. Straight away he realized Mum was dead. He said the other thing which he always remembers from that experience he wasn't at all scared or afraid seeing her. He felt so good, so happy that his mother had visited him. His mother smiled and that smile sort of showed her love to him. And he smiled back. They said he just stood. He just sat there in bed, just looking silently at his mum, smiling, showing their love silently. And after two or three minutes, his mother just faded into nothing. Just completely disappeared. And then this is the part of the story which I like telling then, being an Englishman. He did what any Englishman is trained to do. He got up and made himself a cup of tea. And drinking his cup of tea, the telephone rang and the telephone was he answered it and it was his sister in London. And he said Pete, terrible thing has happened. He said, yeah, I know. Mama died. How did you know? Said the Sister in England. We just come back from the hospital. Mom has just been to visit me. Isn't that a wonderful story about if your parent died or your child died a long way away? Isn't it wonderful? They can come and visit you and say goodbye. That's just one story among heaps and heaps. I know that last year or early this year, I forget which, adam Tutamlo started talking about ghosts and he went on for 2 hours and I don't want to go into that. All the ghost stories again even though that some of you say, okay, go for it. But no, this is about death and dying. But what it actually shows is that consciousness does survive death and once a person dies, it s usually a very peaceful experience and usually they re very happy afterwards. As Graham Edwards said, he floated above the paddy fields of Vietnam without the care of the world. So happy for him. It was only his memory of his young wife and child back in Australia, he d just been married, a young soldier and his wife had a kid. That memory brought him back into his body. He still had business to do, still had duties. As soon as he came into the body, the pain of the body was so mentally just immediately sort of went unconscious and exiting. He knew he was in a hospital being treated in great pain. This is what happens when you die. This is standard Buddhism. It's all it's good to know this because then you're not afraid when somebody's dying or dead. Rather it's a great release for them. They're at peace, they're happy, they're having a good time. It's only afterwards. When they get reborn again or whatever, they get the trouble start again when they have to get nappies again or go to school and all that sort of stuff you notice some of those stories which I say about people being reborn and then actually speaking. There s quite a few stories of actually people who have actually taught when they were just freshly born. I think I told this not so long ago in waysacle something, but first time this happened here in Nullamar, a couple of Australians came up. They weren't Buddhists, but they came up and said that their young baby, only a few weeks old, had actually spoken. What had happened, it was Peter was the older son, two or three years of age and I think forget what the other kid was. I always forget his name. Called him John was the little baby and when it was time to go to bed, the parents told sort of Peter, no, please go up to bed. And so before he went to his bedroom, he went to say good night to his young baby brother, only two or three weeks old. Good night, John. Stupid talking to a baby like that, isn't it? Saying good night, John. What do you expect the baby to do? But this baby surprised everybody by saying, Goodnight, Peter. Only a couple of weeks old. And the parents couldn't believe this. There was a so shocked they stopped what they were doing. They stared in awe at the pram and their older son obliged them by saying once more, good night, John. And this time with both of them watching clearly that he heard the baby two weeks or something. Say good night, Peter. Unmistakably is spoke and that's why they came here, because they were spooked. What's going on? Please explain. Never spoke again for months until it started speaking again. Interestingly. It spoke in adult speech, not in baby talk. And I ve been collecting such stories as another couple in Perth whose baby also spoke when it was born. A Malaysian Chinese couple. And the best story of all of quite a few stories was in the United States when a baby came out of the womb in front of the doctors and midwives in the hospital. The young newly born, only one or 2 hours old, spoke and the words it said go down in my history book. Because what it said was oh no, not again. 10s Great story and true. That's what happens. So actually we understand that when a person is actually born they're not coming from nowhere. They're not an image of their parents, as all mothers know. When you give birth to a child, that's a being with a history, with a personality very different than from you and your husband. You know that it's an old being coming into this life. Which is why I gave a talk at Christchurch yesterday, the grammar school. Very sweet. This little boy came up and said, knows a schoolboy, is it okay to fall in love? He was only 16 and he was deeply in love with a nice girl. Yeah, of course it is. Nothing wrong with that. What do you expect? And I explained it to him that sometimes you can actually see a partner from your past life, someone you've known before. Love at first sight is not love at first sight at all. It's lover. 2nd, 3rd, so many sites. An old person you've known before and you meet again. That's why you feel you've known that person. And so that understanding sort of this the way that life works when somebody dies. It's not such a big deal anymore. It's not the end of things. It's just like a phase. It's just a passage from one life to another of these huge numbers of lives we've lived, actually, as Buddhists. You've died many times. You've been born many times. Which is why I call all Buddhists born again Buddhists. Having an understanding of rebirth takes away a lot of the pain of death. When my father died, I got lots of stories about my father's funeral, but one of the stories which actually really made a big impact on me, my father was an atheist. My mother was sort of Church of England, but she never went to church. And when my father died, just the funeral directors, they were trying to organize things. What religion are you said? No, none, really. When you put none, they put C of E. Church of England and. So that, you know, she was too sort of worried about the fact that she d lost her husband to really worry about such things. So when we had the funeral service cremation, there was an old Anglican priest gave the service. First of all, as soon as I saw this, I thought, Hang on, my father was an atheist. He didn t believe in you. But nevertheless, he gave a sermon. But then when he gave his sermon, he started saying about my father what a wonderful man he was and how great he was. Straight away that I sort of closed up to that sermon, I said, but you don't even know my father. How can you say such things? You're not being honest. For me, religion had to be honest. And actually, that was one thing which would disturb me. And I remember having a sort of a determination, a resolution to say at that time, must have been, I knew I was going to be a monk sometime, because I said, if ever I am doing a funeral service, I would never act like that. Just to try and cheer people up, to say things which I didn't know about somebody. If ever I give a funeral for someone I don't know, I just say I just don't know this guy or that girl. But it's what the family said they say is an okay guy. That's as much as I can say because honesty was so important at a time of a death, even more important than other times. And so the honesty at the time of a death is crucial. So when I give a funeral or talk to people, we just talk to people with honesty. That is a good chance you'll see that person again. Don't say you will. But I can say with true honesty because according to Buddhist theories of rebirth, we do tend to get reborn together in groups. Even the Buddhist scriptures, although that the Buddhist chief disciples were also disciples or friends or brothers and sisters in previous lives. And even just one of the great monks who told of a time before when he was a king. And all of his disciples, his senior monks in his last life were his ministers in lives before and. Even that. One of the early Buddhists who wrote this book about Buddhism in England. This was a high Court judge Christmas Humphreys in England who wrote these books and gave Buddhism a respectable name in England many, many years ago. And he went on to BBC once talking about his past lives. He could remember his past lives, he could remember his wife life from his previous life, who he met again in this life and became one of his closest friends but not his wife. He married somebody else. But it was interesting, just his wife from a previous life because of emotional bonds, craving or whatever, became his best friend in his last life. He died in the some years ago. It's another example of how we do tend to sort of to link together with ties of attachment, love, whatever, and get reborn again in similar lives, not always the same. Sometimes brothers can be parents, sisters can be daughters or wives or whatever. We tend to go in groups. That's why I tell people when you die, when they die, it doesn't matter. They'll probably see them again. It's interesting there's another couple here. It's a Thai tradition. If a child dies very young, sometimes what they do is they mark a part of the body with a pen because if the wife gets pregnant again, they want to see if there's a birthmark there. As if the person who was to be born didn't quite make it the first time. They're going to come the second time. This particular couple, their first child died when it was born, was still born, even. They had an ultrasound a couple of days before the birth, everything was fine. But in those two days before the birth, the child turned round and choked itself on the umbilical cord so it was still born. They called it Charlie and I did the funeral surface while I wasn't looking. They told me afterwards they got a simple biro pen and put a little line on the heel of the foot. You're not supposed to have birth marks on that part of the body. The heel and. Some months it was her first child. Some months later, she got pregnant again. Gave birth to a time, a girl. But that girl had a little mark on her heel who s? Charlie. Didn't make it the first time, but second time lucky. Do you believe that? It's very common. So sometimes as if somebody close to us wants to come into our life, so when we actually have someone close to us die, never think you'd ever see them again. Trouble is, the next time you meet them, you probably won't recognize them because it'll be someone a little bit different. Although that sometimes something inside of you knows that, yeah, there's somebody there, which I know I've known before. But when a person dies, sometimes that what's been taken away rather than what we've had. So we always in Buddhism look about, celebrating the life, not mourning the death, which is most important. And all of you know that famous story of my father's death when I never cried because I compared his life to a concert. At the end of every concert, everybody, if it's a great concert, a great musical, or whatever, you stand up and shout for. More often, the band, the orchestra carries on for a while, but eventually they have to put away the instruments and go home. And so do you. After every concert I ever went to, I never felt sad that the music had ended. Do you ever feel sad after a great concert? Do you ever go crying and saying, it's all over? Always. After a great concert, you feel inspired, uplifted, moved. What a marvelous performance that was. How lucky I was to have been there at the time. And that's actually how I felt when my father died. Just like the end of a great concert, I was moved by his life. And as I remember walking out of that crematorium in Mortlake. I never felt sad, but I felt uplifted, inspired. What a great life that was and how lucky I was to have known that man for 16 years. That's how I feel now. There's other things about the life of somebody who is so close to you, which was also important to me and which actually change the way I perform funeral services. One of the things was that when a person dies, there's always some unfinished business, especially if they die well, even if they die slowly and you got time to actually try and arrange things properly, there's always some things unfinished. Certainly when my father died, because I was only 16, one of the things which was unfinished was a lot of guilt things which I had done and said which I shouldn't have done. Things which I should have said. Which I didn t. And that sort of after a while sort of started to eat at me, especially I remember because I was growing up, 16 year old, my favorite musician was Jimi Hendrix and had a lot of his records. My father used to like Frank Sinatra when he played his Frank Sinatra records. Because I was rebellious, I put on my Jimi Hendrix records at top volume and drowned out his Frank Sinatra. I felt so guilty about that at his funeral and afterwards. And also some of the other things which for a father or a mother at 16, you're not really emotionally mature enough to say how much you love your parents. Try to go up and say to them how much you respect them and value them for what they've given you. When he died, I thought I'd never have the chance again. It was actually great when I heard about Buddhism. Well got into Buddhism. I was already a Buddhist before then. But when I really got into it and found out that you can still say sorry, you noticed how we can feel our relations, our close relations, our children, when something happens to them that we know that something has happened. Friend in Sydney was a Buddhist. He he literally, when he was young, ran away with a circus and he joined the elephant trainer. And he told me in Sydney some time ago that one day he was traveling with all the caravans from one place to another in New South Wales when the elephant just went crazy, started trumpeting and stamping his feet on the ground. They had to stop the caravan and try and settle this elephant down. I didn't know what had spooked him. They looked in this cage if there's any sort of mice or any animals or something there, or if he was sick and they couldn't find out what. It took about five minutes to calm this elephant down. It was only after they calmed him down that they got the message that the head elephant trainer had just had a fatal car accident a few kilometers up the road. As soon as that man died, the elephant knew and went crazy. Recently in Melbourne, they told me that he was in one of the Melbourne paper us, a vet could have been traveling to a party. It was the end of the week. He'd finished his work. He was going to a party, feeling excited, looking forward to a good time. And suddenly, along the road, he was overcome with immense emotions. So much so, he just had to stop the car and cry. He didn't know why, what was going on. And when he got himself together after five or ten minutes, he carried on to the party where somebody was a message waiting for him that his dog had died exactly at that time. Has things like that ever happened to. When somebody has died or a close relation, even a pet has been in trouble you feel there s something wrong. If you re close to someone, they can feel you, they know you. They know if something s happening, especially if you re sensitive. Doesn t matter where my dad has been reborn you can always resonate with that being need time. Anyone who's close to you, you've been close to them there's some way of contacting them in the same way that when somebody's in trouble close relations know that and they feel that if you're having a good time, very happy, they know that. They feel that that sort of mind to mind contact which amongst sometimes get into when they do their meditation. Understanding people's minds, feeling them, resonating with them. It's just sensitivity, that's all that sensitivity is there quite naturally to people who've lived together for a long time. Even with animals they know if you're hurting even a long way away. I s had this book I forget what I did with it. It s an interesting book about animals and how they can resonate with their owners. This TV company in I think it was in Netherlands they did one of these lovely documentaries about animals and their owners. And just to prove that these things existed, they took two camera, us. One was actually at home with the dog, the other one with its owner, sort of a woman. And the woman said every time she came home that dog was actually waiting at the window for her. Even when she came at odd hours, the dog would be waiting at the window. The rest of the time would just be sleeping and lazing around. So the cameras one camera was in the house following the dog. The other one was Nepotoing, the lady. And this TV company, I think they whether it was with a dice or they had randomly told her when to come home and. And they synchronized the cameras so you could actually see. So I was told in this book, when the lady was told to go home, at that precise moment, the dog got up and went to the window to wait for her. The dog knew even at many miles away, when that woman was coming home, was resonating. And of course, you all know the story of our monastery cat Kit Kat. Those of you who have been to our monastery, that's a famous cat, excuse me, because it was born in our monastery. Raised in our monastery. The only time before this happened it left our monastery was when we took it to the vet in Byford to as I say, get monasticized. And and that's as far as its speed from our monastery. Of course, it goes, walks, but doesn't go that far away. Cats in the bush eat birds. And it was eating so many birds that we thought, a cat does not belong in the bush. So we decided to actually to send it to Watermans. Lady who lived in Waterman, she s not here this evening. Very nice lady. We put the cat in the bag. We put the bag in the place, the back seat where your feet go. Can't see out the window. Can't even see out the bag. She took it all the way up the freeway to Waterman's, took it in the bag into her house, kept it in the house for three days before she let it out into the garden. She thought she'd accustomed it to its new home. As soon as she let it out, it bolted for the door. She ran after it. But that's a smart cat. It was much faster than she was. So she got in her car and drove in her car to try and find the cat. Couldn't find it. It was a Saturday in the summertime and I was on duty here in Nalamara, so she rang me, say, I'm very sorry, Jam Brahm, your cat's gone. I said never mind. I thought it actually would find its way back to our monastery in Serpentine. It was a smart cat, but it didn t do that. It was much smarter than that. In 2 hours time, I heard this mewing at the front door over there. And this cat had found its way from Watermelon to here in 2 hours. His poor paws were almost burning because it was a very hot day. Yeah. And I gave it a source of milk which it licked up in no time. I gave it about three sources and then it went to we in the corner. You couldn't blame the poor cat. But how can a cat has never been in the metropolitan area before. Never been in Perth, never been further north than if it find its way from watermans to here. It's about 6 km over the freeway straight line in 2 hours. And find its owner, one of the monks. There's a resonance between people like that. So understanding that as part of buddhism, when I thought that, I used to say sorry to my father who died. I just went into a quiet place and thought of him. And then I said sorry. I did a little act of forgiveness. My dad, all those jimmy hendrix records. I really sorry did that. Didn't mean to. I meant to, but I didn't really mean it to, actually. It wasn't that I didn't love you and care for you. It's just I was being a 16 year old, that's all. I thought of all the other things which he did and said thank you for all of those. And just in the silence of that little ceremony, just told him how much I loved him and how much I cared for him, what a wonderful father he was, and how those things which I wanted to tell him. Now I could actually say to him and you know that people can feel that. Maybe not in words, but they feel where it's coming from. And for me, it was a marvelous feeling of, like, release. Release of the guilt, of actually knowing a person and just growing up. So I do that, actually, in funeral ceremonies, I ask people to be quiet. Think of the person who's passed away, resonate with them and whatever you wish to say to them, to undo all of the unfinished business, to say sorry, to say thank you, to say how much you love them and to marvel free experience. Because when we talk about the grief, it's got so many layers there and guilt is part of it. If you get rid of the guilt, then much more is easy to overcome. And the other layer, which I got rid of, or sort of not got rid of, but settled, was that when you love someone, when you care for them, when you've lived with them for a long time, there's always a sense of another part of debt. They've given so much to you, and you need to repay all of the good times, the kindness, the care which they have given to you. It that was also part of my memory of my father's death. I owed him so much. It's only when I became a monk, I realized, I was taught that in Buddhism we have this thing we call sharing of merits. What that really means is that you do an act of kindness, of goodness, of charity, where it's giving a donation, building a hut or whatever, or printing books, good books, which can help people see their way of life, books on meditation, on wisdom. And I went to Mel. This reason I remember this, because I told this story in Melbourne, because when I went to Melbourne for the first time, somebody appreciated what I was doing and gave a big donation. And they said to me, this this for the Buddhist society in West Australia, but to be used as you want to use it. Because we're giving it out of gratitude for what you've done. So when I came back, I asked the previous Abbott Atan Chakra, can I use this to give an offering in memory of my dad? I want to buy some Parley books, some Buddhist scriptures, so that I can put them in our monastery and inscribe on them. In memory of William Bett, my father. It was wonderful that I was allowed to do that. He got some took about three months to get his books from England. And then I got somebody who's here this evening to actually inscribe them as best they could in beautiful calligraphy in memory of William Betts and the name of the date of his birth and date of his death. Then I offered them to the monastery. It was marvelous for me to actually to give, even as a mug, it's so difficult because you don't have personal funds and money. But I wanted to give something for my dad because giving is part of loving. And when you live together, you give together, you share together and it's one of those expressions which actually makes a sense of softness, community, relationship. And I did owe my father so much. It was a way for me to give back to him. I gave those things in memory of my dad and gave all the merit, all the good karma to him. It certainly it made me feel a certain sense of release from the debts one has to one's loved ones and parents. So it also becomes part of the ceremony for overcoming grief. Sometimes that those people who are saddled with grief, loss of a loved one we want to do something, what do we have to do? Just getting advice is sometimes not enough. We need to do some that's a marvelous thing one can do in the name of the person who's passed away. Go and do some great act of charity in their name. Give all of the goodness for them. I owe you. And so I'm going to give something for others which you will be proud of, and we ask forgiveness as well. And that way we can actually overcome much of the pain, much of the grief, the guilt, the unfinished business of a death which will allow us to go back to that original idea of celebrating a life when all the other complications of death are overcome. Then we can go back to celebrating a life with someone we've known very well. Not only celebrating a life, but learning from the experience. Because all death tells us just how ephemeral this particular life is. People die at all times. Children I've been to funerals of obviously I just said from someone who is still born. I remember going to a funeral of a boy who was only about three or four weeks when he died. I always remember this because the parents were so upset they didn't want to go to the funeral. They just said me. They wanted to give their son a big sendoff. So this was years ago. They hired a Stretch Lima, one of the first stretch limos to come to Perth. And the two funeral directors were in front of the Stretch Lima with me in the back and this small little coffin sort of on the other seat opposite. When we got to the traffic lights, people would always look in to see who s in this Stretch Lima. They couldn't see the little cough in there, but they could see me. So I waved. I'm a Leo. I like going in stretch Lima. Only time I've been in stretch limousine. But I've been to all sorts of funerals. Old people, young people. You die anytime. You don't ever think it's strange when a person dies or something's gone wrong? Death happens at all times. When we understand life, we can actually celebrate that life. And when it's a death, it's like the last part, the last movement of a great symphony. And that way we can be at peace with life and death. Sometimes you have short lives, sometimes you have long lives, sometimes it's in the middle, just you've done it many, many times. So if you get a short straw this life, the chances are you get a longer straw the next. Life is just what happens. So we don't need to be upset and afraid when death happens. We know that something goes on after words. It doesn't finish there. We know that. What are we crying for? Why do we feel grief? Really? It's not only just a cultural accretion onto loss, it is not very useful. Everybody I've asked when I ask them, when you die, do you want people to feel sad? They all say no, do so. Why are we all so disobedient to our loved ones wishes? Nobody wants you to cry. So can't we learn a different way to deal with death? The one who's died. Doesn't want you to be unhappy. They want you to remember them, to learn from their life, to be enriched by the experience of their life and to go on with a positive attitude, caring, sharing and being at peace with each other. So if there's a funeral, I always say that the gift which we give th to a person who's died is not the wreath of flowers which we lay in the coffin. That's an easy gift to give. I tell the people in the chapel consider each one of you as flowers in this great wreath which you're offering to the person who's died. You're offering your lives, the beauty of your lives, the goodness of your life, the harmony of your lives, the love of your lives in honor the person who's died. Be good people, be caring people, be kind people, be generous people. That's the best way we can pay respect to someone who's died. The best gift I could give to my father when he died was trying to be a good son, someone he would be proud of, to be someone who remembered his examples and his goodness and tried to live them. That is a way that we can take something positive out of the death of a person we know and we loved very much. We can actually grow from it, become better people for it. Just grieving, feeling sad about ourselves or sad about others doesn't help anybody. We know that. But we need ways and means to overcome that grief. And these are those ways and means. Just to summarize just what I've been saying, first of all, we have to let go of the guilt by doing a forgiveness ceremony. Let go and understanding that those people probably hear it and know it. The simile of those elephants and cats and people who resonate with each other in times of. Emotional intensity and then do an act of generosity to pay back your debt to that person and celebrate their life rather than mourning their death. And learn from the whole experience. Become better people. When we understand that life is so short that death comes at any time, it means that life becomes more valuable. Time becomes something we don't want to kill or waste. Time becomes something which we must make best use of, not just to accumulate possessions, but to accumulate acts of kindness, acts of goodness, acts of sharing, acts of love. In Buddhism, we call that good karma. That's the meaning of life. When you have the opportunity, make that good karma as much as you possibly can, then you'll be enriching your life. So when you die, you'll have no worries about where you will go. You will die peacefully. You die happily and people will be so proud they knew you. That's the way to live and that's the way to die and that's the way to end this talk. Thank you for listening. Any questions about the talk on death and dying and grief and all that business? Yeah, go on. Yeah. How long does it take to a person to get rebirth? It really depends. Sometimes if people are very angry and upset when they die, they become like ghosts for long periods of time. Because sometimes I don't know if you've ever had, like, dreams when you're not really quite sure whether you're awake or whether you're asleep. That's similar to what it's like being a ghost, not really quite sure what's happening. The mindfulness, the alertness is very, very dull. So sometimes they can live for long periods of time, not realizing they're dead and. That's what happens with a ghost. Whether it's a murder or any other accident or sudden death, again, it really depends upon one's attitude towards those things. If one has been training the mind for a long time to be peaceful, to be accepting of these things, then it won't be such a big deal. However, sometimes if a person especially is murdered, they get a lot of anger and sense of injustice. I said, I think a couple of weeks ago, these are just perceptions of injustice sometimes. This is our old karma coming round to us when we may have killed other people and now it's our turn to be killed. People actually go to war, soldiers shoot people, people do murder each other. What happens to the murder of us? Sometimes just going to jail or just getting away with it, it doesn't resettle the scores is something more fundamental which needs to be settled eventually. Sometimes they are murdered as well and. In such times, such people, if they ve really cultivated their mind, they can really let go and don t have any guilt or so, don t have any anger for the person who did this, have that sense of forgiveness, let go. And then they ll get reborn quite easily in a nice state. But it's like the anger and ill will, the attachments which we carry around with us, those are the ones which keep us suffering for a long time. So if you happen to get murdered, follow the example of one of the stories in the old scriptures. There was a monk who ran into a group of bandits and they not only stole his robes, but after that's, all the only possessions he had stole his robes and bowl were about to sort of chop off his head with a sword. And he said just please just wait one moment. I just want to say that after you've killed me, please don't feel guilty about it. I've given you full permission to cut off my head. I don't want you to suffer as a result of this. And the bandits were so taken aback, they said, look, usually people actually are shaking before they're about to be killed. I usually beg for their lives, citing their children or their wives or other people why they should be spared. But first of all, you're the first person we've come across who's not afraid of death. And number two, you're not even thinking of yourself. You're thinking of me and how I feel after I've killed you. This first person has actually shown compassion to me. And they asked him why. What has he been doing? He told him all about Buddhism, dharma and compassion and forgiveness. And that bandit chief threw down his sword, gave up being a bandit and followed that monk as his disciple, became a monk himself. And all the other bandits, some of them became monks. The others just disbanded and went back home and got proper jobs. That's in the buddhist scriptures. I believe that happened. The power of, like, compassion and wisdom is so strong, it can melt people, can melt even bandits. The point was that when he was about to be murdered, he was not only not showing fear, but showing compassion to your murderer. Please don't feel bad about this. Afterwards, I'll give you full permission to kill me. Could you do that? So this is actually what we could do. Take away all this sort of hatred which we have for other people. Maybe it's our past carb or whatever, who knows? But it's only one line. They're not kidding you, they're just sort of taking away the body. Get another body afterwards. Might get a better one next time. And it, yeah, gone. Suicide is very good. And again, it really depends why a person commits suicide. There are sometimes people who commit, like, euthanasia, and these are people sometimes in such pain and. Or such psychological distress. Mr Dent, the first person in Australia to commit legalized euthanasia in the Northern Territory was a Buddhist. And the reason why he decided to commit legalized euthanasia was not because of his own pain or his own disease. It was out of concern for his wife. We knew him. His wife had to give him 24 hours of care and had no life of her own. She had to be with him all the time. He'd wake up in the middle of the night, she had to look after him, care for him. And there was the toll on his wife, which he thought was unacceptable. If it was just himself, he would just bear it. So he just I to take legal euthanasia out of compassion for his wife. In such a situation, it's so hard to judge and condemn. In other cases, like in more extreme cases, sometimes it's because a boy has lost his girlfriend. Sometimes they've killed themselves, committed suicide in such a case, it's they go they commit that suicide with lots of negativity, lots of pain in their heart when they kill themselves, they're still there afterwards, they just destroy their body they don't destroy their mind with a problem. This is why that a person commits suicide doesn't solve anything. They're still in pain. Which is why if there is a suicide, usually the monks or someone goes around touch you. To talk to that person as if they were still there to try and relieve them of the suffering, the reason why they committed suicide in the first place. And secondly, touch you to forgive them for actually the act. Of killing themselves. Imagine if you did that. You don't need sort of you need that forgiveness. You need support. You need help to ease your way out of that problem. So, as a mic, we look upon that being who just committed suicide as still being there, lingering around in great confusion and trying to actually appease them. Same way I'm talking to you. You talk to those beings. To try and heal them, help them and free them, then go and learn their mistakes and just learn from their mistakes and just go and get a proper birth again and don't do it again. That's what happens with suicides. Trouble with suicides are that very often, actually, people who commit suicide in their previous life do it again because it become almost like a habit. It becomes like an escape mechanism. When life gets tough, instead of actually facing it and finding solutions, you kill oneself. And that becomes like a habit for the next life. When you get difficulties and troubles in your life, that becomes an option. So it's another problem that it's like a habit which actually goes from life to life. I know what habits are like. Sometimes they're hard to sort of get over them. Much worse than picking your nose at the back question. Abortion is the same. Because I gave a talk on this just a couple of days ago in Melvin. Like, how can myself as a monk, as a man, judge a woman who decides to have an abortion? Sometimes this is all a question on right and wrong. I always tell people to actually to know what's right and wrong, you got to follow your gut, the gut feeling. But there's one exception, and that's if you've got irritable bowel syndrome, then don't never follow your career. Because I mentioned the case when I was in Singapore recently on talkback radio. A person who's one of these free psychologists. I think there's a program in the United States called Fraser or something about it happens in many countries have like this radio psychologist. You just ring up for free and you get free psychological advice. So I was on this program giving free psychological advice and religious advice. Dial a bunk. And this guy rang up and said, I'm ha married, but I m having an affair with another woman. Is it right? My answer was if it was right, you wouldn t be asking me. Because we ask those questions because we know it's wrong. But we want actually someone to say it's right to assuage our guilt. That's why we ask questions of people very often. We know inside whether it's right or wrong. It's the same with abortions. The woman is the one who will know whether it's right or wrong if she can overcome fear. Overcome fear of like breaking some law as the society's condemnation or acceptance or whatever. The thing is, we complicate the issue so much so I would never actually say I'll never come up and say abortion is right or abortion is wrong. Because you can't say such things. There's always those cases and some weird cases, strange cases. So if a woman actually, it's easy to say that sort of in a form like this. But if that happens, sometimes the woman comes up in front of you and it's not just a theory, it's a real thing, it's a real situation. A real situation. They're very different than sort of standing back and saying, yeah, this is right, yeah, this is wrong because of this and because of that. In a real situation, it all changes. So I just like dealing with real in a real situation, you try and clear away all the complications so the person can actually make that decision. Well informed, with support, saying, Whatever you decide, side I'll always look after you and care for you and support you. I'll never criticize you for your decisions. I will try and help you make the decision, but the decision is yours. I'll support you because of it. And whatever outcome, if you have the child, I'll try and support you, look after that child. If you decide for the abortion, I support you there as well. Emotionally, psychologically, I have to allow the person to make the decision themselves, to take responsibility for their karma. But when we say it's right or it's wrong, it's just in theory, in practice, there's always occasions. There was one in England when I was visiting last time. A woman had two, had twins, and there's some sort of complication as far as the doctors were concerned. If she went ahead with a pregnancy, all three would die. If the doctors terminated one of those twins lives, killed them, then the other the other twin would survive, and so would the woman. You it's one of those occasions. Well, what would you do? It's basically a choice between killing one or killing three by inaction. There's a great debate, and I was actually quite interested in this. But apparently the debate was to stop because the doctor just acted and just aborted one of the fetuses so the other one and the woman could survive. It was just so obvious to me that had to be the way to go. So sometimes there s always those stranger cases where you can't really say and so you'd always support the person taking responsibility rather than coming down from on high Buddhism, say, or I say, you can't do this and you can't do that. It has to come from the heart, you know, and you know much better than I do what's right and what's wrong. One last question before we finish because it's going late. Yeah, things happen. But there's no individual doer that's actually referring to there's no individual doer that's just referring to the idea of non self, which is a whole different talk. We should take hours to actually go. What it actually is saying is that you know, you who said that sort of is now you're always changing every moment. Different person, different character, different body. If I could magic up you when you are only say ten years of age and I put you beside it you wouldn't be able to recognize that you came from that little boy. If I could magic up me when I was 16 or 17 you could have never imagined this guy with this big beard and bushy hair and and hippie beads would be a jam brahm be completely unrecognizable because we're changing all the time. Do we ever have a choice in the moment? We are constant that choice. Yes, absolutely. But that's the scary part which comes another did you actually choose to ask that question? Always all conditioned for many, many things in the past. Oh, no. That choice is you do choose. You can actually see choice happening. You can observe choice. So choice is real, but the point is that we give it a meaning it doesn't deserve. We think that we are the ones who are choosing rather than noticing. There's a whole complex process of cause and effect. Guilt is people do feel guilt, but they don't need to. There's an alternative, there a lot of time. It does actually come from a sense of self and attachment to things. That's why when I gave a speech once at a grief and loss conference, one lady come up afterwards and she'd been grieving for, I think, a son who died tragically about two years previously. And even though I told all these stories that she said that just really hurt her, because she I was challenging her to give up her grief. And she identified with her grief so much, she went to all these grief conferences. She was a grieving person. That's who she was. And I was actually destroying her identity by telling her to forgive her grief. Sometimes people get into these rats, whether the angry person or they're the schizophrenic person or they're the criminal or whatever, they identify with that so much, they don't want to give it up. That becomes them. So that's why you have to get people who get into grief, get them very quickly before they become the grieving person known to their friends, someone who's sad and get reinforced by their friends and by themselves as being that person, the one who's always sad. So thank you for that question and thank you for listening today. It's gone an extra, but we're not going to charge you over time this evening.