Arahato Sammasambuddha Sam.
Namo Adhasa Bhagavato Arahato Sammasambuddha Sam.
Namo Adhasa Bhagavato Arahato Sam.
There's a theme that's been kind of popping into my mind repeatedly during the time of this retreat that I haven't quite sort of popped enough to have made me feel ready to talk about it.
However,
This evening we had some news of,
Those of you who know Taraniyya,
That her mother has just passed away last night and so at the end of the evening we'll dedicate some chanting and it seemed like an opportunity to address the subject of old age sickness and death.
Many every group that I've met with,
There have been several people who have been finding considerable physical discomfort and pain during the time of this retreat.
And also quite a few people have commented on just the awareness of the aging of the body.
And I think when we're young it's something we don't actually really want to think about.
We don't really want to acknowledge that this is something that might happen to us.
I certainly didn't want to.
I didn't even want to grow out of childhood.
Very happy being 6,
7,
8,
9,
10 and suddenly to find myself actually,
Physical changes happening and the body developing.
I just really didn't want to know.
I wanted to stay as a child like Peter Pan and the idea that one day I would get old was very distasteful.
And our society actually doesn't really help because there's a real emphasis on youth and figure and beauty and physical fitness and strength,
All of these things.
And many,
Many products designed to keep us as fit and healthy and young as possible for as long as possible.
It's something we really admire and we celebrate of youth and vigour,
Strength.
And I remember,
Oh it must be about 8 or 10 years ago,
Noticing a slight sense of anguish.
I think it was,
I don't know if there are two people I'm thinking about I was seeing together but there were a couple of people who I'd always kind of seen as being particularly strong and vigorous.
One was somebody,
Some of you may know of,
Someone called Trevor Leggett,
Who's someone who teaches Zen in the Buddhist Society Summer School in England.
And he was a black belt Judo expert and much of his teaching,
He uses examples from Judo.
And another was a good friend of the community,
A woman who was incredibly fit and healthy who used to kind of teach,
Keep fit and would walk very fast for miles and miles and miles.
Almost at the same time she developed ME and was suddenly sick and couldn't do all the things that she had been doing.
And Trevor Leggett had various physical ailments and he came to the summer school and he had to have an attendant to kind of help him get around and his eyesight was going and he was suddenly an old man.
And I remember just this feeling of,
You know,
Why can't they stay young?
Why can't they remain fit and healthy?
And a sense of sorrow to notice this change that was happening to them.
And now obviously there are changes in my own body,
In this body.
There's quite significant physical changes and along with a slight feeling of not wanting to know,
There's also been a kind of sense of wonder at the nature of the body that kind of runs its own course regardless of one's longings and desires and wishes.
This body has its own cycles and rhythms that we can't do very much about.
I mean there are medicines we can take and there are exercises we can do to perhaps help keep it reasonably strong and healthy and supple,
But it's actually fairly limited.
And this is something that many of you have commented on,
Just the awareness of aging.
I think we're all very fortunate to have discovered this practice and to have this regular encouragement to reflect on this reality of our human existence.
Because as I said,
There is a natural distaste,
A natural unwillingness to come to terms with these things,
Particularly as I said in this society.
I think in certainly I'm not so familiar with Africa and Latin America,
But my contact with Asian culture suggests that there's a generally much more skillful attitude towards these things.
And back in Thailand for example,
Old age is something that is really very highly respected.
Older people are regarded as people who have more wisdom,
More understanding,
And young people are actually trained to show proper respect for the elderly.
And in Sri Lanka certainly there's very often the tradition of just having the whole extended family living all together,
You know,
Maybe three or four generations in one house.
And each one has their place.
Old age isn't something to be ashamed of or looked down on in the way that it tends to be in Western culture.
But the Buddha reminded us repeatedly that having been born,
We're subject to old age,
The body is going to age,
The body is going to thicken,
And inevitably it's going to die.
We might avoid old age,
We might not get sick,
But certainly there'll be the death of the body sooner or later.
The only thing that we don't know is how or when.
So it's very easy to imagine that maybe it won't happen,
To live our lives as though it won't happen.
And many people do this,
So that when somebody close to them,
Somebody that they love,
Dies in some way through some accident,
Illness,
Or simply through old age,
It's received in a way as being a terrible shock,
Something has gone wrong,
Medical science has failed,
The doctors have failed.
Rather than just seeing that this is what we can expect.
The chant that Sister Tita Maydow and I will do at the end of the evening for Tarania's mother is a verse from the Dhammapada where it says something like,
All conditions are transient,
It is in their nature to arise and cease,
Having arisen they will surely cease,
And with their passing there is peace.
That's a kind of very rough translation.
And I'm always struck at Buddhist funerals,
I haven't been to very many,
But the ones that I've attended,
At the incredible sense of peace and a kind of calm acceptance of the death that seems to prevail.
This doesn't mean that there isn't sadness,
That there isn't grief,
But the overall mood of these ceremonies,
Of these times is just an extraordinary kind of peacefulness.
And there's always the encouragement on such occasions just to contemplate our own mortality and to use it as a teaching,
That we often say that the final teaching of those who've died is just the very fact of their death.
So rather than it being a disaster or a tragedy or a source of great anguish and regret,
It's actually a time of,
A very rich time in terms of Dhamma.
I think perhaps the things that make death particularly difficult are when we have unfinished business,
The things that we haven't said,
That we would like to have said,
Things that we have said that we would rather not have said.
I can still notice a slight tinge of remorse over somebody who wasn't particularly close to me,
But she died quite a number of years ago.
And there were a number of occasions when I wasn't quite as mindful,
Quite as sensitive and in tune as I might have been.
And it still is something that is there in my memory.
I mean,
I have worked at forgiving myself and so on and asked her for forgiveness.
But what it did for me was just to really highlight the importance of how we live life in relation to one another.
I found it particularly when I was looking after,
Or particularly one of the old ladies,
Madam Rawati,
The one who I was closest to and spent most time with.
And as I've mentioned,
She was actually quite difficult,
Quite a handful.
And we used to have kind of minor tiffs.
I'd be cleaning her room and she would complain about something and I would make some nasty remark and then she'd be really upset and start sulking and then we'd have to go off to puja or something.
And one of the things that I made a very strong determination when I was looking after her that I would never separate from her was anything unresolved.
So if we had a tiff and say we were walking along to,
I don't know,
The meditation,
I would always make a point of apologizing or trying to resolve the difficulty.
And it was actually quite exacting because often resolving it meant kind of swallowing a bit of pride.
And it was the kind of thing I wouldn't always naturally have chosen to do.
I might have chosen to hold a grudge and kind of let her stew in her own juice for a day or two.
But knowing that she could die at any time and knowing that if I had done that that there would have been a sense of regret,
I made it a practice to be particularly careful in the way that I related to her.
And I'm really very,
Very grateful that I did that because,
You know,
As I described at one point,
The time of her death,
Although it was extremely sad,
It was also very joyous and there was no sense of regret.
I really had a sense that I had really done the very best I could.
As I mentioned in an earlier talk,
I did have some quite powerful images.
This was earlier on when I was looking after her,
You know,
Doing the most terrible things to her.
And as I also said in the talk at the time,
I took this to be a sign that actually I needed a bit more rest.
I needed to take care of myself.
And I say this because I'm aware that there are some of you here who are caring for elderly people and just to really bear in mind the importance of taking proper care of yourself.
You know,
We can be so idealistic in what we should be and what we should do and what we should be able to do,
What we should be able to manage,
What our capacity should be,
Without really having the humility to acknowledge that actually we have limitations.
We're not God.
We're not Superman or Superwoman.
We're a human being who has very considerable needs,
Ourselves.
Certainly the person we might be caring for has very obvious needs,
But we too have needs.
And if we don't take proper care of ourselves,
We're not really going to be able to take proper care of anybody else.
I'm very impressed in Britain,
And I'm not sure how it is here,
But in Britain they have ways of providing respite care.
If one's looking after somebody who's,
Say,
Terminally ill,
Then the person can actually spend time in a hospice while the relatives are able to have some time when they're not actually engaged in 24-hour care.
And this seems to be a very wonderful thing,
To be able to provide that kind of support so that people can manage to take care of those they love in the way that they would want to,
Rather than either having them be cared for full-time in an institution,
Which is sometimes necessary,
Or trying to do the whole thing oneself,
And just burning oneself out,
And the whole thing ending up a complete mess.
Sometimes there's no choice,
In which case one just has to do the best one can,
And to keep reminding oneself that one's doing the best one can.
And if there are times that one doesn't measure up to one's high ideals,
Just to recognise that one's doing the very,
Very best one can,
And that the willingness to even try is an extraordinary offering.
So to really honour that in oneself.
If one can arrange things so that one can have the rest,
The support that one needs in order to continue on a long-term basis,
Then by all means that's something that I would really recommend.
So to be very honest about one's needs,
Honest to oneself,
And to be willing to really consider carefully how one can take proper care of oneself if one is in that situation.
It's not selfish to look after oneself.
Or maybe one could say it is selfish,
But it's good to be selfish.
There's different ways of putting this.
As far as reflecting on our own mortality,
As I said,
There's often not much of an incentive to do this.
And this is why we need to use to really reflect when somebody that we know dies,
Is actually just to really recognise that this is something that can happen to us too at any time.
I went on pilgrimage in India a couple of years ago,
And I'd just turned 50 and I decided that one thing that I would like to do to kind of mark that milestone,
If you like,
Is to go to make a pilgrimage to the Buddhist holy places.
I hadn't been particularly interested in doing that earlier on in my Buddhist life,
Just because it took me a while to really develop a sense of appreciation and devotion to the Buddha.
But by the time I was,
Well actually I decided to go a few years before,
I was thinking it'd be good to go on pilgrimage,
And I thought well when I'm 50 I'll go on pilgrimage.
And so just about a month after my 50th birthday I set off.
And it was a very,
Very wonderful experience.
It was very lovely just to feel very close to the Buddha and to actually be in the places that I'd read about,
Heard about,
Back when it said that at one time the Lord was dwelling at Sawati in the Jeta's Grove and at Atapindika's monastery.
These were just words to me,
And to actually go and visit this place and to experience the kind of culture in which he lived and even just have a sense that in fact India where the Buddha lived is actually quite a chilly place a lot of the time.
I'd always thought of the Buddha living in a hot country,
But actually during the winter months it's quite chilly.
So this was a very important part of the pilgrimage.
But I think the most significant event that happened was something that was quite extraordinary and it involved a whole chain of coincidences,
Like those of you who have travelled in India will know that things don't usually work out the way that you plan.
And this journey was no exception.
We were given all kinds of,
We wanted to get to Lumbini actually and people were telling us about buses to be a luxury coach from Patna.
So go to Patna,
Take a luxury coach to Lumbini.
So we went to Patna and they said there's no luxury coach to Lumbini.
What you want to do is to take a train to Varanasi and from Varanasi to go to Gorakhpur and from Gorakhpur to go to Lumbini.
You'll get a bus anyway.
We were kind of sent around a bit.
And on the train from Varanasi to Gorakhpur,
It was quite a crowded train and at one point there were two seats,
Three seats vacant opposite us.
I was travelling with a lay woman companion and one of the ways that people reserve their seats on a train is to throw something through the window and onto an empty seat and then they kind of,
It can take quite a while to get onto a train in India.
So this is what they do in order to reserve their seats.
A couple of,
Three young men kind of tossed some exercise books or something through the window just opposite us.
So my friend and I,
We kind of arranged,
Put them on the seats and made sure that the seats were reserved for them.
Because Indian trains can be quite crowded.
Anyway they got onto the train and it set off and they sat opposite us.
One of them started looking at one of the other's palms.
They were talking in Hindi so I couldn't understand but they were obviously,
He was obviously kind of giving him a kind of the low down on his character or whatever.
And my friend who was called Mechi,
Which is actually Chinese,
The Chinese mushroom,
Which doesn't mean none,
She and I,
We couldn't resist kind of holding out our hands.
And this chap kind of looked at my hand and the first thing he said,
He said,
Oh,
He said,
Your lifeline's quite short.
He said,
You'll probably live to about 50.
And then he proceeded to tell me some other rather spot on things that he couldn't possibly have known otherwise,
Unless he had a very powerful intuition.
He just looked at my hand and he said,
Well,
It's this,
This and this and that means this.
So I kind of gulped.
And then he looked at my friend's hand and said,
Oh yes,
You'll live to about 70.
And then he kind of turned to each of us and said,
Well,
How old are you?
I looked him straight in the eye and said,
50.
And he looked me back and he said,
Very important time for you.
And you know,
Those kinds of things,
You can't ignore them.
I was actually very grateful,
Although in some ways it was shocking,
But I was incredibly grateful because you take it with a pinch of salt.
Well I did.
But it also brought a real sense of urgency into my practice.
I thought,
Well,
You know,
Maybe I am going to die at 50.
If I were to die at 50,
I mean,
I had,
From that time,
I think I had about nine more months before I was going to be 51.
So I thought,
Well,
You know,
If the time of my death does come,
What will I regret not having done?
So it really helped me kind of get my priorities straight.
And there were certain kind of quite practical things that I wanted to do,
Which when I got back to England I did,
Or began to do.
There were other things to do with just how I lived my life.
And one of them was to do with just like living life fully.
This is what I emphasize a lot.
Really using every moment,
Every experience that we have,
Even the unpleasant ones,
As something that we can experience fully,
That we can learn from.
Another thing was just to be happy,
To enjoy life.
Doesn't mean that there isn't suffering from time to time,
But to really try to avoid suffering unnecessarily.
It seemed to me to be very important.
And there were a few other things.
For me it was actually like having a terminal illness without actually being ill,
Which was,
It was very nice to have the vigor to be able to consider these things and to carry some of these things out,
Rather than actually waiting until I was very,
Very ill or something.
Like for many people it's,
They don't have very much time or very much vigor to finish off their business.
It also was an opportunity to kind of say thank you to the people who'd helped me in my life.
Things like that.
And to really enjoy my monastic life.
Interesting thing happened like about a month before,
Less than a month before I turned 51,
Was that I actually did get very ill and almost died.
Which I think quite,
Well I hadn't actually told many people about our encounter with the palmist.
It's not the kind of thing you tell people somehow.
But when I was taken off to hospital with this illness,
The person who'd been travelling to me in India kind of whispered something to one of the novices and immediately the whole community knew.
And so there was some real concern at that time.
The interesting thing about being incredibly ill like that is that what struck me,
I mean I didn't actually realise how ill I was until after the crisis had passed.
I must have had some kind of intuition about it because I remember lying there and I'd had a slight injury and I thought,
Well shall I,
This was some months before and I thought,
Well I'm in a hospital with doctors and nurses,
I wonder if I should mention this injury.
And then the next moment I thought,
Well see if I die,
It won't really matter about the injury.
And I realised that if I died that actually it wouldn't really matter that this body wasn't completely perfect and that it had things that were wrong with it and that weren't particularly beautiful about it or that there were unfortunate things about it.
That was quite a nice thought,
If I die it won't really matter.
After,
When I was recovering I asked the sister who was with me in the hospital,
I was just kind of curious to know that when my mother,
She's very intuitive and she just happened to ring the monastery on the day I was taken off to hospital.
I think the monk who answered the phone was actually quite put on the spot because he knew I'd been taken to hospital,
He knew I was pretty sick.
And so of course he had to tell her and she eventually kind of caught up with me in one of,
I went to several hospitals actually and she eventually caught up with me in one of the hospitals and Sister Tanya suggested that the doctor come and have a word with her and I said to Tanya,
I said,
Well what did the doctor say?
And she said,
Well,
It was actually a hemorrhage,
A brain hemorrhage that I had and the doctor said,
Well there's a lot of bleeding,
We don't know where it's coming from,
It could be fatal.
And when I heard this afterwards I was actually quite shaken to realise just how near the edge I'd been.
So it was all,
All in all it was quite a powerful learning,
Powerful experience and as I said one of the things that really struck me was how easy it would have been just to slip away without even knowing.
It just actually felt like nothing very much at all and what I remember about the time was just people coming and saying,
Do you know where you are?
And somehow or other I knew each time,
You know,
First of all it was King Edward's Hospital and then it was St Richard's Hospital and then eventually it was Southampton Hospital.
You know,
Do you know what day it is?
Sunday.
And then sort of in the wee small hours it began to get a bit hazy,
Well is it Sunday or is it Monday?
And then I really blew everybody's mind,
They said,
Do you know who the Prime Minister is?
And I got that one right too.
Anyway I recovered and I'm here.
But what all this has done is really just sharpen up a sense of priorities,
You know,
What is really important and a sense of gratitude and appreciation for this opportunity,
For this human existence and a real interest in making the very,
Very best possible use of it,
Knowing that things could change at any time.
So I share this because I realise that for many people they don't have,
They don't meet a palmist on pilgrimage in India who tells them that they could die that very year.
But the fact is that any of us could die any minute.
I don't say this to bring a sense of dread or worry.
Like I suppose if I hadn't been practising when I met the palmist I could have,
It could have been quite damaging perhaps.
I could have been really worried about this prognosis,
This,
What he'd said.
As it was,
It was just interesting.
So my encouragement is just to see this fact of our mortality just being interesting,
Our ageing process being interesting when we get sick,
Just to take an interest in the sickness.
When the Buddha got old,
Got sick on a number of occasions and eventually died,
Even all of the enlightened beings since that time,
There's one possible exception,
Got old,
Got sick and died.
I was telling some of you the other day about a very touching description of the Buddha in his old age and how painful his body was and how he was very much aware that his faculties were failing.
He couldn't see so well,
Hear so well.
All of the senses weren't working so well.
He actually kind of talks about old age as something really sordid,
Maker of ugliness,
Shame on you sordid age,
Maker of ugliness.
Even if you lived a hundred years,
You can't escape the decay of the body.
You can't escape it and the eventual death,
Passing,
Dying of the body.
Only we can take this as an incentive to live life carefully,
Live life fully with appreciation,
Not to waste this opportunity that we have.
Doesn't mean that we're always going to enjoy it.
It doesn't mean it's always going to be pleasant.
But I suspect that what each one of you will find is that the more fully you live life,
Even though sometimes it's pleasant,
Unpleasant I should say,
Sometimes it's pleasant,
The more wonderful it is.
Because we're no longer afraid of these things.
We're able to,
Having perhaps been through a phase of actually acknowledging our fear.
One of the things I've found that with mindfulness practice,
Actually I can be present with my fear.
Just seeing it as part of life.
We don't have to feel ashamed or frightened of fear or want to avoid the fearful things that happen,
Try to just smooth it over with some kind of distraction.
We can actually be present with fear.
We can learn from it.
And life takes on a much richer quality.
It also helps us to appreciate one another in a very different way.
Sure,
We still get irritated with each other.
Because people are irritating,
Let's face it sometimes.
And sometimes we're irritable,
Let's face it.
We can't always be sweet and gentle and equanimous.
We know we should be,
But we can't always feel like that.
Sometimes we're irritable,
Sometimes we're grumpy.
Sometimes other people drive us nuts.
But when we notice that we're irritable,
We recognize that,
Like I have an expression,
I sort of say things like,
You've got to stay away from me.
I'm very dangerous right now.
Just recognizing that we're irritable,
Recognizing that we could blow up,
That we could say something unfortunate.
But with mindfulness,
There's a kind of a resolution just to be a little bit more careful,
A little bit careful.
It's like,
And a simile I like to use,
It's like when you're driving and when the traffic conditions or the weather conditions are very dangerous,
You take extra care.
If there are a lot of idiots on the road,
Which there are sometimes,
Particularly on a Saturday night,
Say,
Rather than blaming them and saying that they shouldn't be like that or getting irritated and frustrated with them for driving irresponsibly,
The appropriate response is to take extra care in how we drive and how we respond and to be extra vigilant.
And in the same way,
If we're feeling irritable,
Like if the conditions are such that we're feeling quite raw,
Or if we're with people who are particularly irritating,
Then what I find it helpful is just to see it as a kind of incentive to be particularly careful.
If we blow it,
If we say or do something unfortunate,
Then we have to learn how to forgive ourselves.
This is quite important,
In fact,
Because what can happen is if we blow it,
If we behave in an unfortunate way,
Is that you can just increase our sense of fear that we'll do the same thing again,
That we'll repeat the same mistake.
And sure enough,
When we're in a similar situation,
The chances are that we will repeat the same mistake.
If we can actually forgive ourselves,
Make peace with whatever it is that has happened,
Then we come to a similar situation again.
And rather than being fearful of repeating the same mistake,
What I've found is that I'm much more able to just relax,
To recognize the danger and to know that if I'm tense,
The likelihood,
If I'm tense and fearful of making the same mistake,
The likelihood is that I will make the same mistake.
If I just am very mindful and just relax and recognize it as a dangerous situation,
Difficult situation,
But that the more at ease I am in myself,
The less likely there is that I'll blow up or whatever,
Tumble into the same old pattern.
The other interesting thing is that if it's in a particular relationship,
Is that the more relaxed we are,
The more relaxed the other person can be.
I noticed this,
Like in sangha life,
It's wonderful for noticing these things,
Because one of the things I used to notice was a particular person in the community is that we could very easily set each other off.
So I would sit down and they would look at me in a particular way or they would make some remark and I would start getting defensive.
And so I'd say something a little bit off and then they would kind of say something a little bit off and the whole thing would escalate.
And I decided to experiment,
To do this little experiment.
So I was sitting down beside this person and then they made some remark that my habitual response would have been to kind of tense up and maybe say something back,
But the remark was made,
You know,
A slight kind of jab.
And so I relaxed.
I went to my breath,
I went to my belly,
I put my shoulders down,
I relaxed my face and I just relaxed.
I can't remember if I actually smiled,
But I relaxed anyway.
And the interesting thing that happened was that that was the end of it.
I relaxed,
They relaxed.
That was it.
So I'd really recommend that you try that with particularly difficult relationships.
It might not work immediately and they might kind of have another go at you and so you might have to relax some more.
But sooner or later they run out of steam because you're not actually feeding that tension,
That aggression.
I think it's kind of based on a martial arts principle.
Martial arts work on the same kind of principle where rather than responding aggressively to the aggressor,
You kind of use that energy to throw them.
I mean I wasn't intending to throw this person,
But to kind of like to disarm,
To take the steam away.
If for some reason,
It really doesn't work and they still remain hot and bothered and angry,
At least you've maintained a sense of calm and equilibrium.
At least you haven't got all fired up.
At least you haven't tumbled into an angry,
Averse reaction.
I haven't actually spoken about the hindrances as a kind of single talk,
But it's interesting that it's like this simile that the Buddha uses for aversion.
He said it's like being sick.
If you're full of anger and aversion,
It's like a disease.
And so using,
With this example,
At least you haven't got the sickness.
At least it hasn't contaminated you.
You've been able to stay calm and even and healthy,
Inwardly healthy.
We have to see it like a game or like a skill or like a craft,
Because we're not always going to succeed.
As with any skill,
It takes time.
Sometimes we'll get it right,
Sometimes we'll get it spot on and we'll feel really good.
And then of course the next time we fail.
So to see that it's a gradual practice,
Practice makes perfect little by little.
Use these ways of encouraging yourself in developing this practice.
But it's something I would really recommend,
Because you never know when it's going to be the last meeting.
And it's really unfortunate if there have been angry words,
We've hurt each other.
And I'm sure all of you have experiences of this and all of you know how unfortunate it is.
So this is a technique that perhaps will help to avoid repeating the same patterns.
People and human beings are hugely irritating,
Even when they don't mean to be.
In fact sometimes especially when they're trying hard not to be.
And so we can expect to be irritated,
Particularly with people that we're particularly close to.
And so just to use our mindfulness practice in any way that we can to recognize when we're irritable and either just to step right outside the situation if we can,
Take ourselves for a walk,
Sit among the trees,
Watch the squirrels.
Or if you're in a city,
I find talking to plants very helpful.
If I have plants in my room or arranging flowers,
Or just find something to do that you really enjoy doing that will take you away from the tense,
Tight situation,
If you can and if you can't then just do the very,
Very best you can.
And be ready to think well of yourself for having done that,
Even if you fail.
That was another of the things I decided to do when I nearly died,
Is to actually delight in my own goodness and to give up thinking I'm an awful person.
I just saw what a kind of miserable pastime it was to keep blaming myself.
I decided to actually enjoy this human life,
This human being,
And to see that it was good.
There are good things it's done.
And to make much of that.
And each one of you have done lots of good things.
Just the effort to come and spend time on retreat,
The effort to endure through the miserable,
Wretched,
Horrible mind states that I'm sure many of you have had to endure through,
The fact that you're still here,
Is a cause for celebration.
And if you're not utterly perfect,
Even if you're not fully enlightened yet,
You know that there's this sincere,
Humble,
Determined,
Effort and aspiration to move towards that,
Is something that is worthy of appreciation,
Worthy of respect,
By yourself.
So I offer this to your reflection this evening.
93
