2561.09.08 Good Life, Good Death by Ajahn Jayasaro

[Music] so good morning I just been recollecting memorable deaths and good deaths and then I try to recall the best death that I can remember in fact it I wasn't present for this death but it was something that I I read about and it's always stuck in my mind and it was the death of the founder of the one of the two founders of the monastic tradition to which I belong and Lucas owl died in 1941 and the age of 80 or just over 80 and at that time he was living in a born which is about six seven hundred kilometers to the northeast of here and who born in 1941 was a city in small city or a town in a state of some turmoil it was a year that French bombers dropped bombs on the city and lubu Sal was bitten by Hornets and fell ill as a result and realizing that his life was probably coming to an end he wanted to go on one last trek one last - dong wandering in the jungle and so he set off to Lao with a number of his students and during this trip during the Cold season of 1940 how he fell ill and his condition steadily worsened and so his students were able to procure a riverboat and started to make the trip upstream along the Mekong River and Lupo saw I think had realized he probably wasn't going to make it back to who born and he suggested they they make for what I might in in jumper sock a box a and the last two days of this journey he was laid out apparently unconscious in the back of the small boat as they imagined they paddled I'm not sure whether they had an engine or a motor but finally they arrived at the monastery which was right on the riverbank and as the boat moved towards the jetty he opened his eyes he said have we arrived and they said yes sir and he got up he pulled himself up and put on his robe and his student said the young monks helped him up off the riverbank and into the the board bo posted to halt the main ceremonial hall of the monastery and he called for his son Ngati for those who who don't know this is the the robe it's basically the same shape as this robe but you were probably of since you see it most often when it's folded and worn over to show so we we usually wear the robe in that way on ceremonial special occasions and so he called for his son Gotti and his son Gotti was draped over his shoulder and while the monks went to bring up their belongings from the boat and to other things he went to pay his respects to the Buddha big buddha statue in the ceremonial hall and after he bowed the third time he stayed there in that prostrate position with his forehead touching the floor and didn't move and the his disciples I assume supposed that he was reciting some passage or some devotional passage and weren't immediately aware that he wasn't moving at all after some time one of the monks moved closely and just very politely put his finger underneath Nobu Sal's nostril and there was no breath coming from his nostril and he realized that the great master who we we believed to be a fully enlightened arahant had died wearing his robes bowing to the Buddha and after completing his third bow so as a Buddhist monk this is kind of like as good as it gets that's that's a best death now let's fast forward many years to the I think would have been late 80s early 90s and I was on arms around in our local village and as I towards the end of the arms round one of the villages came up to me and said that one of the the villages were knew very well and had been one of the the group of lay Buddhists who had requested that agent Shah allowed the Western monks or to build a monastery in the local cremation forest outside the village so I knew this man very well and was very fond of him so I an a couple of the other of the senior monks we went to his house which was just a you know a shack extremely poor man living in a rather ramshackle old wooden house on stilts and as we climbed up the stairs and went into the to the central area who was laying on the floor and he had such a radiant smile on his face and he was so happy to see us also and as we got closer and he managed to lift his hands and show respects and saw they had a a couple of very old and battered photo albums and he showed us and his photo albums were full of pictures of monks and over the years a number of so many Western Buddhists had come to spend time in the monastery and many of them had taken photographs of him and me and him and a Jinsu meadow and other senior monks and him in front of this monastic building and that monastic building and outside the gate and and putting food in monks balls and they developed a film and given him one of the photos and he'd made these albums and the last days of his life he didn't have it he had one one family member adopted son who I think who who would nurse him but the thing that gave him great joy was looking through this photo we could just spend hours and hours remembering this monk and that monk and and all that and so his it was clear that his mind was in a very wholesome beautiful state and by recalling the good things that he done in his life the things of which she was proud thinks which made him happy and so this was I think the first time I really picked up on the importance of encouraging people at the end of their life to constantly consciously cultivate memories of goodness and good deeds that they had performed during their life and it's a thing that could in the midst of even quite serious physical pain and this was we're talking at a time where I don't know he might have some you know brought high or these little caffeinated aspirins or something to as the extent of his pain relief and yet he was really radiant the the other the other occasion that comes to mind was a few years after that and a couple who were very strong and constant supporters of our monastery had a little house out in the rice fields and the the wife had cancer and had some treatment and it was obvious that she wasn't going to get better and so she came back to die at home and I would go over every day and spend some time there and I was there right at the very end of her life and she was laid out on on the floor on a mat and her husband her children and children's parents grandchildren or everyone was in this big room and one one person was massaging a foot one person was holding a hand some one person had a fan and was just keeping her cool husband was right there on one side of her I was on the other side giving her encouragement and again although she had no know kind of drugs or pain relief it was her passing which was as peaceful as you could imagine and to see the value of having being able to pass away in in your own house in the midst of who your memories and with your family all around you and with your teacher your spiritual teacher there to encourage you that also seemed to me to be a very good death and sometimes in speaking with the local villages rice farmers and very very poor people I said you know I would say things like you know don't think that being rich you know is is always such a good thing I mean I'll be frank it is often a good thing you know that's not mince words when you've got a lot of money you have a lot of advantages but one of the advantages of being poor is that you you can't afford to spend the end of your life in a ICU unit in a in a private hospital and there are very few rich people that can die in such a good way as all of you do and so this wasn't just sort of trying to comfort them or you know look on the bright side of life kind of kind of reflection but I really that it was true having seen many wealthy people pass away in in a very upsetting way and you know the I I would say in fact that in in Thailand that we can say there are there are elements of popular Thai culture these days which elements which are regrettable elements which are even deplorable but there are also elements of Thai culture which are wonderful and which I think we can often overlook and I would say at least in the areas of Thailand which I spent most of my life in the northeast of Thailand in the villages and more backward areas that the the relationship and the the way that people deal with sickness and death is is probably as mature as anywhere in the world I think I mean more mature than anywhere else I've seen so you know we have this kind of mixture of kind of mature and immature elements in our in our culture and I guess that's the same anywhere but when I first arrived in in Northeast Thailand then I found that in our monastery we we we had a cremation place and part of the background for this is that forest monks always looking for quiet places to meditate and most villages in Southeast on anyway that cut down the majority of trees by the mid 70s at least but villages would always leave a certain amount of forest usually about two three kilometers away maybe a little bit less in which to I'll cremate the bodies so the idea is that they are close enough to be able to carry the bodies or to at least to put them on a cart and pull them to the cremation place but far enough they don't have to worry about the spirits so for for meditation monks then these cremation forests often the only forest that is left in this denuded areas but also it's just a good distance away from the village for a daily arms round maybe two-three kilometers there two three kilometres back but also because of the belief in spirits and so on very few people will come into the forest and and disturb you when you're meditating and so subsequently these cremation forests provided the place in which many monasteries have grown up and yet retained their their responsibility in providing cremations for local people so our cremation place was just a simple brick steps coming up like this and then on the day of a funeral local villagers would come in find dead wood in the forest pack it up between these two brick walls and then the other flimsy flimsy wooden coffin would be placed upon the firewood and then before the well let's just backtrack a little bit for me after death then the body would be kept in the house and for maybe three days sometimes if there were relatives working overseas and they might keep it a little bit longer so the relatives could get back in time three days and every evening then the monks would go into the house and chant the funeral verses and then the senior monk usually myself would give a small talk and reflection on Beth and encouragement and support for the family of the deceased person then on the day of the funeral the monks would go in again and a chant and then the coffin would be put onto a cart and then the monks would walk carrying this long thread pulling the cart with all the lay people walking along behind and we process through the rice fields to the forest put the coffin on the wooden pyre and and then there would be another session of chanting something like the same kind of verses she would hear in a monastery in Bangkok and a Dhamma talk again reflections on impermanence and death and separation etc and then the funeral itself would take place and one of the things one of the rituals would be to place these little dot my jung on the body itself and so everybody in the village including children for you know children the moment they could walk basically or even carried out would climb up these little steps look at the dead body and place their dog my Jan on on on the on the person's body so following this the fire would be would be burnt air would be would be lit and in a very short time the the coffin would fill up fall apart most of the laypeople by this time would have gone home except those close family members but the monks would stand and and and watch the body decompose in the fire so and I thought this must be the most mature way of disposing of human body that I could imagine and that everyone was involved and but the the amazing thing for me and and I seen it over and over in many years when we have Western visitors and Western young Western men coming to become monks that people are just surprised how how light and carefree even that the the atmosphere is people are laughing joking it's not at all the kind of atmosphere that you would expect if you come from the Western world some limits of decorum and very you you would I think be looked upon as being heartless if you were too small how a joke at a funeral in England for instance but I'd I would ask by that time I had some Thai Thai language and so why is everyone so kind of happy and laughing and doing and isn't anybody sad and so well and we've been doing comedy ah come my god so it's just like it's normal its natural this is what happens you know people get old they get sick they die that's that's just the way things are and so this kind of basic Buddhist wisdom is so embedded in the the culture that there's this it's not considered to be wrong or bad or you know why did this happen I the only time I've seen some tears and anguish when children pass away of course that that's something else then but for anybody I would say over the age of 40 50 years just since yeah this is completely normal and natural so terms of good life and good death in Buddha from Buddhist perspective the connection is that one one part one element of a good life is embracing the idea of death or the the reality of death or the certainty of death and not only that but to recognize and to fully be conscious of the fact that this certain death is uncertain as regards to its particular nature in terms of exactly how you would die whether it's from an illness and accident or whatever and when you will die so the Buddha made great emphasis on the importance of making conscious there are to ourselves regularly again and again the basic facts of human existence so it's it's only not controversial that all of us one day are going to get old and sick and die there there can be no argument about this but the willingness to allow that - to - to nest in your in your mind and to reflect on it and to make it conscious and not to react against it or to repress it or to brand it as being morbid this is something else and and so I think we can see without too much difficulty that there are certain things that we take on as beliefs or as perceptions that we we would say yes I I agree that's definitely true but that we're only able to live according to those beliefs or sustain those beliefs at a time in which we don't feel emotionally threatened in some way but at the moment that there is some strong sense of fear anger a version then often these thoughts and beliefs disappear from our mind as if we we'd never heard them before the obvious example that Buddhist Buddhism Buddhist Buddha teaches that separation from everyone everything that we love and cherish is inevitable again this is surely not controversial and most Buddhists at least will say yes I've heard this and and I'm aware of this and when we see other people in state of bereavement or having been separated from a loved one or had some great loss in their life then we can even feel competent enough to give them some advice and support with these very words and yet when that thing happens in our own life we find ourselves totally incapable the words just seem meaningless so I think I think the point here is that we can accept thoughts ideas in a rather superficial way and assume that somehow that they're a part of us but they're not and this there's somewhat of a digression one of the great obstacles to learning this is in education fields what they called a fluency illusion where you read you read something and you underline it and you highlight it and then you think you can remember it but you can't so there are many ways in which we we have a distorted idea of just how much we we have absorbed of of information and I years but particularly in it what the sense that we're talking right about right now as a sense of who we are what life is what what what makes sense all what what we need to do and it's really important fundamental issues that we only have a very superficial grasp of them and which will disappear in this in the event of strong emotion so the question is how to integrate this kind of wisdom in a sense of something that we've heard which is true and useful that we have remembered at least in a superficial way how can we integrate that into who we are and how we how we respond to situations so many many years ago I I had the occasion to to spend some time with one of the great time unk's of the modern era agent buddha dasa in south of Thailand and I asked him what is mindfulness okay and he said I've seen this entire typhus okay sadhika bunya tan so what this means is it's what mindfulness means when when you're when your wisdom when your understanding of something is right there when you need it that's what mindfulness means onion and so this is the importance of developing what we call mindfulness and mindfulness these days has developed this word has developed a whole kind of new life of its own and used in a non Buddhist context in a number of different ways when in Buddhist context it has a close association with memory and the ability to recollect and bring to mind what you need to know at any particular moment and we developed this ability by cultivating this recollection of certain useful topics and one of them is death so the recollection of death and the inevitability of deaths the uncertainty at the time of death they have the uncertainty of how death may appear this is considered part of a good life we a good life is one which encompasses the the understanding encompasses the truths of inevitable aging the understanding that sickness and ill health is natural and normal if we if we get sick and then we such say why me then that then the question would the the answer Buddhists answer would be why not but why do you think that you should be free of sickness so these days you know we a lot of people think if I just eat all the right things or I do all this exercise then somehow you've got this kind of mystic kind of protection against death and more religious background people think I've done all these good deeds I've made all this merit so why why is this happening to me so the idea that all goodness gives you some kind of protection against the truths of old age sickness and death it doesn't but it gives you the the power and the the the clarity of mind to be able to deal with these things better it's not that these things don't happen so one of the the classic Buddhist blessings and says may you enjoy a smooth journey over a but over the bumpy road of life so most people who want blessings they weren't busy may my may that may the road of my life be a smooth one but the Buddha says no it's not going to be smooth never but you can have a smooth road over the bumps smooth drive or a smooth journey over the bumps if you develop yourself well so again let me return briefly to the topic the so good life this this idea of good life this does have a great deal of resonance with me personally in that my own journey bumpy journey started off as a teenager when the question formed in my life is in my mind was what is a good life and following from that next question is what is the best life to live as a human being and then the doubt arises is is it even possible to to distinguish between different lives and say yes this this kind of life or this life is better than that one so what are your criteria for making such a judgment you know if we're making judgments between cars let's say yeah we have all these different criterias and so in terms of beauty safety luxury comfort speed etc etc but but what are the criteria for determining oh yeah this is this was a good life a life well led and this was not you know it's so in sort of postmodern kind of idea you you know you don't have that kind of right to make that choice you know you you create a narrative for yourself and everyone has their own has the right to make their own narrative something like this but my question is my question was I any kind of underlying universal principles so this is what led me to spend a lot of time reading books and investigating this matter that became kind of all or over conquering like obsession in my life to the extent that I've pretty well neglected all my school studies to pursue this and my my answers I found in book on Buddhism and this was my my path appeared before me that what most simply that human beings suffer some of the such human suffering is inevitable and unavoidable but a huge amount of human suffering is avoidable and that the the teachings of the Buddha provide a path of practice a systematic and effective way to educate oneself so as to reduce and ultimately eliminate all the unavoidable suffering in life and then to share one's understanding of how to do that with others that that for me si was the answer the the path that I embarked upon of course at that time 15 years old I hadn't yet really formed the idea of becoming a monk in Thailand but this was the fluting of the first steps and this this idea of a good life is embodied in one of the phrases that we find in one of the very common chants one that all of the Thai participants here will will be familiar with at the end of any any ceremony many dedication offerings we have we we recite pure Prai or Lee Kwang soo Kwang Kappa jelton ly the Lord gallon and her so this is pure pre-owned for the benefit program sook for the happiness con Kappa Jiao Tong lie so it's cabbage out and everyone else the Lord gallon on turn long-term so this is this is our dedication as Buddhist where we're interested in creating benefit and happiness for ourselves and for others in the long term so this is good life in in Buddhism expressed in a phrase that we're all I think very familiar with in Thailand so one of the very lazy intellectual mistakes that is so common these days even amongst otherwise quite rigorous thinkers is to assume that there is something called religion and you see people saying religion is like this and religion is like that as if there's this one thing called religion which shares the same common properties now I think that it is reasonably legitimate to apply that way of thinking to the religions that grew up in the Middle East the monotheistic religions Christianity Islam Judaism for instance they're one kind of family all religions but Buddhism is of a different family of religions and so it does not share many of the common properties of the the monotheistic religions so where as very simply we could summarize we could refer to the religions in the Middle Eastern family as essentially belief systems and they're often referred to as faiths I would propose that Buddhism is a different kind of religion it is essentially an education system so this is a radically different conception of what a religion is a religion as a belief system and a religion as an education system so this is so this is very much connected with a Buddhist idea of a good life so Buddhism concert' considers that the human birth is a wonderful birth it's extreme good fortune to be born as a human being and the reason for this is our capacity for education our capacity to learn we can as human beings learn new things right till the end of our life to the very to the very last breath of our life certainly our capacity for learning shrinks as we get older but it never disappears and as a Buddhist we so this is the essential feature what is it that makes us truly human so ever it's so many different answers to this question but as a Buddhist answer is our capacity to learn we we manifest our humanity we're most fully human in learning and one of the one of the words used by the Buddha to describe a fully enlightened being we call an era Han is the word a sake are a sake a book on a seka bucola a seka the word a in pali is like in english haze is not means not and seeker comes from the pali word seeker which is again linked to the the thai word 6r and it means training or education education and the word a sacar means someone who has no more need for education or no more need for training so in other words the Buddhist view is that everyone in the world except for fully enlightened our hands are defined by their need for education they are in other words a true Buddhist is the most essential lifetime learner so lifetime learning is so you sort of be a the essential feature of a Buddhist life the good Buddhist life someone who is learning now what what what exactly in what areas should we be learning and in this there are three main areas the area of conduct how we live in the world how we relate to the people around us our families our friends our colleagues this community the society we live in second area is the area of the heart and how we deal with positive and negative emotions so we are all praying naturally to anger greed sell a jealousy anxiety depression etc etc so a good life is one which we try to educate ourselves and find a way of reducing the power of those negative emotions ultimately letting them go we are also we can notice in ourself at least in very embryonic forms all kinds of good qualities with kindness compassion patience contentment peace mindfulness and a good life in Buddhism is one in which tribe we learn we educate ourselves we find ways of cultivating those positive emotions so reducing and eliminating negative emotions creating and cultivating positive emotions this is the good life at the heart and a third area is in terms of thinking understanding our the way that we look at the world and so these three areas are intimately related this is a holistic system but we're learning ways of solid good creative critical thinking but then particularly the Buddhist practices of particular exercises developing discursive thought discursive meditations such as the recollection of death for instance to create particular mental states which are which have a positive solitary effect on our on our lives and minds so these are the elements of the good life in in Buddhism summarized as lifetime learning and learning in terms of of cultivating and educating our conduct our heart and our with faculty these are the three areas what we called the dry seek our witness in these three areas if we expand them into to more detail then we get the Eightfold Path which you know I'm surely familiar with so the extent to which we are going to be ready to - for a good death is going to be quite significantly linked to the extent to which we actualize a good life so these things are considered to be inseparable because a good desk can apply it can appear at any time and the Buddha would constantly be reminding monks I mean asks among ya how often do you practice mindfulness of death or once a day is not enough how often asks another month like once every hour and and not enough somebody somebody else says or like every few minutes not in that should be every breath you know that's the kind of you know importance given and and monks are encouraged to think every day you know this evening you know so I could be I could be bitten by a snake I could be I could afford a full ill with malaria or this and so rather than feeling kind of I'm set and insecure if these reflections are carried on in in a wise thoughtful way the effect is and you can try ask yourself as one is that you see the value of time and we we waste so much time don't we I mean everyone's always you know everyone now we talked about being time poor you know we have so little time and yet at the same time if you're very honest with yourself just write out what exhale you actually spent your time from the moment you wake up in the morning until the moment you go to sleep how much time you spend online on on social media you know so and how much you know at that time do you really need to spend on social media so there are so many areas in life where we're very sloppy and heedless in our use of time and and one of the reasons for that is an absence of this this sense of urgency and since that time has we can say at times money but time you know we don't have anything else really and one of the ways to bring up the sense of the value of time is by reminding ourselves regularly that death can come at any time and this is a systematic approach to bringing that more careful use of time another aspect of this is that we begin to see that we don't really have time for such petty emotions how much time do we do we waste with loved ones just through being in a sulk or being angry or some small thing you know they're just allowed to to grow until you know you can hardly speak with each other and and and so if we were beings in heaven realms where you have like a lifetime of a million years you know it really wouldn't matter with it if you're in a sock for a few days with somebody because of something they said or did but we're not we have extremely limited lifespans and everything we have and hold is insecure this is an insecure situation now we have to become come to come to peace with insecurity the radical inevitable insecurity of life as a human being rather than try to just to forget about it that's the usual actually instinctive way of dealing with things that are threatening but the Buddhist ways say learn how to face these things and become come to peace with them be able to coexist with them and this this is a far more a wiser way of dealing with the the truths of our existence and so you say yeah I'm ready if I live another ten ten years ten days ten months ten days ten on ten breaths I'm ready this is the kind of maturity that we should be seeking to develop so as as people come towards death what are the kinds of things that prevent a peaceful death one the sense of things that we've done that we feel regretful and we feel guilty about sad about worried about so why wait until it's too late try to let go of these things if it's an anger and emiti and towards others you know maybe it's it's time to to let go of that loose end then - and to make a fresh start to forgive if it's yourself similarly then in the case of other people just feel these regrets for all these good things that we were going to do and we never really quite got round to five because we told us we didn't have enough time so if we don't have time to do good things and you know what are we doing with our time so these are two areas same part of a good life and in terms of preparation for a good death is to say what our areas of our life caused us grief caused us anguish caused us regret caused a shame and guilt how what are we doing with those are we just turning our backs on them and trying to forget them is there a way of excuse gently bringing those things up and dealing with them in a wise way and letting go of them right now and what are the good things we say yeah one one day one day I'll do this one day this would be such a good thing to do so this is wishful thinking is that yeah there will be a day someday somehow maybe they won't so maybe just two to give some more attention to those good things so those are two areas the as we one of the the key drivers of this inner training of course is learning to spend quality time with ourselves and rather than always looking outside of ourselves so this is the one of the ironies of the modern worlds we've developed incredibly sophisticated means of communicating with other people we can just pick up a phone and I can pick up my phone and and speak to my mother in England just like that this is incredible to some hundred years ago people who thought it was like like some kind or 200 years like witchcraft or something like this so we can do all these incredible things and yet at the same time our ability to communicate with ourselves to have a sense of what's going on inside of ourselves is has not developed at all it's probably declined and so this communication within should be surely one essential element of a good life and and so and the techniques in to do this it's not difficult but it depended relies on a great deal of patience and commitment but the simple process of choosing a particular object let's say a physical sensation like the sensation of the breath of the nostril and using that as an anchor and then you keep bringing your mind back again and again and then your mind goes crazy and it goes here and it goes there and many people just say I can't do this it's too difficult but it is the idea of I can't do it this is wrong but no this is actually part of it because this is how you get to know what's going on in your mind and what what imbalances there are in your life by stopping the mind going where it wants to and running here and running there and you just keep bringing it back and so you expose the power of of the addiction to memory and the addiction to thought and fantasy as an escape from the present moment we understand how greed works how a version works how doubt works how confusion works how depression works not not through reading a textbook but by exposing these mental states in our own minds and and learning how to hold them and look at them so it isn't the idea that meditation is you just want to get peaceful and if you don't get peaceful it means that you're not doing it properly or you don't have what it takes the first stage and it's a very important stages learning about all the all the things that prevent you from being peaceful and you you get so much really good raw data about human condition with yourself as a guinea pig and that one of the effects of that is increased empathy you begin to understand people around you more often through tuning in and and being being with these kinds of unpleasant mental states you know and you get an idea of how to deal with them this is your your problem solving in a very profound way during this this process so this is this is how you you start working with the real roots of a good life or a life which is not so good because the roots are inside of you and you you it's the techniques needed to make really significant progress are so simple I mean this is the point that they're not complex you're you are revealing complexity by confronting it with with simplicity so part of a good life is giving yourself time just to digest what's going on and and often people will in the course of a meditation will just suddenly wow how could I be so stupid how can I why what am i doing why am i holding on to this or why haven't I ever done that what what's you just suddenly these insights arise just when you give yourself a little bit of time and so just as if you read the lives of great scientists offers and often they're great discoveries don't take place in the laboratory they take place on the bus home in shower when they've the brains are sort of full of all this information and then they just relax and there's this unconscious digestion and and dealing with this and and then the theory comes out well it's the same kind of thing in our lives where we were absorbing all this stuff and all this is all going on but we just sustain ourselves on such a superficial level that that the the internal digestion and processing of this doesn't go the whole way and this is why spending time alone with yourself meditating is such an important part of being able to live a life which is in harmony with your ideals and one in which you can feel a sense of yeah I'm happy with my life this is a good life but again just to come back to this this constant reflection yes this is this is going to pass away and one of the things in in in daily life is to notice the endings of things then you see how we focus right on the beginning of things something new comes out and it catches our attention and and then we allow our attention to to weaken until some something else appears so we're always hooked on to the next thing the next thing the next thing and we do not pay sufficient attention to the passing away passing away passing away passing away but if we can read ress that imbalance and bring a bit more attention to the ending of things again and again and again then this is what prepares the mind for the the increased number and most significant endings that come as we get older you know suddenly you know just you know in your 40s when suddenly your eyesight starts to go well yeah and it's just you know and you said that's never gonna come back that's it you know you're never going to have good eyesight ever again you know and and this is what happens as you get older you know you get 250 in you and you know your body is never going to be better than this ever you know and and this as you get older more and more things yeah it's it this is this is how we prepare for aging I so I've gone past my time and I could probably talk for a lot more longer but just just one last point is that speaking about the maturity of Thai culture and one thing that's just so wonderful that we really need to sustain is the way that we look after our elderly in this country I don't know I I've never seen anywhere that can match the devotion that children and grandchildren and family members the way in which they they not only their own elders but but others but in terms of preparing for for death that sense of as an elderly person as being given that attention and care and interest and and respect that is so important that we don't want elderly people to feel that there that they are no longer any use that they're just a burden on their families and the younger ones and we have to constantly you know I've said this to people you have to worry about being a burden because if your children are looking after you and pushing around in a wheelchair and helping to bathe you're massaging you or taking you out for a ride in the car or whatever whatever they're doing they are modeling out the way that we respect we look after our elderly they're learning that stare model and that's how they look after you and this is how we transmit these these values in our society so in Buddhism we we have a we have this word called su para which is suit means good and para means burden and so we say good but and so we don't mind you can be a burden it's good to be a burden we all we all want to be each other's burdens we're not worried about that but we want to be good burden don't try not to be a burden but be a good burden and when when somebody and a monk devote there's a little ceremony where you ask someone to be your teacher we do this at the beginning of the rains retreat and and the Pali phrase translated is to dear teacher may I be your burden and will you be my burden yeah so this is this is the Buddhist approach like we we we give importance to this responsibility we're not some we're we're aware of rights we respect rights but they have to be balanced by responsibilities and our responsibilities to each other in our family and our communities this is so important to creating a good life which will lead to good death so these are a few not so systematic but sort of here and there thoughts on this topic of good life and good death and I would like to end my talk at this point

Channel: ธรรมะ โดย พระอาจารย์ชยสาโร/ Dhamma by Ajahn Jayasaro

Views: 29,498

Keywords: พุทธเถรวาท, พระธรรม, ชยสาโร, ธรรมะ, พุทธศาสนา, บ้านบุญ, ปากช่อง, โรงเรียนทอสี, ปฏิบัติธรรม, Buddhism, Dhamma, teaching, retreat, Ajahn, Jayasaro, Bhikku, Theravada, Buddhist, Tradition, Thawsi, School, Panyaprateep, ปัญญาประทีป, Bahnboon, ธรรมะเทศนา, dharma, bhudha, 2561, 2018

Id: 0wTy1_7_z44

Length: 61min 54sec (3714 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2019