Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche’s advisory talk to a group of Healthcare professionals from Louisiana, the United States on17 October, 2014

Facilitator: This group is from the US. It was put together by Warren Ebert from Lafayette, Louisiana. Warren is the president of the Home Healthcare Association for the state of Louisiana. Most of the people gathered are here through Home Healthcare, and especially caring for the elderly and the dying, hospice-related care. We are all thrilled to have you here. Thank you so much for taking the time for us. Can you say a little bit about yourself to the group?

(At this point, the group’s Leader and Co-ordinator, Mr Warren Ebert, gave a biographical introduction on Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche, followed by Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche’s talk, as follows.)

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche – Welcome old friends. I don’t know how we should start our conversation. I have a number of limitations: The first limitation is my inadequate knowledge of the English language, through which I find it very difficult to express my feelings or thoughts. I honestly feel lacking vocally. And secondly, you all have chosen a very difficult topic to talk about, that is, how to help dying people and what kind of help can be given to the dying.

Death is one thing no-one has done and experienced. Whoever dies never comes back to tell how they experienced it. (Laughter.) So, apart from that, the concept or the perception of death greatly varies from faith to faith, tradition to tradition, community to community, and there is not any common ground to understand what death is, and how the process of death comes, and what is after death. These are unresolved questions humanity struggles with all the time, everywhere.

Now, for quite some time, modern scientists quite confidently had been saying that there is nothing after death. But that is also now gradually changing. The top-level scientists are not willing to say there is nothing after death; they only say “We do not know.” (Laughter.) “We do not know what happens after death.” And I think that is a more honest statement. To completely deny the continuity of consciousness after death is not a very easy task, and some of my very religious scientists say it a little differently. They say “We do not know what will happen after death, but there is a doubt there might be some continuity, and therefore the benefit of doubt must be given”. So that also, I think, makes sense. If you do not know, then you cannot completely say that there is no doubt. Not-knowing means there is a grain of doubt.

India is a very ancient country where numerous philosophical traditions have originated and developed. Among them, [there were some] six major traditions—part of the six major traditions—the Buddhists, the Sikhs, the Jains, and the other religions. Out of these numerous different traditions of philosophy, only one philosophical tradition denies the continuity of anything after death. That is the tenet called Lokāyata, Rejecting at Distance. Lokāyatas say the mind, the consciousness, is a part of the body, and it is of the same attribute with the body: If you have a good body, you will have a good mind, and if you have a weak body you will have a weak mind; and, when the body disintegrates, the mind goes dead. They use the metaphor of painting on a wall. A beautiful painting on a wall is the quality of the wall. When you destroy the wall, the painting also goes away. So, do many in this life, and after death nothing will remain.

Apart from that tenet, all the other traditions do believe in the continuity of the soul, that is, those who believe in and assert an entity called ‘soul’; for those who do not believe in the soul, they believe in the continuity of consciousness, the real essence of the person.

What is different in the body before death and after death? Until a person is clinically dead the body does not completely disintegrate or decay. It does not decompose, at least. It remains. When death occurs, then the body completely becomes a corpse, a useless, dead body. So the question is, how do these two different states of being happen to a body? As long as a body has been owned by a thing which can be called consciousness, or conscience of potential of knowing or feeling, that body automatically remains intact, or does not decompose at least. And when that ownership, the ownership of consciousness, goes away, then that body automatically decomposes. It cannot remain for several days. So this question of consciousness, or the soul, or in Hindu terminology, the atman—all these are not easy to understand because it is not physically tangible. You cannot touch or distort or do something with it. There is not anything physically there.

Now, in this world, the majority of people are believers. I don’t know how many believe, but they do claim that they are believers: either Buddhists or Christians or Muslims or Hindus or so forth. And all of those believers have a different way of believing in the soul or consciousness. In most of the Christian traditions, I was told, the soul is the finest creation of the Almighty and after the disintegration of the body it will remain either in Heaven or Hell. So, there may not be a past life, but the majority of Christians do conceive a next life, and the next life might be in Heaven or Hell. By this, they do not deny the continuity of the soul or consciousness. Similarly, the Muslims also do not talk about past life, but they talk about future life. Their concept is a day after death, during which everybody comes up and then there will be a judgment from God. The entire Hindu traditions, including the Jains, very strongly assert an atman, an independent soul, which is unchangeable, non-transitory, which is permanent, and which goes from this body to the next body, and the next body. So there is no beginning of life, and there is no end of life. It follows that this life has a number of past lives, there was no beginning, and it will have no end when we die from this body and the soul takes another body to go on. There is the transitory existence, of rebirth in good realms and reborn in bad realms; from bad realms again reborn to good realms, so on so forth.

Buddhists neither believe in a soul nor an atman, unlike Christianity or Hinduism. We only believe in a stream of consciousness. The stream of consciousness is not permanent, it is ever changing, but it has an unending continuity. Therefore, as long as that consciousness, with force of past karma, has a relationship with this body, as long as the stream of consciousness in the body does not cease ownership, the person is living. When the ownership ceases, the person is dead. This is the Buddhist way of looking at death. Then we have a complete explanation of the process of dying if someone is dying of a natural death. Of course in an accident or bomb explosion, that is an instant death, there is no process. In that case death comes without the natural process of dying; the separation of consciousness and body is very violent because it could not go through the natural process. With the natural process, if a person is well-practised with the process of death, then he or she can deal with the death quite easily. So, this is…I’m beating around the bush. (Laughter.) I do not know what kind of dying and death you are perceiving and you are dealing with. What I’m trying to get across to you is that, until we have a common ground about the concept of death, then we will not be able to have a good dialogue on how to deal with that death. So my summation is that the basic question is how to help the dying people. I think that is the most important question for us, and also the most practical.

To help the dying we must know the dying person’s faith and his or her perception of death. If someone is a good Christian, then in order to help the dying person, we must do things in accordance with the Christian tradition. If someone is a Muslim or if someone is a Sikh, or whatever faith he or she belongs to, we should respect that tradition and whatever kind of conception they might have. We shall have to deal with that accordingly. If someone is a non-believer, has no concept of death or dying, for them we must also be sensitive to a few things. Believer or non-believer, people do not welcome death. This is very common. Everybody wishes not to die. This is, I think, a common feature not only among human beings alone, even animals try to survive. There is a theory of survival of the fittest. That means each living being has a tendency to hold on to life and avoid death. And death is looked at unpleasantly and with fear and disliking. Nobody welcomes death. This is our greatest problem. Lama Tsongkhapa said in his commentary on The Stages of Path, that all wise people or stupid people, everybody knows one day he or she will die. I think everybody knows we cannot live forever. Since we have taken this body we will have to give up this body sooner or later. But even a diseased person who is going to die in the next few minutes, that person also thinks “I am not going to die now. I may live until tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or until this afternoon.” Even a very serious patient in the ICU, they still have that feeling of “I will live a bit longer.” So that is the sign that we do not wish to embrace death willingly, and sometimes there is a fear. Fear of losing the body, fear of losing life, fear of losing possessions, and fear of losing relationships with their husband, wife, children, parents, whosoever it may be that is close to them that they may lose. This kind of fear is obvious.

At the same time, to come to the end of this body, the body feels a great deal of pain and discomfort. That is another problem for the dying. Bodily discomfort and emotional fear and attachment make the dying uncomfortable and fearful. So, to help those dying people, I think modern medical science has a lot of facilities to reduce pain, or perhaps not to reduce pain, but not to experience pain. These are good for helping the dying. There might be pain, but the pain is not acknowledged by the brain, so that kind of medication is helpful.

And then to avoid any cause of anger, discontentment, fear, while a person is transiting from life to death, what can we do at that time? We do not make any annoying sounds nearby, not read anything that is disliked by the dying, not say any unpleasant word that can be heard by the dying person, and instead, to make a mental transition from a sensitive state to an insensitive state without much struggle or problem with feeling pain. ….All the religious teachings talk about this, and even the non-believers who have no faith can die peacefully. Dying peacefully means to avoid any immediate cause for anger, fear, or strong desire. All these things—I don’t know how we can try. And with any believer, as I have mentioned before, there are different ways of showing the holy signs. When a Buddhist person is dying, a picture of Buddha or a picture of the dying person’s teacher may be put at their side and he or she might look to it and then some prayers or mantras can be chanted, or beautiful recordings of sound can be played, so the person can smooth the mind slowly.

I don’t know scientifically what the view is here, but I personally do believe that the transition period from life to death, it may be about half an hour to an hour, depending on the individual. During that period, not disturbing the body is also helpful. But these days, if you keep the body on life-support instruments then it is difficult to leave the body undisturbed. Because at the time of transition, time of death, the body becomes very weak, and also for a certain period of time it remains sensitive. When it is very near to death the body’s sensitivity goes away. As long as the body is sensitive and there is structure, there is some movement in the body which disrupts the entire person’s attention, and that distraction of attention is again disturbing the smooth transition of consciousness, or smooth entering into death. I have personal knowledge: One of my very close friends, he was a literary person, when he was dying in the All-India Medical Institute in Delhi, in the Intensive Care Unit, because of his state the doctors removed the life-support instruments; his wife was sitting at his bedside holding his hand. Then his heartbeat came back and went away, came back and went away. It was very difficult to pass away. Then doctors told her “You must remove your hand.” She removed her hand and pushed her chair away a bit from the bedside, then he just passed away. So, that kind of bodily touch and disturbance also can disrupt the smooth transition from life to death. It may appear absolutely unscientific. Today we always talk about scientific verification. But many times, this experience, whether scientific or not scientific, is experiential. If we have some place for experiential things, these things need to be taken care of.

From the Buddhist viewpoint, after clinical death the transition of consciousness may happen immediately or may not happen immediately, and before the transition of consciousness, cremation of the body or burying of the body is not good for the dead or dying person. This is now a common knowledge to many people, given the many centuries that Buddhists have had the concept of death meditation, death samādhā, the mind remains in the body for many days although clinically completely dead. No breath, no heartbeat, no brainwaves. The Mind and Life Institute people are now experimenting with those kinds of death samādhā and they have many instruments lying in the Delhi hospital; they go around when some important Lama passes away, and when he remains in the death samādhā, then they put on the instruments. We do not know the data, what they have found out, but they do it. This is now scientifically undeniable. As long as the person is in death meditation, the body remains in death, but the mind is functioning, like a live person. My teacher, Kyabjey Ling Rinpoche, passed away in Dharamshala, and he remained in that death samādhā for thirteen days. I was able to see him in that body on the eleventh day. He passed away eleven days before, and when I came to see his body it was just like he was alive. Practically clear face, only that there was no breathing, no heartbeat, but otherwise it was a completely living body. After that, only a year ago, one of my senior colleagues from my monastery remained in the death-time meditation for twenty-one days. And during those twenty-one days, from Hubli and from Mysore, many medical doctors came and examined his body and declared him dead; he was declared dead twenty-one days ago, but he remained for twenty-one days in death samādhā. So there is something which, should I say, which gives up the physical body on its own will and turns it out.

Therefore, as I mentioned before, we must give the benefit of doubt to all dying people, whether someone is a believer or non-believer, to respect that there is something inside that body and it is going through transit. And for that, we should give all kind of facilities and congenial environments for that transition.

These are a few stray thoughts that I have put before you. It may be absolutely unusable for you, or you may believe it as irrational or whatever it may be, but it can be a point on which you can think upon and use your own rationality to think something about it. I think now I would ask you to share if you have any questions or comments so that we may have a more interactive way of talking. I’m talking without knowing any of you, and that is very difficult to establish a dialogue. Not knowing your attitudes, your understandings, your outlooks, I’m just speaking a monologue to you. Maybe it may not be useful for you. So I would like your comments.

Co-ordinator – Thank you very much. In the care that we provide in healthcare, there is a difference in knowledge from the professional people like the ones in this room and the person receiving the care in their family. How can we overcome our ego to continue to be compassionate in the way that we provide care for those people who are aging and dying?

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche – (Pause). It’s a very big question. We will have to find the answer through prolonged research and examination; I can’t say. But a compassionate mind is absolutely necessary and indispensable for everybody who gives care to anyone. This I can say definitely. A mother who cares for her child is all compassion; compassion without selfishness. After some time, then the compassion can be contaminated by selfishness and self-desire, but the natural-born compassion is there. A teacher taking care of a student, the elderly taking care of the younger generation, the younger generation taking care of the dying and older generation—all of this if done without compassion, then everything becomes mechanical and dry; mechanical and dry, that is not care; that is performing your duty, your livelihood. You are doing it for your livelihood, and that reduces the value of the entire action, and therefore the receiver will not feel anything. It is imposition. If a person is very weak lying on a bed, never able to put a blanket on his or her body, and if somebody compassionately puts a sheet on that person, not only just putting the sheet on, but that gesture, that action, gives a kind of satisfaction and sense of security in the person’s mind. And if you are on the round and it is your duty to just put it on them, the action is the same, but the receiver will definitely feel the difference.

So now the question: how to develop a compassionate mind? That is a big question. First of all, I would say, everyone, all sentient beings, not only human beings, all living beings, have the potential of compassion. Therefore you can capture it, and you can give an effort to evolving it. That cultivation is absolutely necessary. His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama has talked about a separate ethics, or ethics beyond religion, and he’s also talked about universal responsibility with having a compassionate mind. For that, people are now trying to create a curriculum on how to cultivate the compassionate mind, how to arouse the seed of compassion. Of course it is not possible in a day or two. It will need prolonged and perpetual practice, guidance and self-practice.

Now we are trying to define care, and then, second, to receive care. And then, third, giving care. We could define care as anything that is not borne out of hate and anger, or anything that is not from an uncompassionate mind. Once you identify what is care and what is not care, then first you have to qualify yourself to receive care. Real care cannot be purchased with dollars or rupees. We can employ a very professional nurse to take care of you by paying money, but if that nurse does not have a compassionate mind, then you cannot purchase that compassionate mind. As such, when we talk about receiving care, if the receiver does not have any thought of care, then expecting compassionate care from the giver is not justifiable. Therefore, by practising how to receive care, you come to know care and can then give care to others, and that kind of care is out of a compassionate mind.

A compassionate mind is very difficult to cultivate because compassion demands a sense of equality between all living beings. That is possible, but not easy. You need years and years of practice in your cultivation, because in the ordinary state of our mind, it is very clearly evident that all other beings are divided into many categories. For example, I listen to radio news or I read the newspaper, and all the news is tragic: twenty people died, or thirty people died. I don’t think about it because it is just news. Twenty is a number. But if that news is somewhere around Dharamshala, then I react differently because my friends or relatives might be involved. If that news carries the name of your relative or close friend, your reaction to it is completely different—but the news of death is completely the same, and the dying of a person is the same. It is our reaction to this that is entirely different. So, how can we cultivate a mind that has equal behaviour and feeling for all living beings? That is the foundation of real accomplishment of the mind. But I do not deny that the personal compassion of any particular person is good, it is not enough. It has to be enlarged to the level of universality. And it is possible.

Q: First, it seems clear to many of us, as we listen to people speak and teach to us, that there should be more time—especially in the West—given to the body after it dies, instead of just whisking it away. That’s becoming more clear to us. What are the negatives or the consequences that we might see in the next life, or around us, for not doing that? For not providing time for that body after life has left it?

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche: I am speaking from the viewpoint of the Buddhist concept. So, I mentioned in the very beginning that dying is a lengthy process which can be helped to be completed in a certain period of time which varies from person to person. One may need five minutes, other may need three hours, and yet another many need five hours; it varies from person to person. And I mentioned that in accidental death, like from a bomb explosion or an airplane crash, there is an unnatural parting of body and the consciousness. This unnatural parting gives an unbearable shock to the stream of consciousness. Due to that shock, the consciousness will find it very difficult to transfer from one body to the next body because it is an unnatural departure. If we take the example of a person who is very proficient at high jump or long jump, then performing that jump requires that their body takes an appropriate position so that they can jump properly. Without proper positioning, that person is just thrown and they cannot jump properly. Similarly, the consciousness, in order to transit from one body, must go out of that body to enter into the intermediate state, and from that intermediate state search and enter into a new body. This is the process of the consciousness. So if you do not allow a natural departure, a person may be dying in the hospital bed, but if just after the stopping of the breathing you throw away the body, then the effect may be similar to a bomb explosion, it becomes an accidental death. That is why the time allotment is quite helpful and you do not need to wait for an indefinite time. The body’s sign is quite clear. As the consciousness departs, the body smells and the colours change in a way that can be observed to somebody trained in this. In Tibet, dead bodies have been taken care of by particular people, and they know when it should be disposed of. The other sign, which is a very gross and visible sign, is when the body loses its flexibility. That is also our sign of a departing consciousness. If the body is flexible, then you need to wait. Once the body is inflexible, you do not need to wait anymore.

Q: If you treat clients and work with people who are not actively dying and are not there to care for their dying moment but rather some other illness or some other problem, what are ways that we can treat them that might help them later when they do face dying? What ways can we show them compassion early on that might help them later when we might not be there? In another word, sometimes we cannot be with a person at their moment of death, so what can we teach them about their own process of dying that might ease that process for them and make them more peaceful in the moment?

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche: What the Buddhists do is mostly make them understand that death is inevitable, and that it can come at any time. This is the certainty of death, and the uncertainty of when it comes. The reality is, I think, that everybody knows about death but they do not accept it. So to teach people to realise it internally and then accept it will reduce the fear. Then you can reduce fear and embrace death. No one can avoid death, it is inevitable. Therefore I should create in my mind a kind of willingness and accepting for that event without any fear. I think that is common and basic.

The fundamental thing is to have a peaceful death. A peaceful death means that the dying mind is not under tremendous pressure. To remove the pressure from the dying mind helps to create a peaceful death. For example, among the older people or the patients, in India there is a social tendency to not talk about death, and to not tell people about the inevitability of death. And this is a kind of trouble. I think this should be reversed. We should talk about death and be more familiar with the processes of death. By talking about it, people become more open to death and can evolve a kind of courage to face their death. This we can do much, much before death comes. This kind of awareness would help.

Q: If someone learns to meditate and has been meditating for many years, does this help the process, because you are already separating body from mind and increasing awareness? Does this make the process of transition easier?

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche: Yes, for a practitioner, there is a lot of focus on the process of death. But that does not apply to everyone. Those who are not practitioners cannot become practitioners and those who are not believers cannot become believers. Otherwise proud Buddhist people who are practising the tantrayana, the Advanced Continuity Vehicle, they actually practise the transition of consciousness from the body. They use sleep and dreams and awake-state; they use these processes to practise in this way. And when you are going into sleep, if you are a practitioner, you can recognise most of the process  of dying. It is quite similar process from being awake to going into sleep that we are not able to recognise now. When you are a practitioner you practise them. When you go from a very deep sleep and return to dreams—that is a transition. And then that dream works for some time and goes back into the deep sleep without dreams—that is another transition. From that sleep, comes awake state–another transition. All these transitions are used to transform the mind at the time of death.
I think our time is up, according to the schedule.

Co-ordinator: We can stay all night; [laughter]. Thank you very much. Do you have time to give us a blessing?

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche: That formality is not necessary.

Q: Do you have time for one more quick question?

Pro. Samdhong Rinpoche: Yes of course.

Q : In Buddhist belief, we’re talking about when we bury our death we are giving them time to die, so to speak. Their body is going to stay, and then decay. What is the difference between burning your dead and burying your dead?

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche: Burning and burying of the body?

Q: Yes.

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche: I don’t think there is any difference. The body needs to be disposed of cleanly, not to pollute the environment. If you do not dispose of a body cleanly, it can cause pollution to the environment. Therefore in Tibet there are four different systems. First, is burning; second is burying; third is putting into the sea or river; and the fourth is giving to birds.

All these depend on the local situation. For example, in central Tibet, they do not have sufficient wood or fuel to burn a dead body. For cooking they use only the cow dung, which is not sufficient to burn a dead body. So their way of disposing of a dead body is to give it to the birds, the vultures. And all the body disposal places have hundreds of birds that permanently reside there. And this is completely clean, not a piece of bone will remain; the body would be completely disposed of by the birds. And there is a technique on how to cut and make the bones into pieces. And in my village, my area, they do not allow a body to be burned during certain seasons, and therefore they have to bury them under the earth. But once that season is passed, they take them out and burn. In certain places, they are permanently buried, which is quite good because they bury them quite deep with a lot of earth on top, which doesn’t disturb the environment. And burning is of course very clean. The fire burns everything. I don’t think there is a difference between methods of disposing of the body for the departed person. It is only for the rest of the society, and not to damage the environment. A clean disposal is necessary. Also, different cultures have different ways of disposal. We used to oppose the disposal of body into the rivers and sea because it is not a good disposal, for it pollutes the water and the living beings in the sea. It is a cause of pollution. Proper burial, burning and giving to the vultures—these are good ways of disposal.

Q: If you were to tell a child, in simple terms, who was scared of death, something to relieve their fear, what would you tell them to not confuse them?

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche: I don’t know. That is a very big question. I do not believe that there is a blanket answer to this question. Not only a child, but even elderly people are scared. Each one has a different attribute, a different way of thinking and a different way of liking or disliking, different ways of rationality. As such, we shall have to find different ways of telling things to different listeners. And telling things to old listeners, as a universalised method, may not be possible. Commonly, for a child, the child’s mind should not be considered, as we do many times, as irrational. Even small children have their own rationality. According to their own rationality, we shall have to deal with them. Telling them about death, as a subject, it may not enter into the mind of an immature child. For the immature child, it may be necessary to communicate through metaphor. For example, if someone is standing by the road and a dead body is being carried away, in India, we often say (I lived in Varanasi for a long time, where it is full of dead bodies crossing the street) and we look to that dead body and a child might ask what happened to it. And then we say, that person has died. And the child will ask, what is death? Then we have to say, he is no more, he is not coming back, he is not able to speak again.

If you look at the conversation between Siddhartha, the young Buddha-to-be, and his charioteer; when Siddhartha was going around the street in the chariot, he saw a dead body, an old person, and a diseased person—that story you might have heard about. And he asked questions to his young charioteer what these were. When Sidddhartha was told that this is a dead body, that he is no more alive, then Siddhartha’s question was, “Does death happen to some selected ones, or it comes to everyone?” Chanda, the charioteer’s, answer was “With this body, sooner or later, death definitely comes to everyone.”—which is completely universal. And that changed Siddhartha’s mind because the communicator and the listener were both tuned in a similar wavelength. And that is how to communicate. And so, in telling the child, we shall have to establish a wavelength with the listener. In that way we can find, for each individual, a way to communicate.

Co-ordinator: Would you join us for a group photo?

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche: Yes of course. This face does not have any copyright; [laughter].