These are two public talks that Geshe Michael Roach taught in Raleigh, North Carolina back in April, 1999. Death is feared, avoided, and denied in ways that often causes us to live as if we will never die. At the end of life, people often die with intense regret from not having done the important things they wanted to do in their life. Acknowledging the fact that we will die, and that we have a limited, unknown amount of time left is essential to making our life choices. By meditating on death in the proper way, we can make every moment of life precious and meaningful. A good death meditation results in a happy, clear mind, free of anxiety and fear. One learns to live each day of life as if it were the last, thereby avoiding meaningless activity and spending each moment in the most fulfilling way possible.
By meditating on death in the proper way, we can make every moment of life precious and meaningful. A good death meditation results in a happy, clear mind, free of anxiety and fear. One learns to live each day of life as if it were the last, thereby avoiding meaningless activity and spending each moment in the most fulfilling way possible.
At a recent retreat, one of the meditation practices that Geshe Michael has been teaching students is to imagine going through the stages of death and learning how to meditate on emptiness at a very crucial moment during that process as a method of seeing emptiness directly and reaching the essence body of a Buddha.
This collection of classes is for the purpose of having a regular daily practice. It’s different than many of the other courses here on The Knowledge Base which are meant to teach the philosophy, or intellectual background, of Buddhism. These classes were on monday nights and were taught in a completely different style, focusing on all the most practical and essential elements that should be done each day to really get the most out of all the other intellectual study.
What is death? Most of us live our entire lives in fear and with a very limited understanding of this seemingly inevitable endpoint looming somewhere on the horizon. What happens after we die? In this one-night lecture given by Geshe Michael Roach on September 7, 1999 he clarifies what death is from a Buddhist perspective. He explores the core Buddhist ideas of emptiness and karma, and how they are crucial to an understanding of death, and that most important question of what happens to us after we die.
A public lecture by Geshe Michael Roach in downtown Melbourne, Australia in 1999. This lecture is divided into two parts, the first part is learning how to do a death meditation and then the second part is learning the practice of exchanging yourself and other people. These two practices normal come together and teach us a very powerful method of prioritizing our life and living in the most meaningful way possible.
Topics include: The three main realms of existence; the 17 levels of the form realm; the six types of beings of the desire realm; the four levels of the formless realm; ways of taking birth; all of the different realms of existence and the beings inhabiting them an explanation of: the intermediate state (bardo), the hells, craving spirits, animals, humans, pleasure beings, and formless beings; the causes to be reborn in each realm; how you move from realm to realm; ways of taking rebirth; how and why rebirth occurs; the conditions needed for human birth; the nature of intermediate state (bardo) beings; how world systems form, evolve and are destroyed; a description of the different types of eons; the four principles of karma; the six sufferings always present; the five degenerations of our age; the problems which result from not being aware of death; the advantages of cultivating an awareness of death; how to meditate on death correctly; and how to see the purity.
