Lightly Guided Meditation; Dharmette: Ajahn Chah's Advice to Woman on Deathbed

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation; Ajahn Chah's advice to a person on her deathbed. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Matthew Brensilver at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 09, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Lightly Guided Meditation

Welcome to all. Nice to see your names. Let's do as we do. Find your posture. We'll just open to what's here.

What does it mean to open to this moment? We put down the more obvious tensions: grasping and aversion. We put down more subtle doings: making something happen, influencing life, control.

Instead, we trust that there's a deep medicine in the surrender. Just letting your breathing cue to your deep mind that it's okay to stop bracing against the moment, bracing against truth.

Just noticing the kind of dividing lines we draw, often subconsciously, of what is supposed to happen and what's not, what belongs and what doesn't. The line that separates me from what's happening to me.

No pressure on the one hand, no time to lose on the other. Not a kind of contracted self-state where we're sourcing our effort from the desperation of self, but a sober appreciation of fleetingness. No time to lose. No time like now.

Being very awake is not a meditation technique. No problem with techniques, but non-delusion is not a technique.

Awareness is not meant to protect you from anything, except maybe everything. Just like one gust of wind meeting another gust. What can be harmed? Ego.

Dharmette: Ajahn Chah's Advice to Woman on Deathbed

It's as though sometimes ideas come to me, I get inspired to share something. And sometimes I have to ask, what do I want to talk about? I was seeking inspiration when preparing for tonight, and yesterday, nothing was coming. I sort of floated these little trial balloons of, "Okay, what do I want to talk about?" And nothing felt good, and nothing felt right, and nothing felt like I could just call it in.

But that feels really bad. I realized I've pretty much been, in one way or another, inspired to talk about the Dharma since I started talking about it many years ago, but not yesterday. Not yesterday.

Partially, that was a function of the war and the moral vandalism of our age. I was in touch with a long-time peace activist and Dharma teacher in the Middle East who shared they were teaching over Zoom with sirens and explosions above. I kept feeling some anger amidst my sense of helplessness. And for a few seconds—it was only a few seconds—the thought arose, the fantasy arose of, maybe I should give a talk on what I dislike most about our species. I could give that talk. But that was pretty quickly ruled out as akusala^[1], not skillful.

So, what do you do when you're jammed up and stuck? I turned to the words of a master. Not that those words are perfect consolation for all the pain points of this moment, but they would be enough. So, I'll share what I picked as a transcription of words from Ajahn Chah^[2] that was given to a student's mother who was on her deathbed as a little recorded something that has become quite notable. I've condensed it so we have time for it, but I'll read it in a few minutes. So there's Ajahn Chah talking to a student's mom near the end of her life.

He says, "Now, Grandma, set your heart on listening respectfully to the Dhamma, which is the teaching of the Buddha. While I'm teaching you the Dhamma, be as attentive as if the Buddha himself were sitting right in front of you. You should understand that even the Buddha, with all his virtues and perfections, couldn't avoid the weakening that comes with aging. When he reached the age you are, he let go. Letting go means that he put these things down. Accept the truth about the fabrications of the body, whatever they may be. You've relied on them since you were born, but now it's enough. The Buddha taught that fabrications are not us, they aren't ours, whether they're inside the body or out. They keep changing in this way. Contemplate this until it's clear.

"You've been alive for a long time now, haven't you? Tasted really delicious foods, but they were no big deal. The beautiful things you've seen, they were no big deal. The ugly things you've seen, no big deal. Everything has to change in line with its condition. The truth of these conditions: if you try to fix them in a way that's not right, they won't respond at all. But there is a way to fix things. The Buddha taught us to contemplate this body and mind to see that they aren't us, aren't ours, just suppositions. And this isn't true just for you. This is the way things are all over the world. The Buddha looked at things in line with their conditions, that they simply have to be that way. So, let them go. We leave them be.

"Take your awareness as your refuge. Meditate on the word 'Buddho'^[3], awake. Even though you're really tired, put your mind with the breath. Take a good long out-breath. Take a good long in-breath. Take another good long out-breath. Focus your mind again if you wander off. Focus on the breath. Buddho, Buddho. Let go of everything outside. As the breathing gets more and more refined, we see it soften^[4]. It gets smaller and smaller. But we make our mind more and more awake. We keep watching the breath and get more and more refined until there's no more breath. There's just awareness, wide awake. Let go of everything, leaving just this singular awareness.

"But don't get deluded, okay? You don't need to take hold of anything at all. Just take hold of the awareness. Don't worry about the future. Don't worry about the past. Stay right here. Ultimately, you get so that you can't say that you're going forward, you can't say you're going back. You can't say that you're staying in place. There's nothing to be attached to. Why? Because there's no self there, no you, no yours. It's all gone.

"This is your duty right now, yours alone, to try to enter the Dhamma in this way. Your children, your grandchildren, your relatives, everybody, don't be worried about them. Right now, they're fine. In the future, they'll be just like this, like you are right now. Nobody stays on in this world. That's the way it has to be.

"Drop the world. It's just the world. That's the way the world is. If it arises in the mind, make yourself understand. The world is nothing but a preoccupation. If you think that you'd like to keep living, keep on living a long time, it makes you suffer. If you think that you'd like to die right now and get it all over with, that's not the right way either, you know. It makes you suffer, too. Because fabrications aren't yours. When you sense that the world is like this, you see that it's disenchanting. There's nothing that's really you or yours. You're disenchanted, nibbidā^[5]. Disenchantment isn't disgust, you know. It's just the heart sobering up. The heart has seen the truth of the way things are. There's no way you can fix them.

"The important point is that the Buddha has built a home for ourselves. Build a home so you can let go. So that you can leave things be. Let the mind reach peace. Peace is something that doesn't move forward, doesn't move back, doesn't stay in place. It's peace in that it's free from going forward, moving back, staying in place. Pleasure isn't a place for you to stay. Pain isn't a place for you to stay. When we reach this last stage in life, he tells us to let go and leave things be. We can't take them with us. We'll have to let them go anyhow, so wouldn't it be better to let them go beforehand?

"Today, I've brought you some Dhamma as a gift in your time of illness. I don't have any other gift to give. I've brought you some Dhamma, something of substance, that will never run out. Now that you've heard this Dhamma, you can pass it on to any number of people and it'll never run out. It'll never stop. It's the truth, the Dhamma, a truth that always stays as it is."

William James^[6] said the word "and" trails after every sentence. So, there's more to say. Like the sense that the power and beauty of those words don't answer every question we might ask in this moment. Those words don't console everything that needs consolation. We have this fantasy that the path might console everything that needs consolation, but that's fantasy. There's some remainder. Something remains, to my mind, inconsolable.

But that statement is most definitely something. I don't feel it's always the practice to drop the world; it's just the world. But that is a necessary practice. And in some moments, it's the only practice. And in other moments, it's the precondition for maturing a love that doesn't seek any control or effects whatsoever. It's just love.

So, thank you to the Luang Por Chah lineage. I offer his words for your consideration. See you next time.