What is useful for us at the time of death?VIETNAMESE TRANSLATE ENGLISH BY=THICH CHAN TANH.

 The simplest is to gradually eliminate what is not useful to us. Clearly, when we die, most of the things we enjoy in life no longer help us, at least not directly. So the wealth and fortune that we have so hard to collect, will now be completely useless. Position, fame, name, too ... Relatives can no longer directly help us: parents, children, spouses, physicians, friends including teachers or students, no one can prevent death, even those we trust and trust in a lifetime.

Think for a moment. Obviously, when we close our eyes to death, our subtle body and mind will leave the material shell first to move towards another place of rebirth, our possessions and property will be utterly useless, in the sense that we are not bring anything. Do not think that because we have been successful and prosperous, even rich, we can be reincarnated with money and material possessions. This is not possible. Moreover, we cannot take anyone with us, even the ones we love the most. Even if we feel a very close attachment, spiritually or otherwise, for some people, these bonds are no longer "useful", in the sense that they There is no way to follow us any further.

In fact, death means that the subtle body and mind must continue on their way to a new life, but cannot bring what they have owned for the rest of their lives, nor can they Take someone with you, no matter how close you are. Besides, even the body thanks to certain specific karma that we acquired at the embryo and used from the beginning to the end of life, the body that is so close and loyal to us, also forced to leave behind.

In short, everything that we have called our "life" in our whole life, said "belongs to me", "I have", when we die, does not belong to us anymore, but will enter in the hands of other owners, equally transient.

This applies to all: money, clothes, houses, and even the body - the body - is no longer mine, but will belong to those who remain, my heirs and so on. And then one day, they will also have to go through that situation.

Then all the material possessions we own in a lifetime, we must leave when we die, and pass them on to other people. For relatives, those closest to them - parents, children, etc. - dying means separating from them, permanently. I will never see them again. This does not mean that we will not see them again in rebirths, but it certainly will not be the same. Yes, we can meet them again, but in completely different contexts, in which each person will have a position that is not at all like the relationships that we have knit in this life, relationships. that we earnestly desire.

In order to describe all the scenes of the dissociation and to emphasize their eternal nature, the Buddha used all kinds of illustrative examples, especially in the Lalitavistara, the Buddha referred to the scene of fall foliage. As the weather turned cold and the wind blew hard, the leaves in the harmonious foliage of the treetop began to fall and scattered with the whirlwind. After that, trying to pick them up and attach them back to the old branches to restore old foliage is a useless, impossible job.

The leaves once dispersed are permanently unable to gather together, like dissociations after death, irreversibly. The Buddha taught that no one can recover from the same circumstances. He also took the example of a flowing water, which flows downward and never, never backward.

So, what can be useful when we die? To realize it, we have to start by testing what we can bring with us when we die. According to Buddhism, when one leaves one life to lead to another rebirth, one can only take with it what is infested in the mind, or more precisely, in the stream of consciousness. What has settled in the stream of consciousness? Also according to Buddhism, these are the "imprints", also known as the "potential". Every time we act on one of the three aspects of body, speech and mind, we leave in our mind a trace, an energy or a potential. And we can only act in two ways: one is bad, two is good. As a result, the potentials that we accumulate over time can be either good or bad, depending on the behaviors that generate them: good is good, otherwise bad is evil.

That said, what is beneficial to us when we die? We will carry it with us, whether we want it or not, all the potential we have already stored. Of course, bad potentials cannot help us. On the contrary, they are harmful to us. So what is left that we can rely on? There are only good potentials. If we have consistently and vigorously carried out good, just and selfless acts throughout the past life, the potentials that arise will follow us and be very beneficial to us. Only these behaviors. Aside from that, there's nothing else! END=NAM MO SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=GOLDEN AMITABHA MONASTERY=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=THICH CHAN TANH.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.25/11/2019.