Creating a Dharma Will with Venerable Khando (in person & online)

Most of us who have studied Buddhist teachings for any length of time have heard a great deal about death. It can be summed up in the simple statement:

I'm going to die, that's for sure.

As we go through our days doing our best to have a peaceful and content mind, we are both living well and preparing for death. When death arrives, the most important thing is to have a peaceful mind, and how we live very much influences how we die.

How do we prepare for the inevitable? The prayers and practices that sustain us in our everyday lives can also sustain us at the time of death, but if illness or mental incapacity comes before death, we might no longer be able to study, pray and meditate, and do the practices that have cultivated a peaceful mindstream. Having those practices available to us can help ease the transition from this life to the next.

Preparing for death includes preparing those around us who wish to support us - our spiritual community - to help us through the transition. A Dharma Will is a way of making clear to ourselves and others what will help us have a peaceful mind when we are sick, dying or have died.

In a followup to Venerable Amy Miller's workshop on preparing for death spiritually, Venerable Khando will walk us through what we need to know about creating a Dharma Will, which lays out our wishes for support before, during and after our deaths. Kadampa Center has an online Dharma Will form that we will be using.  

We encourage you to bring your own devices - phone, tablet or laptop - so you can follow along during the workshop.

In this morning workshop, we will learn about the dying process and the elements of a Dharma Will, and then prepare our own documents that lay out our wishes and needs.

We will have an outline that we can use as a guide to fill in our personal information. By doing this in a group, we can receive and offer support to all of us within the group.  See below for links to a variety of resources, as well as to Kadampa Center's online Dharma Will form.