At the Bedside
This course moves outward, one session at a time: first to your own death, prepared for twice a day as ordinary discipline; then to the grief of someone left behind after a death has already happened; then to a dying person still able to receive a teaching, in real and undisguised pain; and finally to a family, together, at a death that — by the tradition's own account — went well.
Nothing here is abstract. Every session reads a specific, named person — Anāthapiṇḍika, Dīghāvu, the unnamed mourners of the Dart's verses — rather than a general philosophy of impermanence. This is meant to be useful the next time you are actually present with someone facing death, your own or someone else's.
Not a philosophy of death in general. What to actually do, the next time you're in the room.
All four suttas are read in full on this site, in Bhikkhu Sujato's complete CC0 translation of the Pali Canon, each with its own structured reading guide, full text, and ten-question self-check quiz. This course adds a single connecting thread across four discourses; it does not retranslate anything.
- Practice the twice-daily mindfulness-of-death discipline as an actual habit, not only an idea encountered once.
- Distinguish feeling loss from prolonged lamentation, and explain why the tradition treats them differently.
- Explain why a dying person may be owed the fullest teaching available, not a simplified one — and what that means for how you'd show up at a bedside.
- Describe, from a specific textual example, what active, real-time support during a death actually looked like — message, visit, teaching, confirmation, family presence.
- Carry one specific practice from this course — the twice-daily check, the dart image, or the four-factors confirmation — into your own life or community role.
Five steps, every session — read the sutta itself in full partway through, not as an afterthought.
All four sessions are live. The order moves outward: your own death, someone else's grief, someone actively dying, and a death witnessed well.
- Nothing to buy. Every sutta is on this site in full, in Bhikkhu Sujato's CC0 translation, with its own reading guide and quiz.
- No prior course required. This course stands on its own.
- A quiet, unhurried setting for Session 3. Its description of physical pain is direct, in keeping with the source text.
- Willingness to actually practice the twice-daily discipline in Session 1, not only read about it once.