Dying, Death and the Bardo
Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche
Tape 1
What I'm going to be explaining, starting this evening, is the interval between lives, or the bardo. As most of all of you know, the best known explanation of this is the book that is called The Great Liberation Through Hearing, in the Bardo. And that book is a very complete and precise explanation of what happens in the bardo as well as what you can do to deal with it and what opportunities there are for liberation. However, because of the book's length and the relatively short amount of time that we have available to us this weekend, I felt it would be inappropriate to start something that we couldn't finish. Therefore, the text that I'm going to use as the basis for my presentation, is an aspiration liturgy, called The Aspiration for the Bardo. And although this text also is a complete treatment of the subject, it is brief enough that we will be able to complete it this weekend.
The liturgy of aspiration begins with a stanza of supplication and the stanza says, "Those who are our refuge in this life, in future lives and in the interval in between, our guides, the gurus, I supplicate you. Lead us who, though negative karma, mistake the projections of our bewilderment to be real, out of our wandering through the six states within samsara."
The first point made in this stanza is that the gurus, which means in this case, those that hold us and raise us onto the path, such as the golden garland of the Kagyu, and so forth, our gurus are our sources of refuge not only in this life, but in all future lives, and even in the intervals or bardos in between lives. So therefore, you begin by supplicating them expressly and by implication, the other sources of refuge, the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and so on.
The request you make in supplicating them is explained in the second two lines of the stanza. What is pointed out here is that it is through the negative karma that we accrue that we wander in samsara. But our accumulation of negative karma is caused by our mistaking our own bewildered projections or appearances to be real. That is to say that the appearances that appear for us or that we experience, are functions of our bewilderment and not independent realities. It is through mistaking them to be independently existent or independently real, that we become fixated, generate kleshas, accumulate negative karma and so on. It is this that causes us to wander through and be reborn in the six states, the realms of the hells, pretas, animal, humans, asuras, and devas. So our supplication is that we be led out of this. This introduces the whole aspiration, which is concerned with the discovery of the nature of bewildered appearances. And you will see as the liturgy goes through the various aspects of the bardo, that it is concerned with the penetration of appearances and the discovery of their true nature.
The next stanza begins with a definition of the bardo as we usually use the term. The term interval or bardo simply means something that is in-between two other things. And it will be used and explained in different ways here. But generally speaking, we use it to mean the state in-between lives. And in the next line it is defined that way: the type of existence that one has in-between lives when one has not gone to or reached the next state of birth. So we usually use the term bardo to mean just that: to mean that state that we're in after death, before the next rebirth. What characterizes that state is explained in the next line, which says, "in that state, one has no freedom or control." A being in the bardo has no ability, for reasons that will become clear, to control where they go and so forth. You are driven about by the strong force of your karma. Your karma�Xyour previous actions�Xbecomes the thing that controls you in the bardo, and you are driven about by it, which means that you are thrown about violently from one place to another, without your having any ability to stop this.
Now if that is what the bardo is like, what can we do about it? That is explained in the next line which says, "Through the instructions concerning special visualizations for use at that time, may I be able to practice all the various ways of bringing the bardo to the path."
In order to gain control over the bardo one must practice in the preceding life. In the state of the bardo, because one has no control one doesn't have the opportunity to engage in practices. So one's aspiration here is, through recognizing what the bardo experience is, to be motivated by that recognition and to pursue those practices, which will give you the ability to gain control and ideally liberation, within the bardo. Now these practices consist of specific methods, types of focus or visualizations, and all of them are ways of bringing various aspects or stages of the bardo experience onto the path. Now, in using the term bardo here in the restricted sense, where it refers to the period in between lives, it will be used in other senses as well, as we'll see: it basically has three phases. And the methods, and this will be taught in detail further on, the methods, Rinpoche said, for dealing with these, involve learning to see the particular type of bewildered projection or appearance which characterizes that phase of the bardo as dharmata in the case of the first bardo, deity and mantra in the case of the second, and the nirmanakaya or emanation body in the case of the third. And again, this will be gone through in detail later on. But that is what you are referring to when you say, "May I undertake the specific practices that will bring the bardo onto the path."
The next stanza describes the true nature of the bardo. It begins by saying, "If you examine it or analyze it, you will see that there is no beginning or end, therefore there can be no in between." Ithere refers to the beginningless and potentially endless cycle of samsaric existence. If you examine existence, you will see that it is without beginning. Furthermore if you examine any phenomenon, you will see that it has no true arising. Now that which does not truly arise does not truly cease and therefore cannot truly abide in between. Or, otherwise explained, because existence has no beginning, there is no abiding state that is in between. So, ultimately speaking there is no single state that is in between two other states because none of these other states have ever truly arisen or truly occurred. So therefore, ultimately, or in the context of absolute truth, what we call the bardo doesn't exist. However as the next line points out, it certainly seems to, to the person who is experiencing it. The line says, "Nevertheless, in the context of bewilderment, it arises as a mere interdependent appearance." In the context of bewilderment means experience as we know it, when the cognition that is experiencing is obscured and therefore bewildered, when you therefore take things that do not have true or independent existence to have such existence. The mere appearance of the bardo or interval, which is itself interdependent, (it is the mere appearance of interdependent conditions in that way) appears, and because your bewilderment consists of the mistaking of mere interdependent appearances as independent realities, you therefore mistake the bardo as an independent reality. In other words, although the bardo doesn't really exist, it seems to as long as you are bewildered. For example, for although we can say that no phenomenon ever truly arises, any phenomenon we could isolate is a mere interdependent appearance and therefore is empty of true origination, therefore we can say that no phenomenon truly ceases. That which never truly came into existence cannot go out of existence, and therefore no phenomenon truly abides or persists, in between origination and cessation, since it never originated. Although we can say that, we also have to admit that we experience the appearance of origination of phenomenon. They appear to start to exist. And we experience the appearance therefore of their ending, destruction or cessation and the appearance of their abiding. Now the origination, cessation and abiding of phenomenon are mere appearances, not truly existent events, but nevertheless, we do experience them in our bewilderment as though they were real.
Now, the bardo is not just the period in between lives. In fact we can say that, as the Buddha taught in teachings, all of samsara and nirvana without exception can be included in or summarized as the bardo. Because as long as there is a state of bewilderment, as long as there is fixation on duality, as long as there is the belief in the independent existence of what is experienced and the cognition that experiences it, as long as there are all of these different kinds of categories of twos: pleasure and pain, good and bad, samsara and nirvana, that arise for us, we are in some kind of bardo or interval.
And so this stanza concludes with the aspiration, "May I gain trust in the Buddha's teachings, that all of samsara and nirvana are in this way included in this category of bardo, which does not truly exist, but nevertheless, appears to.
The next two stanzas divide the bardo into two aspects, the bardo of the nature, or the true nature, and the bardo of appearance, manner of appearance. True nature here means how things are and appearance means how things seem or appear. So the first stanza says, "In absolute truth, things are beyond limit and their nature is the middle." Beyond limit means beyond the limits of existence or absolute nonexistence, and beyond the limits of having a beginning and having an end, having true origination and having true cessation. The nature of things, absolute truth, is that middle which transcends all kinds of conceptual elaborations. A conceptual elaboration is any kind of concept about reality that you can come up with. The nature of things is beyond that and therefore is called the middle because it avoids any such extreme. Therefore the nature of things actually is between or beyond all of our concepts and all of our dualism. Our bewilderment starts with the fixation on duality, the duality of self and other, of pleasure and pain and so on, and it includes the appearance of duality, the appearance of self and other as separate and so forth. But the true nature of all of these things that appear to us as dual is not dual, it is beyond that. And therefore, in the words of the liturgy, it is between that. And that nature of things which is between all extremes or limits is what's called the bardo of the absolute or true nature.
The next line says, "Everything is that, and it is everything. There is nothing whatsoever that has any nature other than this." And therefore, in a sense you can say that this nature is everything that there is, everything that truly exists because it is the nature of all things. Therefore in this stanza you end by aspiring, "May I meet or see the face of the bardo of the true nature." See the face means not to merely understand it, but to gain direct experience of it through precise instruction and the intensive practice of meditation and other methods.
The next stanza describes another aspect of the bardo, which is the bardo of how things appear. Relative truth and, Rinpoche here defined it, the term "kunzop" which is usually translated as "relative" or "relative truth," really means, "fake." But if you say "fake truth" in English, which would be actually a stricter translation, it sounds like an oxymoron. Relative truth is called fake because when it is viewed by an undiluted cognition, it is seen to be unreal, to not truly exist. So therefore what is relative truth? It is a continuous process of bewilderment and bewildered appearances. It is continuous in the sense that it is beginningless and it has never stopped and it is a continuous process of bewilderment and bewildered appearances or projections that is also constantly gaining momentum. The power of it is constantly increasing, causing our bewilderment to grow over time. So through bewilderment we experience relative truth, or fake reality, as real. What is this like? It is like someone in the audience of a skilled illusionist. A skilled illusionist, either through whatever method or through the power of casting spells, can cause their audience to see all sorts of things that aren't there. They can cause you to see people, horses, elephants, houses, whatever you want; none of these things are there, but as long as you don't realize that, you react to them with pleasure, pain, disappointment, happiness, enjoyment, fear and so on, just as though they really were there. Our experience of relative truth is this beginningless deception by the fakery or illusion of our own bewilderment.
Now the term that we usually translate as existence literally is possibility. And I need to interject that because of the next line and Rinpoche's comment on it. The next line says, "In this possibility, nothing is impossible." So the nature of existence, which is synonymous here with samsara, is that because it is all founded on bewilderment, it is all founded on delusion, it is all of the nature of illusion and bewildered projections, anything is possible. Any form of bewilderment, any form of hallucination can occur, just as an illusionist can cause you to see just about anything. So this stanza ends with the aspiration, "May I gain strong certainty about the bardo, or interval, of how things appear." And that means, may I gain the strong certainty, that all of these appearances, the mere appearances, the projections of bewilderment that make up what we call relative truth or fake truth, are nothing more than the bewildered projections of a mind that is captivated by fixated belief in the duality of that which does not possess duality.
Next the text turns to a presentation of different aspects of the bardo and it divides the bardo, types of bardo, types of interval, initially into three and then divides the third of these again into three because it's the third with which we are primarily concerned here. The first type of bardo or interval described here is called the interval between birth and death and it means exactly what it sounds like it means: it means the period of time that starts with when you are born and ends with when you start to die in that life. What demarcates this interval or separates it out of the course of someone's existence is obviously physical events or physical transformations: the transformation of being born into a certain life and of that life decaying and culminating in death. Also, the experience of this interval, the interval between birth and death, is marked by physical activity and physical transformations of all sorts of appearances and all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant things that you hear and that you say. And all sorts of positive and negative, pleasant and unpleasant experiences and thoughts and so on. What needs to be understood about this first interval, the interval between birth and death, is that none of its appearances are reliable. They are unreliable because they are ephemeral; they do not last; they are constantly changing. It is a state of constant change, therefore, ultimately speaking, the appearances of this life have no more existence than magical illusions or dreams because they are mere fluctuations, they are changes, they are not the persistent existence or abiding of anything. So the aspiration connected with this first interval, the interval between birth and death, is that you come to recognize all of these appearances of this life as merely the fluctuating hallucinations of an interval or bardo.
Now, how do you do this? You do this in the best cases by practicing intensive meditation to the point where you can rest in even placement within the direct experience of the illusory nature of phenomenon, or of the emptiness, which is their true nature. If you cannot do that, it is important at least to gain certainty, through examination, of the appearances of this life, in their being ephemeral, illusory and unreliable.
The second interval or bardo that is described here or isolated is the interval of dream, and this is what we normally call the dream state. It consists of experiencing appearances that don't really exist but that seem to because you are asleep. Now what we call sleep is a physical state, so therefore this interval, like the other one, is demarcated by physical changes. In this case the physical change is that when you fall asleep, your senses stop functioning. You stop hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and feeling to a great extent, therefore the images that arise in your mind take on an appearance of reality because there is no sense experience to overpower them. So in dreams, you seem to do all the things that you do while you're awake, and while you are dreaming you take these things to be really there, you think you're actually doing these things, you're actually seeing and hearing the things you seem to be seeing and hearing, but in fact, while you are dreaming, you're not seeing or hearing anything. You're not doing anything. And when we wake up from dreams, even though we realize that it was just a dream, we further fixate on the appearances of the dream by investing dreams with significance. We think, was it a good dream, was it a bad dream? What does it mean? And we solidify the illusory dream images even after we have awoken from them. So the aspiration here is expressly that all of this bewilderment connected with the dream state, its primary bewilderment, thinking that dreams are real while you are dreaming, and its secondary bewilderment, thinking that they're important after you wake up, that all of this bewilderment be removed. Now that is the express aspiration, but by implication this refers to how we experience in general, because although we can extinguish the dream state from the waking state, by the physical factor, or physical transformation of sleep, our cognition fundamentally functions in the same way: it is deluded; it is hallucinating. The bewildered appearances of dreams are easily understood by us to be unreal, once we are awake. But if you think about it carefully, the bewildered appearances of the waking state, in their unreliability, in their being ephemeral, impermanent and so on, are no more real and are just like dreams or magical illusions. So really, what this stanza of aspiration is pointing out, is that by eradicating the bewilderment of taking dreams as real, you can move toward eradicating the bewilderment of taking conventional appearances, daytime or waking appearances, as real as well.
Following that, starting the next stanza, we come to the third interval. And it is this third interval that is usually what people mean when they talk about the bardo and therefore it is the principal subject of the rest of our text. Here, it is called the interval of possibility and it is divided into three, which is simply called the first part, the middle part and the last part. And they correspond to dying, being dead, and approaching rebirth. These are called the interval of possibility because they are the state in which the various possible rebirths can happen, as you will see.
Now, the paths through which you prepare for the three phases of the interval of possibility are: the path of the clear light through which the nature of the first bardo is recognized to be dharmakaya; the path of the illusory body through which the nature of the second interval is realized to be samboghakaya, or the body of complete enjoyment; and the path of the nirmanakaya, where you transform the final phase of, or the third interval, into birth as nirmanakaya. So you make the aspiration initially, all summarized into one stanza, "May I traverse or complete these paths and thereby achieve liberation in these intervals." Now, what does this mean? Whatever form of meditation we may believe ourselves to be practicing, whether we say we are practicing Mahamudra, "I meditate on Mahamudra," or we are meditating on the Great Perfection, "I am a Great Perfection practitioner," or we meditate on the profound Middle Way, whatever it is we may think we are doing, what we are supposed to be doing in any of those three systems of practice, is coming to a direct realization of the true nature of all things. In terms of what that nature is not, you could say that nature is not inherent existence. In terms of what it is: you can say it is the freedom from true inherent or independent existence, and it is that which is called the "clear light." So the purpose of meditation in general is to gain the direct experience of the clear light and to gain sufficient experience to achieve liberation during the first part of the interval at death. So if you can truly realize that all things are empty of existence, true existence, then that is the path bringing liberation in the first interval.
In case that doesn't work, you also meditate on pure appearances. That is to say that from within that state of emptiness, the nature of all things, the deity arises. This may involve the deity arising from a syllable and/or a scepter and so on, and whatever deity it is, Vajravarahi, or any other, you identify yourself completely with this utterly unreal and yet absolutely vivid and clear utterly pure appearance. By doing this you gain the possibility of liberation in the samboghakaya of that deity in the second phase or the second interval.
In case that doesn't happen, you also prepare for taking a rebirth as emanation: which is to say, through the force of love and compassion, and the force of your aspirations for appropriate rebirth, to be able to stop inferior birth, inappropriate birth, and choose a birth through which you will be able to continue the path and be of benefit to others. And that is how you achieve freedom of birth in the third and final phase of the interval of possibility. So that stanza summarizes what is going to be presented throughout the rest of the text, since the text is primarily concerned with the interval as we usually mean it, the interval between lives.
Now, the text turns to the first of the three parts of the interval of possibility and this is called the first interval and it consists of the entry into the clear light at the time of death. It starts with the dissolution with what are called the elements. The elements are qualities of physical matter�Xsolidity, cohesion and so on�Xand when your body starts to break down, and the breaking down of your body is what we call dying, these things start to fall apart or dissolve. Now, they are presented usually in a certain sequence as they are in this text, however Rinpoche said they don't always break down in the same sequence; there are several places in what we are going to go through now where these things can vary from person to person. There is a standard sequence that they are presented in based on the majority of processes, but they are not always the same.
When the earth element (solidity) dissolves, you become unable to support your physical body. Rinpoche says for example this is what happens as we get older and you become weaker. That is the breakdown or the dissolution of the earth element. When the water element dissolves, you mouth and sense apertures like your eyes, and nose and so on start to dry up. You start to have a dry mouth, you don't have enough natural fluids or moisture. When the fire element dissolves, your temperature decreases and your warmth starts to withdraw from the ends of the limbs inward, toward the center of your body. And when the wind element dissolves, you stop breathing externally. Now this doesn't mean that you become unconscious yet. You may remain conscious and your consciousness is still seated within your body, but at that point you stop breathing and your pulse will come to a halt. This is one place, Rinpoche said, where the order can vary. What's going to follow after this is a three-part sequence, which precedes the entry into the clear light, that's called appearance, increase and attainment. It sometimes happens that the breathing doesn't stop until people have already experienced both appearance and increase. And we know this because individuals have described their experience of it as they are dying and while they are still able to talk, which means that they are still breathing.
But nevertheless the classical order, for clarity and based on the majority of dying people, is that the four elements dissolve and then there is appearance, increase, attainment and then the clear light.
When appearance dissolves, the first of the three stages that follows the dissolution of the elements, what happens is that appearances for you, what you see as the dying person, subside and become a bright, fairly uniform, eventually uniform bright whiteness or white light. That is the appearance associated with this stage. There is a cognitive state that accompanies that. And the accompanying cognitive state is that your awareness, your mind becomes a little bit vague, like mist or smoke, which means that, in this case, Rinpoche said, it means that you can sometimes focus and sometimes you can't. Now, many people experience this as they are dying before, or at least start to experience it, before their breathing stops. Rinpoche said he knew an old Lama who was dying in Darjeeling who was describing all of this stuff up to this point and a little bit beyond it, as he was dying. And also, Michael Doran of KTD definitely experienced the first stage, appearance, before his breathing stopped, because Rinpoche said that as he was dying he said, "Where is all this light coming from?" And this is not uncommon. When this happens what it means is that the dying person is experiencing what is called "appearance". Or here, the dissolution of appearance. Now, there is a third thing that happens along with appearance. It's a suppression of a certain type of thinking. The thirty-three different forms of anger, thirty-three different thoughts that are aggressive, or angry, in short all types of being angry stop. "Stop" however means that they are suppressed. They become dormant. It doesn't mean that the dying person has purified the affliction of anger. It means that the physical condition of dying has shut down the biological mechanism that supports the emotion of anger. So temporarily, anger is suppressed.
The next stage and the last phase of the dying process we'll be looking at this evening, is called "augmentation" or "increase." And it refers to the increase of the appearance of death, which arose during appearance. It has an appearance, a cognitive aspect and also an aspect of suppression or dormancy. The appearance is that the dying person sees everything go red. Before everything was white, now everything just becomes a uniform field of red. Their cognition becomes like fireflies, which in this case, Rinpoche said, means that it's sporadic, it flashes on, flashes off. Sometimes their mind is lucid and clear and focused and sometimes it's obscure. The suppression aspect is that when this stage of dying is reached, all forms of desire, lust, attachment, craving, hankering, all things, wanting, any form of that, all of it, stops. Again, it has not been purified. The forty different types of desire are merely suppressed because of the biological dying process. According to our text, most people realize at this point that they are dying. Rinpoche said, the fact that it says "most" in the text, with our understanding that the order of sequence is indefinite to begin with, means that some people will realize that they are dying. Those who realize that they are dying at this point also recollect what they have done. If they've led good lives in which they can take satisfaction, then they will start to feel happy at this point, and if they've led lives full of harming others and so on, then they can start to be terrified. Often people will at this point start to have visions of their future parents and the place of their subsequent rebirth and different sorts of events in their future life or the circumstances and so on. For example, it is not unknown that at this point, if they can still speak, butchers (butchers in Tibet doesn't mean like the guy behind the meat counter, it means the guy who kills the animals) and others who have harmed beings will have terrifying hallucinations that may indicate their future rebirth and also the sense of things coming to get them. Like they'll say, "get these animals out of here, they are going to get me," and so on.
In short, at this point, the dying person may become aware that they are dying and may also recollect their previous actions. Therefore it is at this point that intervention is of the greatest benefit. What sort of intervention? At this point, when appearance has dissolved into increase (the red appearance), the dying person's cognition can be steered, somewhat. In other words, their mind is like fertile soil. Anything that is planted in it at that time can have a very powerful effect on what happens to them in the rest of the interval and therefore in their next life. So it's at this point that it's a good idea to recite the names and mantras of buddhas or of the fathers and sons of the lineage, great gurus, and so on. Now, ideally, Rinpoche said, this means if the person, him or herself, can actually recite these things, can bring these things to mind at least, that will be the most powerful thing. Otherwise, whoever is assisting them through the dying process can intervene at this point by reciting these things with their mouth actually right next to or even touching the person's ear. And in that way, what you are trying to do is remind them of those to whom they supplicate and also you can remind them of their previous practice, instructions can be given at this point, and so on. And also, it is at this point, that the ejection of consciousness can be performed for the person's benefit with the greatest benefit, because it is at this point that the consciousness can be ejected from the body but it is still in the body, and therefore can be gotten hold of and moved.
So this is the critical time when interventions of all kinds will be of the greatest benefit. Please recite the dedication and aspiration with the wish that through the virtue of this session that all beings, having received authentic instructions from eminent teachers, come to recognize the clear light at the time of death, and achieve the state of omniscient liberation.
Donden Chojin Association
Copyright 2010
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