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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—your previous actions—becomes 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." It here 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—solidity,
cohesion and so on—and 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.
end of tape 1
tape 2
Continuing from where we left off last
night, we had finished looking at the stages of dissolution, the stages
of dying, up through the first two of the three stages which precede the
experience of the clear light, and these were appearance and increase.
The third stage, what ensues upon or follows after increase is called
"attainment." And attainment refers to the final shutdown or dissolving
of the physical processes of the living body and this shut down or
dissolution causes a corresponding set of experiences. The appearance is
called utter blackness. However, Rinpoche said, in fact, it's not really
the appearance of blackness, it's no appearance at all. Previously there
was brilliant whiteness and then brilliant redness and now it's called
utter blackness because it is the utter absence of such appearances and
this is happening because the functions of the body and mind, which
support or allow appearance are shutting down. The corresponding
cognitive experience is that your cognition, your awareness, your mind,
becomes like a butterlamp in a vase.
Now, a butterlamp that is placed in a
vase may be lit and burning and therefore producing light, but none of
the light will escape the vase. From outside it would appear to be just
a dark vase. In the same way, there is a continued bare or mere lucidity
of your cognition, but it is divorced from any kind of contact with any
object such as an object that appears or an object that is cognitively
apprehended. So it is a state of mere lucidity without the apprehension,
either with the senses or with the cognition itself of any object.
Because this is the state your cognition is in at this point in the
shutdown or dissolution process, the final seven of the eighty types of
thoughts stop. Previously we saw that the thoughts connected with anger,
the varieties of anger, and the thoughts connected with desire, stopped.
Now the last seven, which are the seven varieties of stupidity, or
bewilderment, cease. And they don't cease or stop in any final sense.
They are suppressed and become dormant. And as with the previous two
states of suppression, the suppression is caused by the simple fact that
the biological processes that support them, and enable them to arise in
connection with their respective objects, are simply not functioning at
the moment and therefore these thoughts stop, but they have not been
purified; their tendency has not been in any way uprooted.
During this whole process of dissolution,
there has been a gradual withdrawal of the cognitive faculties. And
cognitive faculties here refers to the six main functions of
consciousness: the apprehension by the eye consciousness of visible
forms, the apprehension of sounds by the ear consciousness and in the
same way, the apprehension of smells, of tastes, or tactile sensations,
and of objects of mind.
These
six functions of mind or consciousness have gradually dissolved and
therefore all appearances, not only visual appearance, but also auditory
and other appearances, have gradually, during this dissolution process,
diminished in intensity, or clarity, and then finally disappeared
altogether. This is something that we can often observe happening with
the dying person. Sometimes, they will say, "Come closer, you're so far
away," because they actually perceive you as being a greater distance
away from them physically than you are, at the bedside, simply because
of what's happening to their eye consciousness. Or they'll say, "Speak
louder, I can't hear you." And again, it's a corresponding thing
happening with the ear consciousness, and so on.
At this
point, at the conclusion of the three-fold shutdown of appearance,
increase and attainment, all of the elements of your conventional being,
your body and mind, that is to say your aggregates, your physical
elements and your senses, all of these have become dormant, and have
temporarily, in the words of our text, entered the mandala of absolute
truth. Which means that they are temporarily absent as obscuring
factors. Again, they have not been purified or uprooted, they are merely
dormant. However, because of their dormancy, because you are not seeing
or hearing anything and so on, there can arise various hallucinations at
this point. One sort of hallucination is that people who have led nasty
lives, who have done bad things, will often have terrifying
hallucinations of yamas or demonic beings, executioners and so on,
coming to get them. People who have led predominantly virtuous lives,
may have some experience of well-being, such as fleeting glimpses of
very pleasant things: pleasant environments, pleasant people and so on
at this point. Remember however that these appearances, because of the
withdrawal of the consciousnesses, are entirely subjective like dreams.
Because of their entire subjectivity, as is the case with dream images,
they have no stability and can fluctuate, change from one thing to
another, and in any case don't last very long.
At the
end of all of this process of shutdown, the final events that constitute
death occur. What keeps you alive, that is to say, what keeps your mind
biologically seated in your physical body, is a wind or energy that is
called the life wind. And the life wind abides within what is called the
avadhuti or the central channel of your body. Now, the conditions for
your becoming a biological being were the ovum from your mother and the
sperm from your father, obviously. The original seeds, which led to you
as a resultant physical, biological being, are still present within your
body. They are held in place by the life wind. They also contain the
life wind and keep it in the body and the way this works is as follows.
What's called the red element, which is the remaining seed essence of
the ovum, is present during your life, while you are alive, in the
center of your body, below your navel. And what's called the white
element, which is the seed essence of the sperm of your father, is
present in the center of your body, at the very top of your head. These
things are held in place, they're held apart, forced apart, as it were,
by the life wind, which fills the central channel in between them,
inflating it, the way, for example, Rinpoche said, something we inflate
like a tire is held inflated by the air within it. Not only does the
life wind hold these things at the upper and lower ends of the central
channel, but these things trapped in those places, also contain the life
wind between them, in other words, keep it from escaping.
What happens at this point is that with
the shutdown of everything, the last to shutdown is the life wind
itself, which is the most basic factor of your being alive in the
conventional sense. As it shuts down, it withdraws into the heart area.
Now, what happens is similar to deflation except the central channel
doesn't deflate, but the pressure within it is withdrawn. As a result,
the red and white elements move for the first time. The red element
rises up because there is nothing forcing it down. It rises up toward
and eventually comes to rest in your heart. At the same time, the white
element, that you have received from your father, descends, or falls
down from the top of your head until it also reaches your heart. What
ends up happening is that five things that form the essence of your
being come together in one place. The most basic mind, the all-basis
consciousness and the life wind, which previously filled the entire
central channel and all of the potential cognitive functions, those
three things, and the white and red elements, all of these five things
come together at the very center of your heart, in the midst of the
central channel. Because of this, when they come together you could call
that the actual moment of death. When they come together, because of
their doing so, because all possible types of thoughts or conceptuality
are temporarily dormant or have ceased, you have an experience that is a
cognitive experience, not a sensory experience, but that is in quality
like the experience of boundless, clear or cloudless sky. And this is
the experience of what is called the fundamental or ground clear light.
What you experience at that moment, you experience not because of any
meditation you may have done. You experience it because it is your true
nature. Therefore it is not experienced only by people. It is
experienced at this point in the death process, even by small insects.
And it is experienced simply because all beings have buddha nature, and
what you are experiencing at this point is buddha nature itself.
The reason you can experience it under
those circumstances and the reason you don't normally experience it is
that normally it is masked, or covered by thought. All thought has
become dormant, has ceased at this point, therefore there is nothing
masking the experience of buddha nature. That's the good news. The bad
news is that unless you have trained yourself assiduously in the
recognition of the clear light during the preceding life, you won't
recognize it. Because everybody experiences it and obviously that isn't
sufficient. What happens if you don't have any experience or have
insufficient experience in its recognition is that you are kind of
stunned by it. You are like a small child looking at the murals in a
temple. When a child looks at a mural in a temple—and that's often a
good analogy, here it's a bad analogy—they see the same colors and
shapes that an adult does, but they have no way to recognize these as
depictions of one thing or another. They cannot make the judgements,
"This is well painted, and this is ill painted." Nor can they think this
is this deity, this is that deity and so on. They are completely
ignorant of what they are seeing. In the same way, if you have not
familiarized yourself with the clear light during the preceding life,
through practice, although the ground clear light will appear to you as
it does to each and every sentient being at the moment of death, it
won't do you any good. It will appear, you will experience it, you will
not recognize it and it will only last a moment. You will move from that
experience to the next thing in a moment. Now, Rinpoche said, moment
here doesn't necessarily mean a specific unit of time, like a fingersnap
or something. Moment here means the duration of an action that is
uninterrupted by any other action. So for the time that you are immersed
in the experience, you remain immersed in it, but as soon as, failing to
recognize it, your mind emerges and moves on to something else, it's
finished.
So, what
is necessary above and beyond all else, is to familiarize ourselves with
the clear light, through hearing, through thinking or reflection and
above all through meditation. Through understanding what will happen at
death, the process that we will go through, and thereby being prepared
to recognize it, through cultivating the faculties of recollection, and
alertness, through meditation practice, especially through meditation
practice that is based upon the profound instructions of one's guru, so
that you become able, you develop the familiarity and the faculties of
mindfulness and alertness that will enable you to recognize the ground
clear light when it arises.
Now, you do this by meditating upon the
traditions, which teach you how to meditate on the clear light: the
Middle Way, the Mahamudra and the Great Perfection. In anyone of these
you go through a sequence or series of practices that culminate in the
ability to experience to some degree, in this life, the clear light. Now
what you experience as a meditation practitioner is called the path
clear light or the child clear light. It is something that is
experienced through conscious and assiduous cultivation. Only through
such cultivation, do you have a chance of recognizing the fundamental or
natural or mother clear light at the time of death. But the aim of such
cultivation, these meditation practices and these entire systems which
culminate in these practices, the aim of the practice where you rest in
a state free of all mental elaboration, in that way, is to gain such
familiarity with the path or child clear light, that at the time of
death, because you are familiar with it, you recognize the ground or
fundamental clear light, the mother clear light, just as you recognize
someone you had seen before.
Rinpoche said, a modern analogy that's
even more apt is a photograph. There is a difference between the
cultivated child clear light and the actual or ground mother clear
light, just as there is a difference between someone's photograph and
the person. But if you've seen a good photograph of someone, you can
later recognize the person from having seen that photograph. In the same
way, if you cultivate an authentic experience of the path clear light in
this life, you can recognize the ground clear light at the moment of
death.
In the
cultivation of meditation practice during this life, meditative state is
marked by three characteristics: well being, lucidity and no thought,
nonconceptuality. But the way we normally experience these things during
this life is quite imperfect. It is imperfect in that it is fleeting and
it is imperfect in that it is to a certain degree and not beyond that.
We experience some degree of well being, some degree of lucidity and
some degree of freedom from conceptualization. The ground clear light,
which is experienced at the moment of death, is endowed with these three
characteristics to the ultimate degree. It is absolutely and perfectly
blissful or endowed with well being. It is utter and pure lucidity, and
it is totally and completely free of thought or conceptuality of any
kind. In order to recognize it, because being endowed with these
characteristics makes it so different from our normal state of mind, you
must cultivate a meditative state endowed to some extent with these
three characteristics in this life. So in this life you have to
cultivate what's called a child luminosity that is a one-pointed samadhi
or meditative absorption endowed with the characteristics of the ground
clear light itself.
Now the
ground clear light is called the ground or fundamental or basic clear
light. It's called the mother clear light. It's called the natural clear
light. It's called these three things because it is the true nature of
all things. And it is, in and of itself, utterly and completely pure,
and has been utterly and completely pure and perfect from the very
beginning. In fact, it is utterly unchanging. It is indestructible. It
is unaffected by anything. And it never has changed, never does change
and never will change. The only change is whether or not it is
experienced and whether or not it is recognized when experienced. If you
have cultivated a familiarity with the child clear light during the
preceding life, then what happens when the ground clear light appears is
like a child recognizing his or her mother. And this is called the
meeting of the mother and child clear lights. At that point because you
experience the true and natural clear light, you recognize it based on
your cultivated experience of the clear light and what you previously
experienced and what you experience at that moment, mix together like
water being poured into water and that is the best type of liberation.
It's called the liberation at the moment of death, for those of the
highest capacity. And although in a sense you could call this the
beginning of the interval, because it's the first interval, it's also
called "before the interval." It's the first opportunity for liberation
and is liberation in dharmakaya, to be achieved by those who've
familiarized themselves with the clear light.
It's
important to understand that the type of liberation where someone
recognizes the ground clear light at the moment of death is complete and
full. It is actually the achievement of perfect awakening, or buddhahood
at the moment of death. And this means that when someone achieves this,
they achieve that buddhahood that has all of the qualities for which it
is so renowned, not only the liberation of the person, him or herself,
but the ensuing and permanent all-pervasive ability to be a consummate
benefit to others in every possible way until each and every other being
has likewise, achieved perfect awakening. Recognizing therefore, the
value of attempting to achieve such a state of awakening and liberation
through the recognition of the ground clear light at death, you should
abandon all the distractions of this life. Distractions refer to all of
the things with which we normally concern ourselves. Things which are
either of no use whatsoever, immediately or in the long-term, or are
actually destructive and negative, or at best, are of temporary and
largely only physical benefit. Such things are distractions because
involvement with them prevents you from engaging in the type of
assiduous practice that is necessary in order to achieve this liberation
and awakening. So in order to achieve it you have to abandon such
distractions and abide in solitude, which means practicing in isolation,
like for example, Jetsun Milarepa: remain in a state of three-fold
stillness.
Three-fold stillness means that your body
is utterly still. It is free from unnecessary movement of any kind and
especially from unnecessary and meaningless physical activity. Stillness
of speech means that you are silent. Your speech is still and
undisturbed. Your faculty of speech is undisturbed by the meaningless
babble of conventional speech. And stillness of mind means that your
mind is in a state free of elaboration. This refers not merely to state
of tranquility or shinay, but to a state of insight where your mind is
withdrawn from all forms of conceptual elaboration or thought. In short,
in order to experience and thereby be able to recognize the clear light,
you have to cultivate a meditative state that is the conjunction of
lucidity and emptiness without fixation.
Now the lucidity spoken of here is your
mind's defining characteristic. Your mind is defined by the fact that
you can cognize. You can experience. You are aware. So therefore we
would say that the defining characteristic of your mind is cognitive
lucidity. But your mind is not just mere lucidity, because it is not a
substantial brilliance like that of the sun or the moon or something
like that. The mind is, while lucid, utterly insubstantial. It is empty
of any kind of substantial characteristic or entity whatsoever.
Furthermore this lucidity and this emptiness are not two different
things. They are inseparable. So resting in a state where you
experience, just as it is, your mind, the union of lucidity and
emptiness, and do so without any kind of fixation, which means without
any kind of fixated or conceptualized apprehension, is called a state of
"great even-placement." In general even-placement can refer to either
the perfect meditation of tranquility or that of insight. Here it refers
to that of insight. It is more than a state of tranquility because it is
a state where the mind is resting completely and utterly within a direct
experience of its own nature. It is therefore called "great
even-placement."
Remaining within that state, you are
practicing what is called, "the conduct of extreme simplicity." Conduct
of supreme simplicity refers to a mode of life where you are free from
the elaborations or complexities of not only mundane activities,
distractions and disturbances, but even conceptual functions of mind and
thinking itself. So the aspiration you make at this point, is to perfect
this practice—the conduct of extreme simplicity—so as to be able to
achieve the supreme liberation, liberation in the dharmakaya and perfect
awakening at the very moment of death.
Now, another thing about this liberation
that you must understand is that this is not something that is purely
legendary. It is not the case that when we speak of this liberation we
say, in the good old days, people used to achieve this, but nowadays it
doesn't happen. It does happen. In fact, it happens all the time.
Rinpoche said, "In my lifetime, and even to be more specific, since I
left Tibet, there have been several instances of this in my ?????? [end
of side one; something got lost]
Side 2
[cont.]…at the refuge camp in Buxa where
we were all living. Having died he remained in state of meditative
absorption for three days. Now, in order to understand what happened to
him and to his body, you need to understand that he had been very sick
before he died and feeble. But at the end of his life, just before his
death, he sat up perfectly straight, seemed completely comfortable and
at ease, dismissed his attendants, those who were helping them, said,
"You all go outside and play." Asking merely for his outer robe and his
meditation hat to be brought to him, he put these on and he started to
do his daily practice book. He chanted the first half of it and left the
second half undone and in that state, he passed away.
This was happening at a time when it was
extremely hot in Buxa. And as you know, dead bodies rot and stink very
quickly in hot weather. But his did not. For the three days of his
samadhi, he remained seated upright, without the slightest appearance of
decay, either visible or olfactory, and in fact it wasn't just the heat
of the time and place, because people were offering butterlamps, as many
as a hundred in the room, in which his body was left, and the double
heat of that still didn't cause any kind of scent of decay. And as far
as how he looked, generally speaking when someone dies, to say the
least, his or her complexion is no longer rosy. But his complexion
actually improved. And he looked more florid, more lively after death,
than he had while he was alive.
These indications, specifically the lack
of decay, the florid complexion, in other words the appearance of
circulation and so on, are considered definite signs that someone has
achieved liberation in the dharmakaya, and in fact, perfect buddhahood
at the moment of death. Another example of this was a retreat master
that I knew who in the same way passed away and he also remained seated
with the same signs for the same period of three days. There was also a
lama called Karma Norbu who had done a retreat at Palpung Monastery and
was also a disciple of Chatrul Rinpoche. He lived in an isolated place
in a small house where water was scarce, causing disputes between him
and his neighbors in Nepal and yet when he died multi-colored light,
like the light of a rainbow, started to emerge from his body and from
his house, filling the surrounding area. It was also noticed that his
body was getting a little bit smaller as time went on. His neighbors of
course recognized this as what it was and felt somewhat regretful about
their having fought with him in the past and they prostrated to his
remains and they venerated him properly.
A lama who lived for sometime in the
West, Lama Ganga, who passed away at Thrangu Monastery, after his death,
remained seated in samadhi, in meditative absorption for no less than
five days, and I saw that, Rinpoche said, myself, because I was there
when he died. My point is that there are many instances up to the
present day, of people achieving perfect awakening, through these means.
And in fact, this happens so commonly that in a sense, people are so
used to it that they don't even bother to report it all time. They
simply say, well that's what happens if you practice dharma, that's
dharma's blessing. But we shouldn't be that casual about it, because
when you consider what it is, it is definite and irrefutable proof of
the possibility of perfect awakening at the moment of death.
I mention all of this and comment on it
at length because it's important that you understand that as bad as the
times are, dharma is not affected or diminished by it in any way. We do
indeed live in an age of decadence. But the dharma is not decadent.
Dharma is the same as it always was. For example, the land of Tibet has
suffered greatly throughout the preceding century, and yet all of the
things that have happened there, while they have caused great suffering
to the people and great diminishment of resources of practice, have not
affected the power or authenticity of dharma in any way. The compassion
of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, their blessing, these things are utterly
unaffected by the circumstances of the times we live in. Therefore,
dharma is always effective. It will always work. You simply have to do
it. I say this because I am completely confidant that if someone
practices these things properly, they will definitely achieve this
result of which we are speaking. It is infallible. And I want to leave
you with and inspire you with this confidence, this same knowledge that,
"If I practice this, I will achieve this."
It is that simple, and it is that
infallible because our basic nature is the ground clear light. That is
our true being. Therefore the only other thing that is necessary for us
to achieve awakening, is to familiarize ourselves with that nature
through meditation on the path clear light. Now, this of course is the
big question: the difference is made entirely through whether someone
does or does not meditate assiduously on the path clear light during
their life. That in turn obviously depends upon being taught how to do
so and that in turn obviously depends on having access to a spiritual
friend. If someone has no access to a spiritual friend and receives no
instruction, they will not do any meditation and therefore they will not
achieve liberation and awakening. But once you have access to the
spiritual friend, once you have access to instruction on how to
cultivate familiarity through meditation with the path clear light, you
simply have to do it and if you do it assiduously enough, the
achievement of liberation and awakening at the moment of death is a
certainty.
If you
have not achieved sufficient familiarity with the clear light during the
immediately preceding life, then you won't recognize the ground clear
light. And the moment after it appears, you'll move on to the second
part of the interval of possibility. And the second part of the interval
of possibility is the main part of the interval. It is again what people
think of when they use term bardo or interval. Previously, at the moment
of death, your all-basis consciousness and the remnant of the life wind
and the potential for other cognitive functions and the white and red
drops, all collected together at one place in the center of your heart;
if you don't recognize the ground clear light, then they separate again.
And two of them , the basic consciousness and the life wind together,
the basic consciousness mixed with or riding the life wind, leave your
body. They leave your body through one or another of nine apertures: the
navel, between the eyebrows, the aperture at the very top of your head,
the nose or ears, the mouth or eyes, the anus or urethra. From anyone of
these, the consciousness, riding this wind, will leave your body. And
once the consciousness has left the body, then it's not going back in.
It is as soon as the consciousness leaves your body, that the
appearances of the interval proper start to arise.
Now, in our text it says, "Starting from
that point onward, you have the appearance of your subsequent body."
Rinpoche said this is actually put this way because the text is after
all very brief. In more detail, what is usually explained is that for
the first half of the period of the interval, you will appear to
yourself to have the body you had in the preceding life. For the second
half you will appear to have the body you're going to have in the
subsequent life. The reason for this is that this appearance is a purely
mental body. It is therefore made from habit. You initially have the
appearance of your preceding body because you have the habit of having
that body. That's what you're used to. That's what you expect. On the
other hand, the karma that put you in that preceding life and kept you
in that life is exhausted. It was used up; that's why you died. So
therefore the karmically bound habit of that life is also going to lose
momentum, or diminish during the period in the interval. So therefore
what happens is that initially you have a very vivid impression of
having the same body you had. So in other words, you think of yourself
as the person you thought you were before. Rinpoche said, for example, I
would think of myself as Karthar. I would think, "I have Karthar's
body," and so on. So you have that at the beginning but it starts to
gets vaguer and less distinct as the interval continues and then after
the middle of the interval (so if the interval is going to last for 49
days which is the usual period of time), then for the first half of
that, after that first half has finished, you will start to have an
initially vague and then more and more vivid impression of having your
subsequent or future body.
In
either case, whichever body you appear to possess, the body has certain
characteristics. Don't forget it is utterly illusory. It is like a
magical illusion. A hypnotic or other hallucination. It is therefore
independent. The body is independent in a sense that it is independent
of physical causes. It didn't grow; it wasn't produced by anything, so
it is independent of any kind of physical origin. Therefore it is
independent of most physical conditions. It is also different from your
present body in that whatever is particularly wrong with or defective in
your present body will appear to have been restored. So for example, if
one or more of your senses is malfunctioning, for example if you only
have one working eye, or you can't hear out of one of your ears, or one
of your legs has been removed or doesn't work and so on, you will
appear, in the bardo, to have gotten that back.
Bardo beings, interval beings, never seem
to have defective senses. They appear—of course they don't have physical
sense organs at all, which is why this is the case—they appear to
themselves and to other interval beings to have a full set of the senses
of their particular species. Because it is a mental body, you can pass
through solid matter the way flies can pass through a beam of sunlight.
Flies will fly through, buzz their way through a beam of sunlight
without being in any way impeded by it. In the same way, an interval
being can fly through solid matter, even the hardest rock. It's not that
they actually have miraculous powers; it's simply that they are a purely
mental body, and your mind can go anywhere, do anything. It doesn't
require physical or verbal effort or exertion. So therefore an interval
being will actually find themselves instantly in any place they think
of.
From one point of view you could say this
is miraculous, but don't forget it is impulsive; it is spontaneous in
the negative sense of the word. It is not under control. They are driven
about by whatever occurs to them. And there is no physical body to
prevent them immediately being driven to that place. Having no physical
body, interval beings cannot use clothing and cannot eat food. They do
however, have the habit of hunger and thirst and suffer from it, but
they can't eat and drink. The only thing that they can consume is scents
or smells. And they cannot be nourished by just any smell. The only
smells that they can actually consume and experience as nourishment are
the smells of substances consecrated to them. The best way to do this is
therefore to burn consecrated herbs and other substances and edible
substances together and specifically dedicate them to beings in the
interval. And this is why as a regular, daily observance, and especially
so, or more elaborately when dealing with a recently deceased person, we
perform what's called the singed offering in the evening. And this
consists of the singing of consecrated substances and other edibles and
the dedication of this to interval beings and to others.
Who can
see these beings? They can see themselves and they can see one another.
And a being in the interval can see other interval beings. We cannot,
normally. The exception to that are individuals who have achieved the
divine eye through meditative prowess and interval beings themselves
also have a limited form of this. They have a certain type of
supercognition that is not necessarily as good as it sounds, because
again it is compulsive and impulsive. For example, they might know that
something is going on such as a dharma teaching by a teacher and so on,
and they might go there, but their response to it is not necessarily
going to be positive.
Once
beings have been in the interval long enough that they're starting to
assume the appearance of their subsequent, rather than their previous
body, there are clues, aside from their appearance, in other words, what
species they appear to be, but also their position, their spatial
position. There are clues as to where they are going to be born. Beings
who are going to be reborn in a higher state, as humans, devas or
asuras, will generally be facing upward, so the head is facing toward
the sky rather than the ground and will be moving upward. Beings that
are going to be reborn in a lower state, as animals, as pretas, or as
hell-beings will generally be facing downward and moving downward.
Because interval beings have no physical bodies and therefore do not
have the basis for the perception of physical light, they do not see sun
and moon. They can experience an environment similar to ours and appear
to be in a place, but they will see no light from the sun and moon. And
their bodies cast no shadows.
Now it is at this point, once the
consciousness of the deceased person has emerged from their body, after
they have failed to recognize the ground clear light, and once what is
called the intermediate existence has begun, that the pure appearances
of dharmata will arise. And the pure appearances of dharmata will
consist especially of the appearances of the peaceful and wrathful
deities. The forty-two peaceful deities, the fifty-eight wrathful
deities and the pure vidyadharas. And these appear because the person's
consciousness has left their body. They appear emerging from the body.
Now, the way they appear to the person, although they are part of the
person him or herself, they appear in front of or external to the
person, as though the person and they have separated as they left the
body.
They appear as magnificent deities,
samboghakayas or bodies of complete enjoyment, with their respective
appearances, peaceful and wrathful, very bright, brilliant and
surrounded by intolerably bright light of many colors. In fact, the
reason why we don't achieve liberation upon their appearance in general
is the intolerable brilliance of their light. Because at the same time,
five other types of light are appearing. And these five other types of
light are the pathways to the five types of rebirth. The five are the
six states, but in this case, because they are types of birth rather
than species, the asura, or jealous gods are divided into the two beings
of which they can consist in terms of species, which are in some cases
devas and sometimes animals.
So the five types of rebirths are those
of devas, humans, animals, pretas and hell-beings. And the lights that
are the pathways to those rebirths are white, red, yellow, blue and
very, very dark blue, very, very dim blue--almost non-existent, almost
darkness, respectively. I asked Rinpoche is this designation of one to
one in that order consistent? He said, "That's what it says here." It's
not always absolutely consistent. The point is, the worst the realm, the
less brilliant the light. And the reason for this is the light of the
pure appearances, which can be of any color: white, yellow, red, blue
green--is very, very bright. It's intolerably bright, so that we run
from it. We perceive it as threatening, dangerous, destructive. The
light of the six realms, the five lights of the paths of these types of
rebirths, is all very soothing in appearance. They are muted and it is
because we find them soothing and the light of the wisdom irritating and
terrifying that we choose the soothing light of one of the six states.
In fact, even worse than that, the lights of the lower states are more
soothing than the lights of the higher states. That's why beings
predominantly—I mean the reason we find them soothing is because of
karma and so on, but that's the condition for the predominance of
rebirth in lower states over rebirth in higher states. So, what you want
to do if you have gotten to this part of the interval, which is like the
first part of the second part, is choose the threatening, brilliant,
vivid lights, over the soothing, muted ones. And, in order to do this
you need to prepare for this by thinking of this during this life, that
the really, really bright scary lights, the brilliant ones, are the
wisdom ones, and the soothing, muted ones, are going to lead to samsara
and probably to lower states.
Initially, in fact, you will probably just see the rays of brilliant
lights and not the deities. So the rays themselves, and their brilliance
and their sharpness will seem to be like weapons to you. It's important
to prepare for that experience. If you choose the paths of the wisdom
lights, you achieve liberation in the respective realm. And if you
choose the path of one of the samsaric lights, as we all evidently did,
you know what happens.
In
general, at this point, because you have a mental body that seems to be
the body you had in your last life—now it may have restored senses and
so on, but you won't immediately recognize that it's that different—it's
important to prepare yourself to recognize the signs that indicate that
you're dead. Now why is that important? Because in order to choose what
to do in the interval the first prerequisite obviously is knowing that
you're in the interval. If you don't know that you're in the interval,
you're not going to make the right choices. So what are the signs that
you are in the interval? Generally it's that the signs of the interval
are the appearance of sounds and forms that are utterly unfamiliar. Most
of these are pretty scary and they get scarier and scarier as it goes on
and you become more and more agitated, which means the chance of
liberation tends to decrease over the period.
Scary sounds like a billion thunderclaps
at once and forms of different sorts of beings, not just wisdom deities
but also different sorts of terrifying beings, the size of huge
mountains, and so on—all sorts of scary things. And all sorts of
different things that you've never seen before. So the point at this
point in the interval, is first of all, to recognize that you are in the
interval. And in order to be able to do so, you need to cultivate a
familiarity with what the signs are of being in the interval. Having
recognized that, to make the right choice, to choose the path of the
five wisdoms, one of the lights of the five wisdoms and not the paths of
the five types of samsaric rebirth. If you don't know that you're in the
interval, you won't make the correct choice and you'll just go with
instinct, which will lead you towards the soothing lights and so on.
Now, at this point, as the interval
experience continues, time is passing with you in a mental body. Not
being in any way restrained or governed by the solidity of a physical
body, your mind becomes more and more anxious and agitated. And as in
life, you respond to anxiety with kleshas. Your kleshas therefore grow
in intensity as the interval continues. They came become like a blazing
fire that totally possesses you. You are, don't forget, blown about by
the wind of your previous actions, which arise in the form of impulsive
thoughts which send you from one place to another without your control.
As your anxiety and kleshas increase, this becomes more and more
turbulent, worse and worse. And you have less and less leisure to think
about anything. You become more and more frightened and more and more
saddened and the hallucinations degenerate. You start to become more and
more frightened, see more and more frightening things, respond to them
more and more with anxiety and kleshas and so on. You have no control
whatsoever at this point, unless you have cultivated a preparation and
familiarity with what's going to happen, you're simply unprepared to
deal with this and you have no control over what's happening. You're
just blown about and there is nothing really to help you. So it is
important to familiarize yourself with and thereby prepare yourself for
the experiences of this part of the interval as well.
We are
going to stop here for this morning. Understand however, that this is
the point when we talk about the liberation through hearing in the bardo
or interval. It is that the opportunities for liberation in the interval
which occur can only be taken advantage of by someone who has heard
about them and familiarized themselves with them. By hearing about all
of this and by growing familiar with this, you do have the opportunity
of making the right choices in the interval, which specifically means
choosing the lights of the five wisdoms over the muted lights of the
five types of samsaric rebirth and by making these choices, achieving
liberation. So please dedicate the virtue of this session, to the
achievement by all beings by such familiarity and their subsequence
entrance into the paths of wisdom and achievement of liberation.
end of tape 2
Tape 3 begins
Question:
Rinpoche, if we are beginners on the path and
we're not maybe capable of having the ability of the body, speech, and
mind or training this way, what can do to train for the time of death?
Answer: There are
several things you can do to prepare for death and the interval after
death. These include the accumulation of merit, the purification of
obscurations, the cultivation of as much love and compassion for other
beings as you can, and also regular contemplation of what will occur in
the interval through studying the Great Liberation Through Hearing in
the Interval and so on, preparing yourself for it by imagining what
it is you are going to be going through at that time. This could also
involve meditation on the forms of the peaceful and wrathful deities and
the repetition of their mantras, and in that case should also include
the reinforced recognition that these deities are innate to you and
although they appear outside you in the interval they are not separate
of you but they are part of you. Of especial importance is to dedicate
the merit of whatever dharma practice you do to the rebirth of yourself
and all others in Sukhavati, the Realm of Amitabha, because this is
supreme among all pure Buddha realms. It is greatest in its qualities.
It is also easiest to achieve rebirth in for anyone who wishes to. In
that way we can insure that although we may not be capable of achieving
liberation in the dharmakaya at death, we can achieve liberation in
either the samboghakaya or nirmanakaya.
Question:
Rinpoche you mentioned ejection of
consciousness at one point in the dying process and I'm wondering if you
could talk more about that and when it is done, what it means?
Answer: The ejection
of consciousness refers to the practice through which the emergence of
consciousness from the body of the dying person is controlled and
directed. Specifically the consciousness is directed so that it emerges
or is ejected out of the aperture at the top of the person's head. The
value of this is that if the consciousness emerges out of the top of the
person's head, even if the dying person led a rather evil existence,
they will at the very least be reborn with a precious human body, and if
they were a dharma practitioner, they will very likely be reborn in a
pure realm. So there's great significance and advantage to this
practice.
In general there are two ways that the
ejection of consciousness can be achieved or performed. In one way, the
dying does it for him or herself, the other way is when somebody else
assists them by doing it for them. In terms of practicing the ejection
of consciousness for your own benefit you need to receive the
instructions and then perform the practice assiduously until the signs
of having gained the ability to eject your consciousness in this way,
have arisen. There are many systems of ejection practice. The most
convenient for use in general is the system for ejection associated with
the Amitabha cycle of teachings. When the person has practiced it to the
point where the ability to eject their consciousness has been achieved,
there will be physical signs of this, specifically itching or other
irritation of the aperture at the top of the head and possible eruption
or exuding of lymph and blood and fluids like that. Then, that person,
having been trained in that way, would later on, when it's absolutely
certain that they're dying, actually perform the ejection of
consciousness and would be able to do so successfully. Exceptions to
this are, if the dying person, although they were trained in the
ejection of consciousness, has subdued faculties, where for example,
their mind is dull because of medication or the illness, or if they are
so terrified by death that they forget to do it. Under those
circumstances they require the assistance of someone else. The assisting
the person, that is to say, someone who performs the ejection of
consciousness for another, needs to have practiced it him or herself,
until they achieve the signs of the ability. Only thereafter will they
have the ability to do it to somebody else. In any case, they perform
the ejection of consciousness for the dying person at this critical
moment, and it must not be done before then. It is of great benefit if
it is performed at the right time. Especially if the person for whom
it's performed is a practitioner, someone who trained in the ejection of
consciousness, him or herself, the benefit will be certain and far
greater than the benefit even of the ejection of consciousness of an
ordinary person.
It's of
the greatest importance, however, that the ejection of consciousness not
be performed before the death process is irreversible. If it is
performed when there is still hope of resuscitation, or of the person
reviving or surviving, then if you do it to yourself, it's suicide and
if you do it to another person, it's murder.
Question:
I have two questions. One is, you talk about
the consciousness leaving the body and then after that the person in the
bardo has ideas and visions of himself as certain things. Like he sees
himself in the body that he used to have and he sees himself in the body
that he is going to have and I'm just wondering, if he doesn't have his
consciousness, what part of him is actually perceiving that.
Translator: What do
you mean, "doesn't have his consciousness?"
Question:
Well the consciousness leaves the body.
Translator: The
person we are talking about is the consciousness.
Question:
So when the consciousness leaves the body, then that's where they go?
Answer: The person
is the consciousness, not the body.
Question:
The other question I have is a little more personal. I'm right now
caring for someone who's aged and she's experiencing lots of delusions
and lots of demented experiences. And when you were describing some of
the experiences and the frightening, fearful experiences in the bardo it
really reminded me of some of the things that she's been going through.
And I was wondering if in the dying process there isn't some sort of—something
of the bardo that enters into that and also attached to I'm wondering
what Rinpoche might be able to suggest that I could do for her.
Answer: Well, she's
not experiencing any phase of the bardo. She's experiencing
hallucinations that Rinpoche said are caused by the deterioration of the
parts of the brain that are resulting in the condition. And because the
condition consists of a deterioration of the channels, and so forth
within the brain, it makes communication with the person and therefore
helping them in a meaningful way, very challenging. So it's hard to know
exactly what you can do. But she's not experiencing the bardo yet.
Question:
Rinpoche, I'm still a bit confused as to when
you talk about ejecting the consciousness. What part, when, at what
point would you know that it's time to do it for another person? How can
you tell?
Answer: The actual
point at which the ejection of consciousness proper should be performed
is when the breathing stops and the usual criterion for this is to
observe when the pulse in the neck stops. And after that pulse has
ceased, then you can perform the ejection of consciousness. Up to that
point, you should prepare for it through the preliminary recitation of
the names of buddhas and the various liturgical practices associated
with it that prepare the person to receive the guidance, and so forth.
Question:
Just one more question. Also, why is it that
it's more beneficial to eject the consciousness from the upper
apertures? What determines that? I'm just curious why it's the upper
ones and not…
Answer: First of
all, ordinarily people's consciousness never leaves from that [upper]
aperture. It leaves out of one of the sense doors or the lower gates and
the only exception to this, the only circumstances under which someone's
consciousness will naturally emerge out of the aperture at the top of
the head is if they are someone with extraordinary virtue or merit or
they are someone who has familiarized themselves to some degree with the
ejection of consciousness. Otherwise, it simply won't go out from there
and the reason is that the departure of the consciousness from the body
in that direction is the avenue to the rebirth in a pure realm. More
often that not, a person's consciousness leaves out of the lower parts
of their body and this is almost invariably an indication of a lower
rebirth.
Question:
My cousin died this past week and she's someone
that was close to my family. We saw her....she was almost like a sister.
But she didn't practice any of this, or was not exposed to any of this.
So now she's in the bardo. I asked for a lamp to be lit for her for 49
days. And I'm wondering how I'm helping her or how somebody who has no
exposure or connection to these teachings is helped in the bardo?
Answer: In such
cases the intervention of someone like yourself with sincere compassion
for the deceased and especially your dedication of virtue and merit to
them, actually helps them in spite of their previous absence of
connection with Dharma. There are many instances of this. For example it
is said that even if you say the names of buddhas or certain mantras in
the ear of an animal recently dead, that will prevent that animal from
being born in lower states. Now that animal certainly had no connection
with dharma in that life but nevertheless can be benefited in this way.
Question:
My question is, what would appropriate practices be when we are with
someone at the moment they die. You just suggested I think one, reciting
mantras and names of deities. Are there any kind of appropriate things
we can do at that moment?
Answer: Well, the
type of thing you would do would depend basically upon your degree of
knowledge, but at the very least you could certainly recite mantras and
the names of buddhas and so on with an attitude of love and compassion
for that person and that would actually help them. This type of
spiritual assistance is the most important thing to do for someone who
is dying, because at that point, up to that point, your primary effort
is to make them comfortable and so on, but they are getting to the point
where that's no longer an issue.
Question:
Rinpoche, about twelve years ago, I was visiting a friend of mine in the
hospital and he had Aids and as I visited with him with two other
friends, he asked me to meditate with him. So I did, I just made
something up which would help him relax because I knew that he was very
angry because he had Aids. And so I led him in a very brief meditation,
mostly with the idea…because I didn't think he was going to die right
then, but as it turned out, after I meditated with him, he closed his
eyes. I stepped away, and joined my friends, but I kept an eye on my
friend Peter and it probably wasn't even five minutes after that I saw
that he was no longer breathing. So I went right over to him and I just
whispered to him--I had heard of the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
but I didn't know to say anything so I just whispered to him--it's okay,
don't be afraid, don't be afraid, it's okay, Peter.
That's what I did and I did that for
maybe five minutes, then they called the nurse in and he was dead. And I
always felt okay about that, in fact I felt very fortunate that I was
right there when he died. For some reason I just felt that way. I never
thought I would. Now, that's the first part, I just wanted a little
response about that, if you had any insight into that.
And now, I'm thinking about this for myself because I'm
getting older and my practice is just okay. I'm not a great
practitioner, yet the dharma is always on my mind and my behavior with
others—I always have
the dharma in mind, so I do the best I can with that. And sometimes I do
well and sometimes I don't and I regret it. But now I'm faced with,
"Well, you've not been that great a practitioner and this is serious. My
friend said, "Isn't this enjoyable?" and I said, "Well I wouldn't call
it that." And I always enjoy your teachings but I can't put the word
enjoyable on this. It's touching me too closely. But on the other hand,
I can imagine that if I was doing a good practice, that I could look
forward to when I do die with a certain amount of confidence, that it
will be an okay death. And I know that that does happen. So from that
point of view maybe it could be enjoyable. Anyway, I think I've said
enough. And also if there are any people around who are prepared to be
with someone who is dying, I'd like to know about who they are.
Answer: To answer
your first question, the assistance you gave your friend was both
altruistic and caring and therefore it could only have been helpful,
especially your conveyance to him of assurance and the reduction of his
fear would actually have helped him in the interval after death.
Rinpoche said, I can't guarantee that he achieved liberation, but what I
can tell you is that by making him less afraid at the beginning of the
interval, you created a greater chance for him to do well in the
interval.
With regard to your second question, I'm
a lot older than you are so I've got more to worry about. So, therefore
this is of great concern to me too, so I'll tell you what I really
think. The single best preparation that we can have for dying is to
recite the mantra OM MANI PEME HUNG. If you make the commitment to
yourself, "I will recite 100 million OM MANI PEME HUNGs, whether or not
you complete it in this life, your having that commitment, from the day
you make it until the day you die, will have tremendous benefit and
tremendous effect on you. As for what you meditate on, you should always
visualize above you head, either the Buddha Amitabha, or the Bodhisattva
Chenrezig, it doesn't matter which and think that the deity is the
embodiment in one form of all sources of refuge and especially of all of
your spiritual teachers. Continually visualize them there, above your
head, day and night, and resolve at death you will dissolve upward, your
consciousness will dissolve upward into them, so what you meditate on,
what you visualize is your teacher in the form of Amitabha or Chenrezik
above your head and what you recite is the mantra OM MANI PEME HUNG. And
that is the best preparation.
Question:
Rinpoche, I'm concerned about the possibility
of having impaired mental functions at the time of death due to
medication or to illness. What is the best thing to do if this is the
case? What if one's functions are so reduced like if they're in a coma
and can't practice at all at the time of death, let alone for possibly
ten or fifteen years before the time of their death. If their mental
functions are so incredibly impaired, what is the best thing? I wonder
is there any hope for them to improve their situation at the time of
death or are they just left to their karma completely at that point, as
if they hadn't practiced at all during that lifetime?
Answer: It's by no
means the case that if you're in coma or have otherwise impaired
faculties at the time of your death that this will wipe out the benefit
of your practice previous to that time, but it is the case as you
indicated in your question, that it will be practically very difficult
to make immediate use of the practice or what you learn through your
practice, because you won't be conscious. However, if a person who is in
a coma or whose faculties are impaired either by illness or by
medication has an attending lama at their death, then the lama will be
able to communicate with them because when the dissolution or shutdown
process of dying has reached the point where their mind is, although
still within the body, no longer biologically seated in it, then their
mind becomes independent of the physical conditions which have produced
the impairment.
Usually a state of coma or
unconsciousness, or a state of diminished faculties is produced by
physical conditions such as damage to the brain or medications and so on
that prevent brain functioning, but once the body has shut down, then
their consciousness has an alertness that is independent of these
physical conditions so the person would become conscious at that point,
although it wouldn't be physically evident. At that point, the lama
could perform the ejection of consciousness, could also communicate with
the person, give them guidance and they would be able to understand it.
It's also possible that the person could
at that point, where their mind has biologically separated from the
body, it's possible that they could become conscious. But you can't bank
on that, you can't depend on that, because it's also possible that other
habits would intervene and the person's previous habits of practice
might not reassert themselves. So the dependable resort under those
circumstances would be to have an attending lama.
Question:
Rinpoche, you mentioned before about the
ejection of the consciousness through the crown and how that sometimes
manifested with some sort of physical appearance. Is it always the case
that when the consciousness does eject through one of the gates of the
body a physical manifestation occurs and how would it occur through some
of the other gates or orifices?
Answer: There is
some confusion—the physical evidence, such as the exuding of lymph and
blood and so on—this is not a sign that the consciousness has been
ejected. It's a sign that the person has gained the ability to eject it.
When the consciousness is actually ejected either from that gate or from
any other, there will be no such swelling or sign.
Question:
Rinpoche, how about in the case of some people
who are from a different religious orientation and they have a very
strong concept about that religion, and if you recite the Buddha's
mantras which are very foreign to them, I heard that this would also be
very scary for them because they have fear about other religions, so how
would you work with that?
Answer: Well, what
you say is very true. In those situations you have to do whatever you do
for their benefit silently, such as the cultivation of compassion for
them and silent visualizations or meditations, because if you recite the
names of Buddhas or Buddhist mantras, in the hearing of someone who is a
staunch adherent of another religious tradition, at the very least they
are going to feel disoriented and possibly betrayed. They'll think,
"Well, they are denying my source of refuge or my savior and trying to
appeal to another," and that will anger them. So you have to be silent.
Question:
Rinpoche, speaking of my own death, if I'm
lucky enough to be able to go through it and not have it be sudden, when
you're dealing with pain, I'm understanding that it's better to do it
without medication and so I can be clear, but also, when I'm dying is it
better to try to sit up and maintain a meditative posture, or there's
also the left and right side that you lay on to prepare for death and I
was curious about that too.
Answer: With regard
to the use of pain medication, if someone has a very strong practice
such that they, by maintaining the full clarity of mind during the dying
process, they will be able to achieve liberation, then they should avoid
any pain medication that will excessively dull their faculties, if
possible. Otherwise, if the person doesn't have that kind of strong
practice, it's better that they will receive whatever medication will
alleviate their suffering. As far as physical posture at the time of
death, of course if someone can, it's excellent to die sitting up
straight, but most people can't because after all you are dying. So in
that case, it's better to lie on the right side in the posture that the
Buddha adopted at his death.
Question:
Rinpoche, I had a question about the process
that you described about the red and white elements and the life wind
withdrawing into the heart center. When that occurs is that process an
irreversible process or is that something that someone might experience
during a near-death experience where the life functions appear to have
ceased, but they are then revived?
Answer: The full
process where all of the pressure exerted by the life wind is gone and
the drops completely descend and ascend respectively to the heart and
combine there, that entire thing doesn't happen unless the person has
reached the irreversible stage which is the third stage of attainment.
Up to that, where there is merely some weakening of the life wind and
therefore there could be some movement but not the full thing and there
could therefore be the first two stages of dissolution, the white
appearance [TAPE 3, SIDE 1 ENDED HERE AND SOMETHING SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN
LOST SUCH AS THE REST OF THIS ANSWER]
Tape 3, side 2
Translator: The
first thing, I was basically just checking out because I think there
were a couple of things that maybe I didn't put clearly or something.
The preparation in this life for the recognition of the ground clear
light does not normally consist of simulation of the process of
disolution, but of the generation of a state of even-placement where the
mind is immersed in what's called, "the path clear light." So it's not
necessarily connected with the process of shutdown or dissolution. The
border between the first and second parts of the interval of
possibility, the whole dying and death process, is the appearance of the
ground clear light. The appearance of the ground clear light is the
fourth state of dissolution, the fourth moment. It's the actual moment
of death and if it's not recognized, then one enters what we call the
bardo proper.
Question:
I have two questions. The first has to do with the descending and the
ascending in the
central channel of the life wind at what I'm going to call the heart
center and I've always thought that somehow I have to think of this in
my mind as being that the central channel is symmetrically in the center
of one's physical body and we know that our heart is asymmetrically
placed in our body, so I just want to make sure that I'm clear that I'm
thinking of, when we say, the heart, we're talking about a place in the
central channel at the same level of the heart but symmetrically in the
center of our body.
Answer: It means the
central channel at the height of the heart.
Question:
My other question is having to do with the time from the moment of death
through 49 days. And I know I've heard that 49 days is a general number
within which the whole process of rebirth can take place, so it's hard
to pin down exactly what. There are two parts to this question. One is
kind of technical: when do you start counting? For instance the first
three days are said to be good to do certain practices, the seventh day,
what constitutes that seventh day? Do you start counting from, one is
the day you die, or the person dies? That is the first part of the
question and the second part is, do most of the things when you talk
about the sort of, you compared it last night to the dharmakaya,
samboghakaya, nirmanakaya experience possibility, within that 49 days,
do those first two, like the possibility for recognizing the ground
clear light, generally happen right away in that 49 day period?
Translator: In your
question, did you just equate the first two of those with the
recognition of the ground clear light?
Question:
No. Ground clear light I'm connecting to
dharmakaya, deities to samboghakaya….
Translator: Okay,
good.
Answer: Well, to
answer or in fact, further obscure your first question, there are two
systems for reckoning the 49 day period. One system is, if you die
today, the first day starts with sunrise tomorrow. So that's day one,
and then you count from then on.
The other way, and this is based on the
fact that people are only sporadically conscious for the first three
days after death in the bardo, as will come up, Rinpoche said, tomorrow,
in the rest of our text. The other system therefore, discounts the first
three days and so again, to get the three days, you start sunrise
tomorrow, call that days A, B, and C and then you start day one of the
49 on the fourth day, fourth sunrise, after death.
However, these are not so much different
opinions about how they should be counted, as different ways they can be
applied depending upon what happens to the individual. Some people, and
this is assuming that there is no recognition of the ground clear light,
some people if there is no recognition of the ground clear light, become
unconscious, but stay in the body and they'll remain unconscious for two
or three days and then their consciousness will leave the body. For
those people, it's better to reckon it with the three days excluded.
Other people, with slightly different
channels, who also don't recognize the ground clear light, leave their
body as soon as the ground clear light has passed. For those people it's
obviously better to start counting the morning of the next day. The
problem is, there is no obvious way to tell, Rinpoche said, which is
happening, because although there are signs of someone recognizing the
ground clear light, as we went through, there are no really obvious
signs of whether the person's consciousness has remained or left after
failing to recognize it. So what that means is that basically there are
two customs and one or another will be applied arbitrarily.
As far as the correlation between the
49-day period and the opportunity of the three kayas, the dharmakaya
opportunity, the opportunity to achieve liberation in the dharmakaya is
the ground clear light. If someone recognizes that, then they will
remain immersed in that for the period of their ensuing samadhi, which
is normally three days but can be longer. And they're in a totally
different category, I mean, they are not in the bardo and so on.
Assuming that they don't recognize it, the dharmakaya window, the
dharmakaya opportunity is gone, as soon as they don't recognize it,
because the ground clear light will cease; they'll move on to this next
stage. So the next stage is what's called the opportunity to achieve the
samboghakaya….[Rinpoche interrupts here to clarify something.]
The samboghakaya window has two aspects
to it. Generally speaking, the way that we classify the samboghakaya
window is twofold and generally in most Kagyu presentations they are not
totally sequential: in other words, window one and window two, within
the samboghakaya. Obviously window here is not literal but I think it's
the best word. The two things are this: the one opportunity for
liberation in the samboghakaya is the appearances of spontaneous
presence, which means the rays of wisdom light and the peaceful and
wrathful deities. According to the Great Liberation Through Hearing
in the Bardo, this goes on for several days and Rinpoche said that
if you consult that book, you'll see that there is actually a schedule
for what happens on what day, and there is a progressive coarsening, and
therefore a greater difficulty of liberation and he says he doesn't
remember the exact schedule but it is clear in the book and it lasts for
a couple of weeks.
At the same time, there is the
opportunity for another type of liberation in the samboghakaya and this
is what's going to presented tomorrow, where the practitioner is able to
arise, cause their mental body to arise in the form of a deity, in which
case they achieve liberation in the form of that deity. In the Kagyu
tradition, we classify both of these as samboghakaya windows and we
don't think that it's first the one and then the other. The
opportunities for either are more or less simultaneous.
The
opportunity for the achievement of nirmanakaya begins when one is
approaching rebirth and one's principal effort is in stopping an
undesirable rebirth and choosing one's rebirth. But, as for exactly how
long that period lasts, this brings up the whole issue of the 49-day
period as a whole. The 49-day period is considered an average time or
duration of the interval, the whole thing. But it's by no means certain
that any specific individual, is going to remain in the interval for
that long or only that long. Generally, speaking, Rinpoche said, the
stronger one's karma in one direction or another, good or bad, the more
quickly one is likely to achieve rebirth, to the extent that if someone
has cultivated extraordinary virtue, there will be almost immediate
rebirth in a pure realm. If they cultivated great evil, there could be
almost immediate rebirth in a lower realm.
If someone's balance of wrongdoing and
virtue is pretty well even—causing their rebirth to be less certain, the
karmic propulsion to be less focussed—they might remain in the interval
for even longer than 49 days. In any case, the nirmankaya opportunity is
over when the person either successfully or unsuccessfully enters their
next place of birth. Successfully means that they have used this
period of the interval to achieve the nirmanakaya, which in this case
means, that through the forces of aspirations, moral discipline, love
and compassion, they have consciously chosen a rebirth that will be of
benefit to themselves and others. That's what the achievement of the
nirmanakaya means in this particular context. Unsuccessful means
uncontrolled rebirth. In either case, that's when it ends.
Question:
Rinpoche, from what you said earlier, I have
the impression that your rebirth is determined largely by the choices
you make in the interval state, when you see the five lights of wisdom
and the five lights of samsaric rebirth. I always heard that it was your
karma that determines your rebirth, so how do you reconcile this. Is is
your karma that propels you to make one choice over another?
Answer: Well, that
question actually brings up the primary significance of the interval.
Birth is called the full ripening of karma, in other words, when you are
conceived or born, when you enter the place of birth, you become locked
into the results of previous actions. Once these have in that way
ripened as the aggregates of a certain life, once you have a certain
birth, there's not much you can do about it. You can't all of the sudden
change it. It may change through adventitious circumstances, but
basically you are, for as long as you remain alive in that life, limited
by those circumstances and you have no choice about it.
What happens when you die, is the karma
which propelled you into a certain life, which allowed you to take a
certain rebirth, has been used up. Now there remains some habit for that
type of life, as is evidenced for example, by perceiving yourself as
having the previous body and so on, but nevertheless, the actual karma
is gone. The karma which will cause your next rebirth has not yet taken
effect. And because you have several different such karmas within your
being, it may not even be certain which one you're going to take yet.
In a sense, therefore, when you're in the
interval between lives, you are in a gap that is in between karmically
determined, or karmically locked circumstances. Therefore, in between,
you can, if you know how to do so, actually make some changes and make
some choices, which you cannot do once you have entered the place of
birth and are locked into the next life. That's why the power of a
virtuous state of mind in the interval is tremendous because it can
actually bring an immediate and great change to what happens to you.
Question:
Rinpoche, I'm wondering what one can do when
someone dies, like I'm thinking of my parents. How to stay calm enough
to do practice….with some ways to think about it, because that's what
I'm afraid of: I'll be too upset to be effective. I thought of going on
a retreat after one of them dies to do practice and I remember Jamgon
Kongtrul Rinpoche gave an empowerment at KTD. It was a shortened version
of the peaceful and wrathful deities with the OM RAPASANADI mantra, and
that's what I do for the people that have died in my life so far. So I'm
wondering about that mantra in regards to the OM MANI PEME HUNG. And if
you do go on retreat, for someone is that a good idea and how long,
which practice to do? Stuff like that and how to stay calm?
Answer: First of
all, Rinpoche said, he thinks the mantra that Jamgon Rinpoche gave, the
short mantra for the peaceful and wrathful deities is not the one you
mentioned. It's AH AH SHA SA MA HA, not the ARO PAT SAMADI mantra, but
anyway, as far as the state of sadness or grief that results from the
deaths of people we love, of course this happens to us. The best thing
you can think when you are going through this, is to reflect upon the
fact that death is natural, that everyone dies, that everyone at some
point is going to die and they are not going to be here anymore. In that
way that parting and separation from those we love, is simply a fact of
life. And continuing in that way of thinking you should reflect upon the
fact that you also, are going to die, exactly like those for whom you
are grieving.
By thinking in those terms, you transform
the potentially paralyzing grief into a source of inspiration. Because
the best opportunity for someone to practice is when some event such as
the death of one of |