coscious dying Tibetian Buddhism

[Guest guest]

* The Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on Death and Rebirth * by Lama Ole Nydhal,

Vajrayana Buddhist Lama

 

The Tibetan Buddhist teachings on death and rebirth are unique and very

complete. They usually interest everybody who gets them. In order to understand

about death and rebirth, its important to begin by observing the nature of our

mind. Looking at the mind we often think that there are two things. There is

something seeing and there is something being seen. There is a mirror there,

the picture is in the mirror. There is that which observes and that which is

being observed.

 

But if we look for true duality this cannot be found. Where does every thought

and feeling and experience come from? It comes from the open clear space of the

mind. Who knows it? The open clear space of the mind. Where does it change? It

changes inside that open clear space and it al so returns to it again. So, if

we look for the mind we see that it's not two things, the seer and the things

seen, the experiencer and the experienced. They are not two, but one totality

manifesting in two ways. There is the timeless aspect which is like the ocean

and there is the changing aspect inside time which is like the waves coming and

going in the ocean. And we cannot say that the things either are or are not the

thoughts and feelings, either are or are not the mind.

 

They appear there they are known by it. They disappear there again. Of course

they are felt to be different and they are experienced as different. We see

them as something apart.

 

If we look at these two different aspects of mind we see that that which is

aware, that which is looking through our eyes, listening through our ears, that

which is hearing and feeling and experiencing now, is timeless. It is open like

space. It is rad iantly clear. It has no limit or end anywhere. Something which

is like open clear limitless space of course is not bound inside time. It is

not limited by time and place. But if we look for the true nature of that which

is aware, which is experiencing the world right now this must be seen to be

timeless and limitless. Our own clear space and mind is without birth or death.

 

It is however very rarely that we experience our timeless nature. It is very

rarely that the mirror is aware of itself and the mind se es its own nature.

 

Usually we are caught in the things coming and going in the mind. We are not

seeing the ocean. We are seeing the waves which come and go there. The few

times when the mind experiences itself are the moments of greatest intensity

and joy that we can imagine. The way that the radiance of the mirror is

actually more than the images coming and going in the mirror when the mind

experiences its own nature are very powerful, very exciting and unforgettable.

People may tell you about the clear light.

 

They may tell you about the peak

experiences before the parachute opens in free fall or something like that. You

may actually also have had moments where you forgot to expect anything or fear

anything or live in the past or live in the future, where there was time when

nothing else was in the mind. Suddenly you became exceedingly joyful, totally

secure. You found yourself to be very powerful, very kind. You saw suddenly

that the experiencer itself, that which is aware, really had some lasting

qualities that we usually don't see. Sometimes we know who is calling before we

lift up the receiver and that means that the nature of the space of our mind is

information. When we get happy on the inside for no outer rea son because we

forget to hope or fear or think of anything, it shows that the space of our

mind is joy.

 

When we are kind and compassionate without thinking that we are doing something

to somebody else but simply because they are not separate from us and t here is

nothing else to do, it shows that the space in our mind is kindness and

unlimited love. Even though we may have experiences like that for a few moments

in this life most of the time we are constantly caught in the things which come

and go. We are in the pictures in the mirror not in the mirror. We see what

changes all the time.

 

Seeing this then, different kinds of feelings will appear, attachment and

aversion, likes and dislikes. Hope and fear will follow most beings during

their lives. Instead of being here and now in the truth and the intensity and

the meaning of what happe ns in every moment, recognising it to be true just

because conditions come together like that, we are thinking of the past of the

future, we are somewhere else. Doing that we experience the human life. The

Buddha tells us that there is no one thing which stays the same during this

life, not one single thing. The open clear limitless space is the same in

everybody. It never changes, is not born and doesn't die. But the pictures in

the mirror, the stream of experiences, even though they seem to be similar, are

more like a stream of water that flows all the time and new water is there in

every moment. If we really look we see that in the boy of seven and the man of

seventy there is no-one who has stayed the same. There is not one single

personal thing which stays the same from one moment to the next. All things

appear, change, disappear again, are born and die and come and go.

On the other hand there is relative continuation because if there was no child

at seven there will not be a man at seventy.

 

So we see that even though no

experience of the body or mind, no molecule, no atom stays the same from one

moment to the next, s till there is this continuation. One thing brings about

the next and becomes the cause of the next thing again. Things move in a stream

like that. We are aware of this stream. We are aware of three so called Bardos

or intermediary states while we are livi ng here. The Tibetan word Bardo which

is quite well known, actually means something which is between something and

something else. For instance, if I haven't bored you too much now you are all

in the waking Bardo, the Bardo of being awake. After some hour s you will fall

asleep and you will be in the Bardo of sleep

 

While you are in this Bardo of sleep you will have certain dreams. Each of

these things are intermediary states. They are states that follow one another

all the time. After a waking state come s a state of consciousness and inside

this again is another state: the dreaming state. And this is what we are used

to now. Every twenty four hours, if our lifestyle is not too extreme, this is

what we experience, these three Bardos.

But there are three further ones, which we only experience every time we die.

 

There is the process of death itself, there is the thing that happens after

death, the continuation of the experiences of our last life and then there are

the new experiences as our subconscious starts to go into the shape, go into a

certain structure which then leads into our next birth, our reincarnation. And,

before I tell you the whole process as it happens I should tell you my

credentials for telling you this, why I can sit here and actually tell you

this. You probably know that in Tibetan Buddhism we have many incarnate Lamas.

We have many teachers who are recognised when they come back. They are clearly

the continuation of a stream of consciousness of a former teacher.

 

Nearly everybody knows the Dalai lama. Actually the first Dalai Lama was a

student of a student of the fourth of the Karmapas, who were the first

incarnate Lamas in Tibet around 1110. And among all the incarnate Lamas in

Tibet and there are about 110 s pecial ones, he is the first one to actually

start. His first one was in 1110 in Eastern Tibet and he is also the only one

who, before dying, writes down every detail of his new rebirth, so other Lamas

don't have to find him, they can actually read the le tter he has left and then

they can go out and find the child. That child then has unbroken consciousness

and memory from his last life that he has brought over. So that's one reason,

being a student of this Lama and having his teaching is one of the reaso ns

that I can talk about this with confidence.

Another reason is teachings by other great teachers like Guru Rinpoche who gave

these explanations. He was the Lama who brought who brought Buddhism to Tibet

around 1250 years ago. And the third reason is that I myself am a Powa Lama.

 

Powa means conscious dying. I teach conscious dying. So far I have taught 3000

westerners how to die consciously. Its not an academic study, its not something

I'm telling you about that is abstract. People accept that when they have the

physical hole in their head. When through meditation they have actually

knocked a physical opening in the top of their skulls without even touching

their heads.

 

Many have actually also experienced leaving their bodies during this process

and entering realms of great bliss and great joy. Some people really lose their

fear of death in the process. The biggest courses are always in Poland, Russia,

Germany and Central and Eastern Europe, but I've taught it here once.

 

Its a process that takes about three to four days with the instructions and

everything else and the result is that you actually come out of your body. You

sent your mind out of your body. I mean you get a real physical sign and you

also of course have many mental transformations. Its a teaching which as far as

I know is practiced in a few places such as Burma but among the Tibetans in the

old schools in Tibetan Buddhism it is quite widely known. The w ord Powa means

'a bird flying out of a skylight in a roof, this is actually the meaning of it.

 

I have also had the experience of beings who were dead coming to me. They were

there as real as you are here today. For all these reasons I am telling you now

w ith confidence, I am not just repeating what I have read in a book or giving

a summary of some other teaching. I am totally convinced of what I am saying

here myself.

 

So, what happens in the process of dying is always the same. If we look at the

death process from the outside it may look very different. Death in people who

step on a mine or get hit by a fast car looks very different from death in

someone who dies from Aids or Cancer in a hospital somewhere. It doesn't look

the same at all. But actually what is happening is the same process. What

happens is that the energy which used to be spread all over the whole body

begins to draw into a central energy channel in side the body.

 

There are different kinds of energy and maybe I should say a little bit about

that also. We are all Western educated so we know about nerves, those yellow

strands going through the body, sometimes thick then thinning out more and

more, contracting muscles and bringing information. They work with electricity

and a hormone called serotonin.

 

Then some of you who are Asian probably know about acupuncture and acupressure,

where for example, you put a needle in a finger and it brings a flow of energy

and some more awareness to your kidneys or heart or liver or something else.

There is this outer flow of energy which follows different meridians to the

inner organs. Then you have probably also heard the Hindu word kundalini where

they talk about the nervous energy which is in the spine.

 

In Buddhism we work with the central channel which starts four fingers below

the navel in the centre of the body and it rises to a place eight fingers

behind the original hair line on the top of the head. It is said that this

original energy line or en ergy channel appeared when the egg and sperm met in

the womb of our mother. At that time the egg had an energy which in meditation

is experienced as red and the sperm had an energy which is experienced as being

white.

 

The information in these two cells created the billions of cells which form our

bodies today. The red energy moved down to four fingers below the navel and the

white energy moved up to about eight fingers behind our original hairline on

the top of our head. Between these two then is the central axis. It activates

itself at five places. At the head thirty two channels move out and activate

the brain centre. They have to do with the body, everything physical,

everything sensual. With speech there are six teen channels which fill the

throat. With the heart there are eight channels which became many channels and

cover the upper body and have to do with intuition and feeling and so on. At

the navel there are sixtyfour which spread out and go into the legs a nd cover

the lower body and which have to do with qualities such as artistic abilities,

creativity and so on. Four fingers below the navel there is our power centre

which the Chinese call Chi which can be sexual power or ordinary physical

power.

 

What happens in the process of dying is that these very spread out networks of

energy begin to draw into the central energy channel. The different wheels

collapse. The experience we have on the outer level is that our sensory

experiences become less and less. We see but we are not quite sure who, we hear

sounds but its more like mumbling. Its not distinct. We feel something but we

are not sure what it is we are feeling and actually our whole contact with the

outer world begins to disappear. While this is happening we are also having

some inner experiences. We begin to get confused and begin to drift in and out

of consciousness. Its difficult to focus and be aware. At the same time we also

have some physical experiences. First, is the feeling of pressure. That is the

solid element moving into the water element. Then there is the feeling of

flowing. That is when the water element is moving into the fire element. Then

there is the feeling of dryness. Step by step as the mind begins to withdraw

from its physical bases which are the elements of solid and fluid and heat

giving and airy moving and finally space itself and consciousness.

 

When we float and start getting cold and our consciousness begins to disappear.

During these different processes which are really the process of death, all the

energy comes into the central channel. And here at a given time we breathe out

three times and the third time we forget to breathe in again.

 

Here people say now this is death but

actually we say as a joke sometimes that

if people can afford a few days more in a hospital people will come and put

electrodes on their hearts and give them a shock and then they will go on for a

while longer. Any way even if we do hook people up to the local electricity

works, after a while they do die.

 

Everybody dies. So at the time when one dies, after the taking in of oxygen and

the exchange of energy with the world outside has stopped, there is a twenty to

thirty minute period where the inner energies stop moving.

 

What then happens first is that the white energy from the top of our head

gradually begins to move down through our body to the heart centre which is in

the middle of the body not to the right or the left. On the way down there

thirty three kinds of feelings which come from anger, which are usually based

in anger, disappear. We see a very clear light like a very clear moonlight.

Then after that about ten or fifteen minutes the energy begins to move u p from

the lower centre, the centre below the navel. As this begins to move up we

actually experience red light like a setting sun moving up and forty kinds of

feelings which were caused by attachment and greed disappear. And when twenty

to thirty minutes have elapsed after we stopped breathing, these two energies

come together in the heart. First everything becomes dark. This darkness is

where seven kinds of feeling base in stupidity disappear.

 

Then after that we experience an intense clear light. This is all the awareness

all the energy, everything that used to fill our whole body. This is now in the

heart centre. Everything has met there. This moment is actually our best moment

for enlightenment.

 

If we can hold this state, if we can be aware twenty to thirty minutes after

death that this clear light is our true essence, that this is our awareness

then we can do what many great saints have done during this last time over the

last two thousand five hundred years.

 

Here I would like to give an example from my own direct experience. It was when

the sixteenth Karmapa died in 1981. A year and a half before that in 1980 he

had told me on which day he was going to die. I met him on the solstice in

Colorado in America. He told us to come to him on the first day of the eleventh

month next year. He said that we could also bring our friends. So we came out

to seek him in the Himalayas. He wanted to die in the West where scientists

could examine his death processes. Five days after his death his body was still

warm and supple. He was then put into the meditation position surrounded by a

lot of butter lamps. He stayed there for forty five days until the 19 of

December when he was taken from his meditation seat. He had made his body very

small. They put him in a box with a window that you could look in. Most people

didn't want to look but I did because I knew that I would have to tell the

story. I knew it would be my job. His head was smaller but not much smaller but

his whole body was like that of a child. This man had been bigger than me. He

was a massive big boned Tibetan from a warrior tribe, a big strong man. When he

was burnt the next day there were outer signs, a double rainbow around the sun,

which is very unusual in Sikkim. There was also an enormous eagle that kept

turning high up around the burning place. When his heart came out of the oven

it rolled down to the students. There were many other things that happened that

were very unusual.

 

This is a case of what you call Thukdam. Thuk is the Tibetan word for heart or

deep mind and dam is bond. It is where one is able to bind the consciousness in

the heart. If one is capable of doing that and holding that state then one can

do all those t hings.

 

Other things also happen when teachers and Yogas and Lamas die. They sometimes

change the whole vibration of their bodies from solid to energy and they only

leave their hair and their teeth and their nails which have no nerves and which

cannot be transformed. These things are still happening. But if one transforms

everything like that its more difficult to be reborn because there is nothing

physical to pull one back again. It is always difficult for high incarnates to

come back because there are so many things pulling them in other directions and

only other peoples problems to bring them down here again. So this was an

example of somebody really capable of staying in the clear light of the mind in

the state called Thukdam.

 

If you use meditations where you concentrate on Buddha forms disappearing and

you concentrate on being aware without being aware of anything, concentrating

on just naked awareness, totally conscious without having to be conscious of

anything, just having awareness in its own state resting like that, then that

is the kind of meditation which will develop into the power of staying aware as

you are dying. It is a period where awareness and energy and space inside and

outside are no longer separate, where one's mind, where awareness, clear light

is the same inside and outside, where there is no difference between

enlightenment here and there. Its just like space and awareness, inseparable.

 

If one is not capable of holding that state and the normal taxpayer does have

difficulty holding that state, then one becomes unconscious. Here the text

usually says that one is unconscious for three and a half to four days. My own

experience is that e very time people who died came back to me it was exactly

sixty eight hours. It happened with my mother and a few other times also. I

don't know what meaning it has but I know that when they are there as close as

you are its very clear that they are there. Every time checking afterwards it

was 68 hours. So it may be that modern big city people, very intellectually

trained people and so on go through some processes more quickly than less

neurotic farmers or people like that. Anyway this has been my own experience.

 

Then when one wakes up from this state of unconsciousness then usually one does

not know that one is dead. If ones death process has been very long, if one has

been dying for a long time one has some idea but if one has just been hit by

something and has had no time to prepare then one really has no idea. One is

also confused because one has no solid body and that means that whatever we

think then that's where we are. If we think England or India or Thailand or

Burma or Cambodia or Denmark, whatever we think, the moment we think it our

awareness is there because like space and awareness, there is not anything to

move.

 

Its also a difficult situation because nobody can see us. So we try to

make contact with people. We try to find out why all our friends are unhappy

and our enemies are happy. We can't really understand these things. Any time we

try to talk to them they walk away and when we sit in a chair they come and sit

on us and so on. It feels very strange. After about a week in this state and

that means about ten days after we died, then mind really faces the fact that

we are dead.

 

Then we really understand 'Oh I must be dead.' Here again if you meditate on

the process where after a meditation everything arises as a pure realm,

everybody is a Buddha , you are a Buddha, every thing is a pure realm, that

aims for the second phase, the phase of waking up again. An ordinary person who

is used to seeing the world in an ordinary way will in that situation see

ordinary things everywhere, while somebody who is trained in this process of

having the whole world appear as a pure land and seeing Buddha nature

everywhere will at that time when one wakes from the shock of dying, again see

Buddhas and pure states of mind and one will run there and do what the Tibet

ans say, change bodies with the different Buddhas.

 

It is like a child seeing her mother and running there. When we see these

different Buddha forms that we are used to meditating on, we run there and we

mix into them and we enter their mental level. This is not the state of

Dharmakaya or the state of highest truth. It is a state of Sambhogakaya. Its a

state of blissful joy and richness of the mind. But this state is also without

any kind of falling down or suffering again. If we don't make it to that state

then as I said mind will discover that it is actually dead and this is such a

big shock that we become unconscious once more.

 

When you wake up from that

unconsciousness then the stream of experiences from the last life has been

broken, the stream of experiences from the last life is over and now our

subconscious begins to come up. The things that were planted inside, the

pleasant, the unpleasant, the friendly and unfriendly thoughts and feelings now

come up because no new impressions are coming to the mind from the outside.

There is no new sensory in put. All the subconscious things start coming up and

depending on what is the strongest tendency inside us then one out of six

worlds begins to predominate.

 

For instance its possible that we've done a lot of good things but we were also

aware that we were doing them. In that case of course we fill the mind with

good impressions but always thinking I do this for you. We don't remove the

separation between us. We don't remove the things that block us. Though the

things are positive and give good dreams, they don't make us wake up into the

experience that everything that the open clear space is the same. So, if we've

done that. If we've filled the mind with g ood impressions but still think that

I do something for you then the result is what we call Gods world. Buddha tells

us that there are six levels where we experience spontaneous joy, all desires

are spontaneously fulfilled. There are seventeen levels wher e we experience

aesthetic joy, like beautiful sunsets and fine art and so on, and there are

four levels where we experience abstraction. Buddha called them Arupadhatu,

Rupadhatu and Karmadatu, that is, the formless, the formed and the desire

worlds. These three are the psychological states that we enter if a lot of

positive Karma is there but we still believe that there is a me doing it for

you.

 

Then there is also another stage which is much less pleasant. That is if

jealousy is the strongest feeling in us. Then in that case we reach what is

called the half-god realms. Half-gods are not having such a good time. They are

always jealous, they are always fighting to get what others have, they are

always experiencing looking for weapons and so on and they are not experiencing

joy. They also get hurt more easily than the gods. The gods minds function in

such a way that that they only think that they die if their heads are cut off.

 

But the half-gods also think that they die if they are shot through with an

arrow. So their minds work differently. Also in these half- god states beings

are usually very angry and in those states when they die they really fall down

because their minds are charged with negative impressions, anger and hate.

 

Then there is also the possibility that the mind has really clouded its

potential. This can bring about a situation where one is so confused when one

dies that one tries to hide between rocks or in bushes and here one can

actually appear the next time with four legs and a nice fur coat. Its possible

for mind to unite with the animal body at least for one life. I know at least

three cases in my own experience, for some reason always with big yellow dogs,

where they have come right up to me put their paw s on my chest, looked into my

eyes and mentally said What happened?

 

Suddenly the light went out and now I'm in this state. One dog in Malta was

actually following me all the time. It was so embarrassed about having that

body. It was really a contact. I wo n't say that it happens often. If we look

at the world there are so many miserable and poor and suppressed and suffering

human lives that one doesn't even need to become an animal to suffer today.

Look at Africa and South America and so many poor parts of the world where

people have nothing. In my own experience I have made contact across that

barrier and it does exist.

 

Its possible that greed and avarice have been the strongest feelings. At that

time the desires, wishes which were always tormenting us, concentrate on food

and drink. There again, beings may have very strange experiences. They may have

the experience of having a very small mouth. Whatever one tries to eat is very

difficult to get down. In this dream state one is in a body as big as a town

and its impossible to get what one needs.

There are other states where one experiences outer hindrances, where when ever

one reaches for something then some demon or disturbing influence always takes

it away. Or, things become fire and burn us and so on.

 

Finally, if we have mainly charged the mind with anger and hate then the result

is paranoia. When the subconscious impressions come up from the mind the mind

cannot stand them and the main feelings then are cold and heat. Buddha tells us

that there are eight levels of feeling extreme cold and eight levels of feeling

extreme heat. Then there are also stages which come from time to time like when

people suddenly start drinking like mad and destroy their lives once or twice

or four times a year, make a sh ambles of their lives and then gradually they

have to get together again.

 

Actually we can see it all if we look in a mental institution or at human

beings living in extreme situations. All these things can happen while there

are physical bodies. We see human beings experiencing all these things in

different places. All this can happen even more strongly when there is no

physical body. Right now if one is depressed or unhappy one can eat pills, but

when we die there is no body to distract the mind. The experiences are very

strong. So for that reason Buddha really advises us t o do, think and say

useful things. Otherwise we create problems for ourselves.

 

These other realms, even though they may be experienced for a very long time,

are realms where one gets rid of karma, where one works out karma. If one is in

the god realms one is spending the money, the good energy one created. If one

is in the parano ia or suffering states one is working off one's debt. But the

place where one comes back to the really important place is this human life.

 

If we return to a human life then seven weeks after dying we find some parents

making love and we go down from the t op of the fathers head and follow his

sperm into the mother. We wait until the sperm and egg meet and then a new life

starts. Or, we go from this life into one of the other pleasant or unpleasant

states. But after some time again we reunite with a human l ife like this and

this human life is where the most things can really be done. Here we have a

physical body.

 

We can understand that things are positive and negative. We have very strong

feelings, desires and attachments and expectations.

 

If we look at the continuation of our last life or this one then the first

thing to consider is what happens after we die. What structures come up, where

we go. And then when we are reborn human again there are three more results.

First there are many kinds of human birth. Australia, North Europe are some of

the most pleasant places one can be today. So, there is the place one is born.

 

One can be born in a place where there is collective good karma, where the poor

are taken care of, where there are transparent political processes and where

one can be free have a useful life to develop oneself and think of others. Or

one is born in a place with a lot of suffering, oppression and hunger, which is

actually the majority of the world.

 

Then there is also what kind of body we get. We may get a body that is healthy

and long lived, brings joy and is popular, or we may get one that is sick and

not functional is short lived and has many problems. And the third thing is the

tendencies we h ave, that is if we naturally like to share, if we like to be

good with others, if we like to benefit others, or if we like to put others

down and stand on them and suppress them.

What after that next life when we die the whole inner roulette starts again.

 

The outer impressions disappear then once again we get into new states. Buddha

tells us is that there is no beginning to all this. He says that mind is like

space and space ha s no beginning. Mind has been timelessly been playing with

itself, expressing its qualities, experiencing, producing situations inside and

outside. And there are many more births in states of pain and suffering than in

states of joy and bliss. Even when w e are born here as human beings as we are

now in a nice country, healthy and so on still when we were born we didn't

smile when we came out of our mothers, we screamed because it hurt.

 

Some day we will get old, sick and die.

While we are here in our best years like we are today, we are always trying to

get things we like and avoid things we don't like. We try to hold onto what we

have and arrange ourselves with things we can't avoid. In all conditioned

states no matter whe re we are there is either the suffering of everything

collapsing and landing on our heads or there the suffering of things being

impermanent and changing and being unable to hold them, or there is the

suffering of being ignorant, of simply not knowing, of hardly remembering

yesterday and having no idea about tomorrow.

 

That is why Buddha is always advising us to shift our values from the bank that

gives less and less interest because out life is getting shorter and we cannot

take things along, to the bank that gives more and more. To shift our values

from things that change and disappear, that are born and die, that come and go

and shift them into something which is timeless and cannot disappear, something

which is more joyful, more happy, more powerful, more compassionate. And that

basically means shifting our value s from the thoughts and feelings and

projections of the mind into the open feeling of the space of the mind itself.

It means to try to rest in our awareness and doing that, see the one who sees

and not just do the things that are seen, trying to be aware of the one who is

aware.

 

We will see three things that will make us

very joyful. First we will see that

that which is aware is not a thing. That is, it has no colour weight smell or

size, it really like space. And recognising that it is like space we do become

fearless, I mean really fearless. Nothing can disturb us. Nothing can hurt us

again. Being fearless we can see that everything is interesting because it

happens, because it shows the qualities and the abilities and the richness of

the mind.

 

Finally we can see that other beings

are like us. They want happiness, want

to avoid suffering, and that their

mind is like clear space. And then we

become loving and kind. So actually all these different qualities, all these

different mental tendencies are really important. We actually saw quite a few

of them demonstrated by a red- headed

policeman on our way into Canberra. He stopped us for doing 90 kilometres per

hour in a 60 zone, and he was actually completely happy that while he had to

book us to keep up his quota we were

going to leave the country and nobody

would suffer. This feeling of sharing

and being with us was a really

wonderful human reaction.

 

These tendencies exist everywhere in everybody and everybody can bring them

out. There is something seeing and there is something being seen. There is a

mirror there.

 

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