Dying and living
a dharma talk delivered in 2003
by
Geshe Gedun
Tharchin
For Buddhism it is very important to have a correct motivation to undertake any activity, because through a change of intention and motivation, one can change and modify the way one sees things. All religious traditions use prayer as a means of developing this correct motivation; particularly in Buddhism, prayer is understood as a process of 'familiarisation' with the correct motivation. Prayer does not necessarily have to be something to be recited verbally, but rather something that comes from the heart; this is the most important kind of prayer. From a Buddhist perspective, the mind is the main key to transforming the other elements we are made of, which are, primarily, the body and consciousness. As Dharma practitioners it is very important, especially in the beginning, to put emphasis on our mental activity. All the chanting, rituals and ceremonies that we may attend are secondary tools for the development and transformation of the mind. The mind is understood as the element which, when transformed, allows us to change our intention towards whatever activity we wish to undertake in our daily lives; through changing one's intentions and motivations a person can change the course of their life and the course of all the lives that follow.
Today we are going to talk about dying and living in Vajrayana tradition. The concept of dying and living or living and dying is very important and should be brought into our practice, as our life can be seen as the result of many small daily deaths. I am a believer in this lack of certainty that when I go to sleep at night, I am not sure whether I will wake up the next morning. The process by which we arrive at the deep sleep phase is, in some ways, similar to the one we go through after we die. The subject of death is very interesting, and it is also a simple subject, more so than one might think; we should not see death as something frightening and difficult to face.
Being alive brings us joy precisely by virtue of our particular abilities, such as awareness and the ability to act, but, in fact, being alive in itself would not be possible except as the result of the death phase we mentioned earlier. For example, we can say that a good day is the result of a good night's rest. In fact, when we fall asleep we lose contact with a certain reality and remain in a state of semi-consciousness, but this state is necessary to regain energy and be more active during the day. So a good night's sleep is necessary to have a positive and active day. But the opposite is also true, namely that if we have a pleasant day, full of satisfaction and successful activities, it will lead to good sleep. So we see a certain interdependence between good sleep and an active and positive day, and between a boring day and a bad quality of sleep. It is very difficult to talk about techniques and methods for developing good sleep, but in the Buddhist tradition it is believed that there are 'ways' to decide what kind of sleep to facilitate, or perhaps decide what time one wants to wake up the next morning. So a person can become 'familiar' with these issues through mental activity. What I am trying to explain is the relationship between the night cycle, during which we sleep, and the active cycle of our day, one influencing the other and vice versa. When we sleep we generally reach a phase of relaxation during which we cannot do any particular activity. In the Vajrayana tradition, it is believed that there are some practitioners who are able to practise the Dharma more during sleep than during wakefulness. This means that a person can even use sleep as a tool for Dharma practice. So a high-level practitioner can use the entire twenty-four hours to practice the Dharma. By Dharma practice we mean proper development of intentions, proper awareness, and proper development of all our qualities. A person who approaches life as a tool for Dharma practice inevitably sees death as a time to use for Dharma practice. From the Vajrayana practitioner's point of view, death is a once-in-a-lifetime event and is something unique to be able to increase and grow one's realisation.
So for the great practitioner death represents a treasure, a precious opportunity to develop great qualities. In the course of this experience there is the possibility to expand and increase one's realisation. According to the Vajrayana tradition, the moment of death for ordinary beings, such as ourselves, is the only moment when the so-called "innate mind" appears. When this innate mind manifests at the moment of death, we are able to maintain a state of awareness and acknowledge this apparition, then we can use it to make use of all our experience and increase our achievements. At the moment of death we come into contact with the innate nature of the mind and have the opportunity to explore the truths expressed in the Dharma. If, on the other hand, we fail to develop this awareness and limit ourselves to a conventional, superficial knowledge of the truth we have developed throughout our lives, our perception of all the things we face will be that of ordinary beings with a rather unrefined level of mind.
In order to be able to acknowledge the manifestation of this innate mind it is necessary to first try to become familiar with what is the process of disintegration of the five aggregates that we will face at the moment of death. The Self is made up of the five aggregates, and during the process of death these five aggregates dissolve according to a process that develops in different stages, which has been studied and is more or less the same for everyone. The disintegration of the five aggregates is linked to the four elements. The five aggregates are made up of the four elements, so the disintegration of one produces the dissolution of the others. The four elements are earth, water, fire and air (wind). The order in which these four elements are stated is the same as the order in which they dissolve, so the first is earth, the second is water, the third is fire and the last is air (wind) which dissolves in the last stage of consciousness. In the dissolving stage of the earth element there are particular experiences that happen within ourselves. Similarly when dissolving the water element, there will be particular experiences specific to this stage. This is also the case when the element fire is dissolved and when the element air is dissolved. The latter element produces specific signals in the consciousness. This process of disintegration is correlated with our five senses, so that as the disintegration of the four elements progresses, so does the disintegration and dissolution of our five senses. Similarly in sleep some of these elements dissolve. That is why the five senses do not function and are not active. So practitioners try to follow the process by which we die, but also the moment of transition from wakefulness to sleep. For a great practitioner, going to sleep is an excellent opportunity to try to acknowledge these signals. So if we go to bed too late and are exhausted by daily fatigue, we cannot do this kind of practice. It would be good to go to sleep with some reserves of energy, both physical and mental, to be able to face this practice. After the dissolution of the four elements, our outer senses are completely shut down, at which time we are defined as clinically dead. However, in the Vajrayana tradition this stage cannot be defined as death as it is believed that there are four more stages to go through to reach the dissolution of consciousness.
Our consciousness can be observed from two main levels. The first level, which is coarse and superficial, consists of disturbing emotions, while the second is a more subtle level. With regard to the gross state of consciousness, we refer to three emotions: attachment, hatred and ignorance. These three disturbing emotions are dissolved in the order in which we have stated them, and once all three have been dissolved there appears what is called, in a very beautiful term, the 'clear light', which could be called the innate nature of the mind. To explain the concept of 'clear light' in language that everyone can understand, we can say that it is the essence of the very core of our mind. When we refer to attachment, hatred and ignorance, at this stage, we are not referring to their practical expression, but to the signs that the expression of these three disturbing emotions can generate, and when these three types of signs dissolve, then there are four signs that appear within ourselves.
The moment when the innate nature of the mind, the essence of our mind, emerges following the dissolution of our disturbing emotions, is the moment when we can implement into it a whole series of knowledge that we have accumulated over the course of our existence and then put to use. This is a very important phase because it is the one in which we give importance to our stream of consciousness.
The great practitioners (yogis) are able to take advantage of this innate mind, to use it to meditate, to practice and to implement all those realizations that they have achieved in the course of their existence. There are some great Lamas, and I have witnessed them, who actually die clinically and maintain the meditation position and in appearance, on the physical level, do not appear to be deceased, yet when they finish their meditation the body collapses and falls. In this case by great Lamas I do not mean people who have been entrusted with great offices and honorifics, but very simple people who have practiced Dharma for a long time. At the end of this meditation, using the innate mind, they separate the mind from the body and at the same time pass into the intermediate stage of life called "Bardo". All these words to define life, death and the various stages in between are important but not as important as our willingness to experience these events through daily practice and becoming familiar with it. So, in summary, it is about having a constant awareness of all our experiences throughout our daily lives.
According to what the historical Buddha said in the Sutras, a good practitioner is able to be aware at all stages of their life: when they are standing, when they are eating, when they are sleeping... and they are able to intuitively remember any moment of their life because they try to constantly remain in a state of good and correct awareness. Consequently, if we do not maintain this awareness on a daily basis, in the course of all our activities, it will be impossible, when we go to sleep or when we die, to be able to remember our experiences as something living to use. The Buddha himself said that in order to be able to maintain a good level of daily awareness, much introspection and attention is needed. This awareness, which is the ability to take a moment before performing an action, allows us to evaluate whether that action is more or less correct. This ability to take a little time before embarking or not on an activity is the practice of mindfulness. This practice is the only one that allows us to lead a virtuous life. In the Vajrayana tradition the practice of mindfulness is in some ways neglected because it is taken for granted that it is part of general practices and is not studied separately. In the Theravada tradition the word mindfulness occurs more frequently. When you ask a Theravada master what kind of practice we should do at the time of death he will surely say that we should live trying to maintain our awareness. If we go to a Vajrayana master, he will explain to us a whole series of complicated things like the four elements, all the processes of dissolution, and in the end we won't remember any of it. The meeting point of these two traditions is that they have in common that they want to die with a positive mental attitude, with a virtuous mind.
We must try to apply both methods since we are fortunate, living in the West, to live in a context where many Buddhist traditions have met. In order to become aware of the moment of death, even if we are not aware of all the phenomena of dissolution, we must have a good practice of awareness. Therefore, the focus is on maintaining a positive mental attitude and a virtuous mind. Since I have been in the West I have come across many different traditions: besides the Chan/Zen and Theravada, which were not part of the Tibetan context, other lineages like the Kagyu and the Nyingma, which I did not know much about when I was studying in my monastery, and of course Christianity. We can draw on all these beautiful traditions to enrich ourselves further.
This is one of the advantages of our western civilization, that of living in a multicultural and democratic context that allows us to learn about different things, without the closed-mindedness that leads us to say: "What I do is better than what others do". This attitude is wrong and shows the ignorance that is at the source of all our miseries. Destroying this attitude and opening up to others is one of the goals of Dharma practice, and when you open up to others, you have the opportunity to receive a lot and thus further your spiritual growth. So one must also have a good capacity for introspection and above all awareness because, without these qualities, there is a risk of taking not only good things but also bad things.
The word ignorance is a term that in Buddhism could be explained in many ways and with different levels of introspection, however here we interpret it as mental closeness. To accept or consider something as positive just because it is mine is a symptom of closed-mindedness and is a selfish attitude. According to a Tibetan definition this attitude can be translated as "clinging to oneself". The symbolic phrase to define this mentally wrong attitude says: "This is good because it belongs to me". In the schools of philosophy for the definition of this concept enormous volumes are studied to describe in depth what we are saying. So ignorance can be defined as a narrow mind and as clinging to oneself, thus clarifying the relationship between ignorance and clinging to oneself. One of the objectives is to destroy these wrong mental attitudes because they are perceived as the source and origin of all our miseries. It is also true that many Buddhist practitioners have great ignorance. Sometimes there are people who are considered great practitioners, with a scholarly knowledge of Buddhism, who also possess great ignorance because they have a narrow mind. Sometimes having an exclusive knowledge of Buddhism, without knowing other things, can be a reason for closed-mindedness. Although this opinion of mine may be wrong. Living and dying should both be part of our existence to be experienced with awareness. Living in awareness and dying in awareness is the advice given in the Theravada tradition which, in my opinion, is the tradition that brings us most directly back to the essence of the Dharma message.
Question: In the course of an accidental death what happens to a person?
Answer: It is a more complicated death. If one comes to a coma because of illness and comes to it gradually, this process of dissolution may last longer. Those who die from particular illnesses that lead gradually to the moment of death are in some ways more fortunate because this gradualness allows more time to bring to mind all their experiences and make the most of this opportunity. It is a good opportunity to reflect in a slow and gradual way. If you are a good practitioner, whether you die from an accident or a violent event of any kind, there is the possibility of bringing all the experience back to mind at that particular moment. But there has to be an extraordinary awareness. Gandhi at the moment of death, after he had been shot, was able to invoke the name 'Ram', the equivalent of God. The fatal attack was not an event that disturbed him to the extent of upsetting his calmness of mind, he managed to keep it intact... great awareness.
Question: Does the way we die affect rebirth?
Answer: The nature of rebirth will be decided by the imprint one gives to the innate mind at that particular moment. Death is a unique opportunity and in a sense we practice for a lifetime to prepare for that particular moment. If we imprint at that moment with feelings of anger, this can cause reincarnations in what we call the Lower Realms. It's like an email, you can write pages and pages of messages on your computer, but if we get the recipient's address wrong we lose all our work ... our life's work. It's one of the secrets of Buddhism.
