"So in that way, this original work done by these three people, King Trisong Detsen, the abbot Shantarakshita, and the master, Guru Rinpoche – usually just referred to as the King, the Abbot, and the Master – created the Tibetan Buddhism that exists and survives down to the present day."
"Taking the vow of Refuge is the same thing in all Buddhist traditions. It’s taking refuge in the Buddha as a teacher, in the Dharma as a path, and the Sangha as companions on that path."
"Tibetans could expect the map of Dharma to provide them with a very precise approach to the journey of death, because the journey of death is a journey of the mind, and therefore is part of the science and knowledge that we call Dharma."
"...when you’re talking about the interval, or bardo, after death many of the observances performed by clergy or by others for the benefit of someone who has died, are concerned with providing assistance to them in the bardo or interval..."
"...someone who does the three year retreat is going to be able to recognize the ground clear light when it arises at death, because of their training. So therefore they should not require the ejection of consciousness."
"...achieving the state where you’ll be able to recognize the ground clear light at death and remain in meditation afterward."
Today, we’re going to have a really good time. [Laughter.] We’re going to have a lot of fun, and laugh a lot, because we’re going to talk about death. [Laughter.] In particular, it seems you want me to talk about how death is handled in Tibet.
[Rinpoche talked for quite a while about history during the Bon religion, which preceded Buddhism in Tibet. I have edited this section out. - Ed.]
After the building of Samye, the original monastery, which is still standing, several things occurred that constitute what we regard to be the actual creation of Tibetan Buddhism as we know it. The first of these was that the abbot, Shantarakshita, in order to see whether Tibetan culture and society could tolerate monasticism, originally ordained seven young men who were called the seven test cases. The idea behind this was that if these seven could tolerate the monastic vows, then the culture probably could. One of them was a previous life of His Holiness Karmapa, and one of them was a previous life of Jamgon Rinpoche. In any case, these seven ordinations were successful and therefore at that point, satisfied, the king and the abbot together declared that monasticism would be supported and would be part of Tibetan Buddhism.
The second thing that was going on at the same time was the training of translators, some of whom were among the seven test cases, and many others, who worked closely with great Indian masters and began the project of the translation of the Buddha’s teachings into Tibetan. Their best-known works that are still used nowadays are the Kanjur, the translated commands, the Buddha’s teachings, the sutras and tantras, and the Tanjur, the translated commentaries, which are the collection of the Indian commentaries up to that time. We use many of these original translations from Sanskrit into Tibetan down to the present day, such as the Twenty-One Praises of Tara, the Aspiration for the Conduct of Excellence, and many other things that turn up in your liturgical use and study.
The third thing that was happening at the same time was that Guru Rinpoche began the presentation of the Vajrayana, or Secret Mantra, to those Tibetans who had an aspiration and predisposition for it. He did this in many different ways, but the single most important, for lasting historical significance, was that sponsored by the king, at a cave near the monastery of Samye. Not on the monastery grounds, but in a place called Chimphu, he gave the great empowerment, or great abisheka of the Assembly of Sugatas, so the Assembly of all Buddhas. He gave this to a group of 25 disciples. Each of them at the empowerment cast a flower made out of gold onto the mandala, and subsequently practiced a deity from within the mandala. The mandala has 725 deities. They practiced the deity on whom their flower landed. So in that way, each of these 25 disciples achieved perfect awakening through the practice of a single deity. Their traditions of these deities, practiced separately and all together, come down to the present day.
So in that way, this original work done by these three people, King Trisong Detsen, the abbot Shantarakshita, and the master, Guru Rinpoche – usually just referred to as the King, the Abbot, and the Master – created the Tibetan Buddhism that exists and survives down to the present day. And the period in which they were functioning is called the Age of the Early Translations. Although many great masters have appeared since then, no one has done anything that surpasses their achievement in the establishment of the literature, the creation of the lineages of vajrayana practice, and the establishment of the monastic tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Guru Rinpoche said himself at this time, speaking of the future: “There shall appear in this land innumerable siddhas and masters, all of whom shall be of immeasurable kindness to this teaching and this land, yet when you compare their kindness, it shall be as nothing in comparison to that of we three.” So therefore respected above and beyond all other teachers are these three; the King, the Abbot, and the Master.
In later centuries the lineages that they founded developed and subdivided based on location or family name and so on, and were supplemented by further teachings that were brought from India. Eventually all of these different lineages, through subdivision and through coalescing, emerged as the four schools or four traditions of Buddhism that we have nowadays, but all of these can in one way or another trace their origin back to the beginning.
Because of what happened in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, when Buddhism really was planted in Tibet, as it became more and more integrated into the society and culture, not only have innumerable people achieved awakening through its methods, but also a vast number of ways of providing services to the general population have developed, and one of these is the service that is provided to someone, together with their family and so forth, at the time of their death.
A great deal of good things have arisen from this original work. Starting with the earliest great Vajrayana teachers, Guru Rinpoche and his 25 disciples, many teachers have appeared. For example, his emanation, Lord Marpa the Translator, who lived in the 11th century, replenished the teachings by receiving further instruction in India and founded what we call the Kagyu tradition, which has remained as an unbroken transmission of awakened wisdom down to the present day with His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa. In the same way, the Glorious Sakya tradition, which originally came from one of the family lineages of one of the 25 disciples, and the Virtuous tradition, or the Gelug tradition, all of these different schools have in their own way, served the Buddha’s teachings in Tibet and provided more and more access for different individuals. But fundamentally speaking, they’re all doing the same job. Fundamentally, they’re all doing the same thing, and that same thing is the presentation of the Buddha’s teachings, which we call the Holy Dharma.
The same thing that they do is presenting a path and then telling you how to travel it. And if you think about it, the path of Dharma is very much like a map. What you learn when you learn Dharma is like learning to read a map so that you can get to where you want to go. The starting point of that map is taking the vow of Refuge. Taking the vow of Refuge is the same thing in all Buddhist traditions. It’s taking refuge in the Buddha as a teacher, in the Dharma as a path, and the Sangha as companions on that path. But once you’ve done that, then you have to pursue the path, and to do that you have to learn to read the map.
We could say that Tibetan Buddhism, as we know it nowadays, is a very detailed map indeed. But if we speak of literal maps, the maps that cartographers create, Tibetans did not have very good ones. [General laughter.] Tibetan knowledge did not include the exact science of cartography. The map of Dharma is very detailed. Maps of locations and roads in Tibet were at best sketchy, and sometimes positively imaginative. [Laughter.]
Here the situation is very different. When you buy a map, you expect that map to tell you exactly how far it is to where you’re going, and to give you all sorts of indications about the best ways to get there and so on. You expect a great deal of information. This is part of our culture. We expect that cartographic maps, literal maps, are going to tell us everything we need to know to get somewhere, and we’re used to it. We take it for granted. Why do we have this expectation? Because it is a natural product of the education and scientific development of our culture, our society. So we could say, simply, almost brutally, that the reason the maps are better in modern world than they were in Tibet is because our education, our knowledge is superior. We could go further and say that Tibet lacked scientific progress. Thousands of years ago people rode horses to get from one place to another. Now most places you still have to ride horses to get from one place to another.
But in extolling the superiority of our Western education, and the superiority of our skills, cartography, and so on, we have to remember that there is one exception to this. There is one science, one –we could even say – technology, one area of education that was superior in traditional Tibetan culture, and that is the understanding and mapping of the mind.
Just as we expect, and have the right to expect, the maps we use to travel from one place to another, in our culture and this time, to be extremely detailed and precise, and to provide us all the information we need in order to get to that place; in the same way, Tibetans could expect the map of Dharma to provide them with a very precise approach to the journey of death, because the journey of death is a journey of the mind, and therefore is part of the science and knowledge that we call Dharma.
When we talk about what services were provided for people who died, we really have to remember that people who die have to be divided into three classes, and most of what we’re talking about, when we talk about “then this happens to the dying person, and then this happens to the person after their death and therefore we have to do this and chant this and so on,” most of what we’re talking about is the average person. The average person is someone who was not so good that they’ve achieved awakening, or so dire in their behavior that they’re also a special case.
What I mean by this is when you’re talking about the interval, or bardo, after death many of the observances performed by clergy or by others for the benefit of someone who has died, are concerned with providing assistance to them in the bardo or interval, and most or all of you have read a great deal and heard a great deal about the things that happen in the bardo. However, before we go into detail, you should know that only one of these three types of people will actually experience the Bardo.
This one of three categories of people is by far the majority. It’s only a comparative few on the upper end, and a comparative few, fortunately, on the lower end, that don’t experience the bardo; but nevertheless, the bardo only happens to people who have neither been extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad. So before we talk about what happens to a normal person dying a normal death, we have to look at these other two types.
The first type is the death of a holy being. Holy beings do not experience the bardo, because the bardo is a state of bewilderment and confusion, and they are neither bewildered nor confused. If we start with the most obvious, classic case of a holy being, let’s talk about the Buddha, or any buddha. Obviously, by definition, a buddha has not only achieved but fully demonstrated in that lifetime the achievement of the body of great unity, the state of Vajradhara. A buddha has abandoned everything that is to be abandoned and has realized everything that is to be realized. So therefore when a buddha dies, nothing changes in their mind. They do not become in any way confused or bewildered, so there is no bardo.
Even, however, if we’re not talking about a supreme nirmanakaya, that is to say someone like Buddha Shakyamuni, who demonstrates the twelve deeds of a supreme nirmanakaya. If we’re talking about someone who has achieved that same state of awakening but not demonstrated the twelve deeds, in other words a nirmanakaya of birth, they are not going to experience the bardo either, because if they’re awakened there is no delusion to arise during the death process.
To some extent, there are likely to be indications of this in what happens to their body when they die. The most dramatic indication of this is that their body simply vanishes. And this happens. When in that way, the body of a person – either before their death, or at their death, or gradually after their death, it can happen in any of those three ways – vanishes, partially or entirely, we call this a rainbow body, because the body, the coarse elements of the body dissolve into light.
Now, there are a lot of varieties of this. This can happen in many different ways. For example, when the king, Trisong Detsen, passed away, he was surrounded by his attendants and so on, and he was an emanation of Manjushri, so I mean he had a head start [audience laughter], but nevertheless what he did when he died was: on his shrine he had an image of Manjushri that was one of his supports for faith, and as a sign that his mind dissolved into the wisdom expanse of Manjushri’s heart, as he died, his body dissolved into light of five colors, which then dissolved into the heart of that statue.
But there are many other ways it can happen. For example, among the disciples of Guru Rinpoche, Nubchen Sangye Yeshe, without abandoning his body, simply rose into the sky and went to the realm of Vajrapani. Or, sometimes the body will not disappear entirely, but the body will shrink considerably. Like the Dengbo Chintsey Rinpoche, when he passed away his body shrank immoderately, by which I mean more than you can account for due to desiccation and so on.
There are other things that indicate the same state, but that are not quite as obviously dramatic. For example, when His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa’s body was cremated, his heart, eyes, and tongue survived unburned. And actually, the heart flew out into Situ Rinpoche’s hands. And these are all indications that the person who passed away is enlightened.
So what happens to that person? What happens to their mind? Because either through their having in a previous life achieved awakening, and then intentionally been reborn as a nirmanakaya or tulku in that life; or because they achieved awakening in that life; they are at the time of their death a nirmanakaya buddha, a nirmanakaya. So, since the nirmanakaya is a display of the wisdom of the dharmakaya, when they’re done with that body, which is the part of them that we call nirmanakaya, then they remain in the state of dharmakaya. In a sense you could say that nothing happens to that mind. Where a normal person would become unconscious, they remain in a state of absolutely nonconceptual wisdom, which is what we call dharmakaya. Their physical body either disappears or not, but the person just remains in the state of dharmakaya.
Then, where a normal, an ordinary person would awaken from unconsciousness and find themself in the bardo and undergo various hallucinations, because they’re not unconscious, at that point their mind manifests as the sambhogakaya, and they abide as the sambhogakaya, or body of complete enjoyment, for as long as they wish, until they intentionally take their next rebirth as a nirmanakaya. And during that time, when a great master is in the sambhogakaya state, they achieve tremendous amounts of hidden or unseen benefit for beings. One of these ways they benefit beings includes granting uncommon blessings to their disciples, and that’s why when a teacher passes away, we do perform extensive funerary rites. But these funerary rites are not called the Forty Nine Day Observance, as they are in the case of a normal person, they are called the Completion of Intentions. And the Completion of Intentions means that you are performing the funerary rites in order to attune yourself to your teacher or the deceased master’s present ability to benefit you tremendously while in the sambhogakaya state.
An indication of this purpose is the fact that after the teacher has passed away, their body, as long as it is kept, will be dressed as the sambhogakaya, with the sambhogakaya silks and jewelry, crown, holding a vajra and bell and so on. And so the purpose of the funerary rites for such a teacher is not to help them, but to provide a convenient avenue for accessing their tremendous blessings at that time.
Now, aside from the intention of the funerary services performed for a great nirmanakaya who passes away, as opposed to those performed for an ordinary or average person, what are the other differences in what you do for them when they die? The first and most obvious difference is that in the case of an awakened being, especially a renowned awakened master and so on, when they pass away, the ejection of consciousness is not performed for their benefit. The ejection of consciousness, where the consciousness of the person is ejected from their body and sent ideally to a pure realm, is not done for them.
The reason for this is that an awakened being, whether they were already awakened before that previous life or whether they achieved awakening in that life, abides at the time of their death in the unceasing recognition of the mind’s nature, the nature of all things. Therefore, when they die, although they do die, their body stops functioning as a living organism, instead of becoming unconscious, they simply rest or remain in meditation. Meditation here, although the general term is used, refers to their even placement within the dharmakaya.
There are physical signs of this. In the body when the blood stops circulating it pools at the bottom. There’s a very specific term for it, where the blood pools at the bottom. Pathologists use a very specific term that I just don’t remember what it is. That doesn’t happen. In other words, although there is no actual circulation in the sense of a living body, it appears as though the circulation has not stopped. So for example the face will not become pale the way it does with a normal corpse, the nose won’t cave in, and so on. In other words, they don’t look dead. They look as though they were still living. And yet the heart is not beating, they’re not breathing, and so on.
What is done instead of the ejection of consciousness? The Clarification of Meditation. The Clarification of Meditation in the case of a renowned awakened master is more or less simply a request addressed to them to remain in the state of meditation. In the case of someone of lesser attainment, it can actually remind them to do so.
What is important to understand about this is that, although it’s obvious that the situation of a renowned awakened master is going to be different from that of an ordinary person, this distinction between the death of an ordinary person and the death of someone who abides in the nature of dharmakaya, needs to be made in other cases as well. As well as renowned nirmanakayas, this also can happen or be achieved by ordinary beings - that is to say those who are not nirmanakayas, those who are born as ordinary beings, who received subsequent training. This nowadays principally is known to happen to those who do the Three Year Retreat. Someone who does the three year retreat – and Rinpoche said, “By does the retreat I mean actually does the practices, not just you know live for three years in the retreat and sleep,” – but someone who does the three year retreat is going to be able to recognize the ground clear light when it arises at death, because of their training. So therefore they should not require the ejection of consciousness.
This has always been understood. For example, during the time of the Great Encampment of the Karmapa when the 7th Karmapa, Chodrak Gyatso, had a what we would call a traveling monastery where they traveled and camped in tents all over the place, it was so common for those in his traveling retinue to remain in the state of samadhi or the state of meditation after death that when an old monk died, they wouldn’t say, “Another one died today.” They said, “Another one flew off today,” because it was the rule rather than the exception. And it was almost unknown in the days of the Karmapa’s Great Encampment for anyone not to achieve this state.
But lest you fear that this is merely the tale of a past golden age, I assure you Rinpoche said that this is continuing down to the present day. One of the best recent instances of this is Lama Ganga from Thrangu Monastery who presumably some of you knew. He actually passed away in a hospital in Cherku and Khenpo Rinpoche and others wished to bring his body back to Thrangu Monastery from the hospital. But because he passed away in the hospital, he entered samadhi in the hospital, and they were concerned that transporting him, Eastern Tibetan roads being what they are, would disturb him and shake him out – literally, shake him out – of the samadhi, because this is possible. It’s considered important not to allow the person to be disturbed by sharp or loud noises and so on. But the depth of his samadhi was such that, even though he was transported along the bumpy road between the hospital in Cherku and Thrangu Monastery, he remained in samadhi.
So, I tell you the story to assure you that this is still going on. And this is the real reason why teachers push the three-year retreat so hard, why it’s so highly extolled. Because you have a very real chance, through doing the three-year retreat practices, of at least achieving the state where you’ll be able to recognize the ground clear light at death and remain in meditation afterward.
So, after hearing all about Tibetan culture and religious culture and so on this morning, your stomachs are probably empty enough that going to a large and elegant Tibetan restaurant would be a good idea. So we should therefore stop for lunch.
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