"Lay people also, who practice seriously, can through their practice, achieve the level at which they can recognize the ground clear light and remain in meditation through the process of death."
"So he had never done a three-year retreat, or anything like that, but nevertheless, when he died he remained in perfect samadhi, perfect meditation, for three days. And this is proof that any man or woman who practices seriously can achieve this same result."
"But then they’ll say, “But surely this only happens among Tibetans; it doesn’t happen among Westerners,” and this is not true."
"...if Westerners practice these teachings, they can achieve the same liberation and awakening as anyone else. By the same token, we should say that if Tibetans don’t practice, they’re as capable of falling into Hell as anyone else."
"...the more effort you put into it and the more concern you have for the deceased person, both on the part of the patrons and on the part of the lamas or whoever performing the ceremony, the more benefit."
"For a yogin or a yogini who has practiced Dharma, death is not much more of a big deal than going to sleep at night. And they have the same confidence, going through and into the process of death, that we have every night when we go to sleep."
The lineages of which we were speaking this morning still exist. Not only do they exist, they exist unimpaired. That is to say the blessings and effectiveness of these lineages’ instructions and practices are still present. What this means is that if you perform the practices of your particular tradition, the Karma Kagyu tradition or any of the other lineages we’ve been discussing, if you practice with vigor, you will be able to remain in meditation at the time of your death. This morning I talked about the fact that this happens not only to great eminent teachers, but also to lamas, and monastics, and so on. You might think then that only lamas and monastics are able to do this. But this is incorrect. Lay people also, who practice seriously, can through their practice, achieve the level at which they can recognize the ground clear light and remain in meditation through the process of death.
There is a saying about this that Dharma has no owner. It is owned by whoever practices it. This means that whoever practices Dharma with the most vigor will achieve the most result. Whoever practices it somewhat less will achieve somewhat lesser result, and whoever practices a little will achieve a little result.
This is still going on. For example, a month or two ago, a man in the area in which I was born passed away. In early life, before the Communist invasion, he was a monk, and in fact attended, for a while, the previous Bardor Rinpoche. But after the Communist invasion, during the Cultural Revolution, under the pressure of the times, he defrocked. He became a non-monk, and came to have a family. He had seven or eight kids. So he had never done a three-year retreat, or anything like that, but nevertheless, when he died he remained in perfect samadhi, perfect meditation, for three days. And this is proof that any man or woman who practices seriously can achieve this same result.
So this hasn’t stopped working. It hasn’t stopped happening. It’s going on nowadays. Nevertheless some people think, “Well, okay, so it’s not just tulkus who can do this, lamas can do it.” And then they’ll say, “Okay, not just lamas, maybe lay people too.” But then they’ll say, “But surely this only happens among Tibetans; it doesn’t happen among Westerners,” and this is not true.
Probably one of the most famous instances of a Western practitioner to achieve this is the Buddhist nun, Sister Palmo. Sister Palmo, of whom no doubt some of you know, was born in England in the early years of the twentieth century. During her life she immigrated to India. During the late nineteen forties when India was gaining its independence from England, she became a close associate of both Mahatma Gandhi and Pundit Nehru. Because of this, after Independence, she became a civil servant in the Indian government and married a prominent religious teacher from the Punjab. Her husband is a famous guru in the Punjab. They had three children, one of whom, her son, became one of India’s most famous film actors – not that that has anything to do with her samadhi [laughter among audience], but just you might want to know.
Pursuing her career in the Indian civil service, eventually she reached the point where she was offered a ministry. She was offered an appointment as a Minister of one thing or another. She declined the appointment and went to His Holiness the Karmapa in Rumtek and received the vows of an upassika from him and began to practice intensively while continuing with a lower level of civil service job. Then when she decided to retire from the civil service, she received the full monastic ordination from His Holiness and began to live at Rumtek and practice with great vigor.
While living at Rumtek she had a fascinating way of communicating with His Holiness the 16th Karmapa, because Sister Palmo, or Frieda Beaty as her name was before she was ordained, did not speak much Tibetan. She spoke in a kind of rudimentary pidgin Tibetan when she really needed to. His Holiness of course did not speak any English, except for a few words here and there. Nevertheless, they could communicate with one another. And he would speak to her in a kind of mixture of Tibetan and English and she would speak to him in a kind of mixture of English and Tibetan, and somehow they understood one another.
There was only one area of misunderstanding or disagreement between them. Traditionally Tibetans feel that it is grossly disrespectful to step over a Dharma text so much as one letter, because placing your foot over something is a sign of disrespect – is taken as a sign of disrespect for it. Sister Palmo, having been brought up in Great Britain, did not think that this indicated disrespect, and so therefore she would forget [chuckles in audience] and when she was in a hurry, she would just step over Dharma texts and over the table on which they were placed. His Holiness would scold her, and she would apologize and say not to do it again, which she wouldn’t until the next time she did it. [Loud laughter among the audience.]
She passed away in the home of the owner of the Overroy Hotel, in Delhi, during His Holiness’s second tour in the West, so that would have been in 1976 or 1977. She passed away and remained in samadhi for three days after her death. The fact that she did this is proof that culture of origin is irrelevant, so it’s obvious that if Westerners practice these teachings, they can achieve the same liberation and awakening as anyone else. By the same token, we should say that if Tibetans don’t practice, they’re as capable of falling into Hell as anyone else. [Laughter in audience.]
Now, I’ve been told that this year or next year, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche is going to be teaching the ejection of consciousness, or powa, to disciples who have completed the prerequisite, which is 600,000 Amitabha mantras. Powa is a very good example of what makes Vajrayana special, which is to say, many means of little difficulty. I recommend this highly. It’s extremely beneficial at the time of death. It’s said that if someone engages in the ejection of consciousness at death, or has it done for them, even if the person had committed great wrongdoing, they will not fall into a lower rebirth for the duration of the teachings of the Buddhas of this eon.
How does this work? It’s a little bit like deferring the payment on a loan. If you have a loan that is due to be repaid in a certain length of time, and you then can somehow negotiate a deferment so that you can pay it back much more gradually, then this puts you in a much better position. In the same way, although you may have the karma that would cause you to be reborn in a lower realm, even a hell realm, in your next life, the practice of powa delays this, so that you’re reborn in fortunate circumstances and are able to gradually purify the karma that otherwise would have caused a rebirth in Hell.
Generally speaking, when we go to sleep at night, Rinpoche said, we don’t fear too much that we’re not going to wake up in the morning. We feel that we have enough reason to be fairly confident that we’re going to wake up the next morning. For a yogin or a yogini who has practiced Dharma, death is not much more of a big deal than going to sleep at night. And they have the same confidence, going through and into the process of death, that we have every night when we go to sleep.
Normally, we regard death the biggest of big deals. In fact it’s such a big deal for us that we often are afraid to mention it. We don’t even like to say “death.” We have other ways of referring to it. If you say the word “death” aloud, someone is liable to go, “Shhh.” But it’s said for a yogin, death is not death, it is an opportunity for awakening.
There is nevertheless, a situation under which circumstances death is a big deal, death is dangerous, and death is worthy of fear. That’s if, because you don’t believe in the results of actions, you behave badly. You do nothing good and lots of bad things. Then there is considerable danger at death. But that is the same kind of foolhardy behavior as it would be driving your car in a straight line without looking to see if you’re even staying on the road, just to see what happens. [Laughter.] Never looking at a map, thinking, “It doesn’t matter, I’ll end up somewhere.” That’s dangerous because eventually, you might drive off a cliff. If you plan properly, you learn to read a map, you select the roads, and you make sure you follow them, you’re not going to drive off a cliff. In the same way, if you understand the results of virtuous and unvirtuous actions, and if you implement that understanding through conscious moral choices, through the adoption of virtuous actions and abstention from unvirtuous ones, then you’re just like somebody who can confidently drive because they know the route to get to where they’re going. Just as we don’t regard a journey as particularly a big deal when we know where we’re going, neither is death.
Now, you’d say that death is a big transition, and it is. But if you’re prepared for a transition, if you know how to handle it, you can get through it. For example, suppose you owned a valuable property in New York City, a house in which you live. Then you acquire a nicer house in California. You sell the house in New York and you move to California. Well this is something of an undertaking, but you would have no doubt that you would be capable of organizing the move and seeing it through and safely arriving at your home and moving in. You wouldn’t freak out about it; you’d just take care of it. Well, in the same way, death is really nothing more than that. You’re moving from an old house to a new one. Because when you die, it means your body is falling apart, and it’s old. It’s time to discard it. It’s not useful anymore. It’s not a big deal in the sense of discarding something that has outlived its usefulness. In this case the body doesn’t literally “outlive” its usefulness. [loud audience laughter] Discarding something once its usefulness is over is not something we conventionally or in other circumstances regard as tragic. It’s natural. So death inherently does not require the level of fear with which we commonly regard it.
At this point we’ve looked at the first of the three types of experiences of dying: the experience of holy beings and those who’ve achieved a state of training that is somewhat concordant with that of holy beings. For such individuals, who are called the “upward minority,” they’re the ones at the top, there is no Bardo, because there is not the bewilderment which would cause the Bardo.
Now we come to the second group, and these are called the “downward few” or the “downward minority,” and these are people whose lives are so bad, who do so many bad things, like such actions as the Five Actions of Immediate Consequence, but not just that; there’s lots of other bad things that can cause this too. In short, if you do very bad things, then there will also be no Bardo, because the karmic propulsion is so intense it’s like an express train to, well literally, an express train to Hell. [Laughter.]
What it’s called is the “Upward Express” and the “Downward Express.” Literally, I’m not making that up. You know, you really zoom straight to the top or straight to the bottom.
So those are the first two groups. The first group is the best possible situation; the second group is the worst possible situation. They’re both, in the general population. They’re both somewhat few. Most people are in the middle group. The middle group are those beings that experience the Bardo.
The word “bardo” means “in between,” or “interval.” So, although we tend to use it colloquially, in Tibetan and in English, to mean the period after death, in fact the word bardo means any phase or period that is characterized by a common feature or characteristic such that it can be clearly distinguished from what precedes it or follows it. Therefore all states of, or phases of, existence constitute one or another bardo or interval.
The usual division of them is into six. The period between the reaching of one’s birthplace and death, or the being struck by mortal illness at the conclusion of that life, is called “the Interval Between Birth and Death,” or “the Bardo Between Birth and Death.” Birthplace means, for example in the case of a human being, the womb of one’s mother. Whatever becomes the physical cause and site of birth.
The second is the period between when you are struck by mortal illness and when you pass away, so it’s what we normally refer to as dying, and that’s called “the Interval of Dying.”
The third is from when the breath, heart, and so on, stops – the moment of death – until the appearances of the apparent clear light arise. The simplest way is to say: from the moment of death until your consciousness actually leaves your body. That’s called “the Bardo of Dharmata. That’s the period at which one could recognize the ground clear light, but it’s more often experienced as unconsciousness.
The fourth is the interval between the moment when your consciousness actually leaves your former physical body, which is the beginning of what people normally think of as “the Bardo,” and the moment when you enter the place of your next birth. That’s called “the Bardo or Interval of Becoming,” because it is the interval in which you’ve become what you were going to be born as.
So those four are the main ones. Within the Interval Between Birth and Death there are two distinct states that are within this life but nevertheless somewhat special, so they’re also called two bardos. One is the state of meditation, which is called “the Interval of Meditation,” and the other is “the Dream Interval” that includes also the state of deep sleep. So sleep and meditation are the other two bardos.
Therefore, we see that these intervals or bardos are completely natural. They’re not something inherently fearsome or unnatural at all. However, usually we use the term Bardo to mean the period after death until your next rebirth.
It is during the period of the deceased’s remaining in that bardo, first the Bardo of Dharmata and then the Bardo of Becoming, that observances or services are to be performed for them.
Customarily we think that the Bardo lasts for forty-nine days. In fact, the true meaning of the forty-nine days was meditation days. As you’ll see in clear commentaries on the Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, although not clearly pointed out in the text itself, the actual division into days and weeks is not solar days of objective time, but the subjective time of the deceased’s perception. What they perceive as a day is a meditation day. A meditation day is the length of time for which your mind can remain in a state free of distraction. So, for someone who is tremendously trained in meditation, it could be very long. For most people, it’s very, very short. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the forty-nine days duration of the interval originally referred to meditation days, we still do use forty-nine solar days as the calendar for scheduling observances for the deceased.
As for what services are sponsored by the family or other survivors, this depends upon what they can afford. There are a number of different ways this has been done traditionally in Tibetan culture. First of all, and most important, is to have the ejection of consciousness, or powa, performed by as eminent a teacher as possible, as soon as possible after a person has died. Especially this must be done within the first three days after the person dies, because after that point normally they’ve awoken from unconsciousness and their consciousness has left the body so there’s no point. It’s too late for powa.
The most important observances are the ejection of consciousness and other ceremonies and services performed during the three days immediately after death. Then, for the remainder of the first week, other services will be done, especially what is called the Purification Inscription Ceremony, sometimes called the Transmission of Placement.
The Purification Inscription Ceremony refers to what is used as the support for sending the person’s consciousness, and it may have a representation of the person, but at least it has their name. So it’s sometimes called the Name Inscription. The Transmission of Placement, which is another name for the same ceremony, refers to trying to place the person or lead the person to a pure realm. These ceremonies are applications of the sadhanas of various deities. Therefore, there are certain ones that are more common than others. Generally speaking, the most common practices of sadhanas used for this purpose are those of Amitabha, the form of Chenrezig called the Emptier of Samsara from its Depths, Akshobya, the Sarvavid form of Vairochana, Vajrasattva, the Peaceful and Wrathful ones, and Padmavajra. There are others also, but the ones I’ve mentioned are the ones that you’re most commonly going to encounter.
So those will be done with the purification ritual, for the remainder of the first week, and also, if possible, for all forty-nine days, depending upon the resources of the family. Also during these forty-nine days, the family may sponsor regular readings of the Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo.
For those with less resources, those who couldn’t actually afford to sponsor all of that, they would at least try to get the ejection of consciousness performed as soon as possible after the person’s death and one or more lamas to perform whatever ceremonies they could, for definitely the first three days after death, and then every week after the person’s death. So on the day of the person’s death for seven weeks, they would try to get a ceremony performed.
Those with fewer resources than that might sponsor the performance of these ceremonies once, or more times if possible, by a monastery. Those unable to sponsor anything would perform the ceremonies themselves, with other family members or with associates, and so on.
There’s no specific requirement, but the more you can do for the person, the better. This doesn’t mean the more you can pay, that the more money you spend in sponsoring the ceremonies has corresponding benefit, but the more effort you put into it and the more concern you have for the deceased person, both on the part of the patrons and on the part of the lamas or whoever performing the ceremony, the more benefit.
Some families would also sponsor a yearly memorial purification ritual. Even though the person would undoubtedly have been reborn by then, they would still have a ceremony performed for their benefit on the year anniversary -- the first and also succeeding anniversaries -- of the person’s death, but not everyone did that.
Now to be specific, and I think this is something that you can do that is very convenient and easy, and Rinpoche said that I can help you with the arrangements of, and that is appropriate for these times: Generally speaking, most Tibetans are very devoted to Buddha Dharma. In particular, among the many provinces of greater Tibet, the former kingdom and now province of Nangchen has a long history of producing a lot of very devoted and intense practitioners and siddhas. So because of this, and because of the need for lay men and lay women to have places where they can engage in intensive practice, I’ve built public temples, in the heart of Nangchen where I was born, for the practice of the nyungne and nyene. And these are being very well and much used, and regularly people perform the nyungnes, often in eight sets - eight nyungnes straight, at a time. And if you want to know about the benefits of the eight nyungnes or even one nyungne, then please read the book Rest for the Fortunate in which this is presented in great detail.
One of the uses that’s made of these temples that we built is that whenever someone passes away in the region, people do, and also sponsor, the nyungnes. By sponsoring a nyungne for the benefit of the deceased person, this is a very simple but very beneficial way to ensure that they are benefited greatly. If you want to do that, it’s very easy to do, and given the exchange rate, it’s also very inexpensive.
Also, at Karma Ling, KTD, and this KTC there is the custom of burning lamps that are sponsored for the benefit of specific people, including those who have recently died, so you can sponsor those lamps.
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