Instructions for the Time of Death and the Bardo

The original outline of the text is divided into four points. The first was the practices of a personal deity for this lifetime. The second is the practice of transference of consciousness at the time of death. The third is how to blend appearances together as the practice for the bardo state. Now, we come to the last section of the outline, which is showing the essential points with respect to the correct view, the proper type of meditation and proper behavior or conduct. 

What is the essential point of the correct view of reality? It is to realize that whatever types of appearances arise to our mind, although these seem to be real and have true existence from their own side, nevertheless, not even an atom of them has inherently findable existence. When we have certainty about how nothing has inherently findable existence, without letting our mind lose this as the object, to focus single-pointedly on it, is the essential point for meditation and building up beneficial habits of the mind. 

As for the essential point of behavior or conduct, whether we are going around walking, sitting or lying down, we should do this within the context of realizing the total absence of all fantasized ways of existing (voidness) and see that everything that happens is with the absence of these fantasized ways of existing, with the absence of inherently findable existence that things appear to be that way of existing, but in fact they don’t. In this way, we should see everything around us during our behavior in accordance with what is actual reality. 

These are the practices for The Three Essential Moments of this life, death and the in-between stage. These are the special instructions for how to practice at these moments, which come down from the tradition of the great master Maitriyogi. Having had the opportunity to have a precious human life and learn about these practices, we should try to put them into practice as much as possible. 

At the end of any practice, it is extremely important to offer the proper types of dedication prayers. If we take any positive potential that we’ve built up from a positive practice, even if it is just making one offering of a flower and we dedicate the potential built up for achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, then this is both types of prayer: a wishing type of prayer as well as a dedication type of prayer. 

If we offer and dedicate the positive potential built up in this way for our attainment of enlightenment, then our potential will not become exhausted, but will continue until enlightenment is achieved. If we dedicate our positive potentials in this way, then we won’t completely devastate and destroy them by becoming angry. Once they are dedicated, then anger will not destroy them. It is important, of course, to follow the methods to prevent ourselves from ever becoming angry. If we never become angry, we will have happiness of mind. We will get less sickness, and our life will be longer. 

However, if we merely pray with the wish “May I achieve enlightenment to benefit everyone,” this is merely an aspiring type of prayer, but not a dedication. We should dedicate some actual positive potential that has been built up, and it is important to dedicate it for great aims and purposes, namely the attainment of enlightenment to be able to benefit everyone. 

The people who have come here have a great interest in spiritual practices, intention to do practice, and you are all learned and have many talents and abilities. It is not possible, of course, to give up total concern for food and making a living, but with the proper attitude, you will be successful both on that level and the spiritual level. You realize that it is not proper to go out and murder people or living creatures, and that it is not proper to steal. If we don’t make our living by such dishonest and illegal ways, but if we make an honest living and have the verbal energy of our mouths saying mantras and have our minds and hearts always in a state of being warm and kind to others, then there is nothing wrong with good, honest work. It is extremely beneficial if we can promise never to kill even the tiniest of creatures or insects. If we look at the highly realized masters of India, examples among them are weavers and tailors and so on. There is no contradiction between working in an honest manner and having, in addition, a kind and warm heart and saying OM MANI PADME HUMs. 

If we look at the example of the great master Dromtonpa, a famous lama from Tibet, in the early part of his life, he studied with the master Sey Tsunpa. He used to sit and with his feet he would soften the animal skins for his master. With his hand, he would churn milk. With his back, he would rock back and forth to move the instrument for making yogurt. He would put his books to the side, and doing all these various actions he would memorize the texts and study at the same time. When Atisha came to Tibet and Dromtonpa met him, Atisha asked him, “What type of practice did you do before?” He explained how he was the attendant and served Sey Tsunpa and practiced and studied the Dharma. Atisha told him that out of all the spiritual practices that he did, this manner of serving Sey Tsunpa and working like that was the best. It is very important to have a warm and kind heart and always have thoughts for the peace and benefit of everyone. 

You are all very fortunate to have the opportunities of the recent past of His Holiness the Dalai Lama coming to Europe, and if you had the opportunity to meet with him and see him, you are very fortunate. You have various geshes that come and visit you here giving teachings who are excellent masters, and in the future, you should continue to ask them to come and teach you the various texts. You have the teachers Lama Zopa and Lama Yeshe, who are excellent teachers; through their kindness, you have these various centers, and you should offer prayers for their long life. You should be happy, and I will say prayers for all of you. That concludes this teaching. 

[Chanting]

If we don’t reach that point where we actually gain control over our rebirth, and we see that it is our time of death and we are going to die, there are instructions on how to handle this situation and what to do. The text continues with the instructions for the second of The Three Essential Moments, for the time of death, which follows from the line in the root text: “At the time of death, meditate on the oral teachings of transference of consciousness and make an offering of one’s own body.” 

It is divided into four sections. The first is offering one’s illusory body to the assembled field; the next is cutting off the connection of one’s own mind; the third is opening up the great pathway for liberation and the fourth is propelling one’s consciousness upwards. 

We should visualize our mind as Chenrezig in the form of a tiny Chenrezig in our heart. With this state of detachment from our body, possessions, friends and relatives, we should imagine our mind as a small Chenrezig that comes up and leaves our body from the crown of our head. When it is said that it is emanating out from our heart, we should understand that this is the place where it initially leaves from, since it was at our heart, but the actual place that it exits from our body is the crown of our head. Then, we imagine that when our consciousness has left the body in the form of Chenrezig, the body collapses on the floor like a piece of matter or lump of flesh that is now devoid of all consciousness, like the corpse. Up in the air, our mind as Chenrezig looks back and sees our old body, which is lying on the floor looking very nice, fat and juicy; looking very delicious. Then Chenrezig, which is our mind, takes a sword in his hand and slices off the top of our head.

When we build a fireplace for building a campfire, it’s done in the method of having three large rocks placed in a triangle, and we build the fire inside. Instead of rocks, we arrange three human heads. We place the top part of the skull cup that was sliced off from our body upside down on top of these three human skulls. We imagine that this skull cup becomes huge. Now we emanate from the heart of Chenrezig many dakinis who are holding various cleavers – curved knives like a chopping knife – in their hands. They chop up our old body, and they put the pieces inside the skull cup. From the naval of the deity, fire comes out and causes all the flesh of our old body inside the skull cup to boil, then our mind as a deity says OM AH HUM, and it blesses and transforms it all into nectar and ambrosia. Again, we emanate many dakinis out from our heart as the deity. They have in their hands skull cups. They use these skull cups to scoop out the nectar from the large skull cup and make an offering of all of these to the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, deities, protectors and dakinis and so forth who are all in the sky. This is a very nice point to break for lunch.

[Chanting and a break]

In this way, we transform ourselves to all the objects, like the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. We are making the offering from this enormous skull cup. The objects to whom we are making the offering can be the same as what we were visualizing before in the practice in terms of the objects that provide a safe and sound direction in life (refuge). We had on a lotus with four major petals, and we had the spiritual master of the meditational deity in the center, and we had all the Buddhas of all the sutras and tantras on the front petal; and then to the central figure’s right, we had the representation of the Dharma in terms of all the texts; and at the back, we had the representation of the spiritual community in forms from both sutra and tantra form; and on the left petal, we had all the Dharma protectors. 

 We visualize the same, as we did before, that these are the objects to whom we make this offering. When we are finished with this offering, our mind has been outside our body; we have been visualizing it in the form of a small Chenrezig. And regardless of the fact that before we visualized chopping up our body and giving it away as an offering, still, our body is here. At the end of this offering, we visualize that our mind as a small Chenrezig comes back into our heart. Even though we have done this procedure of visualizing our mind going out of our body and our body being chopped up, made an offering, all this is now finished in our visualization. We are still there, so there is no fault in having the Chenrezig go back into our body. 

This completes the first section of this part of the outline, which is making an offering of our illusory body to the field. 

Cutting off the Strong Connection to This Life 

The second point is having our mind cut off of its strong connection. When the time of death happens, and we have to leave our body, if our mind is still strongly attached to our body, possessions, friends and relatives, it will be extremely difficult for us to go to a pure Buddha-field. In order for our mind to become detached from connections to various objects, the best method is to meditate on voidness. This will allow us to become detached, and this is the best method. The intermediary type of method would be to focus on how all things, all appearances are merely like an illusion, and in this way, cut our attachment. The least way of doing it is to try to meditate on death and how no situation ever remains static, everything is impermanent, and when we die, the fact of reality is that we have to leave everything behind, our possessions and everyone we know. 

The great Milarepa said that at the time of death with no control, we are going to have to give up everything, so now while it is under our control, we should give these things up with an eye on doing intense practice. As for the various things that we might have in this lifetime, we should realize these are the results of positive potentials we built up from past lives, and we shouldn’t just waste what we have and just throw them away, but rather we should use them constructively to make offerings to the Triple Gem, to help others, and in this way to build up further positive potentials. 

If we use the wealth that we have to make offerings and help others, then these things do have a purpose, and they take on essential meaning. However, if we only use these things to work for various activities of this lifetime and build up greater and greater amount of objects, then there is no point to it at all. If we have a great deal of miserliness about the things that we have, and we don’t use them for anything, then it is pointless to have them at all. If we use the things that we have to make offerings and help the poor and needy, then we have made it very meaningful to have these things, and we have not just wasted them. If we use whatever things we have to help and benefit others, then at the time of death, we won’t feel any sorrow or regret; we will feel that “I have lived a good life by the kindness of the Triple Gem, and I have used what things I had for the benefit of others. I have not just wasted them,” then we can die with our mind at ease. 

If we haven’t used the various things we had to make offerings and to benefit others, then no matter how many possessions we had during our life, when our life ends, everything will seem like it was just like a dream. We will die with a tremendous amount of problems and unhappiness because we will feel terrible at leaving behind all these possessions and wealth, and we will die in a miserable state of mind. On the other hand, if we have spent our life practicing as hard as we can, and we’ve used whatever we had to help others and make offerings, then at the time of death, we won’t have any regrets. We will feel that “Due to the kindness of the Triple Gem, I led a good and constructive life, I have done the best I could, I have been of help to others, I have not wasted the things I’ve had, but I’ve used them for constructive and positive things, and this way, my wishes have all come true in terms of what I could do,” and we will be able to die in a happy and peaceful state of mind, with no regrets.

There are many ways like this to cut our mind’s attachment to these various things. We should realize that whatever possessions we have, we should use them for constructive purposes and shouldn’t develop great attachment to anything.

Bees, for instance, all go to sweet flowers where there is a lot of pollen, but if they get completely into the sticky pollen in the flower, they can get stuck there, and they will be unable to get out. Likewise, we shouldn’t get caught up in the various things we have, so that we get stuck in them like in this example. Whatever we have, we should feel satisfied with it, feel it’s acquired by the kindness of the Triple Gem, and not be greedy for more, but try to develop a feeling of satisfaction. 

If we have no satisfaction and are always wanting more and more, then we are never going to have enough, and our thirst will never be quenched like someone thirsty drinking salt water. 

Pathway to Liberation

The third point in the outline is opening up a great pathway to liberation. 

In our body, we should imagine we have the central energy channel with a thickness of about the size of our finger. We should imagine this channel goes up to the top of our head, and at the crown of our head, the channel opens up; it is a bit wider at the end, like the end of a trumpet or a flower. This is the upper end of the channel. The lower end of the channel we should imagine is slightly below our naval. We should imagine that the bottom end is plucked. At the center of our heart, we should visualize a small Chenrezig. Way up, above us, we should imagine Tushita Buddha-field, as was explained yesterday, which is an extremely beautiful place made out of all precious gems, and it is very grand and extensive. We should imagine that sitting in the center of this grand Buddha-field is the great guiding light, Maitreya. He is yellow in color and seated in the same posture as you have in your poster, with the legs down. We make a request to Maitreya three times: “Please lead me up to your pure land realm.” That is the third point for opening up the pathway to gain liberation. 

Propelling Our Minds Upwards

Now the fourth point is propelling our mind upwards. 

Again, we make a similar request to Maitreya. Before, in the previous section, as was explained, we have a shaft of light that we imagine connects us all the way up to Maitreya. In this fourth section, again, we make requests to Maitreya and imagine that Maitreya sends another thin shaft of light down the larger shaft of light. The smaller shaft of light is in the shape of a hook like we have in amusement parks, a chain with a hook going down to pick things up. This goes down, and we imagine this catches hold of us, our mind in the form of Chenrezig at our heart, and picks us up all the way to the heart of Maitreya in his Buddha-field. There we dissolve into Maitreya’s heart, and emanated out from Maitreya’s heart, we take birth in front of him, on a lotus. I will give the oral transmission of this part of the text.

[Transmission of the section of the text]

This concludes the first two of The Three Essential Moments, the teachings for what to do in this lifetime and at the time of death. The third point is the essential instructions for the bardo, and for this, there is the meditation on blending or mixing appearances. Whether we have done this transference of consciousness or not, we are still going to die. After we die, we go into the bardo, which comes before taking our next birth. If you ask, “What is the bardo like, what is this in-between period like?” – if we are going to be reborn in our next lifetime as a human being, then in the bardo, we will take on the appearance of a small child at the age of eight. If we have been a constructive and positive person in our life, then when we die, during the bardo period, we won’t have any frightening, nightmarish things appear. If we have been a destructive and negative person, then the bardo will be filled with all the fearful things of the hells and so forth that we will be taking rebirth into. Even if we are already in a bardo being for reborn to one of the worst places of rebirth, there are still methods that can be done to prevent this from happening. If our relatives and friends who are left behind after we died light many lamps or candles for us and make offerings of charity to the poor, hungry and needy, and likewise and set up representations of the Buddhas and so forth, these are methods that can help avert these worst types of rebirths that can come after the bardo. 

The actual length of time that anyone stays in the bardo is seven days – one week long by the count of human time – and it can recur up to seven times, so the longest time we can stay in the bardo is 49 days or seven weeks. Most beings have left the bardo state by the end of the fourth week. Whatever types of practices are going to be done to benefit the deceased, they should be done primarily at least in the first four weeks. 

As for the actual things that the bardo beings can partake of, it is only the odors and fragrances of things; they can’t actually eat anything physically, they can just partake of the aromas and smells of various foods. Of course, to benefit what is going to happen to us in the future bardo state, the main thing we should do is constructive and positive practices now ourselves while we are still alive; this will make a huge difference. It will be like walking, holding a torch that is projecting a light in front of us. Although after our death, the prayers and charitable things done by our friends and relatives left behind are of benefit, the difference would be like us walking, making a light in front of us, or walking ahead with someone behind us using a flashlight. 

The various appearances we see in the bardo are also determined by the type of rebirth we will be taking. If we were to be reborn as a god, things would appear as white and very beautiful.