|
At night when you can drop the activities of the day, you should engage in a series of meditative contemplations similar to these:
All right, soon Im going to fall asleep. How many people have I heard about who went to sleep and never woke up? When I lay my head down on my pillow, I may not wake up again.
Death is not that complicated. It is simply a matter of not being able to take in one more breath. Then I am dead. That could happen to me tonight in my sleep. Then critically and honestly look at your life and think, If I die tonight in my sleep, what did I do with my day?
What have I done with my life? Have I been of benefit or have I caused harm? Sometimes it is not so pleasant to see how self-centered and selfish you have been, how focused on me, my, mine.
Whenever this has been the case, you have created darma that ultimately propels the mind in a difficult direction at the time of death. It is like forward motion. If you put something into motion, it continues to go that way.
If your mind has been moving along a negative course, when you die it continues exactly the way it has been going all along. So each night you should assess the general and specific direction of your likfe. You must recognize where you have indulged in the faults of your mind and harmed others. This negative karma must be purified, which means you must confess your faults before the wissdom being who is your object of spiritual commitment and devotion.
You should take refuge in a perfect wisdom being, without any fault, the absolute expression of enlightened mind. Begin by confessing, I did it again, I have hurt others. I have caused harm. I have been wrong. I know better, but mistakenly I have done it again. Then accept absolution from whomever you know to be a perfect wisdom being. If, for example, you have faith in Jesus as your object of wisdom, visualize that blessings descend from him in the form of light or nectar and actually wash away your accumulation of nonvirtuous karma and negative mental habits.
Then, with the wisdom being as your witness, reaffirm your intention to benefit other being s by vowing, I will halp others in whatever way I can until I truly have the enlightened strength to bring them perfect bliss and happiness. As important as it is to recognize your mistakes, it is equally important to recognize where you have been kind and where your activities of body, speech, and mind have been of benefit. The virtue of such activities creates merit that you dedicate generously with a pure, selfless heart to the immediate and ultimate benefit of all beings: By the power of this dedication may each being find happiness and may all without exception attain the qualities of their intrinsic buddha nature.
With this, rest in the thought: I have purified by karma. I have committed myself to selfless work for the benefit of others. I have ddedicated my accumulation of merit to their happiness. Now if I die tonight I will have no regrets. Having reflected on the day in this way, meditate on your own death. Imagine taht you are really going todie, that you actually enter deaths passage and there is no way back.
Imagine vividly different scenarios - an airplane crash, an automobile accident, terminal illness, stabbing by a mugger. Use your power of mind to make the event immediate and real. Any scenario you choose has some possibility, because you really do not know where and when your death might occur. People often express fear about this kind of meditation and say, If I think this way, maybe it will happen to me.!
But think of all the things that have ever crossed your mind - you would not have time in an eon for that many things to happen to you. Thinking about death is not goiing to make it happen, but it does prepare your mind for the death experience. So, courageously, imagine the details of your death as clearly as possible: There is a stabbing pain in my chest. Its my heart! Im having a heart attack! I hear the ambulance sirens, I am place on a stretcher, my sife is crying, and the dog is frantic. The paramedics trip on the stairs as they carry me out. The ambulance lights, the chaos, the bright lights of the emergency room....... I overhear the doctor say, am sorry, Mrs Jones, but hes in pretty bad condition. We may not be able to pull him out of it. My wife looks at me, stunned and brokenhearted. Shes my last link. I cant say anything. I cant see her now. Im so lonely, helpless........ I am dying, but everyone dies. My life feels like a dream, and now its going to end. Death feels very familiar.
I know Ive been through it before. Life, death - they are transitions I must make. What choice I have lies in the intention of my prayer, the power of my meditation, and the decision to use my spiritual connection to the wisdom being in whom I have faith. With your mind and your heart, offer all that has been positive in your liffe to the benefit of every other being.
Do not cling to anything. With the wisdom being who is your spiritual refuge as witness, say this heartfelt prayer: By the virtue I have accumulated in my life, may I and every other being who passes through the door of death find rebirth in a state of pure, sacred awareness. Then allow your consciousness to merge into the heart of flawless wisdom.
This completes the second phase of meditation. Finally, in concluding the nights meditation of death, receall impermanence and the suffering it brings to all beings, and let compassion expand from the most profound depths of your heart-mind. Suffering is so pervasive in our world, in all realms of existence, that there seems little we can do. Who has not been frustrated in trying to help even one person? How can we think of meeting the needs of the countless beings who are lost in the ocean of suffering? Only an enlightened wisdom being can truly benefit all beings, just as the radiance of the sun shines for all who stand in its light. With this thought aspsire to enlightenment:
From now until enlightenment, I will work ceaselessly for the welfare of others. In each moment I vow to reduce my faults and increase my qualities of compassion and wisdom. By following this spiritual path and the merit it generates, may I and all others find freedom from suffering and realize our innate enlightened potential. Then drop all activities of the mind and relax.
This relaxation is like the openness that occurs after the last thought passes and before the next one arises. The mind remians as the mind is, not unconscious, not dull, not analytical, just naked in open awareness. Let the mind rest there.
...Another method for deepening our understanding of the four thoughts involves visualisation. Begin by establishing pure motivation, your aspiration to attain enlightenment in order to help beings go beyond suffering and dins permanent bliss and happiness.
Then, in as much detail as you can, consider how things change. When your mind becomes weary, relax. Don't force it; true relaxation doesn't last very long at first. We thought begin surfacing again, visualise yourself in very high, rugged terrain where sheer black rock cliffs rise precipitously. There's nothing to cling to. Only one very narrow and precarious path snakes along the steep sides of the cliff. The path grows narrower as you go. until completely disappears.
You can't move forward, and behind you, chasing you, are snarling, ravenous beasts close in from behind, and you've got nowhere to run. You're helpless, without friends, without family, without hope. In desperation, you call upon your teacher, upon god or Buddha - something greater than you, something infallible. That embodiment of perfection appears, saying Have no fear.
These treacherous black cliffs have arisen as the result of your clinging from beginningless time to a belief in the truth of ordinary reality. This belief has become so strong that your danger is great. Ignorance makes the landscape dark. These beasts that mean to kill you represent ripening karma you've created with your own poisonous mind. This narrow path tat disappears into nothingness is the way of samsara. Whatever has come together will separate. Whatever is happening now will at some point cease.
Day by day, each step you take, left foot, right foot, will pass without any possibility of reclamation or control. The shortness of the path indicates the brevity of your karma for remaining in this human life. Then the infallible being you've invoked asks: What is death? What is samsara? It seems good, bad, happy, sad, but it's like a dream. There's not a trace in it of anything true or solid. Delusion and ignorance perpetuate phantom experience of danger and power.
To awaken from this dream is to realise the birthless and deathless absolute nature. After you've finished the visualization, let the mind rest. Finally, dedicate the merit of your practise to all beings, that they may awaken from the suffering dream.
Through this meditation, you will see that delusion, ignorance, poisons, karma, and the belief in the truth of an unsubstantial reality all create the precarious conditions of the cycles of suffering. By recognising impermanence and contemplation the empty, dreamlike nature of samsara, you will undermine your belief in the solidity of experience....
... We need to prepare for the moment when the mind and body separate by developing strong habits of spiritual practise that won't evaporate in the face of death. ...
If we become familiar with the process of dying, we won't be taken by surprise; we won't be paralysed by fear or distracted by confusion. If we develop the necessary meditative skill, death can be a door to the deathless state of enlightenment whereby we ceaselessly benefit all beings... ...
At death, the elements lose their power. They no longer support one another, and the mind separates from the body. When the elements begin to disassociate, the ability to conceptualise, to differentiate between self and other, subject and object, diminishes. The male energy stored in the crown of the head descends, the female energy in the naval rises, and the two join in the heart...
... If we are skilled in resting in awareness of our mind's nature, we can find liberation in the chhnyid bardo by recognising the clear light as our own inherent nature. This blending of awareness with the clear light produces dharmakaya liberation...
...Next the reflections of mind begin to arise as a pure display of colours and deities; this is the second phase of the chhnyid bardo. If we recognise these phenomena as none other than the radiance of our intrinsic awareness, this transitions becomes an opportunity to attain liberation, called sambhogakaya liberation...
... If in live we developed a strong habit of praying when things seemed beyond hope, we will remember to pray this time. The moment we think of our source of refuge, we will be reborn in that wisdom being's pure realm. This is called nirmanakaya liberation...
... If our practise of the Great Perfection paths of t'hregchhod and t'hodagal has been strong, we can find liberation in one of these two phases of the chhänyid bardo...
... Otherwise, these opportunities for liberation elude us, and the minds dualistic takes form as the experience of self and other, the process of ordinary sentence beings in samsaric reality. We enter the sidpa bardo, or bardo of becoming, the forty-nine-day transition of rebirth....
The mind will move into another dream, taking rebirth in one of the six realms, with all opportunities to awaken, to find rebirth beyond suffering, lost...
... A method termed p'howa can be used at the moment of death to transfer one's consciousness to a pureland...
Called the meditation of nonmeditation because it is relatively easy to accomplish, p'howa is widly taught in the Vajrayana tradition even to beginners, for it provides safety at the time of death. After very little practise, signs of accomplishment appear, indicating that the channels of the subtle body are no longer blocked and that one's consciousness will easily transfer through the crown of the head to a pure realm of experience at death.
This practise is like a bridge linking dharma from this life to the next... ...
....Words and concepts simply can't liberate us, for they are part of the mechanism of dualistic mind. They can't give us a taste of mind's essence or lead us to its realisation. ....
Conceptual mind is bound by object-subject duality. But minds's true nature cannot be grasped dualistically, it's self-seen...
... Relating to al teacher is like plucking into an electrical outlet. If electricity is flowing, it will come directly to us...
By relating to one who has a direct experience of the absolute truth, we can connect with that truth. The purpose of honouring, accepting, having faith in, and being receptive to the teacher, then, is to realise this truth ourselves, not simply to appreciate someone else's realisation of it...
... When our minds start to change as a result of the methods given us by the Lama, we begin to recognise more and more of the lama's noble qualities, and our faith increases. When our faith meets the realisation of the lama, the meaning of the absolute nature is born in our minds. It's a combination of the teacher's qualities and our own faith, prayer and practise that liberates us...
... Through our habit of dualistic perception, we built walls in basic space, creating artificial boundaries. But on the level of absolute reality, there is no separation, no near or far: the lama's wisdom is no different from that of all enlightened beings. This all-pervasive wisdom that lies beyond one or many, separate or together, is the absolute lama.
... It is difficult to find a perfectly qualified teacher, but the one we choose as our guide on the spiritual path should at least have certain qualities...
The teacher's practise should have reached a stage at which and indwelling confidence in the deeper meaning of the teachings and the dynamic energy of realisation has been fully attained. Such a teacher's mindstream is filled with a spontaneous, unfabricated love and compassion for all beings. Seeing or hearing, even thinking about or touching that teacher is beneficial.