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Commentary on Aspiration for the Bardo

by Chokyi Wangchuk
BARDO
INTERVAL OF POSSIBILITY

Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche’s

Commentary on Aspiration for the Bardo
by Chékyi Wangchuk

Translated by Yeshe Gyamtso

KTD Publications
Woodstock, New York
 Published by:
KTD Publications
335 Meads Mountain Road
.Woodstock, NY 12498, USA
www.KTDPublications.org

Distributed by:
Namse Bangdzo Bookstore
335 Meads Mountain Road
Woodstock, NY 12498, USA
www.NamseBangdzo.com

© 2007 Karma Triyana Dharmachakra

All rights reserved

ISBN 0-9741092-2-3
This book is printed on acid free recycled paper
CONTENTS

1. THE BARDO
5. Supplicating the Guru
9. Nature and Aspects

17. INTERVAL OF POSSIBILITY

23. The First Part: Dying
31. The Moment of Death: Experiencing the Clear Light
43. The Middle Part: Being Dead
61. The Last Part: Approaching Rebirth
75. Questions and Answers

113. Glossary
121. Index
127. Acknowledgments
128. Resources
INTRODUCTION

This book is the finished outcome of a teaching on dying,

death, and the bardo given by Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche at
the KTC (Karma Thegsum Chdling) center in Hartford,
Connecticut on June 4th-6th, 2004. Khenpo Rinpoche gives
a traditional presentation in the form of an extensive oral
commentary on the brief root text, Aspiration for the Bardo
(Tib. bar do'i smon lam), by Chékyi Wangchuk, the Sixth
Shamarpa, found in the communal liturgy Dharma Practices
of the Karma Kagyu (Tib. kam tshang chos spyod).
Chékyi Wangchuk, the Sixth Shamar Rinpoche (1584-
c.1635), was recognized at an early age by his principal
guru, the Ninth Gyalwang Karmapa, Wangchuk Dorje.
Demonstrating swift accomplishment in his training and
tremendous proficiency in debate and scholarship, he
became one of the most renowned panditas of his era. He
traveled and taught extensively throughout Tibet, China,
and Nepal, and performed vast activity for the benefit of
beings. Just as the Golden Garland of the Kagyu succession

vii
 continued with Chékyi Wangchuk himself, he in turn recog-
nized the tenth incarnation of the Gyalwang Karmapa,
Chéying Dorje, who then became his principal disciple.
By far, the most widely known cycle of teachings dealing
with the interval (Tib. bar do) is the Great Liberation
Through Hearing in the Bardo (Tib. bar do thos drol chen
mo), or, as it is commonly referred to in the West, the
Tibetan Book of the Dead. A treasure text composed in the
eighth century by Padmasambhava of Oddiyana, and later
discovered in the fourteenth century by the great treasure
revealer Karma Lingpa, it is an extraordinary compendium
of precise and detailed knowledge and instruction pertain-
ing to the bardo—the intermediate states of existence
between life and death. Taken as a whole, however, the
scope of the work is far too vast to be adequately encom-
passed by a teaching event of only three days' time.
Because of this, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche thus explains
that the reason why he chose Chékyi Wangchuk's
Aspiration for the Bardo as the root text for his teaching
and commentary is that although this aspiration liturgy is
composed in brief verse form, it is nonetheless complete in
its content and presentation. It is an appropriate and aptly-
chosen work for the scope of a concise teaching such as this,
and Khenpo Rinpoche bestows an exceptionally clear and
accessible elucidation of this most challenging material,
while graciously giving the necessary time and attention to
its more technically obscure points.
His commentary is not merely a bare description of the
sequence of events in the process of dying and death, but
moreover, it is underscored throughout with the purpose and
urgency of aspiration: we are clearly instructed on what to

vill
practice and how to train ourselves at every point of oppor-
tunity, in this very life—whether in the waking state or the
dream state—and even within the interval experience itself,
and we are exhorted to do so. Much of the basis of this
preparation for the time of death hinges on a critical experi-
ential understanding of the illusory nature of all appearances
that is primarily obtained through meditation. Likewise, this
understanding is closely interrelated with the gradual
process of familiarization with the clear light—the very
nature of mind itself. It is such familiarization through expe-
rience that will ultimately culminate in direct recognition of
that nature, and as Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche explains, this
is precisely what transforms the potential terror and confu-
sion of the bardo into one of the greatest opportunities one
could ever have—the interval of possibility.
It is a rare and invaluable blessing indeed to come into
contact with these profound teachings. Rather than live our
lives in anxiety, fear, and denial of death's inevitability, we
can instead take confidence and joyfully look forward to
making this life meaningful in preparing now for the
tremendous opportunity for liberation that the time of
death provides.

Jigme Nyima

ix
 This book is dedicated to
Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche,
our glorious guru of infinite unwavering
generosity, wisdom, and compassion.
THE BARDO
The best known explanation of the bardo is the Great
Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, which provides a
complete and precise explanation of what happens in the
bardo as well as what you can do to deal with it and what
opportunities there are for liberation. Because of the book's
length and the relatively short space available here, the text
that I use as the basis for this presentation is an aspiration
liturgy called the Aspiration for the Bardo, which is also a
complete treatment of the subject.
 SUPPLICATING THE GURU

“Those who are our refuge in this life, in future lives, and in
the interval in between, our guides, the gurus, I supplicate
you. Lead us, who through negative karma mistake the pro-
jections of our bewilderment to be real, out of our wander-
ing through the six states within samsara.” The liturgy of
aspiration begins with this supplication.
The first point is that our gurus are our sources of refuge,
not only in this life and in all future lives, but also in the
intervals or bardos in between lives. In this case, your gurus
are those who hold you and raise you onto the path, such
as the Golden Garland of the Kagyu. You begin by suppli-
cating them expressly and by implication the other sources
of refuge: the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
The request you make in supplicating them is explained
in the second sentence, which points out that it is through
accruing negative karma that we wander in samsara. Your
accumulation of negative karma is caused by mistaking
your own bewildered projections or appearances to be real.
That is to say that the appearances that you experience are
THE BARDO

functions of your bewilderment and are not independent

realities. It is through mistaking them to be independently
existent or independently real that you become fixated, gen-
erate kleshas, and accumulate negative karma. It is this that
causes us to wander through and be reborn in the six
states—the realms of the hells, pretas, animals, humans,
asuras, and devas. Supplicating that you be led out of this
introduces the whole aspiration, which is concerned with
the discovery of the nature of bewildered appearances. You
will see, as the liturgy goes through the various aspects of
the bardo, that it is concerned with the penetration of
appearances and the discovery of their true nature.
We begin with a definition of the bardo as we usually use
the term. The term interval or bardo simply means “some-
thing that is in between two other things.” It can be used
and explained in different ways, but generally speaking it
means the type of existence that you have in between lives
when you have not gone to or reached the next state of
birth. Here we use the term bardo to mean just that, and
what characterizes it is explained in the next line, “In that
state, one has no freedom or control.”
For reasons that will become clear, beings in the bardo,
being driven about by the strong force of karma, have no
ability to control where they go. Your previous actions con-
trol you in the bardo, and you are driven by this karma.
This means that you are thrown violently from one place to
another without having the ability to stop. Now, if that is
what the bardo is like, what can you do about it? That is
explained, “Through the instructions concerning special
visualizations for use at that time, may I be able to practice
all the various ways of bringing the bardo to the path.”
 SUPPLICATING THE GURU

Because in the bardo state you have no opportunity to

engage in practices, you must practice in the preceding life
in order to gain control over the bardo. First you aspire to
recognize what the bardo experience is. Then your aspira-
tion is to be motivated by that recognition to pursue the
practices that will give you the ability to gain control, and
ideally liberation, within the bardo. Whereas before we
used the term bardo in the restricted sense, to refer merely
to the period in between lives, it will now be used in other
senses as well, with practices consisting of specific methods,
types of focus, or visualizations. All of these are ways to
bring various aspects or stages of the bardo experience onto
the path. That is what you refer to when you say, “May I
undertake the specific practices that will bring the bardo
onto the path.”
The bardo basically has three phases, and the methods
taught for dealing with these involve learning to see the par-
ticular type of bewildered projection that characterizes each
phase. You recognize dharmata in the case of the first phase,
deity and mantra in the case of the second, and the nir-
manakaya or emanation body in the case of the third. These
will be described in detail later on.
 NATURE AND ASPECTS

The text now describes the true nature of the bardo, “If you
examine it, you will see that there is no beginning or end,
and therefore there can be no in-between.”
“It” here refers to the beginningless and potentially end-
less cycle of samsaric existence. If you examine existence,
you will see that it is without beginning. Furthermore if you
examine any phenomenon, you will see that it has no true
arising. Because existence has no beginning, and because
that which does not truly arise does not truly cease, there is
therefore no abiding state that is in between. Ultimately
speaking, there is no single state that is in between two
other states because none of these other states have ever
truly arisen or truly occurred. Therefore, in the context of
absolute truth, what we call the “bardo” does not exist, but
it certainly seems to exist to the person who is experiencing
it. “Nevertheless in the context of bewilderment, it arises as
a mere interdependent appearance.”
The phrase “in the context of bewilderment” means
THE BARDO

experience as you know it. Your experiencing cognition is

obscured and therefore bewildered, and you therefore take
things that do not have true or independent existence to
have such existence. The appearance of the bardo is itself
interdependent. It is the mere appearance of interdependent
conditions, and in your bewilderment you mistake interde-
pendent appearances to be independent and the bardo to be
an independent reality. In other words, although the bardo
does not really exist, it seems to exist as long as you are
bewildered. No phenomenon ever truly arises, and thus any
phenomenon that we can isolate is a mere interdependent
appearance. That which never truly came into existence
cannot go out of existence, so we can say that the phenom-
enon never truly ceases. Furthermore, the phenomenon
cannot truly abide or persist in between origination and
cessation, since it is empty of true origination. Although
you may agree with that, you also have to admit that you
experience the appearance of origination of phenomena.
The phenomena seem to start to exist; you seem to experi-
ence their ending, destruction, or cessation as well as their
abiding. The origination, cessation, and abiding of phe-
nomena, however, are mere appearances, not truly existent
events, and in your bewilderment you experience them as
though they were real.
The bardo is not just the period between lives. In fact,
the Buddha taught that as long as there is a state of bewil-
derment, all of samsara and nirvana without exception can
be included in or summarized as the bardo. As long as
there is fixation on duality, and as long as you believe in
the independent existence of what you experience and the
cognition that experiences it, you are in some kind of

10
 NATURE AND ASPECTS

bardo or interval. As long as all of the different categories

of “two's” arise for you—pleasure and pain, good and bad,
samsara and nirvana—you are in the bardo. We conclude
with the aspiration, “May I gain trust in the Buddha's
teachings, that all of samsara and nirvana are in this way
included in this category of bardo, which does not truly
exist, but nevertheless appears to.”
The bardo is divided into two aspects, the bardo of the
true nature and the bardo of manner of appearance. “True
nature” here means how things are, and “appearance”
means how things seem or appear. “In absolute truth, things
are beyond limit and their nature is the middle.”
“Beyond limit” means beyond the limits of existence or
absolute nonexistence, and beyond the limits of having a
beginning or true origination and having an end or true ces-
sation. The nature of things, absolute truth, is that middle
which transcends all kinds of conceptual ‘elaborations,
including any concept about reality that you can come up
with. The nature of things is beyond that and therefore is
called “the middle” because it avoids any extreme.
Therefore the nature of things actually is between or beyond
all of your concepts and all of your dualism.
Your bewilderment starts with the fixation on duality—
the duality of self and other, of pleasure and pain and so
on—and it includes the appearance of self and other as sep-
arate. But the true nature of all of the things that appear to
you as dual is not dual; it is beyond that, and in the words
of the liturgy, it is between that. The nature of things that is
between all extremes or limits is the bardo of the absolute
or true nature. As the next line says, “Everything is that,
and it is everything. There is nothing whatsoever that has

11
THE BARDO

any nature other than this.” In a sense you can say that this
nature is everything that there is, everything that truly
exists, because it is the nature of all things. You end with the
aspiration, “May I meet or see the face of the bardo of the
true nature.” “See the face” means not to merely under-
stand the bardo, but to gain direct experience of it through
precise instruction and the intensive practice of meditation
and other methods.
The other aspect of the bardo is the bardo of how things
appear. The term used here is kiindzop, which is usually
translated as “relative” or “relative truth,” although it liter-
ally means “fake truth.” Relative truth is fake truth because,
when it is viewed by an undeluded cognition, it is seen to be
unreal, to not truly exist. It is a process of bewilderment and
bewildered appearances, and it is continuous in the sense
that it is beginningless and it has never stopped. It is con-
stantly gaining momentum, and its power is constantly
increasing, causing your bewilderment to grow over time.
Through bewilderment you experience relative truth, or
fake reality, as real. What is this like? It is like being in the
audience of a skilled illusionist who, through some method
or through the power of casting spells, can cause an audi-
ence to see all sorts of things that are not there. The illusion-
ist Can cause you to see people, horses, elephants, houses,
whatever you want; none of these things are there, but as
long as you do not realize that, you react to them with
pleasure, pain, disappointment, happiness, enjoyment, fear,
and so on, just as though they really were there. Your expe-
rience of relative truth is this beginningless deception by the
fakery or illusion of your own bewilderment.
The term we usually translate as “existence” literally

12
 NATURE AND ASPECTS

means “possibility,” so the next line says, “In this possibil-

ity, nothing is impossible.”
The nature of existence is synonymous here with sam-
sara, because it is founded on bewilderment and delusion.
Because it is all of the nature of illusion and bewildered pro-
jections, anything is possible. Any form of bewilderment,
any form of hallucination, can occur just as an illusionist
can cause you to see just about anything. You end with the
aspiration, “May I gain strong certainty about the bardo of
how things appear.”
In other words, you aspire to gain the certainty that all
of the mere appearances—the projections of bewilderment
that make up what we call relative truth or fake truth—are
nothing more than the bewildered projections of a mind
that is captivated by fixated belief in the duality of that
which does not possess duality.
Next the text turns to a presentation of different aspects
of the bardo. Initially it divides the bardo into three types,
and then further divides the third of these into three inter-
vals or phases. The first type of bardo is the interval in this
life between birth and death, and it means exactly what it
sounds like—the period of time that starts when you are
born and ends when you start to die. What demarcates this
interval, or separates it from the course of your existence,
are physical events—the transformation of being born into
a particular life and the decaying of that life, culminating in
death. The experience of this interval between birth and
death is also marked by physical activity and the physical
transformations of all appearances—all of the things that
you hear and say, positive and negative thoughts, pleasant
and unpleasant experiences, and so on.

13
THE BARDO

What needs to be understood about this first bardo, or

interval, is that none of its appearances are reliable. They
are ephemeral; they do not last and they are constantly
changing. Ultimately speaking, the first type of bardo is a
state of constant change, and the appearances of this life
have no more existence than magical illusions or dreams.
They are mere fluctuations and changes, not the persistent
existence or abiding of anything. The aspiration connected
with this first bardo, the interval between birth and death,
is that you come to recognize all of the appearances of this
life merely as the fluctuating hallucinations of a bardo.
How do you do this? In the best case you practice intensive
meditation until you can rest in even placement within the
direct experience of the illusory nature of phenomena, the
experience of emptiness that is their true nature. If you can-
not do that, it is important at least to gain certainty,
through examination, that the appearances of this life are
ephemeral, illusory, and unreliable.
The second bardo that is described here is the interval
that we normally call the dream state. This consists of
appearances that do not really exist but that seem to exist
because you are asleep. Because what we call sleep is a phys-
ical state, this interval, like the other one, is demarcated by
physical changes. In this case the physical change is that
when you fall asleep your senses stop functioning. You stop
hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and feeling to a great
extent, and therefore the images that arise in your mind
take on an appearance of reality because there is no sense
experience to overpower them. In dreams you seem to do all
the things that you do while you are awake, and while you
are dreaming you take these things to be really there. You

14
 NATURE AND ASPECTS

think that you are actually seeing and hearing the things
you seem to be seeing and hearing, but in fact you are not
seeing or hearing anything. You are not doing anything.
When you wake up, even though you realize that you
were just dreaming, you further fixate on the appearances
of the dream by investing them with significance. “Was it a
good dream? Was it a bad dream? What does it mean?” In
this way you solidify the illusory dream images even after
you awake from them. Your primary bewilderment is think-
ing that a dream is real while you are dreaming, and your
secondary bewilderment is thinking that the dream is
important after you wake up. The aspiration here is to
remove all of this bewilderment connected with the dream
state. That is the express aspiration for the dream state, but
by implication it applies to how you experience in general.
Although you can distinguish the dream state from the wak-
ing state by the physical factor of sleep, in both states your
cognition fundamentally functions in the same way: it is
deluded, it is hallucinating. Once you are awake you can
easily understand that the bewildered appearances of
dreams are unreal, and if you think about it carefully, the
bewildered appearances of the waking state are no more
real. They are just like dreams or magical illusions in their
unreliability, ephemerality, and impermanence. What this is
really pointing out is that by eradicating the bewilderment
of taking dreams as real, you can move as well toward erad-
icating the bewilderment of taking conventional waking
appearances as real.

15
INTERVAL OF POSSIBILITY
The third interval is what is usually meant when people talk
about the bardo and it is the principal subject of the rest of
our text. It is the interval of possibility and is divided into
three phases, simply called the first part, the middle part,
and the last part, which correspond to dying, being dead,
and approaching rebirth. These three are called the interval
of possibility because this is the state in which the various
possible rebirths can happen, as you will see.
There are three paths through which you prepare for the
three phases of the interval of possibility. Through the path
of the clear light, the nature of the first interval is recog-
nized to be dharmakaya. Through the path of the illusory
body, the nature of the second interval is realized to be
sambhogakaya, the body of complete enjoyment. Through
the path of the nirmanakaya, the final phase, the third inter-
val, is transformed into rebirth as nirmanakaya. You initial-
ly make the aspiration, “May I traverse or complete these
paths and thereby achieve liberation in these intervals.”
Now what does this mean? You may say, “I meditate on

19
Mahamudra,” or “I practice the Great Perfection,” or “I
meditate on the profound Middle Way,” or you may say
whatever it is you think you are doing. Whatever form of
meditation you believe yourself to be practicing, what you
are supposed to be doing in any of those three systems of
practice is to come to a direct realization of the true nature
of all things. In terms of what that nature is not, you could
say that nature is not inherent existence. In terms of what it
is, you could say it is the freedom from truly inherent or
independent existence; it is the clear light.
The purpose of meditation in general is to gain the direct
experience of the clear light and to gain sufficient experi-
ence to achieve liberation during the first phase of the inter-
val at death. If you can realize that all things are empty of
true existence, then that is the path that will bring liberation
in the first interval.
In case that does not work, you can also meditate on
pure appearances. That is to say that from within the state
of emptiness, which is the nature of all things, the deity aris-
es. This may involve the deity arising from a syllable, or
from a scepter, and ‘so on. Whatever deity it is—
Vajravarahi, or any other—you identify yourself complete-
ly with this utterly unreal and yet absolutely vivid and pure
clear appearance. By doing this in the second phase or inter-
val you gain the possibility of liberation in the sambho-
gakaya of that deity.
In case that does not happen, you also prepare for taking
a rebirth as emanation. This is to say that through the force
of love and compassion, and the force of your aspirations
for appropriate rebirth, you are able to stop inferior or
inappropriate birth and choose a birth through which you

20
can continue the path and be of benefit to others. That is
how you achieve freedom of birth in the third and final
phase of the interval of possibility.
This summarizes what is presented throughout the rest of
the text, since the text is primarily concerned with the bardo
as we usually mean it—the interval between lives.

21
 THE FIRST PART: DYING

The first of the three parts of the interval of possibility con-

sists of the entry into the clear light at the time of death. It
starts with the dissolution of the elements, which are quali-
ties of physical matter such as solidity, cohesion and so on.
When your body starts to break down, which is what we
call dying, the elements start to fall apart or dissolve. They
are usually presented in the particular sequence given in this
text, although they do not always break down in the same
sequence. This standard sequence is based on the majority
of processes, but it can vary from person to person and is
not always the same.
When the earth element, the element of solidity, dissolves
or breaks down, you become unable to support your phys-
ical body. This is what happens, for example, as you get
older and become weaker. When the water element dis-
solves, the sense apertures like your eyes and nose start to
dry up. You start to have a dry mouth, and you do not have
enough natural fluids or moisture. When the fire element
dissolves, your temperature decreases and your warmth

23
THE FIRST PART

starts to withdraw from the ends of the limbs inward,

toward the center of your body. Then when the wind ele-
ment dissolves, you stop breathing externally. This does not
necessarily mean that you have become unconscious just
yet. You may remain conscious, and your consciousness is
still seated within your body, but at that point you stop
breathing and your pulse comes to a halt. This is one place
where the order can vary. A three-part process—appear-
ance, increase, and attainment—follows the dissolution of
the elements and precedes the entry into the clear light. It
sometimes happens, however, that breathing has not
stopped yet even while the person is experiencing both
appearance and increase. We know this because individuals
have described their experience of it as they are dying and
while they are still able to talk, which means that they are
still breathing. Nevertheless for clarity we use the classical
sequence based on the experience of most dying people,
which is that the four elements dissolve and are followed by
appearance, increase, attainment, and then the clear light.
The dissolution of appearances is the first of the three
stages that follow the dissolution of the elements. What
happens to you as the dying person is that you see appear-
ances subside and become a bright whiteness or white light
that eventually is uniform. That appearance is associated
with this stage, and there is a cognitive state that accompa-
nies it. The accompanying cognitive state is that your
awareness or mind becomes a little bit vague, like mist or
smoke. This means, in this case, that sometimes you can
focus and sometimes you cannot. Many people who are
dying experience this, or at least start to experience it,
before their breathing stops.

24
 DYING

I knew an old lama in Darjeeling who, as he was dying,

described all of this process up to this point and a little bit
beyond it. Michael Doran, a staff member at KTD, definite-
ly experienced the appearance stage before his breathing
stopped, because as he was dying he said, “Where is all this
light coming from?” This is not uncommon. When it hap-
pens, it means that the dying person is experiencing the dis-
solution of appearance. A third thing that happens along
with the appearance stage is the suppression of a certain
type of thinking. The thirty-three different forms of anger,
or the thirty-three different aggressive thoughts—in short,
all types of anger—stop. “Stop,” however, means that they
are suppressed. They become dormant. It does not mean
that the dying person has purified the affliction of anger but
that the physical condition of dying has shut down the bio-
logical mechanism that supports the emotion of anger, so
anger is temporarily suppressed.
The next stage of the dying process is augmentation or
increase. This refers to the increase of the appearance of
death that arose during the previous stage. This stage also
has an appearance, a cognitive aspect, and an aspect of sup-
pression or dormancy. The appearance is that the dying
person sees everything go red. Previously everything was
white, and now everything becomes a uniform field of red.
Cognition becomes like fireflies, which in this case means
that it is sporadic; it flashes on, flashes off. Sometimes the
mind is lucid, clear, and focused, and sometimes it is
obscure. The suppression aspect is that when this stage of
dying is reached, all forms of desire, lust, attachment, crav-
ing, hankering—any form of wanting, all of it—stops.
Again, it has not been purified. The forty different types of

25
THE FIRST PART

desire are merely suppressed because of the biological

dying process.
With the understanding that the order of sequence is
indefinite to begin with, and because of the fact that the text
says “most,” we know that some people will realize that
they are dying. Those who do realize it will also recollect
what they have done. If they have led good and satisfying
lives, then they will start to feel happy. If they have led lives
full of harming others and so on, then they may start to be
terrified. Often people at this point will start to have visions
of their future parents and the place of their subsequent
rebirth, along with different events or circumstances in their
future life. For example, if the dying person can still speak
at this point, it is known that butchers who kill animals and
others who have harmed beings will have terrifying halluci-
nations that indicate their future rebirth. They may also
sense things coming to get them and say something like,
“Get these animals out of here, they are going to get me,”
and so on.
In short, the dying persons may become aware that they
are dying and may also recollect their previous actions, and
it is at this point that intervention is of the greatest benefit.
What sort of intervention? At the point when appearance
has dissolved into increase (the red appearance), the dying
person's cognition can be steered somewhat. In other
words, their mind is like fertile soil. Anything that is plant-
ed in it at that time can have a very powerful effect on what
happens to them in the rest of the interval and therefore in
their next life. At this point it is a good idea to recite the
names and mantras of buddhas, the fathers and sons of the
lineage, great gurus, and so on. Ideally the most powerful

‘26
 DYING

thing is for the person him or herself to actually recite these

names and mantras, or at least bring them to mind.
Otherwise, whoever is assisting them through the dying
process can intervene by reciting these things with their
mouth right next to or even touching the person's ear. In
that way you try to remind them of those to whom they
supplicate. You can also remind them of their previous
practice, give them instructions, and so on. At this point the
ejection of consciousness from the body can be performed
for the person with the greatest benefit, because it is at this
point that the consciousness can be ejected while it is still in
the body and can be gotten hold of and moved. In summa-
ry, this is the critical time when interventions of all kinds
will be of the greatest benefit.
We have looked at the stages of dissolution, the stages of
dying, up through the first two of the three stages that pre-
cede the experience of the clear light—the stages of appear-
ance and increase. The third stage that ensues upon or fol-
lows after increase is attainment. This is the final shutdown
or dissolving of the physical processes of the living body
that causes a corresponding set of experiences. Its appear-
ance is utter blackness although there is not really the
appearance of blackness; in fact, there is no appearance at
all. Previously there was brilliant whiteness and then bril-
liant redness, and now there is the utter absence of appear-
ances. This is happening because the functions of the body
and mind that support or allow appearances are shutting
down. The corresponding cognitive experience is that your
awareness, your mind, becomes like a butter lamp in a vase.
A butter lamp placed in a vase may be lit and burning and
producing light, but none of the light will escape the vase.

27
THE FIRST PART

From the outside it will appear to be just a dark vase. In the

same way, there is a continued bare lucidity of cognition,
but it is divorced from contact with any object that appears
or that is cognitively apprehended. It is a state of mere
lucidity without apprehension of any object, either with the
senses or with the cognition itself.
The cognition is at the stage of the shutdown or dissolu-
tion process when the final seven of the eighty types of
thoughts stop. Previously we saw the cessation of thoughts
connected with the varieties of anger and the thoughts con-
nected with desire. Now the last seven thoughts, which are
the seven varieties of stupidity or bewilderment, cease. They
do not stop in any final sense, but they are suppressed and
become dormant. As with the previous two states of sup-
pression, this suppression is caused by the simple fact that
the biological processes that support them, and enable them
to arise in connection with their respective objects, are sim-
ply not functioning at the moment. These thoughts stop,
but they have not been purified; their tendency has not been
in any way uprooted.
During this whole process of dissolution, there has been
a gradual withdrawal of the cognitive faculties, which here
refer to the six main functions of consciousness: the appre-
hension of visible forms by the eye consciousness, the
apprehension of sounds by the ear consciousness, and in
the same way the apprehension of smells, tastes, tactile sen-
sations, and objects of mind. During the dissolution
process, these six functions of mind or consciousness have
gradually dissolved. All appearances—not only visual
appearances, but also auditory and other appearances—
have gradually diminished in intensity or clarity, and have

28
 DYING

finally disappeared altogether. This is something that you

can often observe happening with the dying person.
Sometimes while you are at their bedside the person will
say, “Come closer, you are so far away.” This is because
they perceive you as being physically farther away from
them than you are, simply because of what is happening to
their eye consciousness. They will say, “Speak louder, I can-
not hear you,” because a corresponding thing is happening
with the ear consciousness.
At the conclusion of the threefold shutdown of appear-
ance, increase, and attainment, all of the elements of your
conventional being, your body and mind, have become dor-
mant. In other words your aggregates—your physical ele-
ments and your senses, all of these—have temporarily, in
the words of our text, “entered the mandala of absolute
truth.” This means that they are temporarily absent as
obscuring factors, although they have not been purified or
uprooted. They are dormant, and because you are not see-
ing or hearing anything anymore, various hallucinations
can arise at this point. People who have led nasty lives and
done bad things will often have terrifying hallucinations
that executioners, yamas, demonic beings, and so on are
coming to get them. People who have led predominantly
virtuous lives may have an experience of well-being, such as
fleeting glimpses of pleasant environments, pleasant people,
and so on. Remember that these appearances are like
dreams. Because of the withdrawal of the consciousnesses,
these hallucinations are entirely subjective. As is the case
with dream images, they have no stability; they can fluctu-
ate, change from one thing to another, and in any case do
not last very long.

29
 THE MOMENT OF DEATH:
EXPERIENCING THE CLEAR LIGHT

The shutting down processes conclude with the final events

that constitute death. What keeps you alive—what keeps
your mind biologically seated in your physical body—is a
wind or energy that is called life wind. The life wind abides
within the avadhuti or central channel of your body. You
know that the conditions for becoming a biological being
were the ovum from your mother and the sperm from your
father. The original seeds that led to your resultant physical
being are still present within your body. They are held in
place by the life wind, and they also contain the life wind
and keep it in the body. The way this works is as follows:
The remaining seed essence of the ovum is the red element,
and while you are alive it is in the center of your body
below your navel. The seed essence of your father's sperm
is the white element, and it is present in the center of your
body at the very top of your head. These seed essences are
both held in place and forced apart by the life wind that fills
the central channel between them. The central channel is
inflated by the life wind in the way that a tire is inflated by

31
THE MOMENT OF DEATH

the air within it. Not only does the life wind maintain the
seed essences at the upper and lower ends of the central
channel, but because they are trapped in those places the
seed essences also contain the life wind between them and
keep it from escaping.
What happens with the shutdown of everything is that
the life wind, which is the most basic factor of your being
alive in the conventional sense, is the last to shut down. As
it shuts down, it withdraws into the heart area. What hap-
pens is similar to deflation except that the central channel
does not actually deflate; the pressure within it is with-
drawn. As a result, the red and white elements move for the
first time. The red element that you received from your
mother rises up because there is nothing forcing it down. It
rises up toward and eventually comes to rest in your heart.
At the same time, the white element that you received from
your father descends or falls down from the top of your
head until it also reaches your heart. The end result is that
the five things that form the essence of your being come
together in one place. The most basic mind, which is the
all-basis consciousness; the life wind, which previously
filled the entire central channel; and all of the potential cog-
nitive functions—those three along with the white and red
elements, come together at the very center of your heart in
the midst of the central channel. This is the actual moment
of death.
When these essences of your being come together, and
because all possible types of thoughts or conceptuality have
ceased and are temporarily dormant, you have an experi-
ence that is a cognitive experience, not a sensory experience.
In quality this is like the experience of a boundless, clear,

32
 EXPERIENCING THE CLEAR LIGHT

and cloudless sky. It is the experience of the fundamental or

ground clear light. What you experience at this moment is
not because of any meditation you may have done previous-
ly. You experience it because it is your true nature, and it is
experienced at this point in the death process not only by
people, but also even by small insects. It is experienced sim-
ply because all beings have buddha nature. What you are
experiencing at this point is buddha nature itself.
The reason why you can experience buddha nature under
those circumstances, and that you do not experience it nor-
mally, is that normally it is masked by thought. Because all
thought has ceased and become dormant at this point, there
is nothing to mask the experience of buddha nature. That's
the good news. The bad news is that, unless you have
trained yourself assiduously in recognizing the clear light
during your preceding life, you will not recognize it.
Everybody experiences the clear light, but obviously that is
not sufficient. If you do not have enough experience in rec-
ognizing it, you will be stunned. You will be like a small
child looking at the murals in a temple. When a child looks
at a mural, they see the same colors and shapes that an adult
does, but they have no way to recognize them as depictions
of one thing or another. They cannot make the judgment,
“This is well painted; that is ill painted.” Nor can they
think, “Here is this deity, there is that deity,” and so on.
They are completely ignorant of what they are seeing. In the
same way, if you have not familiarized yourself through
practice with the clear light during your preceding life, it
will not do you any good to see it now. The ground clear
light will appear to you as it does to each and every sentient
being at the moment of death and you will experience it;

33
THE MOMENT OF DEATH

nevertheless you will not recognize it, and it will only last a
moment. You will move from that experience to the next
one in a moment. “Moment” here does not necessarily
mean a specific unit of time like a finger snap. Here it means
the duration of an action that is uninterrupted by any other
action. For the time that you are immersed in the experience
of the clear light, you remain immersed in it; however, fail-
ing to recognize it, your mind emerges and moves on to
something else, and it is finished.
Therefore what is necessary, above and beyond all else, is
to familiarize yourself with the clear light during your life-
time. This is done through hearing, reflection, and above all
through meditation. By understanding what will happen at
death and the process that you will go through, you can
prepare yourself to recognize the clear light. By cultivating
the faculties of recollection and alertness through medita-
tion practice, especially meditation practice based upon the
profound instructions of your guru, you can develop the
faculties of mindfulness and alertness that will enable you
to recognize the ground clear light when it arises.
You do this by meditating upon the traditions that teach
you how to meditate on the clear light: the Middle Way, the
Mahamudra, or the Great Perfection. In any one of these
you go through a series of practices that culminate in the
ability to experience the clear light to some degree in this
life. What you experience as a meditation practitioner is the
path clear light or the child clear light, and it is something
that is experienced through conscious and assiduous culti-
vation. Only through such cultivation do you have a chance
of recognizing the fundamental or natural mother clear light
at the time of death. The aim of these meditation practices,

34
 EXPERIENCING THE CLEAR LIGHT

and the entire systems that culminate in these practices, is to

rest in a state free of all mental elaboration, and in that way
to gain familiarity with the path or child clear light. At the
time of death, because you are familiar with it, you will rec-
ognize the ground or fundamental clear light, the mother
clear light, just as you would recognize someone you had
seen before.
Seeing the child clear light is analogous to seeing a mod-
ern photograph. Just as there is a difference between a pho-
tograph of someone and the actual person, likewise there is
a difference between the cultivated child clear light and the
actual mother clear light. If you have seen a good photo-
graph of someone, you can later recognize the person from
having seen the photograph. In the same way, if you culti-
vate an authentic experience of the path clear light in this
life, you can recognize the ground clear light at the moment
of death. .
Practice of the meditative state that cultivates the clear
light during this lifetime is marked by three characteristics:
well-being, lucidity, and no-thought or nonconceptuality.
The way we normally experience the clear light is quite
imperfect, because in this life it is fleeting and because it
manifests only to a certain degree and not beyond that. You
experience some degree of well-being, some degree of lucid-
ity, and some degree of freedom from conceptualization.
The ground clear light that you experience at the moment
of death, however, is endowed with these three characteris-
tics to the ultimate degree. It is endowed with absolute well-
being, which is perfect bliss. It is utter and pure lucidity, and
it is totally and completely free of thought or conceptuality
of any kind. These characteristics make it so different from

35
THE MOMENT OF DEATH

your normal state of mind that, in order to recognize it, you

must cultivate a meditative state endowed to some extent
with these same three characteristics. Therefore in this life
you have to cultivate. child luminosity, which is a one-
pointed samadhi or meditative absorption endowed with
the characteristics of the ground clear light itself.
The ground clear light is called the “fundamental or basic
clear light,” the “mother clear light,” and the “natural clear
light.” It is called these three things because it is the true
nature of all things. It is, in and of itself, utterly and com-
pletely pure, and it has been utterly and completely pure
and perfect from the very beginning. In fact, it is indestruc-
tible. It is unaffected by anything, and it is utterly unchang-
ing. It never has changed, never does change, and never will
change. The only change is whether or not it is experienced
and whether or not it is recognized when experienced. If
you have cultivated a familiarity with the child clear light
during your preceding life, then when the ground clear light
appears, it is like a child recognizing his or her mother. This
is the meeting of the mother and child clear lights. At that
point you both experience the true and natural clear light
and also recognize it based on your cultivated experience.
What you previously experienced and what you experience
at that moment mix together like water being poured into
water. This is the best type of liberation, liberation at the
moment of death. In a sense you could call this the begin-
ning of the bardo, because it is the first interval, but it is also
known as before the interval. It is the first opportunity for
liberation and it is liberation in dharmakaya, to be achieved
by those of the highest capacity who have familiarized
themselves with the clear light.

36
 EXPERIENCING THE CLEAR LIGHT

It is important to understand that this type of liberation,

when someone recognizes the ground clear light ‘at the
moment of death, is complete and full. It is the actual
achievement of perfect awakening, or buddhahood, at the
moment of death. When a person achieves this type of lib-
eration, they achieve buddhahood with all of the qualities
for which it is renowned—not only their own liberation,
but the ensuing and permanent all-pervasive ability to be of
consummate benefit to others in every possible way until
each and every other being has likewise achieved perfect
awakening. Recognizing the value of attempting to achieve
such a state of awakening and liberation through the recog-
nition of the ground clear light at death, you should aban-
don all the distractions of this life. Distractions refer to all
of the things with which you normally concern yourself—
things that are of no use whatsoever, either immediately or
in the long-term, or that are actually destructive and nega-
tive. You should even abandon things that at best are of
only temporary and largely physical benefit. Such things are
distractions because involvement with them prevents you
from engaging in the type of assiduous practice that is nec-
essary to achieve this liberation and awakening. In order to
achieve it you have to abandon distractions and abide in
solitude. This means practicing in isolation like Jetsun
Milarepa and remaining in a state of threefold stillness.
Threefold stillness means that your body is utterly still. It
is free from unnecessary movement of any kind and espe-
cially from unnecessary and meaningless physical activity.
Stillness of speech means that you are silent. Your faculty of
speech is undisturbed by the meaningless babble of conven-
tional speech. Stillness of mind means that your mind is in

37
THE MOMENT OF DEATH

a state free of elaboration. This refers not merely to the state

of tranquillity, or shinay, but to a state of insight in which
your mind is withdrawn from all forms of thought or con-
ceptual elaboration. In short, in order to experience and
thereby be able to recognize the clear light, you have to cul-
tivate a meditative state that is the conjunction of lucidity
and emptiness without fixation.
Your mind is defined by the fact that you can cognize.
You can experience, you are aware, and therefore the defin-
ing characteristic of your mind is cognitive lucidity. Your
mind is not just lucidity because it is not a substantial bril-
liance like the sun or the moon. The mind, while lucid, is
utterly insubstantial. It is empty of any substance or entity
whatsoever. Furthermore, this lucidity and this emptiness
are not two different things. They are inseparable. You rest
in a state in which you experience your mind just as it is,
which is the union of lucidity and emptiness, and you do so
without any kind of fixation, without any conceptualized
apprehension. This is great even-placement. In general,
even-placement can refer to either the meditation of perfect
tranquillity or of insight. Here it refers to insight because it
is more than a state of tranquillity. In this state the mind is
resting completely and utterly within a direct experience of
its own nature. You remain within that state, practicing the
conduct of extreme simplicity, which refers to a mode of
conduct that is free from elaborations or complexities. Your
mind is free not only from mundane activities, distractions,
and disturbances, but even from conceptual functions of
mind and thinking itself. At this point you make the aspira-
tion to perfect this practice—the conduct of extreme sim-
plicity—so that you can achieve the supreme liberation,

38
 EXPERIENCING THE CLEAR LIGHT

perfect awakening, at the very moment of death.

This kind of liberation is not purely legendary. It is not the
case that we can speak of this liberation by saying, “People
used to achieve this in the good old days, but nowadays it
does not happen.” In fact, it happens all the time. In my life-
time—more specifically, since I left Tibet—there have been
several instances of this in my own experience and countless
others as well. When I was thirty-eight years old, there was
a certain tutor of a Drukpa Kagyu lama called Gar
Rinpoche. This tutor passed away at the refugee camp in
Buxador where we were all living. In order to understand
what happened to him and to his body, you need to under-
stand that he had been very sick and feeble before he died;
yet just before his death, he sat up perfectly straight, seem-
ing completely comfortable and at ease. He dismissed the
attendants who had been helping him, saying, “You all go
outside and play,” then asked for his outer robe and his
meditation hat. When they were brought to him, he put
them on and started to do his daily practice book. He chant-
ed the first half of it, and in that state he passed away, leav-
ing the second half undone. Having died, he remained in a
state of meditative absorption for three days.
This happened at a time when it was extremely hot in
Buxador. As you know, dead bodies rot and stink very
quickly in hot weather, but his did not. For the three days
of his samadhi, he remained seated upright, without the
slightest appearance of decay, either visible or olfactory. In
fact, the room was hot not only because of the time and
location, but because people were offering butter lamps, as
many as a hundred, in the room where his body was left.
Still, the double heat from the lamps still did not cause any

39
THE MOMENT OF DEATH

scent of decay. As for how he looked, we know that, gener-

ally speaking, when someone dies, their complexion is no
longer rosy, to say the least. But the lama's complexion
actually improved. He looked more florid, more lively, after
death than he had while he was alive.
These indications, specifically the appearance of circula-
tion, the florid complexion, and the lack of decay, are con-
sidered definite signs that someone has achieved liberation
in the dharmakaya and perfect buddhahood at the moment
of death. Another example of this was a retreat master that
I knew who passed away in the same way and remained
seated with the same signs for the same period of three days.
There was also a lama called Karma Norbu who had done
a retreat at Palpung Monastery and was a disciple of
Chatral Rinpoche. He lived in an isolated place in Nepal, in
a small house where water was scarce, causing disputes
between him and his neighbors. Yet when he died, a mulkti-
colored light, like the light of a rainbow, started to emerge
from his body and from his house, filling the surrounding
area. It was also noticed that his body was getting a little bit
smaller as time went on. His neighbors of course recognized
this as what it was and felt somewhat regretful about their
having fought with him in the past. Now they prostrated to
his remains and venerated him properly.
Lama Ganga, a lama who lived for some time in the
West, passed away at Thrangu Monastery and after his
death remained seated in samadhi for no less than five days.
I saw that myself because I was there when he died. My
point is that there are many instances up to the present day
of people achieving perfect awakening through these means.
In fact, it happens so commonly and people are so used to

40
 EXPERIENCING THE CLEAR LIGHT

it that they do not even bother to report it every time. They

simply say, “Well that's what happens if you practice dhar-
ma. That's dharma's blessing.” But you should consider
what it is and not be so casual about it, because it is definite
and irrefutable proof of the possibility of perfect awakening
at the moment of death.
I mention all of this and comment on it at length because
it is important to understand that, as bad as the times are,
the dharma is not affected or diminished in any way. We do
indeed live in an age of decadence, but the dharma is not
decadent. The dharma is the same as it always has been.
The land of Tibet has suffered greatly throughout the pre-
ceding century, yet all that has happened there—all that has
bought great suffering to the people and has greatly dimin-
ished practice resources—has not affected the power or.
authenticity of dharma in any way. The compassion of bud-
dhas and bodhisattvas and their blessings are utterly unaf-
fected by the circumstances of the times we live in. The
dharma is always effective and it will always work. You
simply have to do it. I am confident that if someone prac-
tices these things properly, they will definitely achieve the
result described here. It is infallible. ] want to inspire you
with this same confidence and knowledge that, “If I practice
this, I will achieve this.”
It is that simple, and it is that infallible, because your
basic nature is the ground clear light. That is your true
being. The only other thing that is necessary for you to
achieve awakening is to familiarize yourself with your basic
nature through meditation on the path clear light. The big
question is whether someone does or does not meditate
assiduously on the path clear light during their life. That

41
THE MOMENT OF DEATH

obviously depends upon being taught how to do so, which

in turn obviously depends on having access to a spiritual
friend. If you have no access to a spiritual friend and receive
no instruction, you will not do any meditation and there-
fore you will not achieve liberation and awakening. Once
you have access to the spiritual friend, and once you have
access to instruction on how to cultivate familiarity through
meditation with the path clear light, you simply have to do
it. If you do it assiduously enough, achieving liberation and
awakening at the moment of death is a certainty.

42
 THE MIDDLE PART: BEING DEAD

If you have not achieved sufficient familiarity with the clear

light during the immediately preceding life, then you will
not recognize the ground clear light at the moment of
death. The moment after it appears you will move on to the
second phase of the bardo. This is the main part of the
interval of possibility, and, as we have seen, it is what most
people think of when they use the term bardo. Previously,
collected together at the moment of death at one place in
the center of your heart were your all-basis consciousness,
the remnant of the life wind, the potential for other cogni-
tive functions, and the white and red drops. If you did not
recognize the ground clear light at that time, these five sep-
arate again, and two of them leave your body. These two—
the basic consciousness and the life wind together—leave
your body through one or another of nine apertures: the
navel, the place between the eyebrows, the aperture at the
top of the head, the nose, the ears, the mouth, the eyes, the
anus, or the urethra. The basic consciousness is mixed with
or riding the life wind. It will leave your body from any one

43
THE MIDDLE PART

of those apertures, and once it has left it will not go back in.
It is as soon as the consciousness leaves your body that the
appearances of the interval proper start to arise. “Starting
from that point onward, you have the appearance of your
subsequent body.”
It is put this way because the text is, after all, very brief.
When presented in more detail, what is usually explained is
that, for the first half of the period of the interval, you will
appear to yourself to have the body you had in the preced-
ing life. For the second half you will appear to have the
body you are going to have in your subsequent life. The rea-
son for this is that this appearance is a purely mental body.
It is made from habit. You initially have the appearance of
your preceding body because that is what you are used to.
That is what you expect. On the other hand, the karma that
put you in your preceding life and kept you in that life is
exhausted. It was used up, and that is why you died.
Therefore the karmically bound habit of that life will lose
momentum or diminish during the period in the interval.
What happens is that initially you have a very vivid
impression of having the same body you had before. In
other words, you think of yourself as the person you
thought you were before. For example, I would consider
myself to be Karthar, thinking, “I have Karthar's body,”
and so on. That body will appear at the beginning, but as
the interval continues it will start to become less distinct,
more vague. Then after the middle of the forty-nine days,
which is the usual period of the interval, you will start to
have an initially vague and then more and more vivid
impression of having your future body.
In either case, whichever body you appear to possess, the

44
 BEING DEAD

body has certain characteristics. Do not forget, it is utterly

illusory. It is like a magical illusion, a hypnotic image, or
some other hallucination. Therefore, in a sense, this body is
independent. It did not grow, and it was not produced by
anything, so it is independent of physical causes. It is also
independent of most physical conditions. It is different from
your present body in that whatever is particularly wrong
with or defective in your present body will appear to have
been restored. If one of your legs has been amputated, for
example, you will get that body part back. If one or more
of your senses is malfunctioning—if you only have one
working eye or you cannot hear with one of your ears—you
will appear, in the bardo, to get that function back.
Bardo beings never seem to have defective senses. Of
course, they do not have physical sense organs at all, which
is why this is the case. They appear to themselves and to
other interval beings to have a full set of the senses of their
particular species. Because they have only a mental body,
they can pass through solid matter the way a fly passes
through a beam of sunlight. Flies can buzz their way
through a beam of light without being in any way impeded
by it, and in the same way, as an interval being, you can fly
through solid matter, even the hardest rock. It is not that
you have miraculous powers; it is simply that your body is
purely mental, and the mind can go anywhere, do anything.
It does not require physical or verbal effort or exertion. This
being the case, as an interval being you will find yourself
instantly in any place you think of.
From one point of view you could say this is miraculous,
but do not forget that it is impulsive. It is spontaneous in the
negative sense of the word because it is not under control.

45
THE MIDDLE PART

You are driven about by whatever occurs to you, and there

is no physical body to prevent you from being instantly
driven to another place. Having no physical body, interval
beings cannot use clothing and cannot eat food. They do
still have the habit of hunger and thirst, and they suffer
from it, but they cannot eat or drink. They can only con-
sume scents, but they cannot be nourished by just any smell.
The only smells that they can actually experience as nour-
ishment are the scents of substances consecrated to them. It
is therefore good to burn consecrated herbs and edible sub-
stances together, and to specifically dedicate them to beings
in the interval. This is why, especially when dealing with a
recently deceased person, we perform a singed offering in
the evening as a regular daily observance. This consists of
singeing consecrated substances and other edibles and ded-
icating them to beings in the interval and to others.
Who can see these beings? They can see themselves and
they can see one another. A being in the interval can see
other interval beings, but normally we cannot see them. The
exception to this are individuals who have achieved the
divine eye through meditative prowess and the interval
beings who themselves have a limited form of this. Bardo
beings may have a certain type of supercognition, but it is
not necessarily as good as it sounds, because it also is com-
pulsive and impulsive. For example, an interval being might
know that something is going on such as a dharma teach-
ing, and they might go there, but their response to it will not
necessarily be positive.
Once you have been in the interval long enough to start
to assume the appearance of your subsequent body rather
than your previous body, there are clues as to where you are

46
 BEING DEAD

going to be born. Aside from appearing as whatever species

you will be, clues are also given by your spatial position.
Beings who are going to be reborn in a higher state—as
humans, devas, or asuras—will be moving upward and will
generally be facing upward, with the head facing the sky
rather than the ground. Beings that are going to be reborn
in a lower state—as animals, pretas, or hell beings—will
generally be facing downward and moving downward.
Because interval beings have no physical bodies and there-
fore no basis for the perception of physical light, they do
not see the sun and moon. They can experience an environ-
ment similar to ours and appear to be in a place, but they
will see no light from the sun and moon, and their bodies
will cast no shadows.
Now the pure appearances of dharmata arise. The con-
sciousness of the deceased person has emerged from the
body after the person has failed to recognize the ground
clear light, and the intermediate existence has begun. The
pure appearances of dharmata will consist especially of the
appearances of the peaceful and wrathful deities. These are
the forty-two peaceful deities, the fifty-eight wrathful
deities, and the pure vidyadharas. They arise after your con-
sciousness has left your body, and they appear to emerge
from the body. Although they are part of you, they seem to
have become separate from you as they left your body. They
appear as if they are in front of you or external, and they
arise as magnificent deities. They are sambhogakayas, or
bodies of complete enjoyment, with their respective appear-
ances, both peaceful and wrathful. They are very bright,
brilliant, and surrounded by intolerably bright light of
many colors. In fact, the reason you do not achieve libera-

47
THE MIDDLE PART

tion upon their appearance in general is the intolerable bril-

liance of their light.
At the same time, five other types of light are appearing,
and these represent the six states that are the pathways to
the five types of rebirth. Because these five other lights are
types of birth rather than species, the five types of rebirth
do not include the jealous gods. The five types of rebirths
are devas, humans, animals, pretas, and hell beings. The
species asura, or jealous gods, can consist as two beings or
types of rebirth, which are in some cases devas and in other
cases animals. The lights that are the pathways to all of
those rebirths are white, red, yellow, and blue, followed by
very, very dark or dim blue that is almost darkness or non-
existent. The sequence of colors is not always absolutely
consistent, but the point is that the worse the realm, the less
brilliant the light. The reason for this is that the light of the
pure appearances—which can be white, yellow, red, blue, or
green—is very, very bright. It is so intolerably bright that
you may perceive it as threatening, dangerous, and destruc-
tive, and run from it. The lights of the six realms, represent-
ing the five pathways to rebirth, are all muted, and very
soothing in appearance. Because of karma, if you find the
wisdom lights irritating and terrifying, you may choose
instead the soothing light of one of the six states. Even
worse, because the lights of the lower states are more sooth-
ing than the lights of the higher states, rebirth in lower
states predominates over rebirth in higher states.
Therefore what you want to do if you get to this part of
the interval, which is the beginning of the second phase, is
to choose the threatening, brilliant, vivid lights over the
soothing, muted ones. In order to do this, you need to pre-

48
 BEING DEAD

pare by reflecting during your lifetime that the really, really

bright scary lights, the brilliant ones, are the wisdom ones,
and that the soothing, muted ones lead at least to samsara
and probably to lower states. Initially you will probably just
see the rays of brilliant lights and not the deities, and the
rays in their brilliance and sharpness will seem to be like
weapons to you. It is important to prepare for that experi-
ence because if you choose the path of a wisdom light, you
will achieve liberation in its respective realm. If you choose
the path of one of the samsaric lights, as we all evidently
did, you know what happens.
At this stage you have a mental body that seems to be the
body you had in your last life. Although this body may have
restored senses, you will not immediately recognize that it is
different from your physical body. Nevertheless it is impor-
tant to prepare yourself to recognize the signs that indicate
that you are dead. That is important because, obviously, the
first prerequisite in choosing what to do in the interval is to
know that you are in the interval. If you do not know that,
then you will not make the right choices. What are the signs
that you are in the interval? Generally, the signs are the
appearance of sounds and forms that are utterly unfamiliar.
Most of these are pretty scary, and they get scarier and
scarier as it goes on. You hear scary sounds like a billion
thunderclaps at once, and you see forms of different sorts of
beings, not just wisdom deities but also terrifying beings the
size of huge mountains, and so on. You see and hear all
sorts of scary things that you have never seen before. You
become more and more agitated, which means that the
chance of liberation tends to decrease over this period. The
point is that you need to recognize when you are in the

49
THE MIDDLE PART

interval, and to do so you must cultivate a familiarity with

the signs that you are there. Having recognized them, you
need to make the right choice, which is the path of the five
wisdoms, not the paths of the five types of samsaric rebirth.
If you do not know that you are in the interval, you will not
choose one of the five wisdom lights, and you will just go
with instinct, which will lead you towards the soothing
lights and samsara.
The interval experience continues, and time passes with
you in a mental body. Since your mind is not in any way
restrained or governed by the solidity of a physical body,
you become more and more anxious and agitated. As in life,
you respond to anxiety with kleshas, and your kleshas grow
in intensity as the interval continues. They can become like
a blazing fire that totally possesses you. Do not forget that
you are also blown about by the wind of your previous
actions, which arise in the form of impulsive thoughts that
send you from one place to another without your control.
As your anxiety and kleshas increase, this experience
becomes more and more turbulent, worse and worse. You
have less and less leisure to think about anything. You
become more frightened and saddened, and the hallucina-
tions degenerate. You start to become more and more
frightened, see more and more frightening things, respond
to them more and more with anxiety and kleshas, and so
on. Unless you have cultivated a preparation and familiari-
ty with what is going to happen, you are simply unprepared
to deal with it, and you have no control over what is hap-
pening. You are just blown about and there is nothing real-
ly to help you; you are buffeted about by the violent wind
of your own karma. Here “wind” should be understood to

50
 BEING DEAD

be metaphoric, not a literal wind. It means the force of

impulses born from previous actions that throw you uncon-
trollably about from place to place and experience to expe-
rience. Normally, being buffeted about in that way is the
principal experience of the second phase of the interval.
At the same time, this is the point when we talk about lib-
eration through hearing in the bardo or interval. Through
hearing about opportunities for liberation in this phase, you
have the opportunity to choose the lights of the five wis-
doms over the muted lights of the five types of samsaric
rebirth, and thereby achieve liberation. It is important to
familiarize yourself with and prepare yourself for these
experiences because the opportunities for liberation in this
phase of the interval can only be taken advantage of by
someone who has heard about them,
Since the interval state is considered a state of being, it
has a duration or life span that we generally classify as
forty-nine days, since that seems to be the length of that
_ interval for most beings. For the first three-and-a-half days
after death, and after the passing and nonrecognition of the
ground clear light, the consciousness of the deceased person
will probably still be within their body. Until the conscious-
ness departs from the body, the person is largely uncon-
scious. They may be sporadically conscious, but even when
conscious they are still extremely confused, like someone
who is intoxicated or drunk. Eventually whether it does so
immediately after the failure to recognize the ground clear
light or after three-and-a-half days, the consciousness
emerges from the body, and the person starts to have the
experiences and hallucinations that characterize the second
phase of the interval.

51
THE MIDDLE PART

For some or much of the time in this phase, the deceased

persons will not know that they are dead. (I could call the
interval being “it” ”
rather than “he or she,” because it no
longer has gender, but that's rude, so I will say “they.”) At
times you may suspect that you are dead, but basically you
will not have any more certainty that you are dead and in
the bardo than you normally have when you are dreaming.
Therefore you will be extremely agitated by all of the
strange things that keep happening to you. You encounter
beings that you have never seen before and hear sounds that
you have never heard before. You do not know where you
are and why you are there, and all of the agitation around
you, all the rushing about and so on, will be extremely dis-
turbing. You will still see those that you loved, friends, fam-
ily, and others, and you will try to communicate with them.
Because you do not know that you are an interval being,
you see no reason why, when you speak to someone, you
should not be answered. Of course, you are not answered
because you are not visible. You become frustrated and
aggrieved every time you try to talk to one of your relatives
or friends and they ignore you. Eventually you begin to fig-
ure out the reason why. You start to understand that you
are dead, but as soon as you figure that out, you react even
more strongly.
For example, when you see your former aggregates—it is
polite to say “aggregates,” but what it means is “corpse”—
you will try to get back into that body, because you identi-
fy with it so strongly. You will not be able to get back into
your body, but you will still be very attached to it and to
how it is treated. You will be very upset, of course, by see-
ing your dead body, and distressed to see your relatives and

52
 BEING DEAD

loved ones crying and grieving and so on. When you see
people making arrangements for the disposal of your wealth
and belongings, and you see your stuff being divvied up,
you will not like it.
Your attitude towards your former aggregates (i.e., your
corpse) will alter over time for much the same reason that
your identification with the mental body of habit alters. The
perception of yourself as your preceding body starts to
weaken and is superseded by a perception of your subse-
quent body. Although you were initially attached to your
corpse, eventually the karma of being in that body will be
over, and gradually the habit left behind by that karma will
weaken. Eventually you will start to dislike the corpse, and
finally you will be happier when you do not see it and you
will want it to be disposed of. You are still attached enough
to your body that you will get very upset when it is disposed
of, for example when it is cremated or buried or cast into
water. You will become especially angry when people are
disrespectful of your body by calling it a “corpse.” If we
speak the way we do of dead bodies saying, “Well, that
thing is a corpse. It is not so-and-so, it is just their dead
body,” you will not like it. You will still have enough iden-
tification with that body as part of yourself that you will be
as upset as you would have been if someone had said some-
thing about your body while you still inhabited it.
Eventually, having realized that you are dead, you will
attempt to comfort your loved ones who are grieving for
you. You will say, “Don't worry, don't worry, I'm right
here. Can't you see me? I'm right here.” Of course, your
loved ones cannot see you, so you will be saddened by your
inability to comfort your grieving survivors, and you too

53
THE MIDDLE PART

will start to grieve and cry. You may get to the point of
fainting, or almost fainting, through grief and frustration.
- On the other hand, when you see people who are not griev-
ing, you will be angry about that. You will resent people
who dislike you, make jokes about you and laugh, or are
otherwise disrespectful about you, now that you are dead.
You will feel that some people just do not care that you are
dead; they are laughing about something else or playing and
entertaining themselves, and in general they are going about
their lives normally. You will think, “How can they do that
when I'm in this state? I've just been pulled right out of my
body! I'm wandering in the bardo! I'm going through all of
this, but they are laughing and having a good time and I
can't communicate with them!”
As an interval being, you will actually feel enmity for
those people, even though they may be persons you did not
even know. You will resent those who are not grieving as
much as you are distressed by those who are mourning.
When you see the disposition of your possessions, especial-
ly those that were particularly valuable or precious, you
will resent it. When others make use of your former belong-
ings, you will think, “This stuff was worth a lot to me. I put
a lot into it, and now this person is wasting it.” You will be
very angry about that, and you will actually follow the stuff
around after it is passed on. The dead person's conscious-
ness will often be attracted to the site of their former pos-
sessions. This is one reason why soon after someone died in
Tibet it was customary to offer at least a certain amount of
their treasured possessions to the Three Jewels to help the
~ dead person cut through their attachment to their previous
belongings and to prevent these things being used in a way

54
 BEING DEAD

that would upset them.

If you have no instructions to follow, and have not been
taught how to prepare for the bardo, you will experience
the appearances of the interval of possibility in much the
same way you experience the dream state. You will have
very little basis for knowing what is going on, just as you
are pretty well lost when you are dreaming. Because the
average or untrained person will not know for some time
that they are dead, they will be at the mercy of the events
that appear to occur. They believe that they are real just in
the same way that they do not know when they are dream-
ing. If you do not understand what you are undergoing,
what you are seeing and hearing, you will be totally at the
mercy of your bewilderment and the bewildered appear-
ances. Therefore the aspiration says, “May I train myself in
dream, which is the manner of appraisal of the path.”
This refers to the practice of dream that is part of the six
dharmas of Naropa and similar systems, in which you train
to develop the consistent ability to dream lucidly. This
means knowing that you are dreaming while you are dream-
ing so that thereafter you can transform the dream state
from impure appearances to pure appearances. The practice
of lucid dreaming exists largely because it is the best prepa-
ration for this phase of the interval. As long as you do not
know you are dreaming when you are asleep, you are not
going to know that you are dead when you are dead. In
order to recognize that you are dead and in the interval, you
need to be able to recognize when you are dreaming and
asleep. To transform the appearances that occur at this stage
of the interval—the principal method here—you need to be ~
able to transform the appearances of dreams as well.

55
THE MIDDLE PART

You need to prepare yourself by having a certain attitude

towards conventional waking state appearances, because in
order to gain skill in dreaming, you need to gain skill in
relating to conventional appearances. Fundamentally this
consists of learning to constantly view all the appearances
of the daytime waking state as illusory, like magical illu-
sions. You need to reinforce and maintain this attitude until
it gets to the point where the emptiness of appearances
actually becomes an object of direct experience, and the
appearances manifest to you spontaneously and clearly,
without your having to reinforce them with the thought
that they are devoid of inherent existence. The attitude of
regarding appearances as illusory needs to be reinforced
throughout the waking state until conceptual reinforce-
ment is no longer necessary, and you do not need to remind
yourself that appearances are empty. When you develop
such a momentum or continuity of mindfulness and cer-
tainty, it becomes not merely something you are telling
yourself; it is the truth. You are certain about the emptiness
of appearances, and they actually appear to you that way.
Your aspiration is, “May I reach the point where wisdom
has been attained.”
Here wisdom specifically means the state of mind in
which you directly see appearances as the unity of appear-
ance and emptiness. Reaching that state is the prerequisite
for gaining mastery over the dream state, and eventually the
interval state as well. What prevents us from doing this?
What are the main obstacles that impede cultivation of
awareness during the waking state, during the dream state,
and therefore and most importantly, during the interval
state as well? They are the three thieves that steal from you

56
 BEING DEAD

any chance of liberation, any chance of getting out of sam-

sara. The first of these is doubt, which in this case means
questions such as, “Are appearances empty or not? Is this
the interval, or is it not?” Doubt will prevent the faculty of
mindfulness from being strong enough and focused enough
to cut through the illusion of appearances. It is doubt that
causes us constantly to reenter the samsaric cycle, and it is
doubt that prevents us from gaining the momentum neces-
sary to break out of it.
The second thief is fixation on reality, meaning the fixa-
tion that appearances are what they appear to be. Fixating
that this is truth or reality is maintained by doubt, and
doubt prevents us from putting a stop to the fixation. All of
the habits of reacting to appearances as if they were real will
arise again, generating kleshas and so on. Whether it is dur-
ing this life or during the interval after death, kleshas will
re-arise because you think these appearances are real and
therefore you react to them in that way.
The third thief is mindlessness. This means lack of recol-
lection of what you are attempting to keep in mind, such as
the illusoriness of appearances, the fact that you are in the
interval, and so on. It is mindlessness, the lack of recollec-
tion, that keeps us lost at sea, wandering endlessly. The
aspiration here is, “May I become free from these three
thieves who steal from me the opportunity of liberation
from samsara.”
Next we discuss the essential means by which you can
achieve liberation in the second phase of the interval and the
reason why this phase is called the “opportunity of libera-
tion.” Using the means of transforming the appearance of
your mental body into the body of the deity, you can achieve

57
THE MIDDLE PART

liberation in the sambhogakaya. This method depends upon

practice in your preceding life, because it consists of
employing, in the interval after death, the principal method
of mantra or Vajrayana. This is the most profound of all
paths and, if practiced in the preceding life and properly
employed, it can bring liberation at this point.
The details of this path consist, first, of the actual trans-
formation of all appearances—the appearance of your men-
tal body and all other appearances—into the rainbowlike
vajra body of the deity. Secondly, the perception of all
sounds is transformed into the mantra of the deity, the
vajra sound that is the unity of sound and emptiness. This
is significant because, in this interval especially, there are
terrifying sounds—very loud sounds, like a billion thunder-
claps heard simultaneously—and these are so disturbing
that you need a means or method by which to alter your
perception of them. Thirdly, your perceptions, and there-
fore the experience of your mind itself, are transformed
into the vajra mind, which is the mind that is the unity of
bliss and emptiness.
The aspiration here is to train to become skilled in the
means of mantra, and thereafter have the opportunity to
employ in the interval the three essential points that make
up the principal feature of the most profound path. If these
are employed, what happens is that the mental body of the
being in the interval is transformed. As we have seen, this
mental body is composed of the life wind from the previous
body and the subtle mind, or all-basis consciousness. In
other words, this mental body that is composed purely of
wind-mind is transformed, through the interval being's per-
ception of it, into the illusory body in the form of the deity.

58
 BEING DEAD

The practitioner, who has assumed the illusory body of the

deity, further purifies their mental body by immersing their
mind in the clear light. When the illusory body in the form
of the deity is in that way purified by the fire of the clear
light, it becomes the body of great unity, which is endowed
with the best of all aspects. “Best of all aspects” means
emptiness that is at the same time great bliss. Here the
miraculous body of great unity refers to an illusory body
that is inseparable from the purifying clear light. Otherwise
put, this is the body of a deity in which the form and wis-
dom of the deity are united, inseparable. Thus the final aspi-
ration of this phase is, “May I achieve the sambhogakaya in
this second or principal phase of the interval of possibility.”

59
 THE LAST PART: APPROACHING REBIRTH

In the second phase we saw there was opportunity for

achieving liberation in the interval through the transforma-
tion of your mental body into the sambhogakaya of your
deity. This obviously depends upon assiduous practice in
the preceding life and on having received instruction. Most
beings who find themselves in the second interval do not
achieve liberation there because they have not done the
preparation or even received the instruction that would
enable them to do it. If the being does not achieve liberation
in the second interval, the third interval will begin.
The difference between the second and the third phases
of the bardo is that the third phase is said to begin at the
point where the habits from your preceding life have weak-
ened so much that you begin to identify primarily with the
body of the next life. As a result, you are looking for a body
and a place to find birth, and you feel extremely lost. The
defining characteristic of the third phase of the interval of
possibility is that you are obsessively searching for a birth-
place, and that is the principal practice in this third phase.

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THE LAST PART

You are trying to avoid a conventional, compulsive birth

where you would be put into a birthplace under the com-
pulsion of your karma and karmic impulses.
At this point, not only have you lost your previous phys-
ical body, but also the habit of it has waned to the point
where you feel extremely vulnerable. You feel like a travel-
er who cannot find a hotel or place to stay. As a more com-
pelling analogy, you are like a warrior in the midst of battle
who has fallen off your horse and is trying to remount it or
even to get back onto any horse. That is the sort of urgency
that you feel at this point in the interval, so it is here that
you are particularly subject to the compulsion to be reborn.
Here birthplace does not necessarily mean a geographical
location; it means the container for the consciousness. It can
mean the womb if you are going to be born in a womb, but
it depends on what the species is.
When you start to look for the birthplace, certain indica-
tions can show what sort of birth you are moving toward.
When those who are going to be reborn as devas or gods
start searching for a birthplace, they find themselves amidst
the god realm, and they are attracted to it. They see wealth
and luxury, and they like it and want to stay there. There
will be indications of this in the body they have left behind.
If someone is moving toward a god or deva rebirth, their
body will look good. It will have a fairly good complexion,
and people will not find their body especially repulsive. The
eyes will not be gaping wide open but will be half-open.
The corpse will probably smell good within limits, and
because of the involvement of devas and devis, there could
be rainbows in the sky, rains of flowers, and so on. None of
this means that the person has achieved enlightenment or

62
 APPROACHING REBIRTH

liberation. In this case it just means they are headed for a

higher rebirth. Meanwhile in the bardo, as the interval
being moves toward a deva rebirth, they will see how gods
and goddesses are occupied with entertainment and play
and they will think, “I want to go there.” It is actually their
attachment to the activity of the gods that forms the imme-
diate condition for rebirth there. Those who are born as
devas do so because of their karma, but the immediate con-
dition that actually propels them into that birthplace is
attraction to it.
The second of the higher realms is the realm of the asur-
as, or jealous gods. Asuras are similar to gods except they
are much more violent and aggressive. Therefore the expe-
rience of someone who is going to be reborn as an asura is,
in general, similar to the experience of someone who is
reborn as a deva. Asuras feel prouder and more aggressive.
Rather than seeing the entertainment and amusements of
the gods, they see asura soldiers putting on armor, taking up
sharp weapons, and attacking one another. The warfare of
the asuras is fast and constant and violent, like constant
lightning. When devas see the god realm they give rise to
attachment or desire, but the asuras give rise to a kind of
proud anger. They think, “I've got to join in that battle.” It
is another form of attachment, but it is an attachment that
is an attachment to battle and conflict, and that is the imme-
diate condition that propels them into that birth.
The third higher realm is the human realm. Those who
are reborn there are attracted to situations and circum-
stances, such as the prosperity of humans and the pleasures
of the human realm. In particular, they are said to witness
the union of their future parents. Seeing that gives rise to

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THE LAST PART

intense desire for the parent who will be of the opposite sex,
along with intense resentment and jealousy of the parent
who will be of the same sex. In the human realm it is this
combination of desire and aversion that propels them into
the birthplace, which in the case of humans is the womb.
What happens as a result of this conjoining of desire and
aversion is that the consciousness of the interval being dives
into the body of the father via one or another of the sense
apertures. Then, together with the father's sperm, the con-
sciousness ends up in the ovum of the mother and the
womb. It is at that point that a human being is conceived,
and its consciousness is locked in.
The first of the lower realms is the animal realm.
Animals, in general, are so bewildered that they are reborn
through an almost instinctive and very primitive reaction
that is also compulsive and compounded of attachment and
aversion. Depending upon what type of animal it is, it will
have something to do with a womb or an egg, and so on.
The animal realm is similar to the human one except that it
is much coarser. The emotions are coarser and the bewilder-
ment is stronger.
Pretas, the second of the lower states, are particularly
miserable animals. They are low on the evolutionary scale
and are a primitive or undeveloped species. They generally
do not take birth through attachment, however, interval
beings do not look at the preta realm or at the realm of
some form of microscopic life, and think, “I really want to
go there.” That is not the way it works. Again, what drives
you into that type of birth is your karma, but the proximate
or immediate condition is that you are fleeing something
else. You end up choosing that rebirth because there is

64
 APPROACHING REBIRTH

something that you are so afraid of that you take shelter

from it through birth as a preta. You may be fleeing a vio-
lently turbulent ocean, or a forest fire, landslide, or earth-
quake. You may be fleeing the destruction of an entire
mountain or the fierce wind that breaks up a planet at the
end of time, or you may be running away from the violent
cries of terrifying beings at war. You could be seeing various
demonic creatures such as yakshas or fierce predatory ani-
mals, or you could be driven into the birth by a blizzard.
In short, if you are going to be reborn as a preta or a
lower animal, you are fleeing something. You are trying to
get as far away as possible, so you naturally flee into some-
thing that looks like a close, confining, and dark space. You
look for a shelter, such as caves, holes in the earth, hollow
tree trunks, holes in walls or buildings, or spaces in between
the leaves of thick foliage. In short, you go into a dark, dark
space. You are afraid of being out in the open, and it is the
attitude of desire for the dark space of shelter in reaction to
something you are afraid of that causes you to be reborn as
a preta or lower animal.
The third of the lower states are the hell realms. Because
there are very many different hell realms, the actual circum-
stances that propel one towards rebirth in them can vary
quite a bit. An example of a proximate or immediate condi-
tion for hellish rebirth may be that you see an attractive for-
est or mountainside with wild animals moving around and
with what appear to be hunters stalking them. You will be
attracted to the action of hunting and think, “I have to go
there. I want to take part in this and kill some, too.” That
thought will pull you into the situation, but as soon as you
are locked into it, the whole scene will change. The hunted

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THE LAST PART

animals, and possibly also the hunters, will change into

demonic beings, henchpersons of Yama. They will grab hold
of you, take you into custody, and pull you down to hell,
where they will start doing their stuff—killing you, cutting
you up, and doing all the things that happen to you in hell.
Some beings that are born in hell will not even get that
far in the bardo, especially if they led particularly bad lives.
Even while they are still alive, they may start to see the ser-
vants of Yama on their deathbed, and they will die in a state
of terror. Such persons, and in general those who are reborn
in hell, leave behind bodies that people find unaccountably
scary. People just look at the body and feel freaked out. The
body will actually look unpleasant; not just scary but un-
pleasant as well.
Sometimes a dying person who is going to be reborn in
hell will lose consciousness before the whole dissolution or
shutdown process is completed. They will faint or lose con-
sciousness in reaction to the agony of death and go through
the whole dissolution process without being conscious.
Then they wake up unaware that they are dead, and of
course their first thought is, “Where and what is my body?”
In some cases, as soon as they realize that a mental body has
been formed, they will realize that this interval body is not
like their preceding aggregates. In this particular case, they
will perceive that their mental body is a round, globular
mass. It is a sphere with one eye on top of it, like a ball with
an eye, and it seems to be blown upward by a very fierce
wind. It is blown way up, and then the wind stops and it
falls down and lands on a surface of red-hot iron. As it
lands, it splatters and melts, then re-forms instantly into the
horrific body of a hell being.

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Hell beings have bodies that are physically sensitive but

extremely horrific. As soon as the hell body has been
formed, the being is apprehended by the guardians of that
particular hell, who start to torture and kill them in various
ways. Many, not all, but many of the beings who are reborn
in either the hell realms or as pretas seem to experience
being captured by the henchpersons of Yamaraja, the Lord
of the Dead, and put on trial, where everything they ever
did is recounted. They are charged and judged by Yama,
then are led into their next rebirth in a state of great terror.
This does not happen universally. It does not happen to
everyone who is reborn in those realms, but it does appear
to happen to some.
Sometimes another proximate condition for rebirth, if
you are going to be reborn in a hot hell, is that you start to
experience intense cold in the interval. You flee from the
intense cold, thinking, “I really want to go to a warm
place,” and the warmest place your mind can find is the
>

realm in which you are going to take birth. Then you are
born there, and it is too warm. On the other hand, if you
are going to be reborn in a cold hell, the opposite happens,
and you start to experience suffering of intense heat in the
interval. You flee that and are reborn in a cold hell. In this
way, even in the hell realms, beings are sometimes born
through a kind of craving that is produced by rejection of
one thing and choosing something else in its stead.
In general, the immediate or proximate conditions for
rebirth are based on one of the four types of physical
rebirth: instantaneous, moisture and warmth, egg, or
womb. The immediate condition for taking birth instanta-
neously, without physical generation, is attachment to place

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THE LAST PART

or location. Species that are produced by heat and moisture

are generally beings that are cast into that birth through
attachment to scent and taste. Beings that are born in either
womb or egg are generally cast into that birth by attach-
ment to the sexual union of their parents that forms the
physical condition for that birth. In any case, the various
forms of bewilderment and bewildered appearances that
arise in the interval cause you to generate attachment for a
certain mode of rebirth and therefore to be cast into it. In
this way, the wheel of birth after birth keeps on turning, and
it never stops because each time we die we again find our-
selves compelled to attach to and take a certain type of
rebirth. All of these situations describe the experience of the
third phase or third part of the interval of possibility.
Next the text focuses on the means by which you can
avoid negative rebirths. The first and primary instruction is
to rely upon the remedy for whatever type of reaction you
would normally have toward that appearance, whatever it
is. An appearance may be anything you see or experience in
the interval, whether pleasant and attractive or unpleasant
and frightening. To rely upon the remedy, of course, you
must have tamed your mind. In order to have any resources
at this point in the interval, you must have trained yourself
in the various remedies for the various types of things and
your reactions to those things. Whatever happens or might
happen under those circumstances, you must have the nec-
essary ability to keep your mind tamed and in control. The
aspiration here is, “May I therefore at that point not be sep-
arated from whatever yogic practices I am trained in.”
Here, as in the two earlier stages of the interval, what
happens to you principally depends upon the degree of your

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training and the degree of your ability to bring that training

along with you into the after-death state. At this point, as
before, you will apply whatever is your principal training.
Your practice may be Mahamudra or the Great Perfection
or the Great Middle Way, or it may be the cultivation of a
state of great and impartial compassion—any of these
means can be used at this phase in the interval.
There are other particular means that can be helpful as
well. These include the four roots or principals among the
six dharmas of Naropa. The first is the practice of chandali,
which here is called the “self-blazing of bliss and warmth.”
Second is the practice of illusory body, by which you learn
to view all that appears and everything that exists as illuso-
ry, thereby bringing about self-liberation of the eight mun-
dane dharmas. Third are the instructions on dream, by
which you cause the bewilderment of the dream state to be
purified within the dream state itself. Finally, there are the
practices concerning the clear light. In general, all forms of
bewilderment and ignorance in the waking state, in the state
of deep sleep, and so forth can be purified through these
specific practices.
You could apply whichever other practice or combination
of practices you are trained in. For example, if you have
maintained a stable practice of the generation stage, which
means the visualization of deities, you would at this point
employ both the technique of visualizing yourself as your
deity and also the technique of recognizing the forms that
appear to you as deities. That is to say, you not only trans-
form appearances as the deity but also are able to recognize
other appearances to be deities as they occur. Normally
beings in the interval do see actual deities appearing before

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THE LAST PART

them, but some of these are wrathful, and all of them, as we

saw before, are intimidating in their brilliance. If threatened
by these appearances, you will not recognize them as
deities, as sources of refuge, and you will flee from them.
Someone who is assiduously trained in the generation stage
may be able to recognize the deities and also to transform
the experience of the interval into the appearance of deities
with all of their features— holding scepters and making the
sound of mantras, for example.
If you have cultivated devotion in the practice of guru
yoga, you would principally practice guru yoga at this
point. By visualizing your guru on top of your head and
supplicating your guru for rebirth in a pure realm, you
could succeed, even in this third phase of the interval, in
being reborn in a completely pure realm. This is not because
gurus favor those who pray to them over those who do not.
Authentic gurus have equal compassion for all beings and
are utterly impartial, but a person's devoted supplication is
necessary for the guru to lead them to the pure realm.
Therefore, at this point in the interval, practitioners of guru
yoga would employ this method and could achieve libera-
tion through it.
An important factor here is the moral discipline you have
maintained. For example, authentic monastics who have
maintained flawless moral discipline in the immediately pre-
ceding life can invoke the merit and power of that. The
momentum of that merit will counteract the kleshas such as
desire and so forth that form the immediate conditions for
rebirth. By dedicating the merit of your moral discipline to
rebirth in a pure realm, you will be able to achieve it. Yet
another faculty that can be evoked at this point, regardless

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of technique, is the power of intensive mindfulness and

alertness. This can be evoked, regardless of its association
with one method or another, because at this point you are
trying to block the gates to rebirth in any impure realm.
What you want to achieve in this third stage of the inter-
val is to avoid samsaric rebirth altogether and be reborn
only in a pure realm, and you can do this using any of the
particular methods that were just described. If, however, the
compulsion of karma is so strong that you cannot stop
yourself from being reborn in samsara, then your next
resort is to choose a better rather than worse birth. The
birth you want to choose is one where you will be able to
practice the Vajrayana and proceed toward awakening.
Therefore you want to choose to be reborn as a human
being possessing the six elements, and specifically a human
being who will in your next life have access to and complete
the practice of the supreme path of Vajrayana. The aspira-
tion here is, “May I create the excellent interdependent cir-
cumstances for the continued practice of this path.”
In order to choose an appropriate rebirth, regard your
taking birth at this time as an act of conscious emanation.
That is to say, you achieve an emanation body in the sense
of consciously choosing birth, rather than being born
through the force of karmic compulsion described earlier.
You do this by aspiring to undertake or accept the type of
birth that will be of the most benefit—the most benefit to
others and the most benefit for your own completion of the
path. You can choose your family, as well as your gender,
race, country, social circumstances, and so on—whatever
you want, whatever you decide is going to be best. You may
choose to be male or female; you may choose to be born in

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THE LAST PART

one place or another. The point here is that you have gained
the power of choice, and in order to employ this effective-
ly, you need to apply the faculties of mindfulness and alert-
ness throughout the conception, gestation, and birth
process. If you can do this, then you will not succumb to the
confusion and bewilderment that fetuses normally undergo.
The aspiration here is that you maintain mindfulness and
alertness during the threefold process of conception, gesta-
tion, and birth, through applying the wisdom of the third
empowerment. You aspire to achieve a form of birth that
will cause you to be happy in your next life and to proceed
to further happiness because you will use your life for the
practice of the dharma.
Because your aspiration is to take birth in a form that
will be most beneficial, you will usually choose birth in a
pure realm as your first resort. In that case, you would con-
tinue from then on to be reborn in pure realm after pure
realm unless there was specific reason to do otherwise. It
could be that through compassion you would take rebirth
in an impure realm such as this one. In any case, after you
have achieved the higher levels, you would produce emana-
tions in both pure and impure realms. In short, your aspira-
tion is that in the long run you be able to accomplish all
forms of buddha activity through producing countless ema-
nations in both pure and impure realms.
The text now summarizes everything that has gone before,
saying that from now on, you will always aspire to prepare
yourself for the interval by thinking, “This is what I will do
when this happens. If that happens, I will do this.” By con-
sciously engaging your mind in this manner, not merely
thinking about it from time to time, you will be prepared.

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As soon as excellent interdependent circumstances arise,

you will be able to respond to the circumstances appropri-
ately. In that way, the text concludes, “May I train in the
transference from one state to another that constitutes the
interval.”
Training in this way involves the strong inculcation of a
highly motivated aspiration. This is true whether you are
working with the delusions of the waking state, of the
dream state, or of the interval state. For example, in order
to train with the dream state, the primary factor is to initial-
ly generate a highly motivated aspiration immediately
before sleep. The aspiration could be, “I will recognize that
I am dreaming, while I am dreaming. Recognizing it, I will
not feel fear, no matter what I dream. I will transform the
contents of dreams at will. I will change one thing into a
hundred (for example, my body into a hundred), and I will
change negative things into positive things.”
This type of aspiration to recognize the dream state and
transform it will give you the ability to do so, because the
aspiration itself, if highly motivated, is the primary factor in
success. It is the same for the interval. Preparation for the
interval consists in large part of learning what will happen,
bringing it to mind, and consciously and repeatedly prepar-
ing yourself to respond with the appropriate remedy to each
stage as it comes up.
Please dedicate the virtue of receiving these instructions,
and all virtue accumulated by yourself and others through-
out the past, present, and future, to the ability of each and
every being to recognize the various experiences of the
interval as they occur. Dedicate this merit to the ability of
each and every being to respond to these experiences with

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THE LAST PART

appropriate mindfulness and alertness, thereby achieving

liberation through rebirth in pure realms. Let all of those
liberated beings, having achieved liberation, work tirelessly
to liberate others until finally all six realms of sentient beings
have, without exception, achieved perfect awakening.

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Student: Rinpoche, if we are beginners on the path and may

not be capable of having stability of body, speech, and mind
training in this way, what can we do to train for the time of
death?

Rinpoche: There are several things you can do to prepare

for death and the interval after death. These include the
accumulation of merit, the purification of obscurations, the
cultivation of as much love and compassion for other beings
as you can, and also regular contemplation of what will
occur in the interval through studying the Great Liberation
Through Hearing in the Bardo. Prepare yourself by imagin-
ing what it is you are going to be going through at that time.
This could also involve meditation on the forms of the
peaceful and wrathful deities and the repetition of their
mantras. That meditation should also include the reinforced
recognition that these deities are innate to you, they are part
of you. Although they appear outside you in the interval,
they are not separate from you. It is especially important to

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

dedicate the merit of whatever dharma practice you do for

the rebirth of yourself and all others in Sukhavati, the realm
of Amitabha, because this is supreme among all pure bud-
dha realms. It is greatest in its qualities, and it-is also easy
to achieve rebirth there for anyone who wishes to. In that
way you can insure that, even if you are not capable of
achieving liberation in the dharmakaya at death, you can
achieve liberation in either the sambhogakaya or nir-
manakaya.

Student: Rinpoche, you mentioned ejection of conscious-

ness at one point in the dying process. Could you talk more
about that—when it is done, what it means?

Rinpoche: The ejection of consciousness refers to the prac-

tice through which the emergence of consciousness from
the body of the dying person is controlled and directed.
Specifically, the consciousness is diretted so that it emerges
or is ejected out of the aperture at the top of the person's
head. The value of this is that, even if the dying person led
a rather evil existence, if the consciousness emerges out of
the top of the person's head, that person will at the very
least be reborn with a precious human body. If they were a
dharma practitioner, they will very likely be reborn in a
pure realm. There is great significance and advantage to
this practice.
In general, the ejection of consciousness can be achieved
in two ways. In one way, the dying person does it for him
or herself, and in the other somebody else assists them by
doing it for them. In order to practice the ejection of con-
sciousness for your own benefit, you need to receive the
instructions and then perform the practice assiduously until

76
 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

the signs of having gained this ability have arisen. There are
many systems of ejection practice. The most convenient for
general use is the system associated with the Amitabha cycle
of teachings. When the person has practiced it until they
achieve the ability to eject their consciousness, there will be
physical signs, specifically itching or other irritation of the
aperture at the top of the head and possible eruption or
exuding of fluids, such as lymph and blood. Later on, when
they are absolutely certain that they are dying, the person
can perform the ejection of consciousness and will be able
to do so successfully. Exceptions to this are when the dying
person, although trained in the ejection of consciousness,
has subdued faculties. For example, their mind may be dull
because of medication or the illness, or they may be so ter-
rified by death that they forget to do it. Under those circum-
stances they require the assistance of someone else.
The person who assists by performing the ejection of con-
sciousness for another needs to have practiced it himself or
herself until achieving the signs of the ability. Only there-
after will they have the ability to do it for somebody else. In
any case, they must perform the ejection of consciousness
for the dying person exactly at the critical moment, and it
must not be done before then. Ejection of consciousness is
of great benefit if it is performed at the right time, especial-
ly if the person for whom it is performed is a practitioner. If
this person has trained in the ejection of consciousness him-
self or herself, the benefit will be certain and far greater than
the benefit to an ordinary person. It is of the greatest impor-
tance that the ejection of consciousness not be performed
before the death process is irreversible. If it is performed
when there is still hope of resuscitation or survival, then if

77
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

you do it to yourself it is suicide and if you do it to another

person it is murder.

Student: You talk about the consciousness leaving the body,

and after that the person in the bardo has ideas and visions
of himself as certain things. For example, he sees himself in
the body that he used to have and he sees himself in the
body that he is going to have. When the consciousness
leaves the body, what part of him actually perceives that?

Rinpoche: The person is the consciousness, not the body.

Student: Right now I am caring for someone who is aged,

and she's experiencing lots of delusions and demented expe-
riences. When you were describing some of the frightening,
fearful experiences in the bardo, it reminded me of some of
the things that she has been going through. I was wonder-
ing if something of the bardo enters into the dying process,
and what Rinpoche could suggest that I could do for her.

Rinpoche: She is not experiencing a phase of the bardo. She

is experiencing hallucinations that are caused by the deteri-
oration of the parts of the brain that result in the condition.
Because this condition consists of a deterioration of the
channels and so forth within the brain, it makes communi-
cation with the person, and helping them in a meaningful
way, very challenging. It is hard to know exactly what you
can do, but she is not experiencing the bardo yet.

Student: Rinpoche, at what point would you know that it is

time to eject the consciousness for another person? How
can you tell?

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Rinpoche: The actual point at which the ejection of con-

sciousness proper should be performed is when the breath-
ing stops, and the usual criterion for this is to observe when
the pulse in the neck stops. You can perform the ejection of
consciousness after the pulse has ceased. Up to that point,
you should prepare for it through the preliminary recitation
of the names of buddhas and the various liturgical practices
associated with it that prepare the person to receive the
guidance.

Student: Why is it that it is more beneficial to eject the con-

sciousness from the upper apertures? What determines that?
Why is it the upper ones and not others?

Rinpoche: Ordinarily a person's consciousness never leaves

from the upper aperture. It usually leaves out of one of the
sense doors or the lower gates. The only circumstances
under which someone's consciousness will naturally emerge
out of the aperture at the top of the head is if they are some-
one with extraordinary virtue or merit, or they are someone
who has familiarized themselves to some degree with the
ejection of consciousness. Otherwise it simply will not go
out from there. The reason is that the departure of the con-
sciousness from the body in that direction is the avenue to
rebirth in a pure realm. More often than not, a person's
consciousness leaves out of the lower parts of their body,
and that is almost invariably an indication of a lower
rebirth.

Student: My cousin died this past week. She was someone

who was close to my family and almost like a sister to us.
But she didn't practice any of this, and was not exposed to

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

the dharma. So now she's in the bardo. I asked for a lamp

to be lit for ber for forty-nine days. How am I helping ber
or somebody else in the bardo who has no exposure or con-
nection to these teachings?

Rinpoche: In such cases the intervention of someone like

you, who has sincere compassion for the deceased, actually
helps a person in spite of their previous absence of connec-
tion with dharma, especially when you dedicate your virtue
and merit to them. There are many instances of this. For
example, it is said that if you say the names of buddhas or
certain mantras in the ear of an animal recently dead, that
will prevent that animal from being born in lower states.
Now that animal certainly had no connection with dharma
in life, but nevertheless it can be benefited in this way.

Student: What would be appropriate practices when we are

with someone at the moment they die? You just suggested
that we would recite mantras and names of deities. Are
there any other appropriate things we can do at that
moment?

Rinpoche: Well, the type of thing you would do would

depend basically upon your own degree of knowledge. At
the very least you could certainly recite mantras and the
names of buddhas and so on. Doing so with an attitude of
love and compassion for that person would actually help
them. This type of spiritual assistance is the most important
thing to do for someone who is dying. Up to that point your
primary effort has been to make them comfortable, but they
are getting to the point where that is no longer an issue.

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Student: Rinpoche, about twelve years ago, I was visiting a

friend of mine in the hospital who had AIDS, and he asked
me to meditate with him. So I did. I led him in a very brief
meditation. I just made something up which would help
him relax because I knew that he was very angry that he
had AIDS. I didn't think he was going to die right then, but
as it turned out, after I meditated with him, he closed bis
eyes. I stepped away but kept an eye on him, and it proba-
bly wasn't even five minutes after that I saw that he was no
longer breathing. So I went right over to him. I had heard
of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but I didn't know enough
to say anything so I just whispered to him, “It's okay, don't
be afraid, don't be afraid, it's okay, Peter.” After I did that
for maybe five minutes, they called the nurse in and he was
dead. I always felt okay about that, in fact I felt very fortu-
nate that I was right there when he died. For some reason I
just felt that way. I never thought I would.
I'm thinking about this for myself because I'm getting
older and my practice is just okay. I'm not a great practition-
er, yet the dharma is always on my mind. I do the best I can
with that; sometimes I do well and sometimes I don't and I
regret it. Now I'm faced with dying myself. I can imagine
that if I was doing a good practice, that I could look for-
ward to dying with a certain amount of confidence, that it
would be an okay death, And I know that that does happen.

Rinpoche: To answer your first point, the assistance you

gave your friend was both altruistic and caring, and there-
fore it could only have been helpful. Especially your con-
veyance to him of assurance and the reduction of his fear
would actually have helped him in the interval after death.

81
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

I cannot guarantee that he achieved liberation, but what I

can tell you is that by making him less afraid at the begin-
ning of the interval, you created a greater chance for him to
do well in the interval.
With regard to your second point, I am a lot older than
you are so I've got more to worry about. Therefore this is
of great concern to me, too, so I'll tell you what I really
think. The single best preparation that you can have for
dying is to recite the mantra OM MANI PEME HUNG. If you
make the commitment to yourself, “I will recite 100 million
OM MANI PEME HUNG's”, whether or not you complete it in
this life, from the day you make that commitment until the
day you die, this will have a great effect on you, and you
will have tremendous benefit. As for what you meditate on,
you should always visualize above your head either the
Buddha Amitabha or the bodhisattva Chenrezik, it does not
matter which. Just think that the deity is the embodiment in
one form of all sources of refuge and especially of all of
your spiritual teachers. Continually visualize them there,
above your head, day and night, and resolve that at death
your consciousness will dissolve upward into them. What
you meditate on and visualize is your teacher in the form of
Amitabha or Chenrezik above your head, and what you
recite is the mantra OM MANI PEME HUNG. That is the best
preparation.

Student: Rinpoche, I'm concerned about the possibility of

having impaired mental functions at the time of death due
to medication or to illness. What is the best thing to do if
this is the case? What if a person's functions are so reduced
by a coma that they cannot practice at all at the time of

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

death, let alone for possibly ten or fifteen years before the
time of their death? If their mental functions are so incred-
ibly impaired, what is the best thing? Is there any hope for
them to improve their situation at the time of death, or are
they just left to their karma completely at that point, as if
they hadn't practiced at all during that lifetime?

Rinpoche: It is by no means the case that, if you are in a

coma or have otherwise impaired faculties at the time of
your death, this will wipe out the benefit of your practice
previous to that time. As you indicated in your question,
because you will not be conscious, it will be very difficult to
make immediate use of the practice or what you learn
through your practice. If a person who is in a coma or
whose faculties are impaired has an attending lama at their
death, then the lama will be able to communicate with
them. When the shutdown process of dying reaches the
point where the person's mind is, although still within the
body, no longer biologically seated in it, then their mind
becomes independent of the physical conditions that pro-
duced the impairment.
Usually a state of coma or unconsciousness, or a state of
diminished faculties is produced by physical conditions such
as damage to the brain or medications that prevent brain
functioning. Once the body has shut down, then the con-
sciousness has an alertness that is independent of these phys-
ical conditions, so the person would become conscious at
that point, although it would not be physically evident. At
that point, the lama could perform the ejection of conscious-
ness, and could also communicate with the person, giving
them guidance, and they would be able to understand it.

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

It is also possible that the person could become conscious

at the point where their mind has biologically separated
from the body. But you cannot depend on that, because it
is also possible that other habits would intervene and the
person's previous habits of practice might not reassert
themselves. Therefore the dependable resort under those
circumstances would be to have an attending lama.

Student: Rinpoche, you mentioned before that the ejection

of the consciousness through the crown sometimes mani-
fests with some sort of physical appearance. Is it always the
case that when the consciousness ejects through one of the
gates of the body a physical manifestation occurs, and how
would it occur through some of the other gates or orifices?

Rinpoche: The physical evidence, such as exuding lymph

and blood and so on, is not a sign that the consciousness
has been ejected. It is a sign that the person has gained the
ability to eject it. When the consciousness is actually eject-
ed, either from that gate or from any other, there will be no
such swelling or sign.

Student: Rinpoche, some people who are from a different

religious orientation have a very strong concept about their
religion. I have heard that if you recite the Buddha's
mantras that are foreign to them, this would also be very
scary for them because they have fears about other reli-
gions. How would you work with that?

Rinpoche: Well, what you say is very true. In those situa-

tions you have to do whatever you do for their benefit
silently, such as cultivating compassion for them and doing

84
 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

silent visualizations or meditations. If you recite the names

of buddhas or Buddhist mantras in the hearing of someone
who is a staunch adherent of another religious tradition, at
the very least they are going to feel disoriented and possibly
betrayed. They will think, “They are denying my source of
refuge or my savior and trying to appeal to another,” and
that will anger them. So you have to be silent.

Student: Rinpoche, speaking of my own death, if I am deal-

ing with pain, I understand that it is better to go without
medication so I can be clear. When I am dying is it better to
try to sit up and maintain a meditative posture? I am also
curious about whether to lie on the left or the right side to
prepare for death.

Rinpoche: With regard to the use of pain medication, if

someone has a strong enough practice such that, by main-
taining full clarity of mind during the dying process, they
will be able to achieve liberation, then they should avoid
any pain medication that will excessively dull their faculties,
if possible. Otherwise if their practice is not that strong, it
is better that they receive whatever medication will alleviate
their suffering. As far as physical posture at the time of
death, of course, it is excellent to die sitting up straight, but
most people cannot do that because, after all, they are
dying. In that case, it is better to lie on the right side in the
posture that the Buddha adopted at his death.

Student: When the red and white elements and the life wind
withdraw into the heart center, is that an irreversible
process or is it something that someone might experience
during a near-death experience where the life functions

85
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

appear to have ceased but are then revived?

Rinpoche: The full process, in which all of the pressure

exerted by the life wind is gone and the drops descend and
ascend respectively to the heart and combine there, does not
happen unless the person has reached the irreversible stage,
which is the third stage of attainment. Up until then, there
is merely some weakening of the life wind. There could be
some movement, but not the full process; that is, only up
through the first two stages of dissolution—the white
appearance and the red increase. Up to that point it might
be reversible—in other words, that does happen in near-
death experiences, but the third stage doesn't.

Student: Can you elaborate a little bit more on that, and the
stage just prior to when that occurs? When the drops are
coming together? You were talking about practicing in this
life to recognize the ground clear light when it occurs. If you
miss it when it happens, is that the point when you move on
to the second part of the interval?

Rinpoche: The preparation in this life for the recognition of

the ground clear light does not normally consist of simulat-
ing the process of dissolution, but of generating a state of
even-placement where the mind is immersed in what is
called “the path clear light.” This state of even-placement is
not necessarily connected with the process of shutdown or
dissolution. The border between the first and second parts
of the interval of possibility, the whole dying and death
process, is the appearance of the ground clear light. The
appearance of the ground clear light is the fourth stage of
dissolution, the fourth moment. It is the actual moment of

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

death and if it is not recognized, then the person enters what

we call the bardo proper.

Student: Regarding the descending and ascending of the life

wind in the central channel, I've always thought that the
central channel is symmetrically in the center of our physi-
cal body. We know that our heart is asymmetrically placed
in the body, so when we talk about the heart are we are
talking about a place in the central channel at the same level
as the physical heart but symmetrically in the center of the
body?

Rinpoche: It means the central channel at the height of the

heart.

Student: I've heard that forty-nine days is the general

amount of time within which the whole process of rebirth
takes place, but this is hard to pin down. Technically when
do you start counting? Do you start counting from the day
the person dies? Secondly, do most of the things that you
compared to the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nir-
manakaya generally happen right away in that period of
forty-nine days?

Rinpoche: To answer your first question, or perhaps to fur-

ther obscure it, there are two systems for reckoning the
forty-nine-day period. One system is that if you die today,
the first day starts with sunrise tomorrow. The other way is
based on the fact that people are only sporadically con-
scious for the first three days after death in the bardo. That
system discounts the first three days and starts on the
fourth sunrise after death. If you start at sunrise tomorrow,

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

you can call the first days “A, B, and C,” and then count
the next day as the first of the forty-nine days.
These are not so much different opinions about how the
period should be counted as different ways they can be
applied depending upon what happens to the individual.
Assuming that there is no recognition of the ground clear
light, some people become unconscious but stay in the body.
They will remain unconscious for two or three days, and
then their consciousness will leave the body. For those peo-
ple, it is better to reckon it with the three days excluded.
Other people with slightly different channels, who also
do not recognize the ground clear light, leave their body as
soon as the ground clear light has passed. For those people
it is obviously better to start counting the morning of the
next day. The problem is that there is no obvious way to tell
which is happening, because although there are signs of
someone recognizing the ground clear light, as described
earlier, there are no really obvious signs of whether the per-
son's consciousness has remained or left after failing to rec-
ognize it. Basically, then, one or another of the two customs
will be applied more or less arbitrarily.
As for the correlation between the forty-nine-day period
and the opportunities of the three kayas, the opportunity to
achieve liberation in the dharmakaya is the ground clear
light. If someone recognizes it, then they will remain
immersed in it for the period of their ensuing samadhi,
which is normally three days but can be longer. They are in
a totally different category, because they are not in the
bardo. For someone in the bardo who does not recognize the
clear light, the dharmakaya window of opportunity is gone
as soon as they do not recognize it, because the ground clear

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

light will cease, and they will move on to the next part,
which is the opportunity to achieve the sambbogakaya.
The sambhogakaya window is twofold, and in most
Kagyu presentations the two aspects are not classified se-
quentially, as in “window one” and “window two.” Ob-
viously “window” here is not literal, but I think it is the best
word. The first aspect of the opportunity for liberation in
the sambhogakaya is the appearances of spontaneous pres-
ence, which means the rays of wisdom light and the peace-
ful and wrathful deities. According to the Great Liberation
Through Hearing in the Bardo, this goes on for several days,
and in that book you will see an exact schedule for what
happens on each day. These appearances last for a couple of
weeks, and there is a progressive coarsening and therefore a
greater difficulty of liberation. At the same time, there is the
opportunity for another type of liberation. In this second
aspect of the sambhogakaya window, the practitioner is able
to cause their mental body to arise in the form of a deity, in
which case they achieve liberation in the form of that deity.
In the Kagyu tradition, we classify both of these opportuni-
ties as sambhogakaya windows, but we do not consider that
first one happens and then the other. The opportunities for
either are more or less simultaneous.
The opportunity for the achievement of nirmanakaya be-
gins when you are approaching rebirth, and your principal
effort is to stop an undesirable rebirth and instead choose
your rebirth. Calculating exactly how long this period lasts
brings up the whole issue of the forty-nine-day period as a
whole. The forty-nine-day period is considered an average
time or duration of the interval—the whole thing—but it is .
by no means certain that any specific individual will remain

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

in the interval for that long or for only that long. Generally
speaking, the stronger your karma in one direction or
another, good or bad, the more quickly you are likely to
achieve rebirth. To the extent that you have cultivated
extraordinary virtue, there will be almost immediate rebirth
in a pure realm. If you cultivated great evil, there could be
almost immediate rebirth in a lower realm.
If someone's balance of wrongdoing and virtue is pretty
well even, the karmic propulsion will be less focused, caus-
ing their rebirth to be less certain, and they might remain in
the interval for even longer than forty-nine days. In any
case, the nirmanakaya opportunity is over when the person
either successfully or unsuccessfully enters their next place
of birth. “Successfully” means that they have used this peri-
od of the interval to achieve the nirmanakaya; in other
words, through the forces of aspirations, moral discipline,
love, and compassion they have consciously chosen a
rebirth that will be of benefit to themselves and others. That
is what achievement of the nirmanakaya means in this par-
ticular context. “Unsuccessful” means uncontrolled rebirth.
In either case, that is when it ends.

Student: Rinpoche, from what you said earlier, I have the

impression that your rebirth is determined largely by the
choices you make in the interval state, when you see the five
lights of wisdom and the five lights of samsaric rebirth. I
always heard that it was your karma that determines your
rebirth, so how do you reconcile this? Is it your karma that
propels you to make one choice over another?

Rinpoche: That question brings up the primary significance

of the interval. Birth is the full ripening of karma; in other

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

words, when you are conceived and you enter the place of
birth, you become locked into the results of previous
actions. Once you have a certain birth, your actions have
ripened as the aggregates of a certain life, and there's not
much you can do about it. You cannot change it all of a sud-
den. It may change through adventitious circumstances, but
basically, for as long as you remain alive in that life, you are
limited by those circumstances and you have no choice
about it.
What happens when you die is that the karma that pro-
pelled you into a certain life and allowed you to take a cer-
tain rebirth has been used up. There remain some habits of
your previous life, as is evidenced, for example, by perceiv-
ing yourself in your previous body and so on. Nevertheless
the actual karma is ‘gone, and the karma that will cause
your next rebirth has not yet taken effect. Because you have
several different such karmas within your being, it may not
yet be certain which rebirth you are going to take.
In a sense, when you are in the interval between lives, you
are in a gap that is in between karmically locked circum-
stances. While you are in between, you can, if you know
how to do so, make some changes and some choices. You
cannot do this once you have entered the place of birth and
are locked into the next life. That is why the power of a vir-
tuous state of mind in the interval is tremendous. It can
actually bring an immediate and great change to what hap-
pens to you.

Student: Rinpoche, what can you do when someone dies?

I'm thinking of my parents. How do I stay calm enough to
do practice? I'm afraid I'll be too upset to be effective. I

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

thought of going on a retreat after one of them dies to do

practice. Is it a good idea to go on retreat for someone?
How long should the retreat be, and which practice should
you do?

Rinpoche: Of course, the state of sadness or grief that

results from the death of people we love happens to us. The
best thing you can do when you are going through this is to
reflect upon the fact that death is natural. Everyone dies, at
some point everyone is going to die and is not going to be
here anymore. In that way, you acknowledge that parting
and separation from those you love is simply a fact of life.
Continuing in that way of thinking, you should reflect upon
the fact that you too are going to die, exactly like those for
whom you are grieving. By thinking in those terms, you
transform the potentially paralyzing grief into a source of
inspiration, because the best opportunity for someone to
practice is when some event such as the death of one of their
parents has brought impermanence vividly before their
mind. So you should think, “If I cannot practice now, I'll be
wasting the best possible opportunity.”

Student: Rinpoche, can you explain about the death of a

young infant or child. How does this work for them? It
appears their life has just begun, and they haven't been
exposed to practice. What can you do for them?

Rinpoche: All you can do is to recite mantras such as OM

MANI PEME HUNG for their benefit and in their hearing, or
dedicate all other virtues you perform to their benefit. If you
can, perform the ejection of consciousness for them. You
cannot really do much more than that.

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Student: Rinpoche, you referred earlier to meditating on the

clear light, and I'm not sure what that is. Could you explain
that? Also, I have been told often to accept impermanence.
I think that in Tibetan culture there is much more comfort
and practice in working with this, but in our culture we
haven't been able to talk about death, except for maybe the
last ten years. Many soldiers are dying, and a lot of our
friends are dying at a much earlier age because of illness.
Perhaps we need to pay much more attention to this. There
is a certain-freedom in being comfortable with the idea that
death is natural, yet I don't think we are all in that place.
Could you speak about that?

Rinpoche: To answer your second question first, it is true,

as you say, that generally speaking, people live in denial of
death. We flee the concept and we are intensely uncomfort-
able with it. But being uncomfortable with it is actually the
starting point of contemplation. Whether you are Tibetan,
American, or anything else, if you become comfortable with
the idea of death, you may think, “Well, death is coming,
impermanence is natural, and that's okay.” Simply thinking
that death is okay and being comfortable with it does no
good whatsoever.
The purpose of the contemplation of death is not to alle-
viate anxiety about it but to use the approach of death as
inspiration for practice. Contemplating death and imperma-
nence causes you to realize that you have no time to waste.
It is only if this causes you to practice assiduously that such
contemplation has any value or has achieved its intended
purpose. The instruction that you have heard and read—to
contemplate death and impermanence—really means to

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

take these things to heart so that you are inspired to prac-

tice with diligence.
With regard to the contemplation of impermanence,
some people seem to have the idea that thinking about
death and impermanence all the time will shorten your life,
or that you will attract death by thinking about it. This is
nonsense. The length of your life is primarily a matter of
your karma, and you do not change your karma by think-
ing about death. If it were true that you shortened your life
by thinking about death, then you could lengthen your life
endlessly by repeatedly contemplating immortality, and
we've seen that that does not happen! Therefore you can
reasonably assume that you are in no danger of dying soon-
er merely because you contemplate impermanence.
As for what constitutes meditation on the clear light, I'll
give you an example of it. When you are meditating upon
Chenrezik, as I instructed you earlier, you recite the mantra
OM MANI PEME HUNG continuously. While reciting the
mantra, from time to time rest your mind in a state free of
any mental engagement, of any thought or mental activity,
and that will be an encounter with the clear light.

Student: I have a question about life releasing. In Boston

the earthworms come from Canada. If you buy them, you
are creating the karmic preconditions for more earthworms
to be scooped up by hardworking Canadians in the north,
who pick them up as a sort of cottage industry. Therefore,
when you go to release these lives, you are actually putting
more lives in jeopardy. Similarly, if you buy baitfish, you are
creating a market for more baitfish. I can see how this
works very well in a more traditional agrarian economy, but

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

in a capitalist economy, by buying the earthworms or the

fish I'm putting more lives in danger. How do I best effect
the wish for life release?

Rinpoche: Well, we cannot protect all beings. We have to

protect the ones to which we have access, but even those we
cannot protect forever. We may only be able to lengthen
their lives by as much as one day. So when you buy animals
that are being sold for purposes that will involve their
death, whether it is their consumption as is the case with
fish that are sold live or their use as bait, as is the case with
earthworms, even if they only survive for one day, that is
probably one day longer than they would have survived
otherwise.

Student: In the bardo teachings, the precondition to being

able to do anything successfully in this experience is to
develop a very strong meditative stability in this life. This is
a persistent problem in my practice. I read a lot because I
have a very hard time getting any kind of stability in my
meditation. Is there any further assistance that will get this
to work better? .

Rinpoche: There are definitely means and instructions that

will enable you to develop the type of stability that is need-
ed to successfully traverse the interval. As you indicated in
your question, we all want to achieve this kind of stability.
It is not necessarily achieved by practicing a large variety of
techniques, but by properly implementing any one complete
technique of practice. Visualizing your body as the deity
Chenrezik, repeating the mantra OM MANI PEME HUNG, and
dissolving the appearance of the deity into emptiness at the

95
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

conclusion of the session are three techniques by which you

can achieve the necessary stability for traversing the inter-
val. The phase of the meditation where you withdraw or
dissolve the appearance of the deity is how to cultivate
familiarity with the clear light so that you can recognize the
dharmakaya at death. Meditating upon your body as the
body of Chenrezik is how you can gain the ability to achieve
liberation as the sambhogakaya in the second phase of the
interval. Repetition of the mantra OM MANI PEME HUNG is
how you can learn to view all sound, including the sounds
that appear in the interval, as mantra. Furthermore, the
motivation of great compassion with which you perform
the whole practice is the basis for the altruistic aspiration to
be reborn as nirmanakaya for the benefit of others, which is
the key to traversing the third phase of the interval, and
doing this one complete technique will achieve all that you
need. In contrast, knowledge of a large number of tech-
niques without gaining stability in any one of them will not
bring this.

Student: Rinpoche, I've been a Buddhist for about 25 years,

and I've never tried very hard to avoid eating meat, but it
seems that maybe I should do that since we do live in an
environment where it is possible to eat a fairly healthy,
nutritious diet that excludes meat, unlike other Buddhist
environments where it wasn't so easy to do that. Do you
recommend that I should be making more of an effort to
develop a diet that excludes meat?
Secondly, a lot of us have been reading about these hor-
rible meat factories where much of our meat comes from
now, and where the conditions for the animals are even

96
 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

more horrendous than they would be on a regular farm. If

we are going to eat meat, should we be trying to make sure
that the meat that we are eating does not come from these
terrible places?

Rinpoche: If you can stop eating meat, that would be won-

drous, and I would thank you and rejoice in your doing so.
It is, for all of the reasons you mentioned, obviously better
not to eat meat. If you cannot stop eating meat entirely, or
if you find yourself traveling to countries where you more
or less have to eat meat, then when you eat it, you should
use the opportunity to make aspirations that the animal not
be reborn in lower states. Because you are making a physi-
cal connection with the animal by consuming its flesh and
absorbing it into your body, you can actually help the ani-
mal by doing this. I am not saying that that makes eating
meat okay or that because you make these aspirations, there
is no sin in eating meat. There is. It is very hard for me to
say this because I have been unable to abandon the con-
sumption of meat myself, so I am not comfortable going
around telling people not to eat meat, but if I am asked
directly if it is better not to eat meat, I have to say “yes.”

Student: My understanding is that if someone recognizes the

clear light at the time of death, they achieve the dhar-
makaya, absolute buddhahood. Now if somebody in their
lifetime, as we are now, takes the bodhisattva vow, which is
vowing to return in physical form until all beings have
achieved liberation, would that somehow be breaking their
vow by achieving the dharmakaya state?

Rinpoche: No, it is not a violation of the vow, because when

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

someone achieves the dharmakaya, they do not abide in a

passive state or a state without activity. It is not like some
sort of permanent vacation. As soon as someone attains the
dharmakaya, they automatically display the sambhogakaya
and, by extension, the nirmanakaya for the benefit of oth-
ers. Rather than contravening the bodhisattva vow, it is in
fact the most perfect fulfillment of it.

Student: Rinpoche, what kind of things can an individual

practitioner do on the anniversary of someone who died? If
the person will have already taken rebirth, is it still benefi-
cial for them?

Rinpoche: You can still benefit the person at any time,

including the yearly observance of their passing, regardless
of whether or not they have been reborn and really regard-
less of how long it has been since they were reborn. You can
benefit them by doing meritorious things such as making
offerings dedicated to them or in their name, and by dedi-
cating the virtue of your usual virtuous activities especially
to them at that time. In either case, you will be helping
yourself and also helping the other person. Even if they have
taken rebirth by that time, you do not necessarily know
what type of rebirth. If they have taken an unfortunate
rebirth, you might be able to ameliorate their circumstances
or even free them from that birth by doing virtue for their
benefit.
It was not uncommon in Tibet for great lamas to be able
to see where deceased people had been reborn. They would
sometimes—usually at the request of family members—
determine this, and then advise the family on what needed
to be done. They would say something like, “Your relative

98
 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

has been reborn in such-and-such lower state. In order to

free them from this, the families should perform such-and-
such practices, such-and-such virtuous endeavors, and so
on.” Another event that occurred throughout much of
Tibetan history, and still can happen nowadays, is people
becoming “returners.” Returners are people who actually
die and come back. It is more than a near-death experience,
because they have actually gone through the whole death
process, including the bardo, and they are able, especially if
they do this repeatedly, to see lower states and to contact
people who have passed away. Even if it has been years
since someone has died and been reborn in a lower state,
they will sometimes carry messages from that person back
to family, advising the family about what needs to be done
for their benefit and so on, and this seems to be indeed
effective.

Student: There are some people who are on life support for
a long time, and there is no chance for them to recover.
There is no longer any will left in such a person. What
should one do in that situation to end this suffering, when
there is no living will and there are obstructions to allowing
for a natural death to take place?

Rinpoche: It is hard for me to answer this because the actu-

al effect of artificial life support or resuscitation in most
people in the long run is hard to determine. What I can say
is that if the person is a strong practitioner who has the
chance to recognize the ground clear light at death, then it
would be much better that they not be artificially resuscitat-
ed. Their life should not be artificially prolonged by life sup-
port mechanisms, because these things would prevent them

99
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

from experiencing the ground clear light while they were

still conscious and able to recognize it. When they did even-
tually enter the clear light, they would be entering it from a
state of unconsciousness, which would put them at a disad-
vantage.
This is not really an issue with an ordinary person
because most people do not have a significant chance of rec-
ognizing the ground clear light. In that case, whether they
enter it through a natural, conscious death or from a state
of prolonged unconsciousness is largely irrelevant, because
in either case they are simply not going to recognize it. For
an ordinary person, it is hard to say whether or not artifi-
cial resuscitation and life support actually would do them
any harm—it may or may not. To give you an idea of some-
one for whom it was an issue, the late Lama Ganga, a year
before he passed away, said to me, “IfI have merit, I will die
in Tibet. If I cannot manage that, I'm going to make sure
that I die in India. I don't dare to die in America, because
they won't let me die. They would hook me up to those
machines, and I would not be able to die.” Now I interpret
his remarks as an indirect expression of his confidence in his
ability to recognize the ground clear light and achieve liber-
ation in the bardo, and that is why it was an issue for him.

Student: I heard stories of people who are dying and talking

to their relatives who were already dead for some time—it
seemed as if they saw the deceaced relatives or heard them.
Would talking with deceased relatives and having their pres-
ence be helpful in our process of dying?

Rinpoche: | think that they are not actually seeing their rel-

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

atives—that it is a hallucination produced by the habit of

association with those people. You could actually contact
dead people only when you yourself are dead, when the
shutdown or dissolution process is completed. If the dying
person is still talking, then they are not dead yet. They are
probably having an appearance or hallucination through
habit.

Student: What about people who are from different denom-

inations, who have a different kind of faith or different
beliefs? What is the chance of their liberation, and what can
be done for them in order to help them with this process?

Rinpoche: With regard to your first question, I really do not

know how to answer it. If I were to answer by saying, “No,
non-Buddhists have no chance for recognition and libera-
tion,” that would be no more than sectarian prejudice on:
my part. On the other hand, if I were to say, “Yes, they have
chance for recognition and liberation,” that would be sheer
pretentiousness, because to make that statement I would
have had to have achieved the final result of their religion
and know what abilities it bestowed. So I cannot answer
that question.
With regard to your second question, I think you would
employ the same methods that you would use for a
Buddhist, except you would do it discreetly. For example,
you could recite mantras or Buddhist names, such as OM
MANI PEME HUNG, and dedicate the merit of that to the per-
son, but you just wouldn’t do it so that they heard it,
because that would disturb them, as we discussed before.
These activities are beneficial to anyone, not just to
Buddhists. If you do something virtuous, such as reciting

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

that mantra and dedicating your merit to that person, the

fact that they themselves are not Buddhists does not in any
way prevent them from benefiting from it. The purpose of
dharma is to benefit all beings of the six realms, not merely
Buddhists.

Student: Rinpoche, you spoke about karma being used up

in the interval, and I wonder if you can elaborate more
about karma and how we carry it forward into subsequent
lives.

Rinpoche: Karma abides within the all-basis consciousness

of an individual, and in the case of the interval it is this all-
basis consciousness combined with the subtle wind, the life
wind, that goes from life to life. So that wind-mind serves
as the container for the maintenance and transportation of
karma. J need to make something clear. When I said that the
karma of the previous life was used up, I did not mean that
all of the accumulated karma that had led to the previous
life was used up. I meant that the particular karma, the par-
ticular imprint of action, that led to that particular birth
must be used up when that birth is finished. This does not
mean that all of the other karmic imprints that are stored
within the all-basis consciousness have been wiped out or
used up. They are all there.
The gap that is experienced in the interval consists of the
fact that, while the karmas are still present within your
being, the ripening of karma is temporarily dormant. It is a
karmically ripened situation, a time when the set of aggre-
gates that have karmically ripened during your life are not
present. Karma from the previous life has been destroyed
and used up, whereas the karma for the next one is present

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

but has not ripened yet. This makes for a situation where
changes can be affected, since what prevents change is the
limitation imposed upon you by fully ripened karma. In
other words, once a karma has fully ripened or matured
resulting in the aggregates of a new life, not much can be
done about it. You are stuck in that situation. But in
between lives, although you have plenty of karma that
needs to be purified, none of it is in a ripened state yet, so
changes can be effected.

Student: Rinpoche, how can we as ordinary practitioners,

myself or others, benefit beings in the six realms by empty-
ing the lower realms? I'm alluding to liturgies where prayers
such as “May the lower realms be emptied” are found. For
an ordinary level practitioner, this seems somewhat hard to
grasp. When this is our aspiration, how do we begin?

Rinpoche: Even though we are ordinary sentient beings,

there is a great deal that we can do for others. Every time
that you do something virtuous and sincerely dedicate that
virtue to others, you can—through the force of your merit
and dedication—introduce virtuous habit into the continu-
um of other beings. The virtuous habit that is introduced by
the strength of your dedication and aspiration will eventu-
ally cause them to achieve liberation, first of all from lower
states and eventually from cyclic existence itself.
The phrases commonly used in our liturgies, “Emptying
samsara from its depths,” “Emptying lower states from
their depths,” and so on, refer tothe principal aim and aspi-
ration of all buddhas and bodhisattvas in their compassion,
and indeed of all who take the bodhisattva vow. You aspire
to bring all beings without exception to liberation. This is

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

an open-ended aspiration in the sense that beings are limit-

less, so it is difficult even to answer the question that is
often posed, “Will there ever come a time when all beings
have been liberated?” This remains what has been called a
“difficult point.” Although we undertake the aspiration to
bring all beings without exception to liberation, and
although this is open-ended and possibly an infinite endeav-
or, we still can, one-by-one, benefit beings.
There are plenty of situations where, even as an ordinary
and afflicted being yourself, you can plant the seed of liber-
ation in the being of another. For example, if you say the
mantra OM MANI PEME HUNG in the hearing of an animal
that has died, you plant the seed of liberation in that being.
Anyone who is connected with the Buddha's teaching can
do this. It does not require a state of attainment; you sim-
ply have to know that it can be done and do it.
As I have said before, I cannot assess whether adherents
of other religions can or cannot attain liberation, because I
just do not know. What I can say is that those who have no
connection to any spiritual tradition whatsoever cannot do
it because they have no means at their disposal to introduce
the seed of liberation in another's being. We would call
those persons truly “ordinary” in the fullest sense of the
term. We are also unattained beings, but nevertheless we
have knowledge with which we can benefit others.
Although we too are ordinary beings, we are the best
among the ordinary because we have the means at our dis-
posal to benefit others.

Student: In the U.S. we tend to have pets “put to sleep”

when they are in their last days and they are suffering a lot.

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

How do you view this?

Rinpoche: I do not think it is a very good thing, although it

is true that animals can suffer tremendously when they are
dying, and people do wish to end their suffering. It is much
better to attend and assist the animal during its dying
process as much as you can, and to allow the animal to die
naturally rather than hastening its death by giving it poison.
People's motivation in doing this, of course, is compassion-
ate; they do it because they think that experience ceases
with death, and that the remaining experience of the animal
is just going to be misery and suffering. They naturally want
to spare the animal that suffering. Although their motiva-
tion is compassionate, it is based on a fundamental misun-
derstanding, which is the idea that experience ends with
death.
The problem with euthanasia is that it often will precip-
itate a greater experience of suffering that ensues after the
animal has died. You may not recognize that because you
cannot see it when the animal no longer inhabits its body,
but for this reason it is better if you can allow the animal
to die naturally.

Student: Rinpoche, when in this process can a near-death

experience happen, and when it does, what is happening to
the life wind? Also, I've read that in near-death experiences
people often say that they see a beautiful, wonderful light
and are drawn to it. But it seems that here we are saying
that either we do not recognize it, or it would be so bright
that we would be fearful of it and shun it.

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Rinpoche: It seems that the most common near-death expe-

rience is an experience of either appearance or increase. If
that is the case, then the person has not yet reached the
stage of attainment, which is the stage when there is com-
plete shutdown. Therefore they are not at the point where
the truly brilliant and threatening lights appear. They are
experiencing the whiteness or the redness, and because this
involves the shutdown of certain kinds of conceptuality, it
is experienced as pleasant. The power of the life wind is
not entirely used up, otherwise the person would not
return to life.

Student: Rinpoche, in the context of being reborn in a mod-

ern, scientific process such as artificial insemination or con-
ception in a petri dish in a lab, how does this take place? In
other words, what takes the place of observing the union of
the parents and what becomes the immediate condition?
What makes the consciousness dive into the petri dish?
What are the mechanics of that?

Rinpoche: It basically works the same way, just as it works

the same way physically. The consciousness still identifies
the substances, the ovum and the sperm, with the same kle-
shas. The kleshas are not only directed at individuals, they
are directed at the substances themselves, through attrac-
tion and repulsion. It is still the same kleshas that cause the
consciousness to dive in. Do not forget that the scientific
understanding of artificial insemination does not include
anything about the way the interval being enters, because
they cannot see it.

Student: I'm confused about the dissolution of the two

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

drops, the two distinct things at the beginning. Is it that the

life wind and consciousness, the all-basis consciousness, go
into the sperm whether it is in a petri dish or a man's body?

Rinpoche: Yes.

Student: If a being recognizes the dharmakaya, what is their

next step? Would they then be capable of choosing a rebirth
in a conscious way? Related to that, how would a tulku go
through the bardo?

Rinpoche: To answer your first question, if someone recog-

nizes the ground clear light, they achieve the dharmakaya,
and at that point they do what any other buddha does. They
just engage in boundless activity through the emanation of
various form bodies from that point onward until samsara
is over. To answer your second question, when a nir-
manakaya passes from one life to the next, they basically
can do it any way they want to. What they want will depend
on what is going to be of the most benefit to the most
beings. Obviously, they are not required to pass through a
conventional bardo. They may decide to visit the interval in
order to benefit and, if possible, liberate other beings in the
interval. There are many stories of nirmanakayas who, dur-
ing their in-between lives, liberate countless beings in the
interval. Although they could go to or appear in the inter-
val, visiting lower states and liberating beings there, they
would not experience it as a state of compulsion nor one of
fear or anxiety.

Student: Rinpoche, how can we use the daily process of

falling asleep to help prepare for the process of death? I've

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

heard that during the falling-asleep process you go through

some of the same dissolution and clear light experiences.
How can we use this? Will you elaborate a little more on
what exactly occurs when we fall asleep?

Rinpoche: There is a definite connection between the pro-

cess of going to sleep and the process of dissolution at
death, and this is one of the reasons for the practice of con-
scious or lucid dreaming, which is how you develop the
ability for this recognition.

Student: Rinpoche, your teachings about the interval of pos-

sibility have shown me how the practices of Mahamudra
and visualization, for instance, relate to the interval between
birth and death. Of course, we know the stories of great
lamas who achieved liberation during their ordinary lives,
like Naropa and Milarepa. The practices described here are
aimed at a better chance of achieving liberation during the
interval of opportunity. Are the opportunities in ordinary
life still so considerable that it is worth aiming for those?

Rinpoche: As you mentioned in your question, individuals

like Naropa, Milarepa, and many others achieved perfect
awakening in this very life, before death and before encoun-
tering anything like the interval. You have the opportunity
to do this and to achieve the same thing in this life. In terms
of external resources, you have the same dharma that they
have, you receive the same instructions they that received,
and this dharma and these instructions exist through their
kindness. So from the point of view of external resources
you have the opportunity.
The problem is that in general we do not have the same

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 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

diligence that they had. We do not have the same discern-

ment that they had, or the same faith and devotion. If you
cultivate the same diligence, the same discernment, and the
same faith and devotion that they had, then you can and
will achieve the same thing they achieved. In that sense you
do have the opportunity.
In general there are said to be three results of Vajrayana
practice. The best result is to achieve perfect awakening,
buddhahood, in this very life; the second best result is to
achieve it at death or in the interval, and that is what we've
been talking about. Thirdly, you can at least achieve libera-
tion quickly in a succession of seven or at the most sixteen
lifetimes. This result is the purpose of the practice where
you take conscious birth through aspiration in a situation
where you will be able to continue Vajrayana practice. The
idea is that through further lifetimes you improve, life after
life, until you have completed the whole journey.
The point I am making is that even if you do not achieve
buddhahood in this lifetime, you are still in the very best of
situations, because you are immersed in a system of teach-
ing unique among all Buddhist vehicles, which can lead to
awakening so quickly. This teaching is unique to Buddha
Shakyamuni, the historical buddha. Basically, no buddha of
the past has taught this and no buddha of the future will.
We are very fortunate to have access to teachings that even
within Buddhist traditions in the more long-term sense are
unique.

Student: Rinpoche, do I understand correctly that when you

are reborn in the human realm, you are able to see your par-
ents before you take rebirth?

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Rinpoche:
P Yes, oy you see y your Pp parents and that is why yy you
generate the kleshas—the attachment and aversion—that
cause the birth.

Student: I've heard it said that you can see a few years into
your next life. Is that true?

Rinpoche: In the sense that you already are acquiring a

mental body that has the appearance of your future physi-
cal body, that would give you some idea. I do not know how
precise it is, and I do not know if that means you would
actually have conscious knowledge, thinking, “I'm going to
be so-and-so, the child of so-and-so and so-and-so.”

Student: Rinpoche, since I was a child I've had an interest-

ing connection with reality. At times I have some sense of
emptiness, a lasting sense, and as I've developed my practice
that has increased somewhat. I think that I've reached a
kind of plateau regarding that. At the same time I have a
very active dream life, which is occasionally lucid, and I
have gained some insight from that as well. However, I have
a great deal of difficulty with visualization practice. It
would seem that having lucid dreaming and a sense of
emptiness, I would be able to have some connection with
visualization practice. I feel almost blind. I have a sense of
it, but it is not visual. I wonder what I'm experiencing. Am
I somehow deluding myself or misapprehending what I am
experiencing as emptiness? How I can increase my success
with visualization practice?

Rinpoche: Since you have at least a sporadic ability of lucid

dreaming, you should try the following: In a lucid dream,

110
 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

go to a cliff or precipice, or confront something that would

normally terrify you, like a predator of some kind. See if
these disturb you or if the knowledge that you are dreaming
prevents you in any way from being afraid of these things.
Then try encountering something that you really like or
would enjoy, and see if the encounter with something that
you are attached to produces any kind of disturbance in
your mind. If it does not, if the lucidity of the dream state
causes you to be unaffected by frightening or pleasant
images, then that is really good.
With regard to your experience of emptiness, it is very
difficult to know simply through your mentioning it exact-
ly what it is or what is going on. It could be that you have
had spontaneous experiences of your mind in a state of
what is called “natural rest,” where your mind simply
comes to a state of unfabricated rest. If that is what you
have been experiencing, then you should be able to apply
that easily to visualization practice. To do so, you would
start with a fundament of visualization, such as the syllable
HRIH. Generate a clear appearance of that alone, transfer-
ring the state of natural rest with which you are already
familiar to the mental focus on the syllable. You should be
able to generate a clear appearance of that syllable, and
then gradually extend it to more elaborate visualizations. If
that is not what is going on, you may be experiencing a
mere absence of mental content which sometimes people
experience as a kind of voidness. If it is a mere absence of
mental content, then it is of no use whatsoever. It will not
help visualization or anything else but is just a mental phe-
nomenon like any other.
With regard to the generation stage in general, we all

111
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

want clear visualization, and of course, it is excellent if your

visualization is clear. There's nothing wrong with that, but
the most important factor is not the actual clarity of the
deity that you are attempting to visualize, successfully or
unsuccessfully. If the form is insubstantial, with the colorful
vividness of a rainbow, and if you can recognize it, then
even if the image is extremely vague, the practice is success-
ful, because the main point of it is being practiced. The
insubstantial vividness of the image is more important than
the degree of clarity. It is quite possible that someone might
have the technical ability to generate an extremely clear
image, but see it as substantial. Under those circumstances,
that would be unsuccessful practice of the generation stage.

Please recite the dedication and aspiration with the wish

that through the virtue of this session all beings, having
received authentic instructions from eminent teachers, come
to recognize the clear light at the time of death and achieve
the state of omniscient liberation.

112
GLOSSARY

AGGREGATES (Skt. skandha) [Tib. phung po] The five phenome-

nal or psycho-physical constituents that comprise an individ-
ual being’s experience. They are the aggregate of form (Skt.
rupaskandha) [Tib. gzugs kyi phung po], the aggregate of
feelings (Skt. vedanaskandha) [Tib. tshor ba’i phung po], the
aggregate of perception (Skt. samjnaskandha) [Tib. ‘du shes
kyi phung po], the aggregate of motivational tendencies or
mental formations (Skt. samskaraskandha) [Tib. ‘du byed kyi
phung po], and the aggregate of consciousness (Skt. vij-
nanaskandha) [Tib. rnam par shes pa’i phung po].
ALL-BASIS CONSCIOUSNESS (Skt. alayavijnana) [Tib. kun gzhi rnam
par shes pa] Of the eight classes of consciousness (Tib. rnam
shes tshogs brgyad) according to the yogachara abhidharma,
this is the undifferentiated, primordial continuum which
underlies the other seven types of consciousness. The all-
basis, sometimes known as the “storehouse consciousness,”
is the repository for all previously accumulated karmic
imprints and habitual tendencies.
APPEARANCE STAGE See APPEARANCE, INCREASE, AND ATTAINMENT.
ATTAINMENT STAGE See APPEARANCE, INCREASE, AND ATTAINMENT.
APPEARANCE, INCREASE, AND ATTAINMENT (Tib. snang mched
thob gsum) In the first phase of the interval, this threefold

113
GLOSSARY

shutdown process or subtle dissolution normally occurs

when the outer breath has stopped but the inner winds have
not yet ceased. This sequence follows the coarse dissolution
of the elements and precedes the direct experience of the
ground clear light. Each part of this threefold shutdown is
also distinguished by three aspects: an appearance, an accom-
panying cognitive aspect, and a temporary suppression or
dormancy of kleshas.
ASPIRATION FOR THE BARDO (Tib. bar do’i smon lam) An aspi-
ration liturgy for liberation in the interval, composed in verse
by Chékyi Wangchuk (1584-c.1635), and found in the com-
munal liturgy Dharma Practices of the Karma Kagyu (Tib.
kam tshang chos spyod).
AVADHUTI (Skt.) [Tib. dbu ma, kun ‘dar ma] The central one of
three main energy channels in the subtle body.

BARDO See INTERVAL.

CHANDALI (Skt.) [Tib. gtummo] Inner heat yoga. One of the six
dharmas of Naropa, made famous by Milarepa. Besides the
physical effects of generating heat and bliss, it is a powerful
means to bring about realization and complete enlighten-
ment.
CHILD CLEAR LIGHT See under CLEAR LIGHT.
CHILD LUMINOSITY See under CLEAR LIGHT.
CLEAR LIGHT (Skt. prabhasvara) [Tib. ‘od gsal] Also translated
as “luminosity,” the essential nature of mind on the subtlest
level, which can be considered synonymous with buddha
nature (Skt. sugatagarbha) [Tib. bde gshegs snying po].
Although ever-present within the continuum of every sentient
being, it is normally obscured and thus, ordinarily experi-
enced only after the dissolution of the elements and the three-
fold shutdown processes are completed at the time of death.
Recognition of the clear light can, however, be cultivated
through familiarization by a practitioner who has trained

114
 GLOSSARY

accordingly. Full recognition thereof is considered attainment

of realization of the dharmakaya.
With regard to the clear light, a further distinction is made
between two aspects. The first, the ground clear light (Tib.
gzhi’i ‘od gsal) or mother clear light (Tib. ‘od gsal ma), is the
aforementioned presence of the dharmakaya that naturally
appears at the moment of death, but that cannot be recog-
nized by an ordinary being without sufficient prior familiar-
ization. The second, the path clear light (Tib. lam gyi ‘od
gsal) or child clear light (Tib. ‘od gsal bu), refers to that
process of familiarization whereby the practitioner cultivates
realization of this essential nature through meditative experi-
ence in life. When these two aspects conjoin completely, this
is known as the “meeting of mother and child clear lights,”
and is equivalent to the attainment of perfect awakening or
buddhahood.

DHARMAKAYA (Skt.) [Tib. chos kyi sku] The body of truth or#
reality refers to the noncomposite, nondual, primordially
pure essential nature of the awakened mind itself. It is beyond
all defilements, afflictions, or conceptual limitations, and is
completely clear and unimpeded in its manifestation. The
first phase of the bardo is considered to be a prime opportu-
nity to achieve liberation through direct recognition of the
dharmakaya.
DHARMATA (Skt.) [Tib. chos nyid] According to the Mahayana,
this is the ultimate nature of reality itself, the inexpressible
and fundamentally perfect purity of all phenomena.
DREAM YOGA (Tib. rmi lam) [Skt. svapna] One of the six dhar-
mas of Naropa, these advanced yogic meditation practices
are primarily aimed at utilizing the dream state as a means to
recognize the illusory nature of all appearances, especially as
preparation for the interval experience. These techniques
involve training in maintaining lucid awareness within the
dream state, and actively manipulating the events encoun-
tered in dreams.

115
 GLOSSARY

EIGHT MUNDANE DHARMAS (Skt. astau lokadharmah) [Tib. ‘jig.

rten gyi chos brgyad] Also known as the eight worldly con-
cerns, these are four pairs of opposites: gain and loss, fame
and disgrace, praise and criticism, pleasure and pain.
f ELEMENTS (Skt. bhuta, dhatu) [Tib. ‘byung ba, khams]
According to Indo-Tibetan Buddhist, medical, and astrologi-
cal literature, these are the basic constituents of all material
and phenomenal experience, and can be interpreted at vari-
ous levels, ranging from that of coarse physical manifestation
to the subtle aspects of the mental continuum. The four basic
elements and their respective qualities are: earth (solidity),
water (cohesion), fire (heat and transformation), and air
(movement and energy). When five or six elements are enu-
merated, the additional ones are space and consciousness (or
mind), respectively.
EJECTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS Also known as phowa (Tib. ‘pho ba)
(Skt. samkranti] The practice of ejecting or transferring the
consciousness of the recently deceased to a pure realm such
as Sukhavati. A qualified practitioner may perform the trans-
ference on himself, although the task is normally entrusted to
a qualified lama.
EMANATION See NIRMANAKAYA.

FIVE WISDOMS (Skt. pancajnana) [Tib. ye shes Inga] Five types of

fundamentally pure awareness which are ever-present within
all sentient beings. These are normally obscured by karmic
predispositions and bewilderment, and thus manifest as the
five kleshas. The five wisdoms are: the wisdom of the expanse
of reality, mirror-like wisdom, the wisdom of equanimity or
sameness, the wisdom of discernment, and the wisdom of
accomplishment. Each of the five is closely associated with
one of the five buddha families.
FORTY-NINE-DAY PERIOD See INTERVAL.

GREAT LIBERATION THROUGH HEARING IN THE BARDO (Tib. bar

do thos grol chen mo) Commonly known in the West as the
Tibetan Book of the Dead. A treasure text of great impor-

116
 GLOSSARY

tance composed in the eighth century by the acharya

Padmasambhava of Oddiyana, and later discovered in the
fourteenth century by the treasure revealer Karma Lingpa, it
is a vast compendium of extensive and detailed knowledge
and instruction pertaining to the interval.
GROUND CLEAR LIGHT See under CLEAR LIGHT.
GROUND CLEAR LIGHT INCREASE STAGE See APPEARANCE, INCREASE, -
AND ATTAINMENT.
Guru Yoca (Skt.) [Tib. bla ma’i rnal ‘byor] A practice of devo-
tion to the guru culminating in receiving his blessing and
becoming inseparable with his mind. It is also the fourth pre-
liminary practice of the Vajrayana ngondro.

ILLUSORY BODY (Skt. mayadeha) [Tib. sgyu lus] One of the six
dharmas of Naropa, this advanced practice describes the
experience of a practitioner who arises in a form resulting
from the realization of the inseparability of the three kayas.
This is predicated on authentic recognition of the illusory and
dream-like nature of all phenomena, and is divided into two
stages of attainment: impure and pure.
INCREASE STAGE See APPEARANCE, INCREASE, AND ATTAINMENT.
INTERVAL (Skt. antarabhava) [Tib. bar do] Generally, this term
can refer to any of six different intermediate states of exis-
tence according to the Nyingma and Kagyu traditions. Most
often, however, it specifically refers to the period between a
being’s death and subsequent rebirth, the duration of which
is considered to last an average of about forty-nine days.

KLESHA (Skt.) [Tib. nyon mongs, dug] Emotional obscurations,

afflicted emotions, or poisons. The three primary kleshas are
attachment or desire, aversion or anger, and ignorance or
bewilderment. Along with pride or arrogance, and envy or
jealousy, they are collectively referred to as the five kleshas.
KUNDzoP (Tib. kun rdzob, kun rdzob bden pa) [Skt. samvrti-
satya] Often translated as “conventional truth” or “relative
truth,” the Tibetan literally reads “totally fake truth.” This
describes how ordinary sentient beings perceive the exitence

117
 GLOSSARY

of phenomena; it is considered to be true on a conventional

level.

LIFE WIND (Tib. srog rlung) The subtle energy or “wind” that
keeps the mind biologically seated in the physical body. The
life wind abides within the avadhuti or central channel of the
body.
. LUMINOSITY See CLEAR LIGHT.
LUCID DREAMING See DREAM YOGA.

MENTAL BODY (Tib. yid lus) The form of subtle body experi-
enced by an interval being, which is not confined to a gross
physical form. See WIND-MIND.
MOTHER CLEAR LIGHT See under CLEAR LIGHT.
‘MOTHER LUMINOSITY See under CLEAR LIGHT.

NIRMANAKAYA (Skt.) [Tib. sprul pa’i sku] The body of emana-

tion, through which buddhas manifest spontaneously and
usually physically in accord with the diverse needs and dispo-
sitions of limitless sentient beings. The various possible types
of emanation are classified in different ways according to
either the Mahayana sutras or the perspective of the
Vajrayana. In the specific context of this book, the third
phase of the bardo is considered to be an ideal window of
opportunity for an interval being to intentionally take rebirth
as a nirmanakaya.

OM MANI PEME HUNG The common Tibetan pronunciation of the

Sanskrit OM MANI PADME HUM, this is the well-known mantra
of the mahabodhisattva of compassion, Avalokita (Skt.), or
Chenrezik [Tib. spyan ras gzigs].

PATH CLEAR LIGHT See under CLEAR LIGHT.

PHOWA See EJECTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

RAINBOW BODY (Tib. ‘ja’ lus) A term referring to the experience

of a highly accomplished tantric practitioner who entirely
transcends the conventional limitations of physical form at

118
 GLOSSARY

the time of death, attaining a state of realization that in some

cases may be equivalent to what is known as the body of
great transference (Skt. mahasamkrantikaya) [Tib. ‘pho ba
chen po’i sku]. Outward evidence of such attainment may
take the form of visible rainbows and the remaining presence
of hair or fingernails following dissolution of the deceased’s
physical body.
RED ELEMENT The residual seed essence of the mother’s ovum, @
obtained at conception, which remains present in the center
of the body below the navel for the duration of a person’s life.

SAMBHOGAKAYA (Skt.) [Tib. longs spyod rdzogs pa’i sku] The

body of complete enjoyment through which buddhas appear
perceptible only to bodhisattvas. Refers to the lucid, unim-
peded manifestation of the mind’s true nature, and within the
interval experience this is primarily characterized by the
appearance of the forty-two peaceful and fifty-eight wrathful
deities. In this second phase of the interval, by transforming
the appearance of your mental body into the body of the
deity, you can achieve liberation in the sambhogakaya.
SINGED OFFERING (Tib. gsur) Burnt or singed offering. Con-e
secrated herbs, barley, and other substances are singed and
offered with an accompanying liturgy, which benefits beings
in the bardo and otherwise.
SIX DHARMAS OF Naropa (Tib. na ro chos drug) Naropa taught
Marpa these tantric practices, which are an important part of
the Kagyu teachings and a standard practice in the tradition-
al three-year retreat. They consist of chandali (Tib. gtum mo),
illusory body (Tib. sgyu lus), dream yoga (Tib. rmi lam), clear
light (Tib. ‘od gsal), interval practice (Tib. bar do), and ejec-
tion of consciousness (Tib. ‘pho ba).
SIX ELEMENTS See under ELEMENTS.
THREEFOLD SHUTDOWN See APPEARANCE, INCREASE, AND ATTAIN-
MENT.
TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD See GREAT LIBERATION THROUGH
HEARING IN THE BARDO.

119
 GLOSSARY

@ VIDYADHARA (Skt.) [Tib. rig ‘dzin pa] Literally, “holder of

awareness.” An accomplished tantric master, especially one
who purely holds the three vows—the pratimoksha, bod-
hisattva, and samaya. There are several particular classifica-
tions of vidyadharas. In the specific context of the bardo
teachings, the vidyadharas manifest as powerful, dynamic
beings embodying qualities of both the peaceful deities and
« the wrathful deities.

WHITE ELEMENT The residual seed essence of the father’s sperm,

obtained at conception, which remains present in the center
of the body at the very top of the head for the duration of a
person’s life.
WIND-MIND (Tib. rlung sems) The mental body of an interval
being, which is composed of the life wind and the all-basis
consciousness or subtle mind.

%@ YAKSHA (Skt.) [Tib. gnod sbyin] One of four species that make
up the lowest level of the desire god realms, often character-
ized with a menacing quality, bearing weapons.
@ YAMA (Skt.) [Tib. gshin rje] Lord of Death, the personification
"of impermanence and the infallibility of cause and effect.

120
INDEX

absorption, meditative, 36, 39 transformation of, 58, 61

aggregates, 66, 91, 102 of your body, 44-45
absence of, 29 appearance stage, 24, 25, 26,
former, 52-53 27, 29
agitation, experience of, 49-50, Aspiration for the Bardo, 3
aspirations, 11, 90, 103
alertness, 71-72 achieve liberation, 19
all-basis consciousness, 32, 43, attain wisdom, 56
58, 102, 107 buddha activity, 72
Amitabha, 82 conscious birth through,
cycle of teachings, 77 109
realm of, 76 extreme simplicity, 38-39
anger gaining certainty, 13-14
and asura’s pride, 63 maintain yogic practices, 68
thirty-three forms “stop,” means of mantra, 58
25 motivation of, 73, 96
animal realm, 6, 64 path of Vajrayana, 71
animals, 47, 80, 97, 104 remove bewilderment, 15
apertures, nine, 43, 76, 79 remove obstacles, 57
appearance, increase, and sambhogakaya, 59
attainment, 24-29 train in dream state, 55, 73
appearances, 5-6, 11, 20 true nature of bardo, 12
absence of, 27 trust in the teachings, 11
of dharmata, 47 undertake practices, 7
dissolution stage of, 24-27 when eating meat, 97
and emptiness, 56 assistance, spiritual, 80-81
interdependent, 9-10 asura realm, 6

121
INDEX

asuras, 47, 63 categories of “two’s,” 11

attachment, 63, 68, 110 See also, dharmas, eight
attainment stage, 24, 27, 29, mundane
86, 106 central channel, 31-32, 87
augmentation. See increase chandali, 69
stage Chatral Rinpoche, 40
avadhuti, 31 Chenrezik, 82, 94-96
aversion, 64, 110 child clear light. See under
awareness, cultivation of, 49- clear light
50, 56-57 child luminosity, 36
clear light, 20, 23, 27, 59, 69,
bardo 93, 96-97, 108
aspects of, 11-15, 19-21, ground, 33-37, 41, 51, 86,
23-29 88, 99, 107
definition of, 6-7 meditation on, 94
hunger and thirst in, 46 mother (fundamental), 35-
nature of, 9-12 36
three phases of, 7 path of, 19, 24
bardo of the absolute or crue path or child, 34-36, 86
nature, 11 cognition, 24-25, 27-28, 32
bardo proper, 87 coma, 82-83
being dead, 19, 43-59 compassion, 41, 69, 72, 84
bewilderment, 13, 64, 72 compassion and love, 20, 75,
in the context of, 9-12 80, 90
in the dream state, 15, 69 conception, gestation, and
projections, 5-7 birth, 72
seven forms “stop,” 28 conduct of extreme simplicity,
beyond limit, 11 38
bodhisattvas, 41 consciousness
bodhisattva vow, 97-98, 103 all-basis, 32, 43, 58, 102,
body 107
emanation, 20 of the deceased, 51
illusory, 19, 45, 69 ejection of, 27, 76-78, 83,
See also mental body 92
body of complete enjoyment, 19 six main functions of, 28
body of great unity, 59 consecration, 46
body, speech, and mind, 37- contemplation, 75, 93-94
38, 75 corpse, 52-53, 62
Buddha, 5, 10-11, 76, 84 craving, 67
buddhahood, 37, 40, 97 culture, Tibetan, 93
buddha nature, 33
buddhas, 41 Darjeeling, 25
buddhas, names of, 26, 79-80, days
101 forty-nine, 44, 51, 80, 87-
Buddha Shakyamuni, 109 89
Buddhists, 96, 101-2 three, 39, 87
Buxador, 39-40 three-and-a-half days, 51

122
 INDEX

death Drukpa Kagyu, 39

of children, 92 duality, fixation on, 11
denial of, 93 dullness, 77, 82
moment of, 31-42 dying
preparation for, 75 in America, 100
yearly observance of, 98 process of, 19-21, 23-29,
deceased relatives, presence of, 76, 78
100-101 sequence of, 24
dedication of merit, 73-74, 76,
98, 101-3, 112 earth element, 23
deities, 33, 57-58, 61 ejection of consciousness, 27,
arising, 20 76-78, 83-84, 92
peaceful and wrathful, 47- elements, dissolution of, 23-24
48, 75, 89 emanation body, 7, 20, 71
wisdom, 49 emptiness, 110-11
deity and mantra, 7, 58, 80, euthanasia, 104
95-96 even-placement, 38, 86
delusion, 13 existence, 13
demonic beings, 29, 65-66 eye, divine, 46
desire
and aversion, 64 faculties, diminished, 83
forty types “stop,” 25-26 fire element, 23
deva realms, 6 fixation on reality, 57
devas, 47, 62-63 fleeing, 65
Dharma, 5, 41, 46, 72, 80-81, fundamental (mother) clear
102 light. See under clear
dharmakaya, 19, 87, 96, 107 light
achievement of, 97-98
liberation in, 36-37, 40, 76,
gap, karmic, 91, 102
Gar Rinpoche, 39-40
dharmas, eight mundane, 11,
generation stage, practice of,
69, 111
dharmata, 7, 47
dissolution Golden Garland of the Kagyu,
process, 66 5
great even-placement, 38, 86
stages of, 24-27
distractions, 37
Great Liberation Through
divine eye, 46 Hearing in the Bardo, 3,
dormancy, 25, 29 75, 89
doubt, 57 Great Perfection, 20, 34, 69
grieving, 53-54, 91-92
dreaming, lucid, 55-56, 108,
110
ground clear light. See under
dream state, 14-15, 55, 69, 73 clear light
drops, red and white, 43, 86, gurus, 5, 26, 34
107 guru yoga, 70
See also red element, white
element, seed essences habit, karmically bound, 44

123
INDEX

hallucinations, 13-14, 26, 29, kleshas, 6, 50, 70, 106, 110

50-51, 78, 101 KTD (Karma Triyana Dharma-
heart area, 32, 87 chakra), 25
heart center, 85 kiindzop, 12
hell beings, 47, 66-67
hell realms, 6, 65-67 Lama Ganga, 40, 100
higher realms, 47-48, 62-64 lamas, 25, 40
HRIH, 111 attending, 83-84
human realm, 6, 63-64, 109 providing advice, 98
liberation, indications of, 40-
illness, 77, 82 41
illusory body, 19, 45, 69 liberation, types of
impermanence, 92-94 of the eight mundane dhar-
increase stage, 25-26 mas, 69
indications of liberation, 40-41 at the moment of death, 36-
intermediate existence, 47 42
interval, 5, 75 opportunity of, 56-57
before the, 36 planting seeds of, 104
dream state, 14 through hearing, 51
between life and death, 13- life release, 94-95
14 life support, artificial, 99
See also bardo life wind
interval beings, 45-46, 54, 58, and the all-basis conscious-
64 ness, 43, 58, 102, 107
interval of possibility, 86, 108 description of, 31-32
duration, 44, 51, 80, 87-89 in the heart center, 85-87
first part, 19, 23-29 and the near-death experi-
last part, 19, 21, 61, 63-74 ence, 105-6
middle part, 19-20, 43-59 light, clear. See clear light
signs of being dead, 49-50 lights
three paths of preparation, samsaric, 48-51, 90
19-21 wisdom, 48-51, 89-90
intervention, critical time for, liturgy, aspiration, 3, 5, 103
26, 83 love and compassion, 20, 75,
80, 90
Jetsun Milarepa, 37, 108-9 lower realms, 47-49, 64-67,
79, 103
karma, 53, 83, 94 lucidity, 35
accruing negative, 5, 90
gap between lives, 91, 102 Mahamudra, 20, 34, 69, 108
propulsion of, 6, 50-51, 62- mandala of absolute truth, 29
65, 71, 90-91 mantra and deity, 7, 58, 80,
ripening of, 90-91, 102-3 95-96
Karma Norbu, 40 mantras, recitation of, 26, 75,
karmic imprints, 102 82, 84, 92, 101-2
Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, 39- medication, 77, 82, 85
40, 44

124
 INDEX

meditation, practice of, 20, 33- Palpung Monastery, 40

35, 41, 75, 95 parents, 26, 63-64, 91-92, 109
meditative state, 35-36, 38 path of the clear light, 19, 24
mental body path of the five wisdoms, 50
of bardo beings, 45, 49-50, path of the illusory body, 19
66 path of the nirmanakaya, 19,
identification with, 53 21
transforming appearance of, physical posture, 85
57, 61, 89 practice prioritization, 93
merit, 70-71, 79 preta realm, 6
accumulation of, 75 pretas, 47, 64-65, 67
dedication of, 73-74, 76, projections, bewildered, 7, 13
98, 101-3, 112 pure realm, 70-72, 76, 79, 90
Middle Way, 20, 34, 69 purification, 75
Milarepa, 37, 108-9
mind, vajra, 58 rebirth, 61, 76, 79, 87, 90, 98
mindfulness, 71-72 approaching, 19-20, 89
mindlessness, 57 in an artificial process, 106
moral discipline, 70, 90 avoiding negative, 68
mother clear light. See under five types of, 48, 50
clear light four types of physical, 67-68
indication of type, 62-63
Naropa, 108-9 power of choice, 72
natural rest, 111 samsaric, 71
near-death experience, 85-86, red element, 31-32, 43, 85-86
105-6 See also drops, seed
nirmanakaya, 7, 87, 96, 98, essences, white element
107 red light, 25-26
achievement of, 89-90 refuge, sources of, 5, 70
liberation in, 76 refugee camp, Tibetan, 39-40
path of the, 19, 21 religious traditions, 84-85,
nirvana, 10-11 101, 104
nonconceptuality, 35-36 retreat master, 40
“returners,” 99
obscurations, purification of, ripening of karma, 90-91, 102
75
obstacles, cultivating aware- samadhi, 36, 39-40, 88
ness, 56 sambhogakaya, 19, 87, 96, 98
offerings appearance of, 47-48
butter lamps, 39 Kagyu presentation of, 89
dedicated to the deceased, liberation in, 20, 57-58, 61,
98 76
of possessions, 54-55 samsara, 5, 9-11, 13, 57, 103,
singed, 46 107
OM MANI PEME HUNG, 82, 92, samsaric lights, 48-51, 90
94-96, 101, 104 sangha, 5

125
INDEX

seed essences, 31-32, 43, 85, unconsciousness, 88

107 dissolution process, 24, 66
See also drops, red element, intervention, 26, 83
white element utter blackness, 27
“see the face of the bardo of
the true nature,” 12 vajra body, sound, mind, 58
self-blazing of bliss and Vajravarahi, 20
warmth. See chandali Vajrayana, practice of, 58, 71,
sense experiences, 14-15, 28, 109
45 vegetarianism, 96-97
sequence of dying, 24 vidyadharas, 47
singed offering, 46 virtue, 79, 90-92, 103
six dharmas of Naropa, 55, 69 visualizations, 6-7, 69, 82, 85,
six elements of human realm, 108, 110-12
71
six realms, 5-6, 47-48, 102-3 water element, 23
sleeping, 14, 73, 107 well-being, 35
spiritual friend, 42 white element, 31-32, 43, 85
stages of dying. See under See also drops, red element,
dying, process of seed essences
stillness of body, speech, and white light, 24-25
mind, 37-38 will, living, 99
stupidity, seven forms “stop,” wind element, 24
wind-mind, 58, 102
Sukhavati, 76 wind of karma, 50-51
supercognition, 46 wisdom lights, five, 48-51, 89-
suppression of the thirty-three 90
types of anger, 25
yakshas, 65
thoughts, types of, 25, 28 Yamaraja, the Lord of the
Thrangu Monastery, 40 Dead, 66-67
threefold shutdown See yamas, 29
appearance, increase, and
attainment
threefold stillness, 37-38
Three Jewels, 54-55
three kayas, opportunities of,

three phases of the bardo, 7

three thieves of liberation, 56-
57
Tibet, 39, 41, 93, 98, 100
Tibetan Book of the Dead, 81
truch
absolute, 9, 11, 29
relative, 12-13
tulku, 107

126
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to express our appreciation and gratitude to

Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche for giving us this clear and con-
cise teaching on the bardo and for his blessings and guid-
ance. We also wish to thank Lama Yeshe Gyamtso for his
translating, Mary Young for transcribing the oral teaching,
Sally Clay for editing, Julie Markle for the index, Jigme
Nyima for the research, glossary, and copyedit, and Sharon
Rosen for her proofreading. We thank Sandy Hu for her
generosity and for getting this project going. We express our
appreciation to KTC Hartford for organizing this teaching
and to Vajra Echoes for the recording of Rinpoche’s teach-
ing. We have made our best effort to present Rinpoche's
teachings as accurately as possible. However, if any parts
are incorrect or unclear, we take full responsibility. We hope
that, despite our shortcomings, all beings may benefit from
these teachings.

Maureen McNicholas and Peter van Deurzen

127
 Karma Triyana Dharmachakra

Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (KTD) is the North

American seat of His Holiness the Gyalwa Karmapa, and
under the spiritual guidance and protection of His Holiness
Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the Seventeenth Gyalwa Karmapa, is
devoted to the authentic representation of the Kagyu lineage
of Tibetan Buddhism.

For information regarding KTD, including our current

schedule, or for information regarding our affiliate centers,
Karma Thegsum Choling (KTC), located both in the United
States and internationally, contact us using the information
below.

Karma Triyana Dharmachakra

335 Meads Mountain Road
Woodstock, NY 12498, USA
845 679 5906 ext. 10
www.kagyu.org
KTC Coordinator: 845 679 5701
ktc@kagyu.org

128
 KTD Publications
GATHERING THE GARLANDS OF THE GURUS’ PRECIOUS TEACHINGS

KTD Publications, a part of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra,

is a not-for-profit publisher established with the purpose of
facilitating the projects and activities manifesting from His
Holiness’s inspiration and blessings. We are dedicated to
gathering the garlands of precious teachings and producing
fine-quality books.

We invite you to join KTD Publications in facilitating the

activities of His Holiness Karmapa and fulfilling the wishes
of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche and Bardor Tulku Rinpoche.
If you would like to sponsor a book or make a donation to
KTD Publications, please contact us using the information
below. All contributions are tax-deductible.

KTD Publications
335 Meads Mountain Road
Woodstock, NY 12498, USA
Telephone: 845 679 5906 ext. 37
www.KTDPublications.org

129
THE BARDO PACKAGE

Through the auspices of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche's tire-

less and compassionate efforts to benefit sentient beings,
together with Dénden Chdjin Association, the Bardo
Package has been created in order to help individuals pre-
pare for the inevitable time of death.

The Bardo Package is an extremely rare collection of sacred

items that have been produced with great care under the
direct supervision and blessing of Khenpo Karthar
Rinpoche. The importance of accuracy in the traditional rit-
uals for the dying has been taken seriously, while at the
same time being simplified to render the essential proce-
dures easily accessible to anyone.

The Bardo Package will bring benefit when the moment of

death requires immediate action, and will thus enable you
to step forward and take control of the death situation
without fear or confusion. If we can apply what we have
learned in this life regarding dying, death, and the bardo,
and also have the Bardo Package at our disposal, it will give
us a greater opportunity for higher rebirth and liberation.

For further information:

www.dondenchojin.org
English (917) 880-8315
Chinese (516) 626-9285
ALSO FROM KTD PUBLICATIONS

Karma Chakme’s Mountain Dharma as Taught by Khenpo

Karthar Rinpoche, Volume One, translated by Yeshe
Gyamtso and Chojor Radha, 2005

Karma Chakme’s Mountain Dharma as Taught by Khenpo -

Karthar Rinpoche, Volume Two, translated by Yeshe
Gyamtso, 2006

Precious Essence: The Inner Autobiography of Terchen

Barway Dorje, Foreword by His Holiness the Seventeenth
Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, translated by Yeshe
Gyamtso, 2005

The Vajra Garland @& The Lotus Garden: Treasure

Biographies of Padmakara and Vairochana, by Jamgén
Kongtrul Lodré Taye, Foreword by the Fourth Jamgon
Kongtrul Rinpoche, Lodré Chékyi Nyima, translated by
Yeshe Gyamtso, 2005

Nyima Tashi: The Songs and Instructions of the First Traleg

Kyabgén Rinpoche, Foreword by the Ninth Traleg Kyabgon
Rinpoche, translated by Yeshe Gyamtso, English and
Tibetan, 2006

Chariot of the Fortunate: The Life of the First Yongey

Mingyur Dorje Rinpoche by Je Tukyi Dorje & Surmang
Tendzin Rinpoche, Foreword by the Seventh Yongey
Mingyur Dorje, translated by Yeshe Gyamtso, English and
Tibetan, 2006 ,
A Ceremony of Offering to the Gurus, Composed by the
Glorious Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, trans-
lated by Yeshe Gyamtso; India 2006, USA, 2007

FORTHCOMING TITLES

Karma Chakme’s Mountain Dharma as Taught by Khenpo

Karthar Rinpoche, Volume Three, translated by Yeshe
Gyamtso, Chojor Radha, Namgyal Khorko, 2007

Karma Chakme’s Mountain Dharma as Taught by Khenpo

Karthar Rinpoche, Volumes Four and Five, translated by
Yeshe Gyamtso, 2008

Treasury of Eloquence: the Songs of Terchen Barway Dorje,

translated by Yeshe Gyamtso, 2007

Garland of Jewels: the Eight Bodbhisattvas, by Ju Mipham

Rinpoche, translated by Yeshe Gyamtso, 2007

Tong-Len: Gentle Strength in Compassionate Living, by

Lama Kathy Wesley, 2007
It is a rare and invaluable blessing to come into contact with these
profound teachings. Rather than live our lives in anxiety, fear, and
denial of death's inevitability, we can take confidence and look for-
ward to making this life meaningful in preparing for the tremendous
opportunity for liberation that the time of death provides.

Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche gives an

exceptionally clear and lucid explanation of
Aspiration for the Bardo, graciously giving the
necessary time and attention to its more obscure
points. His commentary, however, is not merely
a bare description of the sequence of events in
the process of dying and death, but is under-
scored throughout with the purpose and urgency
of aspiration. We are clearly instructed on what
to practice and how to train ourselves at every
point of opportunity, in this very life—whether
in the waking state or the dream state—and
even within the interval experience itself.

Front cover: Mandala of the One

Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful ISBN-13: 978-0-9741092-2-0
IS! BN-10: 0-9741092-2-3
os
Deities of the Bardo. | | | i

9°780974 109220