This is the only thing we know for sure. At my age one naturally thinks about death with more acute interest than when one is young.
I know more dead people than alive. Every single one that was grown-up when I was a kid is now gone and even many of my contemporaries have passed away. While other people’s death is sad or tragic, sometimes shocking, one own death is very different. It is both scary and exhilarating, like leaving for the first time one’s home and traveling to unknown places.
I believe that death is to life like sleeping is to being awake.
To die is to enter a fluid state, where the collected karma of the last life rules, a state where only the most subtle part of the mind is 'alive'. The body with its heart and brain is dead and gone. I believe that in death we experience a new kind of dream-reality, where our impulses instantly create the landscape. The memory of this earthly life subsides like another dream and is forgotten. In the same way as language is inadequate to fully describe dreams, I think it is impossible to describe what happens in death, but to die is a most natural thing and though we have forgotten that we have been through it before, I believe we do know about it.
There are many references in different cultures to a judgment after death. Maybe we are haunted by the thoughts the living have about us, so that the judgment comes down to how much we had been separated from others, how much we had been attached to our illusory self.
I definitely believe in reincarnation. It is the only reasonable explanation for the apparent injustice of the different circumstances of birth. Beauty, health and wealth are unevenly distributed. That is part of the judgment which is really the consequences of one’s own actions, i. e. one’s karma.
This is Yamantaka, the conqueror of death.
According to Buddhist view death is conquered when we go through the process of dying without loss of consciousness. This is obtained by the practice of meditation until one’s true nature is realized.
I have unfortunately not reached anything like that, but I do have faith in the Spirit. I do not believe that the sufferings in death will be worse than the sufferings in life and I am ready to accept death joyfully when it comes.
Dao, another name for the Great Spirit:
3 comments:
So how does one meditate to prepare to continue consciousness even in death? And if that becomes one's existence, then is death only defined by the life of one's physical body? What would happen if someone had limbs amputated, but became aware of their true nature? Would they be less alive?
Then, I have to presume that because Western culture is so animated, and based around distraction after distraction, that we are doing little to further the pursuit of knowing ourselves, and more to detract from our ability to be. That's probably why so many Westerners are so afraid of death.
What do you think?
I meditate concentrating on the breath according to the Chinese book 'The Secret of the Golden Flower', but there are many ways of meditating. I am not experienced enough to teach about meditation, really, but the point is to still the mind so that its true nature shines.
Are you less alive when you cut your nails? lol
Human suffering is nothing compared to the eternal soul's suffering when one is initiated, and death is much easier than such sufferings. When one is chose by their soul path of a lifetime of suffering, beyond karma, one is initiated into the Kali or Yamantaka rites. I have been through these and it was a 30 year process, not anything of my conscious choosing would i ever endure such a long painful hell realm, when one year can seem last like 20 years when in soul pain. Now i teach high level apprentices as a dream shaman and structure those who are chosen when their time comes, these are the chaos medicines of the cave grandmothers, not everyone can make it through and never open the gate when the time comes. Only those who have spiritual warrior lives can find the strength to endure.
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