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Mind in the Martial Arts and Eastern Thought: Part 5: Death, Reincarnation and Rebirth-Part A
About 17 years ago I found myself in Lam Rim Buddhist Centre. A beautiful manor house situated outside of a little village called Penrhos, near Raglan in Gwent. A Tibetan Buddhist Lama, The Venerable Geshe Dameho Yonten had founded the centre in 1978. Geshe Damcho had entered the great monastic university of Drepung (near the capital of Tibet) at the age of six. For the next 25 years, he pursued intensively the formal studies of Buddhist philosophy, psychology, logic, debate and scriptural studies, and the practice of meditation under the direction and guidance of some of the most learned and experienced Lamas in Tibet. After having escaped the Chinese invasion of his homeland in 1959, he was able to complete his studies in India and Ladakh, attaining the high qualification of Geshe. During the six years that he spent in Ladakh he became Abbot of Samtenling Gompa Norba. Retuning to India in 1966 Venerable Geshe Damcho gathered his first western students, and it was at their request that in 1976 he came to the west. Today Geshe-la is the Spiritual Director and resident Lama/Teacher at Lam Rim.
On Sunday evenings, after the weekend formal teaching, students used to gather informally in one of the large rooms, which had a large open log fire, and discuss the weekend’s events. Geshe-la would always join the students about 9.00 p.m. The particular evening that made such an impression on me,. started quite innocently. One man said that the weekend had been spiritually, very uplifting, but on Monday he had to rejoin the “Rat Race” along with everybody else, and he went on to say how he was fed up with his job, the nine to five drudgery etc., and apart from his little bit of spiritual practice how life in general was such a drag. Soon others join in, everyone agreeing that “Life” for them held a great deal of unsatisfactory elements, and that no one was having much happiness in their lives. I watched Geshe-la sitting there quietly in the light from the log fire listening to all the negative comments. Suddenly he “O.K. stop!” and let me ask you just one question. “If you knew for certain that you had only seven days left to live, would you still continue thinking and acting the way that you do?” This question, of course, stopped everyone in their tracks. Everyone in the room started to revaluate their lives. Someone said “Well if I was lying on my deathbed I won’t be saying to myself I wish I had worked longer hours at the office” and after a long and interesting discussion everybody in the room stated that of course it would radically change their current behaviour. And then Geishe-la said “And how do you know that, you do not have only seven days left to live?”
The Buddha said that meditation on death was the most powerful practice of all. But “What is death?” and what does it all mean. “The end of everything?” or is there something else? If there is nothing else, like many people believe. O.K.! Then just go-out and have a good time. Why worry about anything? If there is nothing, then all effort is a waste of time. Well according to the enlightened systems, whose goals is nothing less than the achievement of total liberation from the samsaric life; there is! In the previous articles we have tried to focus on one important point, the nature of mind after all, in the Buddhist tradition alone it is said that there are 84,000 different teachings to counter the 84,000 different negative states of mind. Many of the “enlightened” systems have many varied methods to suit the many different capabilities and capacity of the seeker/student.
If we do not have some idea of the supreme teaching of “Natural Mind” and the “Conditioned Mind” then anything written about death, reincarnation and rebirth not only will not make any sense, but also will sound like some fantasy, some construction or some “Exotic Oriental View” of things. Let us look again at what are called the three “Kayas” or bodies. Empty essence, or dharmakaya, cognizance or sambhogakaya. These two are actually indivisible, and this is called nirmanakaya. A basic way to say space, energy, and form, but this is too simplistic. The essence of mind is both empty and cognizant, or one taste of empty cognizance suffused with knowing. The supreme liberation is to recognise the natural state.
Utterly awake, with the five senses wide open.
Utterly open, with unfixating awareness.
For ordinary beings, mind is also one taste of empty coginzance, but it is suffused with unknowing. This is because the awake quality focuses outward, latching on to whatever is experienced. Then the attention gets caught up in the three poisons of attachment, aversion and ignorance (spiritual) these three poisons are the constructed, conditioned and ignorant mind. It is often explained in the following way.... the space of the sky is like the empty essence, our cognizance is like the suns’ Tays, and our thoughts are like clouds. The sky never changes, the suns rays are always present, but the clouds of our obscuration hide all this, and we thoughts are not the “Nature of our minds” then all discussion of death and rebirth is pointless.
The Tibetan Lamas undisturbed in the Himalayan vastness for thousands of years studied all the great questions regarding our existence here in this dimension, we call “Life” And although this is true of many cultures, such as Chinese Taoism, etc. nowhere today is there such an opportunity to study what was once (and still is regarding higher teaching) a secretive and closed society. Qualified Lamas are now openly giving teachings in the West, and if you can cut through the cultural outer coverings you will find a highly sophisticated system of universal enlightened teachings underneath. The Tibetan study and understanding of the death states are second to none.
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