| Buddhist Monk 2005-12-17, 1:03 am |
| Tibetan Buddhism - The Tibetan Book of the Dead - Quotations by Zen
Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
Main Page:
www.ramaquotes.com
Tibetan Buddhism - The Tibetan Book of the Dead:
www.ramaquotes.com/html/tibetan_book.html
*******************************************************************
Zen Master Rama:
"The Tibetan Book of the Dead is not correctly named. It's a book on
the living or of life. It's a book that teaches you about inner states
of awareness.
As you examine the more esoteric side of the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
which is really understood only by a few initiates, we come to see that
what the Tibetan Book of the Dead is a guide for the living, not the
dying.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is very hard to understand in that it is
written mainly in symbols. It is an instruction guide, a series of
meditation practices at the time of death. To be honest with you, only
someone fairly adept in yogic practice can pull it off.
Tibetan Book of the Dead, naturally, is a guidebook, which teaches us
to some extent about the bardo, that is to say the states that one
passes through between death and rebirth.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is an instruction guide for the after
death experience.
It is possible, at the moment of death, to make a tremendous transition
by joining yourself in the bardo plane with the higher fields of
enlightenment.
The Book of the Dead initially appears to be a guide, sort of like a
Motor Club TripTik.
You can cram for exams. You can read The Tibetan Book of the Dead and
if you skipped it in this lifetime you can try and pick it up at the
end.
At the time of death, whatever you have focused on the most will
determine your next life.
The disembodied being stays in the same state of mind that it was in
when it was embodied, unless it does something to change that while it
is out of the body.
Our knowledge, experience, and wisdom can also assist us during the
intermediate stage of the bardo plane when we are between death and
rebirth, in between all things.
So the Book of the Dead prepares you for the bardo, but that's not
really the purpose of the Book of the Dead. That's the popular use
that it's fallen into.
The idea that death changes anything is laughed at by the enlightened
teachers. Life is the bardo. This is the bardo. The bardo is not
something that you experience after death.
The bardo is not a place that you go to at the time of death. The
bardo, or the bardos, are the levels of awareness, fields of attention
that we pass through, and we're in them right now.
The mere fact that you have a body is not discontinuous at all with
being in the bardo. That's just an objectification that our mind
produces or our thoughts produce.
Infinite awareness is everything. This is the bardo. All
possibilities are open to you right now. You can move into any field
of attention, once you know how.
In other words, you're already dead. You're passing through the bardo
right now.
In the Tibetan Rebirth Process, we're not so much concerned with
changing physical bodies but with changing personality structures in
fields of awareness, and in order to do this we need not die
physically.
The Tibetan Rebirth Process becomes of interest because within one
given lifetime, we can dissolve our form and reunite it into something
higher, something purer, something more conscious of its own
eternality.
This is the path of Tibetan Mysticism and Secret Doctrine.
So, the person who practices the Tibetan Rebirth Process within a given
lifetime sees that all lifetimes exist within a given lifetime.
Eternity manifests itself in endless ways on endless planes of
existence that they call lokas, other dimensions - worlds within
worlds.
So, the Tibetan Rebirth Process essentially is the transition from the
human phase into the supra-human. It's the transition that you will
make when you go beyond the human fields of attention into the
supra-conscious and move through the various stages of Enlightenment
and it's possible to do that within a given lifetime.
You have to go through all the pitfalls one goes through in becoming a
Buddha, which are many and varied, various illusory bardos where you
can get hung up for periods of time, like thousands of lives. It's
like Tyresius told Odysseus, right? You don't get through hell in a
hurry.
Keep your mind, through all sensual experiences in the bardo of
duality, on the clear light of reality, on truth, kindness, brightness,
inspiration - anything that brings you above the realm of the senses.
It is certainly possible to cram for a final exam. That is essentially
what the after-death experience is. The Yoga of the bardo plane is a
way to slightly improve your grade because you haven't done everything
that you should have.
Go through all the processes you want, then give yourself a break.
Stop trying to figure it out. Don't hassle yourself by trying to be so
good. Once you've done your homework, just see how you do on the test.
The magic of life, of course, is not something that can be explained.
Structures can only take us to the point where they begin or end.
Beyond structures is the white light.
It only takes a few minutes to read a spiritual book, but it may take
many years or lifetimes to realize the truths contained in such a
book."
- Zen Master Rama
www.ramaquotes.com
Thank you in advance for your religious tolerance.
|