The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Quotes by 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.
It is the Buddhist belief that at every moment the universe is not only dying but being reborn.
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.
You can go through hundreds of lifetimes in one, and it all starts with daily meditation practice.
You have thousands of selves inside you. Meditation is a process of peeling back the layers of the self. We start with peeling back the personality from this lifetime.
Meditation is the study of making the mind still. As your mind becomes still, a power enters you. This power transmogrifies your mind, it escalates your evolution and you begin to cycle through many incarnations in one lifetime.
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.
If you feel that the purpose of life is happiness, enlightenment, understanding, then that's what you'll experience. You become, what you focus on.
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.
