The Core of the Issue

The Core of the issue—the bottom line—is the belief that a psychophysical formal based being is in need of attaining an afterlife. As the Diamond Sutra teaches, “no one is to be called a Bodhisattva, for whom there should exist the idea of a being or non-being, the idea of any form of living entity, or the idea of a person”. This is perhaps the most pivotal line in all Buddhism. One is in grave error if they even begin to conceive of such notions. The Lanka also sheds light on this whole business: There is no being or non-being or any form or formless entity, and certainly no idea of a skandhic “person” that has any innate self-nature; they are all totally devoid of Substance—of the Mind-Stuff that alone constitutes Reality (Dharmadhatu). Sentient beingness is not in need of salvation since there is really no-one there to begin with—only skandhic overflows. In point of fact, “True Compassion” is never about a person-thing, but rather about a Mind-thing. Thus empowering the Mind to awaken from its drunken stupor and to finally face-up to all that it created within the mad pluralized-dream of its own making. The Unborn Mind Alone is sufficient, with no-thing to grasp or strive for.

Our Dharma-series, The Lankavatarian Book of the Dead, was all about coming to this Mind-only realization—a Transcendental Self-conquest initiated by spiritual exercises leading Mind through the six Bardos and finally culminating in the Ultimate Self-Realization and Fulfillment of Dharmakayic Ecstasy. If there’s to be any weeping in life, it’s when a sentient being is born into this samsaric-mess to begin with. Death is not to be feared but celebrated as the pathway into final deathlessness, the final release from all samsaric incarceration. But as the series taught, this is a process not to be taken lightly, because if not being well Self-informed then the awful wheel of re-becoming will once again churn its diurnal course across agony and suffering—wherein Mind finds Itself once more entrapped, through misinformation, into Mara’s wild potpourri of pain once again. Ultimately, it’s a Mind-affair and not a human-affair. Mind is never in need of an afterlife (an afterlife for whom or what?) only the apparent human-person is in need of this endless-ranting across fields of endless rebirths—even in heavenly realms, which in the final scheme of things, is just more of samsara but at a higher level—for the outcome is always the same—reincarnation into lesser-mind fields ad infinitum. The trick is to break the link, that weary maze of rebecoming, and learn to live in the Mind-only satisfaction that singularly the Unborn Alone can offer. So, there is a preparation for the afterlife, a Mind-Preparation that will assure final-release from such tempting notions in the first place.