Category Archives: Preparation for the Afterlife

It needs to be noted that within the Lanka, and within Unborn Mind Zen too, the notion of the reality of an objective world is not denied within its own relativity; Tozen once taught that, “You have to understand that for we Lankavatarians, the world is a concrete intellectual synthesis highly visible and touchable.” So the sensualist notions of the afterlife are very real since “what the mind focuses on determines its reality.” There is a Jehovah Heaven, just as there is a Gehenna and an Avicci Hell as well. But they are still samsaric realms and not permanent in themselves (being one of the six realms of impermanence.) It’s all relative to Karmic based repercussions—there is no escaping these forms of destiny whatever given belief system is intoned. Karma is the determining factor and one needs to see to it that karmic ties are severed in one’s lifetime. However, for the Lankavatarian these sensualist notions are not extended to the pure perception of the Tathata, and that is what the Lanka focuses on—that pure perception—even though it’s sometimes cloaked in expediency for the benefit of the sensualist. Those “who are stupid talk of the trinity of vehicles and not of the state of Mind−only where there are no shadows. Therefore, Mahamati, those who do not understand the teachings of the Tathagatas of the past, present, and future, concerning the external world, which is of Mind itself, cling to the notion that there is a world outside what is seen of the Mind and, Mahamati, go on rolling themselves along the wheel of birth and death.” (Lanka, XVIII) Hence our motto, What the mind focuses on WILL determine its reality. read more