UnbornMind Zen

Archive for the ‘The Lankavatarian Book of the Dead’ Category

Am sitting here awaiting the impending arrival of the mother-of-all storms, being recently christened as the Frankenstorm. Like last year’s nasty punch from Irene, this soon to be “hybrid” (merging with another gigantic weather system approaching from the west) freak of nature promises to bear down on my neck of the woods again—inducing: This all just leaves me to ponder once again the fragile reality of the saha-kingdom and the inevitable futility that its inhabitants face when Read more [...]

Due to an inability to disengage and abrogate the accumulated habit-energies since time immemorial, a lesser-able mind continues the journey through the Bardo of Re-becoming. Still tossed about through the strong currents of karma, the lesser-able one (puthujjana) wanders along totally stupefied as to what is manifesting in this Bardo phase: "O son of noble family, with a body like this you will see your home and family as though you were meeting them in a dream, but although you speak to Read more [...]

The Tibetan Book of the Dead (all quotes are from the Francesca Fremantle-Chogyam Trungpa Edition) invokes the following supplication when the Bardo (5) of Dharmatā dawns: Now when the bardo of dharmatā dawns upon me, I will abandon all thoughts of fear and terror, I will recognize whatever appears as my projection and know it to be a vision of the bardo; now that I have reached this crucial point I will not fear the peaceful and wrathful ones, my own projections. It’s also Read more [...]

Bardo Realm Four, or the Bardo of the moment before death, is the briefest of all the Bardo stages and yet, for most people, it’s also the most terrifying. All of one’s past-lives flashes before the mind’s eye—all of them beckoning (like Captain Ahab strapped and impaled to the humped white-back of Moby Dick) to enter another womb of becoming. For those who have recognized Pure Mind and have practiced long and hard (like the previous journey in our presentation of Bardo 3) will be empowered Read more [...]

For a Lankavatarian, of all the Bardo (in-between stages of transition from one stage of awareness to another) Stages we’ve encountered in this series, Bardo Three—the realm of meditation and Deep Samadhis—holds the highest significance. The longest of our investigation, it needs to be turned to again and again and its components need to be studied and practiced with the utmost faith and diligence. Why? Because all these Bardo stages are really a Mind Voyage—Mind coming to the full self-realization Read more [...]

Now resting in the Amala-megha (Primal Consciousness) the will is no longer one’s own but Self-Will—yoked with the Great Unborn Tathatic Spirit-Mind, and as such, with the Element of Truth-Realm: Yogadhatu. The Ariyan Mind is now within the Direct-Sphere of Consecration (abhișekāvasthā). It’s like being cloaked in an Omniscient Sphere of Translucent Unborn Light. What is forthcoming is very grand indeed…the entrance and consecration into the ultimate stage, or Dharmamegha (dharma cloud). Read more [...]

Trying to find something analogous for these latter stages of Mind Development would prove to be a most audacious undertaking: It's All indicative of the heart of Suchness ...it just IS AT IT IS—with No-thing arising nor cessating. Thomas Aquinas said on his deathbed that all his former prolific theological formulations were as mere “straw” in the face of the Beatific Vision. Mystical language (as procured from Deep Samadhis) is all that can be employed that barely scratches the surface Read more [...]

The implications of these excursions into the Dhyāna of Deep Samadhis should give a clear and lucid realization as to their True-Import in terms of transcending any form of phenomena that arises within the Bardos—whatever the given Bardo Stage. Being Yoked (Eternally-bonded) with the Tathata-Family through the very seed-base of the Buddhas themselves, neither life nor death has any further significance for those who have crossed (parinirvana) to the other shore of Suchness. The sting of death Read more [...]

The 12th century Saint and Rhineland Mystic, Hildegard von Bingen—also known as Sybil of the Rhine, once reflected on the nature of Noble Wisdom: “I am Wisdom. Mine is the blast of the resounding Word through which all creation came to be, and I quickened all things with my breath so that not one of them is mortal in its kind; for I am Life. Indeed I am Life, whole and undivided -- not hewn from any stone, or budded from branches, or rooted in virile strength; but all that lives has its Read more [...]

As our study of these Bardo Stages progresses, certain parallels can be drawn with Dante’s Divina Commedia: The Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. His momentous and Epic Poem is indeed like a journey through bardo stages that hopefully will culminate in ultimate union with the Absolute. Along the road to the summit atop Mount Paradiso, though, one is in need of much purgation—a thorough cleansing of the karmic kleśas that prevent perfect clarity of the Lucid moment when Luminous Union occurs Read more [...]