Recent Essays/Post-3

Topic of the Week: Buddha-Nature at Death

[[ |300px|thumb| ]] Can buddha-nature be instantly actualized at the time of death? Death, in Tibetan Buddhism, is seen as a powerful opportunity for enlightenment. As one’s bodily organs stop functioning and the support of the physical elements break down, one’s ordinary consciousness ceases to function. At this point one is said to go through a psychological and existential hiatus in which all thoughts, emotions, and activities momentarily come to a halt and the luminous nature of mind, the clear light, like a vast, clear sky, is laid bare and open. Those who become aware of this and rest in this state of the ground nature overcome the temporary obscurations and let their buddha-nature shine forth unobstructed and free forever. They are said to have actualized the pristine wisdom of the ground and remain in thugs dam, a meditative equipoise at death. Find more on buddha-nature and death in ’Da’ ka ye shes kyi 'chi kha ma’i man ngag by Mönlam Tsultrim, The Buddha: Death and Eternal Soul in Buddhism by the 14th Dalai Lama, and "Death, Sleep, and Orgasm: Gateways to the Mind of Clear Light" by Jeffrey Hopkins.

Weekly quote

Thine own intellect, which is now voidness, yet not to be regarded as of the voidness of nothingness, but as being the intellect itself, unobstructed, shining, thrilling, and blissful, is the very consciousness, the All-good Buddha. 

~ The Tibetan Book of the Dead