Past, Present & Future Lives and Navigating the Bardo State (Part 4)

A. OPENING TEACHINGS

The New Year is always important in many different cultures throughout the world. It represents a new beginning, and where we leave the old behind, especially any negativity, and welcome the new beginning with hope and faith, and to start the year on an auspicious and celebratory note. Such is the conventional reckoning of the meaning of the New Year.

Whether in eastern cultures or western cultures, it is common to have celebrations or parties to welcome the new year, and it is also common to enjoy the holiday spirit in a relaxed mode. Geshe la therefore apologised to the class for having forged ahead with the class on such a holiday in any event, but took the chance to relay an alternative perspective to this positive Dharmic activity on this special day.

Geshe la explained that for us Buddhists who believe in karma, and who believe in a future life, we should always be mindful that with each day that passes, we are closer to the end of this life and the beginning of the next. The fact that another year has passed should alert us to the fact that we are yet closer to our next life, and our time on earth to accumulate merit is shortening. That is the approach and attitude of the Buddhist practitioner as it ought to be in our nature to always think about working harder to purify our past negative karma, and continuing to accumulate positive karmic seeds. Therefore, New Year’s Day is an important day to remind ourselves to be more alert and mindful with one’s conduct, and pay heed to one’s practices in the year to come.

There is admittedly a disconnect between the conventional view of what the New Year represents, and that of a serious practitioner of the Dharma. Geshe la revealed he was always enthusiastic to celebrate the new year when he was a boy, but after he became ordained, there was a paradigm shift in his mindset, whereby the importance of future lives is now kept firmly in mind every single day of the year (and indeed every waking moment). Once one understands this, reveling in New Year’s celebrations no longer has much, if any, meaning, if such activities do not go towards accumulating merit for one’s future lives.

B. NAVIGATING THE BARDO STATE

It was on that note that Geshe la framed the class’ minds for today’s teachings, where we began delving deeper into how our consciousness enters the bardo state, and the factors that will influence the realm in which one will take rebirth after this life comes to an end.

To understand the concept of the bardo properly, Geshe la explained, it is helpful to refer to Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lam Rim Chenmo as a starting point.

Whilst there term “bardo” is commonly understood to be the state of existence of a given entity between two given lives, it is actually more extensive than that.
There are 4 different concepts of the word bardo. Let’s illustrate our study to beings or entities transiting between two different lives, if the entity having died human, is destined to be reborn in a human womb.

(a) The first is known as the chikai bardo, which is experienced at the time of death and where the last moment of the consciousness remaining in that (dying but just about to be clinically dead) body.

(b) The second is where the consciousness transits between its last life as a human being and its next life as a human being, but is pure consciousness without a physical body, known as the chonyi bardo.

(c) Its next stage is where the consciousness enters the womb, coinciding with the fertlisation of the mother’s egg by the father’s sperm, or what we all the bardo of seeking rebirth or sidpa bardo.

(d) The next moment is where the consciousness is within the physical body – it starts once our consciousness has entered the womb in the form of a foetus, or what we call the bardo of life itself – this subsists throughout our human life, and may be classified into three further bardos of the waking, dreaming and meditative states.

As to where the consciousness is to experience rebirth from (a) up to (c) above, it is dependent on a number of different factors, and the Lam Rim Chenmo devotes 5 Sections to these various factors, which are set out below.

(a) The cause of one’s death

(b) One’s state of the mind at the time of the consciousness leaving the body – whether it was peaceful wishing well upon all other sentient beings versus harbouring anger towards any individual(s) etc.

(c) Where the consciousness and bodily heat leaves the body from at the time of clinical death

(d) The bardo entity’s journey without a physical body before conception

(e) Transference of the consciousness into a womb i.e. conception, as already explained earlier during Part 3 of our classes last week.

Today’s lesson will focus on (a), the Cause of One’s Death, which is one of the factors that will influence the rebirth of the being that died.

By our Buddhist reckoning, the life in human beings end due to a few possible causes.

– The first and most common reason is where one’s karmic connection to the present body has come to an end. （人寿已禁）Put another way, it is when one’s life force for this present life has been exhausted – this is when one has led one’s life in full, as pre-destined by one’s karmic imprint which is calculable from the time of one’s birth and the astrological sign of one’s mother i.e. one’s bazi. In these cases, death can happen even if that person had been otherwise healthy.

– The second and also not uncommon situation is where one’s life force for this present life has yet to be exhausted, but due to the lack of merit, that person departs this world prematurely.

In these situations, there are ways to assist the individual by helping him or her accumulate more merit by prescribing certain practices including but not limited to the 8 Precepts, Prostrations & Prayers and recitation of mantras like Om Mani Padme Hung, life liberation or going vegetarian. These merits so generated can go some way to provide further sustenance to the individual so as to allow him or her to live to the originally envisaged age which is pre-destined by one’s life weight or bazi. Whether the individual can successfully mitigate his or her situation depends on his or her karmic bank at the material time. Some karmic seeds are meant to ripen in this life, some in other (subsequent) lives. What we always attempt to do is to help the individual to create more merits in this life, and to see if former lives’ positive karmic seeds which have yet to ripen, can be made ripen in this life, to improve the situation.

As an aside, when we talk about practices such as animal life liberation to help people accumulate more merit, we need to be cautious as well. For instance, fresh water fish should not be released into the sea. Likewise, it would be terrible to release fish previously in captivity into an area of water where there are many predators waiting to eat these fish. One must therefore remain mindful when carrying out such practices. It is also negative to treat life liberation as a business, which some people unfortunately do. Therefore, the best way to practice “life liberation” is actually to abstain from any act of killing, including insects and bugs in our own homes. One should try to catch them and remove them from the home. Also, being vegetarian is another way of “life liberation”. Once we have less demand for meat consumption, this goes a long way to accumulating merits through such abstinence from killing, which effect cannot be under-estimated.

– At the other end of the spectrum are people who can, oddly, live beyond the exhaustion of his or her life force – that is due to a very positive karmic bank of merits that the individual had accumulated in lives past.

– There is another cause of death which is worthy of note – poor health that comes about due to poor eating habits, due to drinking excessive alcohol, or his or her own desire to take part in risky activities and dies following an accident. These are just examples, but the common thread here is that such individuals die due to their attitude of “carrying on regardless” despite knowing of the risks.
With regard to these individuals, they may die even though their merits life force has yet to be exhausted and/or their merits are sufficient to sustain life for longer. Geshe la relayed a story of his classmates in Sera Jey, some of whom contracted Hepatitis B due to poor health conditions in India. Some friends took the doctor’s advice and ate more healthily, whilst others took the view that they wouldn’t care, since it was karma anyway. Many of the former are still alive and well today, whilst most of the latter are already no longer with us. This underscores the importance of taking proper medical advice, and not carrying on regardless – Geshe la emphasised that Buddhism is about respecting anything that has a true basis, including the foundations of medical science and medical advice. Anything falling within that principle will invariably not be at odds with our Buddhist teachings.

It is helpful give some further illustration of this principle by reference to the present COVID-19 situation. The Governments of the world make a conscious effort to mitigate the conditions one is exposed to. This is wise and we as Buddhist practitioners should respect these measures, whether they be social distancing, vaccination or other initiatives. If anyone says that we should not care because everything is karma, that person is ignorant of the above teaching against “carrying on regardless”. Whilst we believe in karma (cause and effect), we must also be conscious of present conditions (which involve our community and environment) and we should not create negative conditions for ourselves and/or those around us in this present life. To the contrary, we must do what we can to protect oneself and one’s community.

C. THE LAWS OF KARMA IN MOTION – THE IMPORTANCE OF MERITS

From a astrological and divination perspective, the trained are able to ascertain if a given deceased had died due to exhaustion of one’s life force, or due to other reasons, and the above factors will influence the realm and condition of rebirth of the consciousness.

It can be seen that the laws of karma work in a logical fashion, and explains many phenomena in this world which would otherwise be inexplicable. It explains why some people are blessed with wealth, power and a long life – we see many kings and rulers in the history of this world, who would have had everything beneath heaven at their feet. They enjoy these things due to immense merit accumulated from past lives. However, being able to wield such powers also puts them in a precarious position, as they are able to create immense negative karma when they wage wars to build empires etc, or when they enforce their whims or selfish aims upon the common folk.

To the contrary, we see (and probably know of) many kind, virtuous people, who suffer immensely and seem to meet with challenge after challenge in their lives. Yet, this is again explained by the ripening of past negative karma, but his or her positive karmic bank created in this life is sure to ripen in the next life.

Therefore, negative karma and positive karma (merit) are always in a state of flux. They can change depending on one’s acts or omissions during this life. Let’s take one’s water supply as an example. If we have 5 litres of water in a container (and let’s regard it as analogous to positive karmic seeds), it is a limited supply and if we have finished drinking it, we will have none left. Yet, for merit (positive karmic seeds), it is possible to create them as we go along so we need to keep this principle in mind.

Geshe la then relayed story from his younger days as a monk in Tibet. In those days, there was a river by the monastery and young monks would go and play by the water during the summer. They were rather careless with the water they were meant to have gathered for drinking, and used it for their own fun and games, as they were under the impression that the water flowing in the river was, after all, as free of charge as it was abundant. One day however, they were admonished by their master, who advised them that it was wrong for them to waste water this way. Whilst the lesson was not initially understood, Geshe la revealed that as he progressed with his monastic studies, he was later was able to understand that resources such as water, electricity, the country’s resources, or anything that may appear abundant (or free of charge on the face of it), cannot be taken for granted, because lavish use of these resources will have the effect of reducing our own merit (positive karmic seeds) bank. This is worth bearing in mind, especially in our daily lives when we order food at a restaurant for example – order only what you wish to consume, and if you cannot finish the food, make an effort to pack the remaining food home (打包). As mentioned earlier, where merit is exhausted, it will have an impact on one’s longevity even if one were destined to live longer. By way of example, someone who wastes food may run quickly out of the fortune to be able to eat more, and thus, his or her life has to end, even if one’s life-force based on one’s life weight has yet to expire.

D. CONCLUSIONS

Geshe la hopes that this framework will be helpful as we continue our Dharma talks on the bardo state, which is understandably a heavy going topic as it goes to the very core of our present existence, and touches on the working hypothesis of a next life following transference of the consciousness.

In the next lesson, Geshe la will continue to expound upon the other factors which will influence the rebirth of the consciousness.

Geshe la and the Centre wish all Dharma friends around the world a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2022 with auspicious conditions for you, your families and loved ones.

The Maha Tare Team