It was about the eighth century when natural calamities were in full swing in Tibet. None of the measures were working while a large number of casualties were taking place. In such a situation, the Tibetan emperor looked towards India with great hope and sent a respectful invitation to the famous Buddhist master Padma Sambhav.
This was the time of the peak of Vajrayana in India. In Vajrayana, another branch of Tantrayana, Tantric experiments were used very minutely. Acharya Padma Sambhav reached Tibet and established a series of Tantra experiments and solved the Tibetan disaster to a large extent. This was the reason that various forms of Vajrayana took root in Tibet and gradually due to the patronage of the king, Buddhism became fully established there.
Acharya Padma Sambhav did a wonderful experiment. He developed a method of meditation called "Bardo Thodal" to make death easier and free from the cycle of rebirth, which is used with a person standing at the door of death.
Surprising is this method of making death easy, in which some people chant a special mantra in front of any such person. Basically the purpose of this mantra is that the person present at the door of death should be in a fully awake state and he should realize that he is only going to leave the body. Let death be a celebration for him and not a feeling of dread.
The sutras of Bardo are meant to make one realize that you are embarking on a journey, so be in a state of awareness or awakening. Whenever a person lying on the death bed starts closing his eyes, the formula of Bardo is repeated in his ear. He is told that you are only leaving the body, you should be aware of it. You will take another body but will not repeat the mistakes which you have done while living in this body.You must remember that you will be free from this cycle only if you do not repeat the mistakes made in this birth in the next births.
Certainly this experiment is revolutionary. Nowhere else in the world is such an event organized for death. When death becomes liberation instead of mourning, then joy is born..............when death becomes a wonderful coincidence, then liberation is achieved........death when a When the wait becomes there, the celebration happens.Something similar is the use of Bardo, which is tried so that a person does not repeat the same mistakes again and again which he has done while living in the present body.
Conscious death, death of waking state, death of awareness are some such states achieved by Bardo's Sutra. In this, death becomes salvation and on taking the body again, the person is saved from doing those stupidities, which he had done in the previous birth.
Contemplation and meditation on death and impermanence are regarded as very important in Buddhism for two reasons : (1) it is only by recognising how precious and how short life is that we are most likely to make it meaningful and to live it fully and (2) by understanding the death process and familiarizing ourself with it, we can remove fear at the time of death and ensure a good rebirth.
Because the way in which we live our lives and our state of mind at death directly influence our future lives, it is said that the aim or mark of a spiritual practitioner is to have no fear or regrets at the time of death. People who practice to the best of their abilities will die, it is said, in a state of great bliss. The mediocre practitioner will die happily. Even the initial practitioner will have neither fear nor dread at the time of death. So one should aim at achieving at least the smallest of these results.
There are two common meditations on death in the Tibetan tradition. The first looks at the certainty and imminence of death and what will be of benefit at the time of death, in order to motivate us to make the best use of our lives. The second is a simulation or rehearsal of the actual death process, which familiarizes us with death and takes away the fear of the unknown, thus allowing us to die skilfully. Traditionally, in Buddhist countries, one is also encouraged to go to a cemetery or burial ground to contemplate on death and become familiar with this inevitable event.
The first of these meditations is known as the nine-round death meditation, in which we contemplate the three roots, the nine reasonings, and the three convictions, as described below:
A. DEATH IS CERTAIN
1. There is no possible way to escape death. No-one ever has, not even Jesus, Buddha, etc. Of the current world population of over 5 billion people, almost none will be alive in 100 years time.
2. Life has a definite, inflexible limit and each moment brings us closer to the finality of this life. We are dying from the moment we are born.
3. Death comes in a moment and its time is unexpected. All that separates us from the next life is one breath.
Conviction: To practise the spiritual path and ripen our inner potential by cultivating positive mental qualities and abandoning disturbing mental qualities.
B. THE TIME OF DEATH IS UNCERTAIN
4. The duration of our lifespan is uncertain. The young can die before the old, the healthy before the sick, etc.
5. There are many causes and circumstances that lead to death, but few that favour the sustenance of life.
Even things that sustain life can kill us, for example food, motor vehicles, property.
6. The weakness and fragility of one's physical body contribute to life's uncertainty.
The body can be easily destroyed by disease or accident, for example cancer, AIDS, vehicle accidents, other disasters.
Conviction: To ripen our inner potential now, without delay.
C. THE ONLY THING THAT CAN HELP US AT THE TIME OF DEATH IS OUR MENTAL/SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
(because all that goes on to the next life is our mind with its karmic (positive or negative) imprints.)
7. Worldly possessions such as wealth, position, money can't help
8. Relatives and friends can neither prevent death nor go with us.
9. Even our own precious body is of no help to us. We have to leave it behind like a shell, an empty husk, an overcoat.
Conviction: To ripen our inner potential purely, without staining our efforts with attachment to worldly concerns.
The second meditation simulates or rehearses the actual death process. Knowledge of this process is particularly important because advanced practitioners can engage in a series of yogas that are modelled on death, intermediate state (Tibetan: bar-do) and rebirth until they gain such control over them that they are no longer subject to ordinary uncontrolled death and rebirth.
It is therefore essential for the practitioner to know the stages of death and the mind-body relationship behind them. The description of this is based on a presentation of the winds, or currents of energy, that serve as foundations for various levels of consciousness, and the channels in which they flow. Upon the serial collapse of the ability of these winds to serve as bases of consciousness, the internal and external events of death unfold. Through the power of meditation, the yogi makes the coarse winds dissolve into the very subtle life-bearing wind at the heart. This yoga mirrors the process that occurs at death and involves concentration on the psychic channels and the channel-centres (chakras) inside the body.
At the channel-centres there are white and red drops, upon which physical and mental health are based. The white is predominant at the top of the head and the red at the solar plexus. These drops have their origin in a white and red drop at the heart centre, and this drop is the size of a small pea and has a white top and red bottom. It is called the indestructible drop, since it lasts until death. The very subtle life-bearing wind dwells inside it and, at death, all winds ultimately dissolve into it, whereupon the clear light vision of death dawns.
The physiology of death revolves around changes in the winds, channels and drops. Psychologically, due to the fact that consciousnesses of varying grossness and subtlety depend on the winds, like a rider on a horse, their dissolving or loss of ability to serve as bases of consciousness induces radical changes in conscious experience.
Death begins with the sequential dissolution of the winds associated with the four elements (earth, water, fire and air). "Earth" refers to the hard factors of the body such as bone, and the dissolution of the wind associated with it means that that wind is no longer capable of serving as a mount or basis for consciousness. As a consequence of its dissolution, the capacity of the wind associated with "water" (the fluid factors of the body) to act as a mount for consciousness becomes more manifest. The ceasing of this capacity in one element and its greater manifestation in another is called "dissolution" - it is not, therefore, a case of gross earth dissolving into water.
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