Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen describes the Buddhist understanding of death in detailed stages. He opens with guidance on relating to difficult people respectfully, covers meditation posture, then turns to his main subject: how consciousness withdraws from the gross body through a carefully articulated sequence. He walks through each stage—earth dissolving into water, water into fire, fire into wind—describing the physiological changes and corresponding inner visions: mirages, smoke, sparks, darkness. He then explains the subtle body’s role: white and red drops descending and ascending, producing the white attainment, red increase, and black near attainment, culminating in the clear light of death. This most subtle consciousness carries karmic imprints into rebirth. Advanced practitioners, he explains, can use this clear light for awakening at the moment of death. For practitioners familiar with Buddhist teachings on rebirth.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 H and M of A.mp3
UUID: 896b91b6-4712-418e-b833-109f5837a165
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996 Jul-Sep (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1996 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~5,571
People. And here tonight, you know, somebody that you really have a difficult time with, somebody that really pushes your buttons that you don’t like — you know, your enemy, maybe. Yeah, you feel some anger, you feel some hostility toward them. Using that person, you know, trying to work with them. Even if we can only say the words with respect to that person, that’s something that’s moving in a direction that might be a more useful, more appropriate way to relate with them.
Moving in the right direction — that’s something. That’s better than either repressing how we actually do feel or giving in to what is in fact a pretty dysfunctional way of relating with people — you know, what probably doesn’t work. So working with that individual. And as far as your bodily posture, you know, keep a straight back. And it’s useful to — you know, I’ve gone over it — I’ve discussed the sevenfold posture in terms of the feet and the hands and the back, keeping a straight spine.
Also, you know, it’s useful to keep your chest open — you know, maybe bringing your shoulders back. There’s a tendency to slump forward, and this will cause mental dullness. So, you know, maybe purposely bringing your shoulders back, opening your chest up so that your breathing is not as restricted. It’s able to flow more naturally. Okay.
So let’s get in touch with the body first and then notice any tightness. See, and before we go on, does anybody have any questions about meditation that we’ve done? How you find it useful? Good. Yeah.
And why does it associate with purity and clarity? Actually, yeah. Purity and clarity. That’s why — I don’t know why specifically. Yeah.
For wisdom. Yeah. It’s a trend. Yeah. It’s a trend.
Yeah. I mean, as far as the nine-round breathing meditation, the way I’ve been taught is that the light is white. But as you said, there are other meditations where you breathe in a golden light, associated with wisdom. I guess purification — and I don’t know. Maybe I’ll check on that.
I’d like to check on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think you should push anything early.
But I think, you know, that it might be useful at another time to express that compassion for yourself. Yeah. That’s certainly necessary. But I also have a tendency to think — aside from unusual circumstances — you know, it might be useful to persist with the object of meditation because there’s some kind of resistance, you know. And maybe if you change the object of your meditation, then you’re never going to perhaps work through the resistance — what might actually find out what it is that’s preventing you from — but you know, I mean, even just saying the words toward this person — usually we would be saying the opposite, or at least thinking the opposite in our mind.
But I think even just thinking the opposite sorts of words, you know, thoughts and relationships, etcetera — I think it’s useful. I mean, at least it’s trending in another direction. So I think it’s quite — in general, it’s useful to persist. I mean, by persist, I mean to stay with the object of meditation unless there’s some overriding reason. Otherwise, our meditation can be just a way of entertaining ourselves.
We sort of — anytime we meet some kind of resistance, whatever it might be — we switch to something a little more stimulating and more entertaining, and we don’t have to work through any sort of resistance. But then, I mean, you have to be flexible about that. So we’re talking about — are any of you people — dying — death? Talking about death. We’re going through the actual death process, beginning to describe what actually occurs in terms of the physiology on the various levels, gross and subtle and extremely subtle, and also describing what the psychological experience of a dying person is.
Gaining some kind of familiarity — we can make it — I think it’s quite useful. I mean, both in terms of perhaps not as frightening, but also it makes it much more real. And also, I think it aids in giving it a sense that maybe — if, you know — there is a real possibility of rebirth. And if you have the notion, which I did for a great amount of my early life — that death is, you know, that when Buddhists talked about rebirth, this kind of body goes somewhere, you know, kinda identifies as some valley earth and goes to some sort of other place.
And that didn’t sound very plausible to me, so I kind of rejected the notion of rebirth out of hand — not out of any understanding but out of ignorance. That maybe if we can begin to see that there is a mechanism, and that Buddhism does describe a process, and there seems to be some rationale and some logic behind it — and it begins to open up, well, maybe something does go on to take rebirth — and begin to understand what it is in fact that does go on. And then it begins to perhaps have some significance in our life. You know, most people who either accept rebirth or reject the notion of rebirth probably have never gone into it in any great detail.
It’s either because they simply have never really considered — you know, they associate rebirth with the body, and therefore maybe most everyone can see that the body rots and decays and — unless there’s some kind of miraculous, some kind of miracle taking place — it doesn’t seem like it can go forward. And it’s never thought about anything other than the body since we are the body more or less — or the brain or whatever — that with death and the demise of the body we end there. And so they rejected the notion of rebirth out of hand in that way. Or those who do sort of accept the notion of rebirth perhaps have never really thought about it.
They’re just hopeful that death is not the end, that there’s more to come in some form — but they’re not quite sure how — just hoping more or less. But in either case, you know, the existence of rebirth, of reincarnation — I call it rebirth — doesn’t have much impact on their life and how they lead their lives. If — you know — what are the implications if we were to continue on? If the end of this particular life is not the end of ourselves, if there’s something which is going to go on which is intimately connected with who we are and is directly affected by everything that we do, everything that we think and say — and that we have a responsibility toward that individual who is going to take leave. We are directly affecting the quality of that person’s life, who is intimately associated with who we are — just as somebody in the past has done us a great favor, has involved themselves in a lot of skillful actions to provide us with everything we have and who we are now.
You know, we owe a great debt to somebody along the line of our continuum of being — who I was in a previous life — who went to a lot of trouble for me. And having some kind of gratitude and carrying on this tradition of skillfulness and getting concerned about the quality of life for this other person — of who I shall be in the future. So maybe it will have some kind of effect. You know, it’s just not the end. What to say of, you know, these terribly unfortunate types of rebirths which are possible in — you know, like hell, where you find yourself inseparably one with flame. And karmically, there’s no way to die.
And there’s only excruciating pain. You know, these possibilities — whatever the mind could imagine could almost be. You know, how many of us have had nightmares that we were grateful to wake up from? But what if there’s nothing to wake up to? This is our reality. We’re kind of stuck there for the duration, you know, of that particular lifetime.
You know, the possibilities. And hopefully, maybe what we do now could prevent such an outcome — you know, taking responsibility for that. So looking at the death process. And they talked about, you know, what constitutes the gross body — made up of the elements, earth, water, fire, wind energy. And these are — more — not to be thought of as little building blocks but more as principles or forces, the principle of solidity and hardness in terms of the earth element — that which makes up, that which provides structure — that which constitutes in terms of our body, bones and teeth, muscles, flesh. Water — earth water — the binding quality. Predominantly, you know, all the various substances are made up of a combination of these four elements but in different proportions.
Therefore they express themselves different ways. In terms of blood and urine, saliva, the water element is predominant. With water into fire — the vibration, underlying movement on a microscale — you know, the warmth of the body, temperature of the body. Then wind energy — all the way from the respiration, you know, breath, to subtle energies, the currents of energy moving throughout the body, which animate the body, which vitalize the body, which cause the movement of blood, the circulation — you know, the nervous energy working through the body — act as vehicles for consciousness riding through the body. So constituting the gross body, dependent upon that we have gross consciousnesses, sense consciousnesses, the five physical senses — the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body sense consciousnesses — and then the mental sense consciousness which coordinates these, which associates mental images and ideas with the experiences. And then, you know, as the process of death moves forward, there is a breaking — weakening and finally a breaking — of a bond due to the force of karma.
Once, you know, like, karma is like the shaping force which maintains. You know, I was thinking of — it’s hard to think of impermanence. I mean, by impermanence here, I mean there are many types of impermanence, but subtle impermanence. And subtle impermanence is the momentary creation and disintegration of an object. From moment to moment.
And it’s hard to imagine in terms of this table, for example, that it — we experience it as being a solid fixed entity. But we don’t see it as a continuum of events replicating a similar type over a period and therefore giving a sense of solidity. But one useful example which is quite often used is sound. Sound is very unique in this way among all sensory objects.
Sound is only instantaneous. It must be continually replicated. Its cause must be again and again generated for it to continue over time. You know, if the sound is instantaneous, unless the cause is continually being generated, it’s only an instant of time.
But if the vibration of the bell is allowed to continue, what we have is a sense of sound. But this sound has a duration over time. But it only has duration over time because there’s a continuum of instances of sound being recreated from moment to moment to moment to moment. You know? It sounds like one sound, but we can really understand it’s a continuum of instances of vibration over time.
So if we can begin to understand it in terms of solid objects like a table, it’s exactly the same way. But it’s not quite as accessible to our understanding. And likewise with our body. Unless — and we’re going to talk about this when we talk about rebirth — unless the causes, that is the underlying karmic forces, are continually in operation, recreating, reshaping, reconstituting the body from moment to moment to moment — once those forces end, that which is structuring, shaping, maintaining this continuity of body — once that karmic force is exhausted, the body comes to an end the next moment. And the body is continually being — just like the sound — there’s a continuity over time simply because the causes are continually being recreated from moment to moment, and thereby forms a continuum of body, which we tend to fixate on. We think of a solid body.
So once these karmic forces begin to lose their potency, the internal force which is shaping, which is causing the recreating of the content of this body — there begins a collapse of the body. First, we have the gross body. The karmic supports are being exhausted. The karmic supports initially are lost in terms of the earth element. We’re going to go through this.
So there’s a domino-like effect. There’s a gradual transition of the body to inability to support gross consciousnesses. Then we’re left with the subtle body. We talked about the subtle body being in terms of channels, wind energies, and drops. And this is what constitutes the subtle body.
And in turn the subtle body acts as a support for a particular type of consciousness, a subtle consciousness. Subtle consciousness such as what are called the eighty indicative consciousnesses. You know, these are all the various types of consciousness, wholesome and unwholesome, running from hatred to love. I call them the eighty indicative. There’s a long list of conceptual consciousnesses.
Then there are three very specific types of conceptual consciousness which we’re going to talk about in this transition — called the white attainment, the red increase, and the black near attainment. These, together — these three plus the eighty indicative consciousnesses — constitute the subtle mind. These are also — the basis, you know, that which acts as support for these subtle consciousnesses — the wind energies, the drops and the channels — are slowly losing their ability, their structure. The karmic forces which are continually acting to maintain that structure are slowly becoming exhausted. And they’re no longer able to support that particular level of consciousness. We then come down to the most subtle level of wind energy, the life-sustaining energy.
And that which corresponds to that — the most subtle level of consciousness. This is what is going to go on to take rebirth. So essentially death is the separation of this very subtle wind energy-consciousness combination. It’s one entity. You know, Buddhism accepts a dichotomy.
You know, there’s — within the West, it’s been an ongoing philosophic debate as to a dichotomy between mind and matter — mind and matter, mind and matter — and it’s never been resolved. From the Buddhist point of view, they would accept a dichotomy of gross mind, gross matter, subtle mind, subtle matter, subtle body. But at one level — at the most subtle level — the most subtle level of energy, wind energy, and most subtle level of consciousness are one single entity. One entity which has both physical attributes and cognitive attributes. One entity.
And it’s hard to imagine what that might be. But this is fundamental to the entire process built up out of this single entity. This is the most subtle level of what constitutes being, individual, life, but in nature. Am I talking? You know — it is the separation of this — we’ll call it the most subtle level of combination of wind energy and consciousness — from the grosser levels which constitutes death.
This is what is going to go on to reassociate itself with again grosser levels of body, developing grosser levels of consciousness — which is to say this is what is going to go on to take rebirth. Upon this most subtle level, this combination, this unity, are all the various imprints of our actions that we’ve created. You know, our different thoughts that we’ve had, the ways that we’ve spoken, the actions that we’ve done. All the intentions behind the various actions are as if encoded, imprinted — you know, just like, as an analogy, a DNA molecule. It has this fantastic array of information.
When this information — like when you take a seed, and what is the seed essentially? It is genetic material. What is that? Essentially some type of organic molecules which are carriers of information. When they’re placed in soil, begin to interact with their environment in very specific manner.
They begin to draw out, to attract certain molecules if they’re available within the soil in their environment. Others are left aside. And they begin to structure these molecules, these organic molecules, into very complex configurations. That is to say, the seed begins to grow. Likewise with the mind.
It’s very subconscious. It begins to interact with this new environment in very precise fashion. It begins to form a reality. It begins to form gross consciousnesses and begins to conceive the world about it in very specific manners. You know, this is at the level of how our karma is operating, at the level of what we might call: how are we making sense of our world?
What kind of world are we evolving? It is dependent upon our karma — these conditioned factors within our mind which are imprinted upon this combination of most subtle energy and most subtle mind. This is what is going to go on to take rebirth. This is us. Let us say the continuum of us.
This subtle level of energy-mind only becomes operative when the grosser levels of mind-consciousness cease. Grosser levels of consciousness cease when the grosser levels of body cease. So when all of the wind energies — and we’re going to describe this process. Ah, time went away. I don’t want to run too deep into the ground.
Oh, you know, there’s a — with what we call — we have to use this terminology. We have to talk about things the best we can. We say there was a withdrawing of the wind energies. That means that the karma which is maintaining a connection to grosser levels is exhausted, and therefore the connections begin to weaken. So there is what we call a withdrawing of the wind energies first from the gross level of body, and therefore a cessation of gross consciousness.
Then from the subtle level of body, therefore a cessation of subtle consciousness — it begins to withdraw to the subtlest, to the indestructible drop within the heart channel. The channel we are at — the heart area. Not the physical heart but approximately at the center of your chest. There’s a withdrawing of all the wind energies to this most subtle drop, this combination of most subtle wind energy and consciousness. This process is experienced in terms of physiology, which we’ve explained, but it also causes an experience within the dying person’s consciousness.
Now, an advanced practitioner makes use of the two ways in which this process occurs. That is to say, a withdrawing of all of the energies, the wind energies within the body, into the structure throughout the structure of the body — for it grows and settles into this indestructible drop of the heart. An advanced practitioner makes use of how this occurs. It occurs both naturally at the time of death, but an advanced practitioner also actually mimics this process in the course of their meditation, trying to duplicate it. Now why is this?
Because an advanced practitioner utilizes this powerful concentrated mind of clear light, which I mentioned — what this mind of clear light is. This is the mind — I’m going to go through this step by step. But the mind of clear light is the most subtle consciousness. At the dawning of the mind of the clear light in the course of natural death is the last moment of this life. It is death in the course of this life.
But this most subtle consciousness, called the mind of the clear light of death, is unaffected by the appearance of duality. If you remember, we said all of the conceptual consciousnesses have ceased. Conceptual consciousness — we’re at the subtle level. We’re now at the subtlest level. Ignorance is no longer operative at this moment.
If the practitioner has through training developed the mindfulness and the ability to concentrate to make use of this mind — since there’s no effect of ignorance, there’s no appearance of duality, there’s no appearance of true existence — if they can use that mind to meditate on emptiness, then they can liberate themselves in that instant at the moment of death. There is no ignorance operative. There are no conceptual consciousnesses operative at that moment. So this is really an opportune time to develop the wisdom realizing emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality, at the very moment of death. They can either do this at the moment of natural death or, as an advanced practitioner, try to actually duplicate it, mimic it in the course of their meditation practice.
So at the moment when the clear light arises, there is at the same time a total absorption in what they call non-duality. Plus there is an explosion of bliss. This combination of total absorption in non-duality and the experience of bliss is the most powerful means to attain awakening, Buddhahood. But okay, but what happens for most of us? Death for an unprepared practitioner — you know, what in the course of the dying — for a prepared practitioner it represents an unparalleled opportunity, an unparalleled opportunity to achieve awakening.
Yet for all but the well-trained practitioner, we are unable to take advantage of this process. And our death goes by — you know, just like our life more or less — in distraction. It goes by without awareness or control. What could have been a gateway to liberation just becomes a gateway into another lifetime of confusion more or less. So this dying process occurs in very definite stages.
The body does not lose its ability to support consciousness all at once. Each of the various elements that we’ve been talking about — earth, water, fire, air — they serially lose their ability to act as supports for consciousness. There is a transition. So in describing the stages of death, it is said that, for example, we use the term dissolve.
We say that the earth element dissolves into the water element. Or we say it sinks — the earth element sinks into the water element. What is meant by that? There’s no actual — like, you know, like I take a piece of dirt and I put it in this glass of water and it kind of dissolves in it. That’s not what is meant.
It means that the earth element, which is supporting a particular gross level of consciousness, has lost its ability to sustain consciousness. And therefore, having done that, the next level — which is the water element — becomes more predominant in both physiologically and in terms of the psychological experience of the dying person. So as the earth element fades in its ability to sustain consciousness, the water element appears to be more predominant in its ability to support a level of consciousness. So that is termed — we say that the earth element dissolves into the water element. The water element dissolves into the fire element.
The fire into the wind energy element. So all the various elements are gradually losing their ability to function. And therefore the connection between them and the dying person’s consciousness is becoming weaker and weaker and finally being lost. So the physiology of death revolves around changes in the elements, especially in the wind energy element and the various channels in the body and the drops. So psychologically, due to the fact that consciousness of varying coarseness and subtlety depends upon the elements, as these elements lose their ability there are psychological visions which occur to the dying person.
The consciousness induces radical changes in the dying person’s consciousness — their various physical experiences. So for example, the process — the actual death transition — begins with what we call the earth dissolving into the water. So the earth element of our body deteriorates and the water element seems to grow stronger. Our mind is filled with what is called a mirage-like vision. It’s like if you drive along the road on a hot day on the bitumen, you see a shimmering blue mirage of water.
This is what appears to the dying person as the earth element dissolves into the water element. The person — that’s the appearance to the dying person. The feeling, the subjective experience of the dying person — they might feel like they’re being suffocated, like they’re being buried under — they could feel this — they may feel this. It’s not necessary that this will be the case, but this is often the case — that they feel that they’re being buried underneath an avalanche. They’re being buried under the earth, like this pressing down with some great weight upon them.
Their limbs become weak and their eyesight begins to dim. The eye sense organ is beginning to dip — the eye sense consciousness — the eye sense consciousness is beginning to deteriorate. They begin to lose their vision. So that’s the earth dissolving into water.
The next step: water dissolves into fire. So the inner vision is one of smoke. Like the person has the inner vision as if they’re enveloped in swirling, sometimes bluish-grey smoke. It appears all about them. They have a feeling as if they’re drowning, like they’re being carried away on a violent current of water.
This is the subjective experience. And all the bodily fluids — there’s a sense that they’re beginning to dry up. They no longer seem to be flowing. The body begins to have a sense of numbness about it. They can no longer hear.
The ear sense consciousness is beginning to deteriorate. So that’s water into fire. Fire into wind energy. The body begins to gradually grow colder. There is a perception of sparks.
You know, sometimes this is likened to — you know — a pitch-black night when there’s a campfire and somebody puts a stick and agitates the ashes, and these sparks go flying in the air. But sometimes it’s likened to fireflies flying in the dark night sky. This is what is appearing to the dying person’s consciousness. They no longer are able to recognize faces and can no longer remember names. Their inhalation begins to weaken.
And their nose consciousness is deteriorating so they are no longer able to smell. Some people actually have a sense that — some people actually cry out at this time thinking that their body is being consumed by fire. Finally, that’s the fire — it’s the fire into the wind energy element. Now as far as the gross elements are concerned, next comes the wind energy element dissolving into consciousness.
At this point the breathing, which has become more and more shallow, finally stops. There’s an inner sense of being blown around like a leaf in the wind. The inner vision of the dying person is likened to a very dark room, a large dark room. But in the distant part of the room, there’s a butter lamp left burning. Just a low glow of a flame.
But it seems to, at some point, increase in its brilliance, and then it dies down altogether. So, you know, just almost like a sputtering flame — then it glows — then it dies out altogether. With that comes the complete cessation of breathing. We can’t move our limbs. The taste and touch consciousnesses have deteriorated.
They’re no longer operating. Our tongue thickens, turns blue. So this is at the point to the outside world that you appear dead. But from a Buddhist point of view, you aren’t quite dead yet. The four gross elements and all the conceptual consciousnesses associated with the sense consciousnesses have ceased.
With them there’s no movement either in the circulatory system, there’s no movement of energies within the brain. But there remains a subtle level of consciousness still to be absorbed, still to be worked through. And this, as we’ve talked about, is associated with the channels, the subtle wind energies, and the drops. Last week I talked about these two types of drops — red drops and white drops — coarse drops and subtle white and red drops. The coarse white drop is held within the channel wheel at the crown of the head.
It’s suspended there by wind energy. The red coarse drop is held within the channel wheel at the level of the navel. It’s held there by the wind energy. Now what is happening? The wind energies are beginning to withdraw.
You know, I said there’s a very complex structure of perhaps seventy-two thousand passageways which extend throughout the body. But there are three main channels which we visualized in our breathing meditation, our nine-round breathing meditation — the central channel and the right and left. And all the wind energies are beginning to withdraw. They’re beginning to withdraw into this central channel.
As the wind energies begin to withdraw into the central channel, firstly, the white drop, which has been held suspended at the crown, begins to descend. The internal vision of this experience — called white attainment — is experienced as a vast open space pervaded by a white light, like moonlight. Now have a sense it’s not — you know — like on a brilliantly clear night when you see the moon, this brilliant luminosity of a white light. It’s not something that you could grab hold of — not like this white of this paper. It’s emptiness.
By that I mean it’s a vacuity pervaded by white moonlight. This is what the dying person is now experiencing as this white drop begins to descend and move toward the indestructible drop at the heart. That’s called the white attainment. Next, the red coarse drop begins to rise. It’s going to move and be absorbed at the indestructible drop of the heart.
This is experienced by the dying person in terms of a vision of, again, a vacuity, a great expanse, an emptiness. But now it’s pervaded by the redness like the sun — or the orangeness of the sun. So again, this is a red luminosity pervading all of space, of vacuity. This is called the red increase. And the reason it’s called increase is that the sense of vacuity has increased.
The consciousness is becoming much more subtle. The wind energies are becoming more subtle, and therefore the corresponding consciousness is associated with them. Then the white drop begins to flow down, the red drop begins to move upward. And remember last week when we talked about the internal indestructible drop, which is this combination of most subtle mind, most subtle energy located at the heart. It’s enclosed by what is called the life indestructible drop.
That is to say, the indestructible drop which is made out of a subtle white drop and a subtle red drop, which encloses this consciousness like this. So the white drop descends, absorbs into this drop. The red drop ascends, absorbs into this drop, and closes around the consciousness. That most subtle consciousness is now enclosed. Okay?
We experience what is called the black near attainment. This is like being in a vast empty space completely pervaded by pitch blackness. But there’s a sense of vacuity, a sense of space, vast open space, but completely pure blackness — a perfectly black night like the sky. This is because the most subtle consciousness — this combination, this eternal indestructible drop — is being enclosed in the white and red drops. It’s called near because the clear light of death is near.
Now that is the — the dying person experiences unconsciousness, this blackness. It’s like the dying person swoons and goes into an unconsciousness. But the white drop continues downwardly, and the red drop continues upwardly. At that moment, the indestructible — this most subtle energy, most subtle consciousness — is exposed. It manifests.
This is the dawning of the clear light of death. The very last moment — this is the moment of death, of this life. It’s a vision of a complete expanse. The analogy that’s used is of just before sunrise on an extremely clear morning — you know, the sun hasn’t quite broken the horizon. There is a clarity of space.
It’s not a whiteness. It is free of whiteness. It is free of redness. It is free of blackness. It’s hard to imagine, but an expanse of vacuity, completely clear, flooded with a luminosity, a clarity.
You know, the closest I can think is like if you were looking through glass, but this glass extended infinitely. You know? There’s no whiteness. There’s nothing which the mind can hold on to. There’s only a vast clear luminosity in all directions.
This is the clear light of death.