Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The dying person’s final moments appear as a moonlit glow, then a red sunrise, then pitch-dark autumn sky — three visual signs marking the sequential dissolution of the eighty gross conceptual minds, which Geshe Pema Tsering traces in this 45-minute talk. He maps thirty-three minds dissolving into white light, forty into red, seven into darkness, before the subtlest consciousness — the clear light of death — arises as what Buddhism counts as actual death and the mind that carries forward into rebirth. A Q&A covers timing (three days for most people, up to ten for experienced meditators), why Western burial practices can interrupt a practitioner’s death meditation but leave ordinary people unaffected, and how karmic imprints rather than explicit memories account for natural talents — musicianship, say — appearing in a new life.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 DAR 2003 10 21.mp3
UUID: 07e0581a-29ff-4811-986a-cb18cb66b922
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Death and Rebirth (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-10-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~2,836
Elements of our consciousness have faded away and what we’re left with are four subtle elements of mind that cannot be perceived by external factors. Nobody externally could say that those consciousnesses are still present in the body at this point. Right, so we got these four different stages that we go through after the death signs have been seen, the external death signs have been completed and breathing stops. The first thing that goes through is eighty gross conceptual thoughts, eighty gross conceptual thoughts. Okay.
I’m so bad at math. Anyway. Oh, man. This math is not making sense to me. But anyway.
Yeah. Yeah. There’s Okay, so there’s eighty conceptual thoughts, right? We’ve got three different levels, yeah? Three different levels.
On the first level that’s called radiant white, they’re supposed to be thirty three, and then on the next level which is called radiant red increase, they’re said to be forty. Oh, that yeah. No. That’s up. And on the third level, which is called near attainment, there’s seven.
So that’s eighty. Done. Yeah. I can tell why I didn’t do a counting. Oh, yes.
So along with all these different dissolving minds that we have, the subtle winds that these minds ride on also dissolve into the subtler winds. Every time you have forty or thirty-three of these minds dissolving in the radiant white and radiant red increase or the near attainment, then the winds that they ride on also dissolve at this at this same moment. So for every one of the eighty different types of minds there is, there’s a subtle wind that that rides on and the way that this dissolves in terms of the death process is that the gross is to go first and then it moves on subtler and subtler with a mind and a wind dissolving into the subtler and subtler minds and winds. Okay, so at the time of the white increase, so this is the first stage of these dissolving minds, it appears as if when the grossest levels are dissolving, it appears as if there’s a full moon, you know how the sky lights up on a full moon, but not the actual moon bit itself, like around it, it’s like that white light. So it appears as if everything appears like that to the dying person.
Yeah. So, like yeah. The bright bit of the moon itself, but the glow around it. That’s the way it appears to the dying person. At this stage, we still can’t say they’re dead.
Everything’s dissolved. The subtle minds are dissolving, but we don’t say that they’re dead yet. Okay, after these minds have dissolved and we move on to the next stage, which is called the radiant increase stage, yeah? So this is the next group of I’m trying to I said how many? Forty different levels of mind that are dissolving.
What appears to the person at this stage is like the sun rising, the red of the sun rising, that kind of glow appears to the person, so the grosser minds have dissolved into this white light and then the subtler minds dissolve into what looks like a red glow. It’s it’s got this, like, weird metaphors, and I was like, yeah. Sure. I know how to say clear autumn sky. Anyway, the next bit is after the reds dissolved and then reds dissolve, those minds are dissolved and we’re getting to the most subtle types of minds and that appears to the person dying as if it’s the complete darkness of a clear autumn sky.
So, all the light’s gone out of the sky completely and this clear darkness. That’s the way that the dissolving of these most subtle types of mind appears to the dying person. Okay, so what’s happening to the person at this stage then is that at the beginning of this process when we’re talking about the white glowy light happening to them, they are aware then of what’s going on. They’re understanding, they have awareness of what’s happening. But as that white light gives way to red glow and that red glow gives way to the dark glow, their ability to comprehend what’s going on becomes less and less and less.
So most people wouldn’t understand what’s happening at this stage when everything has become dark. So after this dark those subtle minds have dissolved as well. What the person comes to in death process is what’s called the clear light of death and that is the subtlest mind that we possess, that’s the subtle mind that goes on to the next life. When this clear light of death appears, then that’s what we call the actual death of the person, that’s what the death of a person is from the Buddha’s perspective. This is also the very last consciousness that that person has in that life, at the very last chance to do something virtuous and if that mind is negative, it’s their last negative mind.
So, clear light of death is the last exact moment of that lifetime for this person. So this mind is compared to a dawn sky, the sky at dawn in autumn. For some reason it’s always autumn. Okay, so there’s always this autumn, clear sky is related to the clear light of death. Now, this clear light of death, this is the representation of this this is the subtlest mind, that’s the mind that we go into the next life with and that’s if we want to know what the nature of death is or the nature of the mind, the actual way the mind exists is this.
Okay. So this light, this clear light mind, this is the mind that exists with us since beginning with time and goes on to achieve Buddhahood. Any other minds that we may experience are what are called ‘adventitious minds’. They come and they go, they exist based on causes and conditions and they disappear when the causes and conditions cease to be there. Thanks.
But this mind doesn’t go away. This mind, this nature of mind, sorry, this mind is the root of all the other minds and it’s the one that continues on. This the cause that we have, this is the base that we have for all our other things we can achieve. Now the explanation of this mind is being the nature of clear light and being called the fundamental mind is only described in highest yoga tantra, it’s not described in all the sutras in this way. From this point of view, we say that this is the mind that we eventually use in order to be able to understand the nature of reality.
So now we finish dying. So does anyone have questions? So so yeah. Then you go we had to go and be born again, so but at this stage, we’ve arrived at the end of death. This is the last day of death.
So many. Because he’s like, next week, we can be born again. Was like, no. Last day of death. No.
Yeah. Yeah. That explains it. That’s karma. You you die, you’re born.
You die, you’re born. This is Yep. How do we know? This the process of death. He reckons that you know, really.
Okay, so Buddha said, right? And the Buddha said in the Tantras that this is the way it was, and Geshe-la was basing his talk on the way that the Dalai Lama had interpreted and the Dalai Lama knows too. They’re the first person to say this is how you die and this is what happens with Buddha. Is that alright? And there’s nothing that Buddha doesn’t know?
If there’s something that Buddha doesn’t know, it’s a nonexistent. Yeah. Uh-huh. There’s a clear light. Okay.
Sure. Okay, so if it’s a normal person, then this whole process will have been gone through in the most in three days, yeah? But that depends on how they died and what their circumstances were. The whole process will be completed in three days at the most. If it’s not a normal person, if it’s someone who has realizations or someone who is a really good meditator, then they can stay in the meditation on the clear light of death for seven to ten days.
Yep. What do you mean by that? Okay. So and I gotta I gotta remember to repeat things for the tape. Does the way that we do things in the West affect in that people are buried and when they die in hospitals are buried within a few days, does that affect this process?
Alright. If this person is a practitioner here and they’ve been doing all these meditations and everything and they are going to this and someone interrupts them, starts burning their body or something when they’re in those meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings it will harm their meditation. Yeah, they won’t their basis for meditation will be taken away from them. If someone isn’t like that, then they probably wouldn’t know what was happening to their body so it didn’t it wouldn’t make any difference. So, it is it has to be very careful for someone who has been doing practices and focus that their meditation process isn’t interrupted, that their experience of that isn’t taken away from them.
But if someone didn’t know what was happening, then they probably would be unconscious and wouldn’t have a clue. The people doing it don’t have a clue that they’re doing anything, so it it doesn’t affect it anyway. So if someone’s not doing practice, it’s not gonna harm them. Yeah. He he he said it probably won’t harm them in any way.
Yeah. Why isn’t that subtlest mind the object to be negated? Yeah. Isn’t that subtlest mind the object to be negated? Okay, this clear light of mind, clear light mind, is the person, there’s a differentiation between these words.
It’s the person, it’s the thing that has existed since beginningless time, Yeah? And we’ll go on to achieve Buddhahood. The object of negation, as opposed to the person,, and that needs to be negated is the inherent existence of that person. It just sort of sounds like this you know, subtlest mind is somehow independent, so why isn’t it the I? Hang on.
The the I think there’s a problem with, like, this the one word itself. He said it’s not permanent. It’s it’s it’s mind. It’s not permanent. It it comes about independence.
It becomes about in dependence on the previous moment, so it’s not permanent. There’s two different types of self. The self that is being negated when we talk about the selflessness of the person is inherently existent established by its characteristics naturally or self perpetuating thing. That’s the self that is to be negated in the self of persons. We don’t negate the person.
The person is there and it’s that subtlest mind that continues on through lifetime and lifetimes but the thing negated is its inherent existence, it’s existence from its own side. So is is it possible to do that meditation at the time of of dying Realize the selflessness of the person. Okay. So, it’s definitely possible to realize the selflessness of the person at that moment. Geshe-la doesn’t think that it’s possible to achieve the realization of emptiness at that moment because these things come in stages here, but other people say it is possible to achieve the he said that other people say that it is possible to achieve the realization of emptiness at that time.
I thought he said that when his life’s finished, we don’t carry attributes with us. We don’t remember things that we did. Like that? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It yeah. So how in the next life do we do people become natural musicians, natural writers? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Do they have a propensity towards it? Strong propensity. Yeah. We forget the actual actions in terms of our consciousness but we have put imprints on our mind streams. We have created karmic predispositions to behave in that manner again.
By the power of those karmic predispositions when people do things and they have the habit of doing that. I said the end, you go Buddhahood, I’m like, no, not that end. The other end is the end. Okay. But it doesn’t end.
It gets subtler and The understanding gets subtler and subtler until Buddhahood or omniscience is achieved, but the mind never ceases. So the adventitious minds come about based on causes and conditions, grosser minds, they come and go and they disappear but the actual basis, clear light nature of mind, that continues on and understanding becomes subtler and subtler and dependence on that. Minds in general, thoughts, perceptions are impermanent and don’t last forever, but that subtle mind keeps going. Uh-huh. And they kiss okay.
So what are the the great meditators trying to achieve when they’re meditating in the clear light? They’re doing it to make themselves better people, he said. The way that they do this is by meditating in the clear light that enables them to be able to either be reborn in a pure realm such as Dewachen, yeah, or in their next life to come back as someone who will immediately understand the concept of emptiness upon hearing it, be able to practice Tantra without hindrance, develop very quickly an understanding of emptiness, all of these things by doing these meditations. Okay. Because because we talked about the way that the death process and it ends with clear light nature of death.
Subtle, yeah? In the birth process, it’s the opposite, so subtle mind becomes grosser and grosser and grosser and grosser. So, if someone’s meditating on the clear light nature of mind during this process, then they’re going to be able to direct where where they’re going and they will come into that next life with that understanding. I said, isn’t that right? And Geshe-la said, yep.
And then he goes, wait a minute. I don’t know what you said. Oh, here. Yeah. Yeah.
No. I was just looking at you say, should I stop now? Okay, so it is the general practice to prostrate before the teacher gets up. That’s what you meant? So is that the last question he said?
Oh, no. No. Lucid dreams, not flies. Same thing. Same thing.
Again, I’ve gotta find them now. I was just thinking, how do I say that again in person? Got to listen because I got to try and get this clear. Okay, now, the main cause that we have is this subtle mind that’s going along, yeah? Now, this mind’s previous cause, immediately preceding cause is the previous moment of clear and knowing mind.
Now, these other minds that come up, these eighty conceptual minds that you’re talking about, they come about from this mind, in dependence on previous imprints or previous thought patterns that people have in their minds. These previous thought patterns give rise to these adventitious minds that aren’t the actual root nature of mind. So, have because they’re mind, they have to have as their preceding cause, mind, yeah, or thought or consciousness, but the reason that they come about, the adventitious minds as opposed to the fundamental mind can be imprints. The imprints give rise to them, but mind itself has to have a mind as a preceding cause. So there’s mind in every moment.
Yeah? And each as as preceding cause is another moment of mind. This one. Is that okay? Okay.
So, no, those minds come about different types of levels of gross consciousness. They come about from imprints of people who are practitioners or who aren’t practitioners and in actual fact in order to be able to reach Buddhahood then we have to get rid of them. There are things to be abandoned, grosser levels of mind are things to be abandoned. Buddhists don’t have conceptual thoughts. Is that okay?
Okay. Yeah. Kesh and I was using the the term dissolving. Yeah. Yeah.
Obviously, dissolving sort of metaphor in this case is dissolving by sugar in the. Uh-huh. And, you know, so on and so forth. But what’s metaphor that’s been used to describe this process. Okay.
They don’t Yeah. The word dissolved is used because when a grosser thought dissolves into a subtler thought, then that grosser thought disappears, the subtler thought becomes predominant, so this is why it’s used to say dissolved because this other thought becomes the basis for consciousness or the basis for whatever for mind. Yeah? And the grosser ones have disappeared. So that’s why they use this metaphor of dissolving.
Is it like a cloud dissolving now? Sort of dissolving in the sky? Or Okay.