Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Jeffrey Hopkins unpacks the Buddhist model of death and rebirth by walking through the eight stages of dying, the formation of the intermediate state body, and the mechanisms by which karmic potencies determine the next rebirth. He opens with the foundational principle that death is certain but its timing unknown, then traces what happens when consciousness exits the gross body at death — the reversal of eight phases, the emergence of a dream-like mental body shaped like one’s future form, and the movement through subtle states driven by karma and attachment. Hopkins explores the five key features of the intermediate state: all senses intact, spontaneous birth into a complete body, a form determined by one’s destination rebirth, extreme mobility through solid matter, and karmic power that outweighs even a Buddha’s will. He employs a striking personal anecdote about his dying lama appearing in a dream with a child’s radiant form to ground the teaching in lived experience. Throughout, he addresses a central philosophical puzzle — why rebirth must exist if mind cannot arise from matter — and concludes by stressing the critical importance of mental practice and virtue near death, when a single moment of attachment or craving can activate rebirth potencies that override a lifetime of ethical conduct. Aimed at serious Buddhist practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 Death, IS and R no date.mp3
UUID: c1e41f6d-aefb-4503-94e0-36cae4597853
Teacher: Jeffrey Hopkins
Collection: Death, Intermediate State and Rebirth (Jeffrey Hopkins)
Date: 1983 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~5,807
Each hall has a different system. One day in California, the University of California Berkeley, there’s only one microphone for the Dalai Lama and myself. And the controls were also located right here with that one microphone. And so we were sort of we were standing there sort of going like this back and forth. About halfway through the lecture I noticed that he had figured out how to work the controls, and he started turning the various knobs to bring about some better acoustics.
So can is Is everything okay? Can you hear? So death is definite. Time of death is indefinite. And at the time of death nothing helps except mental practice.
You could say religious practice. Mental practice, mental transformation. This afternoon we’ll be using this handout. So if you didn’t get it now, there’s no concern. We’ll be talking from this this afternoon.
If you got it this morning, please bring it this afternoon. So yesterday we went through the eight stages, the eight cycles, the eight phases of the process of death, and began the intermediate state. The intermediate state beginning when there is a slight fluctuation within the mind of clear light of death and one passes back to the seventh state, right? To the mind of black near attainment, and then on through down to number one. So at that moment, the consciousness exits from this white and red drop, white on the top, red on the bottom, which shifts like so, opening, and the consciousness exits from there in the central channel.
Now, one gains a new body at that point, much as in a dream state. One goes through the eight and then back up from eight to one. And at number seven then going backwards, one gains a dream body. So here in the intermediate state, one has gone from one to eight. And now at the beginning of the intermediate state gains a new body, which can be called a mental body.
It’s physical in that its substantial cause is the wind that serves as the mount of the mind of clear light. That very subtle mind of clear light has associated with it a wind, and we don’t have another word, wind or air. And that wind or air serves as the substantial cause of the body of the intermediate state. Now it’s said that the color of this very subtle life bearing wind itself is white, but that has a radiance of five colors, white, red, yellow, green, and blue. So, the wind acts as the substantial cause of the body of the intermediate state and as the cooperative condition of the mind of the intermediate state.
The mind of clear light acts as the cooperative condition of the body. It’s just the other way around. And the substantial cause of the mind of the intermediate state. So you have mind and body mutually causing each other, but mind not acting as the substantial cause of body and body not acting as the substantial cause of mind. Now, what does substantial cause mean?
If you’re making a clay pot, the substantial cause is the clay. The cooperative conditions are the potter, the wheel, and anything that’s involved, anything else except the clay that’s involved in the making of the pot. So, on this theory, only mind can act as a substantial cause of mind. Body or matter can act as a cooperative condition or a cooperative cause, but not as the substantial cause. So in terms of reasoning, it’s by way of this theory of causation that those who need to reflect on the existence of former and future lifetimes establish that there have to be former and future lifetimes.
That in other words, the mind of this life cannot be produced from matter as its substantial cause. Matter can act as a cooperative condition but not act as the substantial cause. And similarly, the mind at the end of this lifetime, that mind of clear light, will act as the substantial cause of a new mind of the intermediate state and then of the next lifetime. So it’s not that just culturally Tibetans or Indians necessarily believe in rebirth, although the doctrine of rebirth is perhaps more prevalent than it is in our culture. Many people, many scholars even, just plain have difficulty with it.
They can’t accept it. Like anyone else, overwhelmed by this seemingly solid present moment. So reasoning is set forth for someone to be able to reflect on the need for a former mind in order to lead to this mind. So once there’s a mind before the mind of this lifetime, there has to be a mind before the mind of that lifetime and before that and before that, and there can’t be any beginning at all to the process of the mind, to the stream of consciousness, to the continuum of an individual’s consciousness. There can be no beginning at all.
So that means that there are, you know, prior to this world system there are other world systems where the person has lived. And if there’s no beginning then to the process of rebirth, then one can say that there is no situation in which one has not been reborn. One has been reborn in every possible situation that there is. And every possible place, generally speaking, that there is. Male, female, beautiful, ugly, rich, poor, etcetera, etcetera.
Another way to gain insight into the need for a mind to proceed this mind is said to be merely to look into the mind and get a sense of its continuum. We tend to be overwhelmed with the present moment. Zen Roshi, who was visiting Philadelphia, was asked what his conception of the present was. And he drew a dot on the blackboard and he said, That’s your conception of the present. And he drew a cross on the blackboard representing all space and all time.
He said, That’s my conception of the present. So sometimes people, when they’re studying Buddhism and see statements that one should live in the present, think that it’s merely this oversolidified present that we live in. If we didn’t oversolidify the present, we wouldn’t be so surprised by the change of events as they unfold. So meditatively what one does is to reflect on today’s mind, or the mind of say this moment, being the continuation of the mind of the person who walked up the stairs. Being the continuation of the mind who came in mind of the person who came in the front door.
Continuation of the mind of the one who was traveling in the car. Continuation of the mind of the one who was leaving the house. Continuation of the mind of the one who was eating breakfast, who was getting up, okay, who was the continuation of the sleeping mind, dreaming mind. You might remember a specific dream and think, oh yes, this this was a, you know, that was a continuation of that dreaming mind. Then you say that’s a continuation of the mind of the one who was about to go to sleep.
And you take it back, it takes a long time to, it helps to refresh the memory greatly. And you don’t just make up what you feel it was a continuation of, but work on the basis of memory. Of course you can’t go back moment by moment, but you can go back in sort of rough sequence. And this lends a very strong sense of the mind as continuation. No one can deny that at least within this lifetime it’s a continuation.
But we often don’t experience it that way. So one goes back and back and finally you get to your tenth grade classroom, ninth, eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth grade. And you don’t suddenly you remember where people sat in the fifth grade, Oh yeah, I used to sit here and then I moved over there. And this is where so and so was around me. And you go back and reflect that mind was a continuation of the mind in the fourth grade, third grade, second grade.
Sometimes you go quite far back. And by getting a sense of the mind as continuum, you can develop, it is said, conviction in former lifetimes that the mind could not either be produced from matter or be produced from a permanent cause. Another way to gain conviction with respect to rebirth of course would be to remember a former lifetime. If you did that you wouldn’t need the reasoning. Wouldn’t be any problem.
In another way that’s very helpful is to understand these eight levels and this subtle, innate, subtle fundamental, innate mind of clear light and it posits something more subtle than the usual type of consciousness, which then can be the vehicle that goes from one lifetime to another. It’s this mind of clear light that is, so to speak, stained or infused with the potencies of one’s actions, one’s karma. karma in general refers to one’s actions, but it also refers to the potencies established in the mind by actions, which then are activated, producing the events and even in an indirect way the environment of one’s lifetime. So in any case, this mind of clear light of death acts as the substantial cause of the mind of the intermediate state. There’s a professor at my university at the University of Virginia, Doctor.
Ian Stevenson, who goes around the world checking on rebirth cases, people who claim to remember former lifetimes. And he says he started out having no conviction in rebirth at all, but is now convinced, following out people’s stories, checking them out. Now, the the way this book lays out the intermediate state is not to give you all of the topics associated with a certain phase of it in order, but more or less to sweep through once, then go back again, give you some more information, come back again, give you some more information, come back on a different topic and give some more information. So it’s somewhat difficult to read. Not just somewhat.
It’s quite difficult to read. In the previous lifetime, this one that was just dying, the warmth gathers either first from the feet or first from the head. It’s said if one is going to be reborn in a good situation, the warmth gathers from the feet on up to the heart and then down from the head to the heart. But if one is going to be reborn in a bad situation, the head goes cold first. But in any case, the warmth and consciousness gather at the heart and, the exit is from the heart from within the body.
Then that consciousness exits out from the body from various orifices. Now, from that first moment of the intermediate stay, which means on level number seven, one has a new body, and in this text it says that the body is the shape of your next lifetime. It’s in the shape of that person. At roughly age six, it can be age six. It’s said it’s not definite that it has to be of age six, but something like age six.
Now, in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it says that you have the body of the previous birth. But in this text, it quarrels with that tradition, saying that it’s mistaking the Indian source on the matter. We need not get into that. And that one assumes the form of the next lifetime. In other words, the karmic connection between this body and the mind has been severed.
And thus, even if you saw your old body, you wouldn’t want it anymore. It’s been severed. You’ve left it. You’re going on to the new lifetime. There’s another tradition that says, for the first three and a half days you have the body of the old lifetime, and for the next three and a half you have it of the new lifetime.
However, in this particular text, from the very first moment of the intermediate state you have a replica of the body of the next lifetime. Now it’s not made out of blood and bone and so forth. It’s like a dream body, and a dream body that’s fashioned in the shape of the body of the new lifetime. I had an interesting experience when one of my lamas died. In fact, a lama whose book this was.
I left the States, I think it was either October or November first of nineteen seventy one. And the LAMA had congestive heart failure and was taking digitalis and it was being it was very helpful. And he started to get the swelling in his legs again, so as I was leaving I took him to the doctor again and filled the prescription. And as before, as I always did, I told him, Now don’t take too much. It’ll you know, it causes you to urinate out all this fluid and you can be you can kill yourself with it.
And he felt he was stronger than most people and needed more medicine than most people. Well, what I can put together is that after I left he did take too much medicine and couldn’t stop the process of losing fluid. And died not too long after I left. In any case, in Germany one night, I was living in closet, actually. It was a closet that had a window.
I was studying for three months with one of his students, not a German but a Tibetan who was teaching in Germany. And the closet had a window. It was certainly no more than six feet. I mean, I fit in. Like, I could lie down.
I’m five foot six, so I imagine it was less than six feet. And they put a bed above the window. The window was quite a large window. I mean, it was high. But the ceiling was high, so they made a little ladder on which I climbed up to this.
And they put a little desk under the bed. I could come in and sit there. In any case, here I was up here high in the closet. And I believe it was early in the morning. I was in a dream.
The lama came to me, actually with the body of the old lifetime at about age six, in a marvelous dream. Very bright and, what do you say, powerful, deep, more subtle than most dreams. And he stood on my chest and was just glowing. All of his physical defects were gone. He had some pockmarks, probably from chicken pox or something like that when he was a boy, I don’t know.
And, he didn’t say much. He said something like, I’ll be seeing you later. When I woke up in the morning I thought, Oh, he must have died. And I went about my daily activities for a couple days and then we heard that he had died. So whenever we, whenever I, you know, read about the being of the intermediate state that’s the shape of a six year old.
See, at that time I didn’t know that it’s the shape of a six year old. But I did have an inkling that he was going that he might die before I left the states. Any case, I think of this little child that appeared and stood on my chest when I was asleep. I haven’t found him yet. I haven’t looked too hard.
I imagine that if he’s going to show up, he’ll show up someday and say hi. So if one’s going to be reborn as a hell being, a hungry ghost, animal, human, demigod, or god, one has that sort of shape. In the Buddhist cosmology, all of these beings are impermanent. One wouldn’t go to a hell forever, although it might seem like that. One wouldn’t be reborn in a godlike existence forever either.
These are all situations of life for beings who do not have control over the process of death. Simple as that. They don’t have control over these eight states. So the eight minds are generated in reverse order. Then this being, it says, rushes about seeking a birthplace.
That doesn’t mean that one necessarily would have the sense always of rushing about, but there does seem to be a great deal of movement, Or even that one was searching for a birthplace. That may be what one was doing, but one wouldn’t have to know what one was doing, if you follow me. And it says one seeks also odors for nourishment and so forth. Later on the text says that if an intermediate state being comes upon food, if it hasn’t been dedicated to that being, then the being can’t consume it. Well here it says that the intermediate being feeds on odors.
And I’ve not seen clear statements on this. So I have just leave it in suspended judgment for a while, whether it’s just odors or There’s no other talk about searching around for particular types of odors or it finds this type or that type and doesn’t like this one or doesn’t like that one. They are called odor eaters. Somebody’s made something that goes inside the shoe that eats odors that I think is called an odor eater. So I chose to translate it as smell eater.
So, because one doesn’t have a body like this one of gross flesh, blood, and so forth, which is obstructed by solid objects, one can move extremely quickly through almost anything, through mountains and world systems and so forth, extremely quickly. Now the example given so that one can understand what the intermediate state is like is a dream body. As we’ve been saying several times, when you go to sleep you pass through mirage, smoke, fireflies, sparks in smoke and the flame of a candle. Then the white consciousness, orange consciousness, black consciousness, mind of clear light. Very quickly though, not in as pronounced a form as at death.
This is because the winds do not gather as radically as they do at the time of death. They do not gather at the time of sleep as radically as they do at the time of death. Thus, it’s said to be even harder to get ahold of these states at the time of going to sleep. Then, when one rises from a deep sleep state, we do so in a dream body, which is like rising from the clear light of death in the body of the intermediate state. It’s the same process.
The wind that serves as the mount of the mind of clear light is the substantial cause of that body. Both in the dream state and in the intermediate state. So one passes from eight to one at the level of seven in the dream state, achieves a dream body, and then goes about doing whatever one does in the dream. It’s fascinating in dreams. I mean, not only do you have your entire body immediately right away, I mean, there’s no development period, but you’re also usually right in a full blown scene.
I mean, it’s as if you came down right in the middle of the play and you knew what you were supposed to do and just unthinkingly you go about doing it. You put your head down in Adelaide, right, on your pillow, and within minutes you’re ready to believe you’re anywhere, doing anything. Then, as we were saying, when the dream ends, the dream body melts or like dissolves from the limits to the heart and one passes through the eight phases there. If one’s going to wake up, then from the mind of clear light you pass from eight to one and wake up. So what kind, you know, what sort of life and body does one have in the intermediate state?
One has all of one’s senses. Even if you were to be reborn blind or crippled from something, in the intermediate state it’s said that you have all of your faculties. And it’s a spontaneous birth so that immediately you have all of your limbs, as opposed to the life that we’re in now, our body the first moment of our body was the egg and the fused zygote, is that what you call it? The egg and fused egg and semen of this lifetime. That’s hard to think that one at one point had a body that was so, flimsy.
But if you think of it, no matter where you place the time of the beginning of consciousness in your own system of this lifetime, I mean, the child that, you know, we were our bodies were that big at some point. You know, we tend to feel, well, how could I possibly you you see some sort of lizard or something. You know, how could you get by with such a small body? Well, we did just a little while ago. In the Buddhist way, when the at the point of conception, the mind enters.
The point of conception. And then that place, it said, where the consciousness enters is the beginning of the heart center. And someone was saying at the end yesterday that wasn’t quite sure about memory, but about his memory of the something of a film that was seen, that within three days or so there’s a visible heartbeat in the embryo. So anyway, at least there’s agreement there that the first organ is the heart. So in the Buddhist way, that’s one’s body at that time.
But here in the intermediate state, one has all of the major and secondary limbs. Major limbs are the arms, legs, head, and the secondary limbs are these parts. That’s all it means. One’s body is not composed, as we’re saying, of gross blood, bone, and so forth. Therefore it cannot be destroyed, even by a diamond.
And one can pass through mountains, fences, whatever, but cannot pass through one’s mother’s womb. One can pass into it, but cannot get out of it. In other words, one is obstructed by, not obstructed from entry, but obstructed from leaving the womb of the mother, if one’s going to be reborn as a human, or in womb or egg birth. And the fifth feature is that through the force of karmic powers, can in an instant go wherever it wants and not even a Buddha can stop it. In one way you can say that a Buddha is all powerful in that a Buddha has all powers that one can have.
But a Buddha is not all powerful in the sense of being able to do anything that a Buddha wants to do. Because Buddhas are compassionate, and it’s obvious that we’re still in a state of suffering, and so they would have a long time ago have relieved us of our suffering if it were possible. And it’s not possible. Our own karma is more powerful than the most powerful being’s abilities. That being can teach and a person can implement practices and over time overcome his or her karma, but in the meantime, that karmic power is even stronger than a Buddha’s powers in relation to oneself.
Then there’s a question. If in the intermediate state you’re you see, if you are destined to be reborn as a human well let’s say, let’s backtrack. What would cause you to be reborn as a human? It’s it’s said that it’s necessary to have engaged in ethics in order to be reborn as a human. And it only takes a single act of ethics, a single act, to establish a potency in the mind that will lead to this lifetime as a human.
We’re all humans. Therefore, in the Buddhist way, this means that each one of us did a, you know, at least a single, but a single act of ethics in a former lifetime that established a potency on the mind. Now then, the potencies of many other actions combined with the potency of that action in order to fill in the details of the life. All right? Born in a good situation with resources or without resources.
Born in a bad situation in terms of even of environment. What kind of appearance one has. How long the lifespan is set up for. One doesn’t have to live out the lifespan that is set up for oneself. Accidents can interfere with it.
But if accidents don’t interfere with it, one to have a certain length of lifespan. So there’s one basic ethical action that leads to rebirth as a human, and then many other the potencies of many other actions feed in in minor ways. Now, we’ve done many different actions, ethical and non ethical actions, in former lifetimes. So what caused this particular action, the potency of that particular action, to become activated and lead to this lifetime? For instance, when we went to sleep last night, certain potencies were activated in the mind that led to certain dreams.
If you consider that first dream, it didn’t come from nowhere. There was some potency within our own stream of consciousness that was activated and led to that dream. According to I think using Buddhist terminology, it’s quite applicable. According to the potency of that action, one’s dream lasted a certain length of time. The strength of the potency associated with that mental, physical, or verbal action that left its imprint in our mind.
Just so then, with the lifetime, something activates this particular potency, which leads to this lifetime. That activation is said to be by way of attachment and grasping. The sort of lifetime that, well, it’s said attached to, that you’re attached to. I don’t think the type of lifetime my own feeling is that the type of lifetime that you’re attached to is no simple matter. I mean, it’s not just that you like it.
I think it may even be what you hate. In other words, you know, if you’ve got two countries fighting each other and people calling each other bad names and hurling bombs at each other, my guess is the people from this side probably die and are reborn on that side and scream back at this side. And people changing sides over and over again until someone breaks the pattern. For instance, if I asked you, if you were to be reborn or if you were an animal, what animal would you like to be? Probably you all know, most of you know right away, what animal you’d like to be.
It’s like we’ve got it already figured out. If you were some other human, what would you like to be? You know, we’ve got to, you know, we don’t usually have to think too much on these things. It’s already we’ve been working on it in our minds already. Now, of course, we aren’t going to say, I’d like to be such and such, you know, like my enemy.
But I wonder, just myself, I’ve never heard any teaching on this topic. It said that a butcher, for instance, somebody who’s killing animals in the intermediate state sees a whole lot of sheep over there or something and goes with the, oh boy, I can go over and do my thing, and, gets reborn, say, in an animal’s body, all that represents is being drawn to a hell. Or if you die if you say you’re in the hospital bed and you’re very cold, which can often be in the hospital, they have ridiculous clothing we’re given in hospitals, And if you say you’re cold, they say, Look, the temperature says so and so, so I don’t know how you could be cold. One of the worst places is, maternity you can’t say ward because it’s the room anyway where women give birth. This is horrible rooms.
These steel tables with a little bit of cloth on it and, quite cool, probably because the doctors want, you know, they preferred cold, I don’t know. But can you imagine what cold does for the muscles, causes them to contract, make it harder? Seems. Anyway, I only noticed that by taking a Tibetan doctor into such a room and hearing what was actually her comment. So anyway, feeling cold and wanting heat.
And this serving right at the end of the life to activate potencies for rebirth in a very hot place. Or one is very hot. One has some sickness toward the end of the life that makes you very hot and you want cold. And this activating potency is to cause one to be reborn in a very cold place. In other words, over the continuum of lifetimes, we’ve engaged in many, many, many different kinds of actions with millions of potencies that are impressed in this mind of clear light.
Therefore, near the time of death is particularly dangerous. Even if you have lived a consistently, say, virtuous lifetime, as consistent as that can be, near the time of death of being worked up, either by your relatives who are coming in moaning over you, or, you know, not being able to stand the fact that you’re leaving your Mercedes Benz or whatever it is that you have to leave, you know, leave your nice farm out in the country, and generating desire, and that activating then potency for rebirth, as it’s described here, is a hungry ghost. So over the lifetime we build up wantings for certain types of lives, and then at the time of death there are also very strong consciousnesses that want this and want that. And so it’s said to be a time when one has to be very careful to be seeking to do virtuous activities. In other words, mentally to be generating love, compassion.
If one has, in Buddhist way, some progress with respect to understanding emptiness, that’s great. It must be terrible in the hospital, you see. You’ve got I don’t know, in the last one I saw in the States, were two televisions, up on the wall about eight feet up eight feet now. It was. It’s out of reach.
High on the wall, out of the way. One for this bed, one for that bed. And my father had a little hand device out of which the sound came. Alright? You put that by your ear.
Alright? And then you have various buttons on it so you can fool around with it. Well, you die in the midst of one of these soap operas. A couple days later, he was telling me, he said, oh, so and such doctor came in, and, oh, he’s terrible. He’s having a love affair with so and so.
He was relating the soap opera to me. He thought that his doctor was, you know I mean, that’s what he heard. So if one could put a picture, you know, some pictures of, you know, Jesus, Buddha, or whoever on the wall so that one could see that sort of thing. When my old lama died this February or March, they put where his head was facing a picture that he had asked him to put there. And apparently, he had one fellow reading a prayer into his ear.
And this fellow didn’t see it, but the doctor, the student doctor who was there, is that smoke back there oh, it’s just the seeing smoke. Fireflies is next. Sorry. Sparks. The doctor saw him look at his student with just the, he said, The Marvelous Eyes of Love.
Then he looked up at the painting and closed his eyes. And that was the, he didn’t open his eyes again. It’s a very nice thing to have that sort of thing, that sort of image on your wall. Generally in the hospital it’s either the TV or nothing. It’s pretty much the way you’re born also.
Can you imagine it? This ceiling isn’t bad. It’s got at least some squares and something round and something over there. Otherwise, it’s, you know, pretty much a blank ceiling with maybe a light up there. So the activity around the time of death being extremely important, although it’s difficult for somebody who was particularly non virtuous during the lifetime to generate to begin generating a whole lot of new good thoughts at the time of death simply because of not being used to it.
But if the person were successful at it, reaching into potencies that are in the mind, then this would help even that person to have a better rebirth. The non virtuous karma would still be taken with the mind and could lead to bad rebirths in the future. So the style and condition of death are very important. Thus our tendency to leave death to later, to thinking about it later, that when the time comes, when we get segregated off, is foolish. It is a cause of fright.
It’s a cause of making trouble for us, right? If you’ve had some talk with a family and so forth, you know, when things get that way, please come around and say goodbye, we’ll shake hands and let that be it. Let’s not moan over each other. We must go. We must separate.
And some people keeping people around you whom you know won’t moan and groan and carry on if they see you in difficulty. This particular lama died in tremendous difficulty, vomiting blood and bloody diarrhea and making a mess here and a mess there. He was quite aware of what was going on, but he kept his mind, they said, absolutely steady. You know, didn’t get excited over it. Oh, I’m vomiting blood, or turned to his doctor student and say, Why don’t you stop this?
What can you do at that time? I think it’s probably best to assume that one’s death will be difficult, but that mentally one will, you know, be determined to keep steady. Then if it’s easy, it’s all the better. As one of his students said, he said he’d always thought of death as a matter of, you know, just sort of dying in your sleep or sitting in your chair and going, he said. But when he saw this, he he could tell he was deeply impressed, deeply by the amount of suffering one could undergo.
So this potency that’s activated, just as that would lead to a certain type of dream, so it’s going to lead to the next lifetime. So it sets up the intermediate state as the intermediate state of, say, a human.