Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 10-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche draws a pointed contrast between how a trained Vajrayāna practitioner and an ordinary person experience the moment of death. Advanced meditators who have cultivated clear light awareness can, at the point of dying, merge what he calls the “son clear light” with the “mother clear light” — directly realizing emptiness at the mind’s subtlest level. Ordinary beings pass through the same dissolution sequence but cannot recognize the clear light when it arises. Rinpoche then traces the reverse process for the ordinary person: white, red, and black appearances, followed by a butter lamp, sparks, smoke, and mirage, leading into rebirth through the intermediate state. He closes with an emphatic commendation of Secret Mantra as an exceptionally powerful quick path for ending cyclic existence. Best suited to practitioners with prior grounding in Vajrayāna generation-stage practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 IH 1993 12 07.mp3
UUID: 19704d08-f1e2-45f2-a931-92a588d593b2
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Inner Heart Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-12-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 10.2 minutes
Words: ~398
So, for the in the course, you know, for the for someone who has practiced a great deal and has that they have generated the mind of clear light. And what appears to them is what is called the son clear light, they generate what is called the son clear light. And there appears to them an extremely subtle non-affirming negation, which is emptiness. Then, at the time of their death, then those who have involved themselves in the generation practices where death is taken as a path to attain the truth body. Then at the time of the actual sequence the death through the death processes when the clear light arises they are able to mix the son clear light with the mother clear light and to actually realize emptiness, the actual emptiness at that point.
There’s a mixing of the son clear light with the mother clear light. Now for the ordinary person, as was described, go through the dissolution process of the elements and there does arise a moment when the clear light arises, but they’re not able to recognize it. They’re not able to realize it. The way it dawns for them, not having realized it, then the reverse process, then the subtle wind energy. So there is at the moment subsequent to that moment when there is a slight movement of the wind energy, which is in combination with that subtle mind, at the slightest moment, then this is the moment of death.
And then they will they go they enter into the intermediate state where the reverse process now works through. There is the the black near attainment, the red appearance, the white appearance, the rising of the appearance of the butter lamp, sparks, smoke, and then a mirage and taking of rebirth within the intermediate state. So the reversing of the of the sequence occurring over the death process. So, when the white appearance, then the butter lamp appearance arises, then the sparks, smoke, and mirage, and then there is the evolution in terms of the gross elements occurring and gross consciousnesses are being generated.
So secret mantra is extremely profound. It is extremely skilled in its means as a quick path. It is able to, in a very effective fashion, to bring a cessation to the taking of rebirth within cyclic existence. It’s a very powerful and precious path. Okay.