Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun walks through the dying process element by element in this 16-minute talk — water dissolving into fire, gross wind energy decoupling from the body — until only the subtlest consciousness and wind remain together at the moment of clear light. He contrasts an ordinary person’s unawareness at that threshold with what a trained yogi can do, making it concrete with a vivid example: a senior tutor to the Dalai Lama who remained in post-death meditative absorption for thirteen days after breathing stopped. He then traces the bardo (intermediate state) body — composed of wind energy alone, able to move anywhere by thought, lasting up to 49 days before karma draws it toward rebirth — and draws a striking parallel between the entire death-bardo-rebirth cycle and the daily arc of sleeping, dreaming, and waking. The talk closes with a practical argument: if death were simply the end, we would never want liberation urgently enough to pursue it.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 LOR 1988 07 07.mp3
UUID: ad8c6ec8-6628-423e-b4bb-3100ca60dbd1
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Logic of Rebirth (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-07-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 16.2 minutes
Words: ~1,953
So, you know, we’ve said that wind energy is always associated with consciousness. And the consciousness which is going to ultimately go on to a future existence, become re associated with a new physical basis, is the subtle most consciousness. So there is always associated with the subtle most consciousness, a subtle most energy. When we talk about dissolution of the elements, it is the bond of the subtle most energy with the various four elements. When we talk about the water element dissolving into the fire element, that is the bond between the subtle most wind energy and the water element is weakening due to the exhaustion of the karmic forces which maintain this bond.
As that weakens the connection of the bond between the fire element and the subtle most energy becomes more pronounced. It appears more manifested. It actually isn’t, but because of the relative diminishing of the water bond the fire bond appears to be more prominent. Therefore we say the water dissolves into the fire. And each of these dissolution has a particular internal sign which we can begin to recognize and it also has an external sign which other people can see as the dying person, as the death process progresses.
What is happening is the mind connected up with the subtle most energy is beginning to decouple itself from the physical basis, the gross elements. This is how the dying process operates. And then as this process proceeds, there reaches a point when we say that the wind, the gross element of wind energy dissolves into consciousness. And then there’s a slow dissolution of a breaking down. There’s a continuum which is in four stages of the wind energy.
You know we’re talking about the connection between the subtle most wind energy with a grosser type of wind energy, with an a grosser type than that, and a grosser type than that. So this happens in four stages. So each of these, you know, the concept, you know, as I spoke about there are subtle and gross states of consciousness. For example, there are said to be eighty conceptual consciousnesses. I won’t get too complicated.
Each gross state is associated with a grosser wind energy. Now as this coupling, as they begin, as the link between the grosser wind energies begins to weaken, then the support for grosser states of mind begins to diminish in function. So the grosser states of mind no longer operate. So the mind naturally becomes subtler. That is the subtler states of mind become manifest.
And then the more subtle connections between the wind energy begin to that strength begins to diminish and so subtler states of mind begin to diminish until finally we’re left with only the subtle most consciousness and the subtle most energy in combination. That’s all we’re left with. At that moment, that is called the moment of clear light. The famous clear light. There are restaurants in Adelaide. Probably many of you have heard about that.
The moment of clear light, they always say go for the light. If nothing else, go for the light. This is the very last moment. I mean for a master, for a yogi who has trained, he can remain in that state for extended periods of time. Now this entire process for an ordinary person will go completely unnoticed, unaware.
He won’t notice any of this, probably. A yogi, he knows everything that’s coming. He’s trained. He’s practiced the death process. He comes to the point of clear light.
He makes use of that moment. It’s a very opportune moment to achieve liberation. At that moment, for example, I think one of the senior tutor to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, who died about four years ago. He remained in this thukdam state for thirteen days. So, up to this point the person from the Buddhist point of view is not dead.
From the Western medical point of view he died a long time ago. His breathing stopped. But from a Buddhist point of view his mind has not severed completely the connection with the physical basis, the body. From the moment of clear light there will arise a slight movement of the wind energy. That is to say a coarser wind will begin to arise, wind energy.
A coarser consciousness will begin to rise which is able to support that. This is the moment of death. This is when the mind in association with this motility factor, the wind energy leaves the body. And from the point of view of Buddhism, the body is just a bunch of atoms, you know, just a bunch of flesh. It’s no longer a living organism.
There’s no longer mind present. What then occurs is the exact reverse process of the serial dissolution of the elements which occurred at death. I won’t go through it in here. It’s going to take place in a reverse process. There’s going to be a re coupling, a re linking together with the grosser elements.
Remanifestation of grosser consciousnesses which are because they’re able to be supported by the grosser elements. This involves we take rebirth in what is called the intermediate state, the Bardo state. So in the bardo state we don’t take on the grosser, coarser elements. We have a body, a subtle mental body, which is, you know, is achieved by the wind element alone. The wind energy element is constructed.
This mental body is composed of not the grosser elements of earth, fire, and water, but only of the the wind energy element. Therefore it’s unobstructive. It can move through walls. It’s said that in the intermediate state we have clairvoyance naturally. We can just by thinking the intermediate state being can go to any place in the universe that he wants to or she wants to just by thinking of it.
So it does not have a coarse gross body and it takes on the aspect of the type of body in which it’s going to ultimately take actual rebirth. This is an intermediate state rebirth. So this process of death, the dawning of the clear light of death and the arising in the intermediate state in a mental body is similar to something that we go through every day. That is to say falling asleep, experiencing the clear light of sleep, and arising in a dream body. It’s very, very similar.
We go through this entire process when we have a sexual orgasm. It’s said maybe when we faint that this entire process takes place in a very similar manner. So we can compare this intermediate state body to a dream body. Dream body is made up of mental form just as the intermediate state body, the bardo body. In Tibetan it’s called bardo.
So in this intermediate state the longest the being can exist in that state is seven days, you know, from the human realm point of view. And the shortest is one moment. That is to say he enters the intermediate state body and then he immediately he causes the aggregated force of taking rebirth and he immediately takes rebirth in another realm. So there’s no certainty how long a being is going to stay in the intermediate state. Because whenever the causes for taking rebirth have aggregated, it’s necessary that it takes rebirth.
Now if after seven days the causes for taking rebirth have been aggregated, there occurs a small death. It goes to the dissolution process and is reborn in another intermediate state body. And this can happen up to six times. So the maximum period in terms of human days that a being will stay in the intermediate state is forty nine days. After that it’s said it’s necessary that all the causes for his taking of rebirth or her taking of rebirth will definitely aggregate.
So at the time of taking rebirth, the consciousness of the dying intermediate state being is drawn due to karmic tendencies and due to attachment or anger to a particular fertilized egg. And this has, you know, there’s some dispute about how this occurs and why it occurs. Actually the problem of, know, what do you say, in vitro fertilization brings up an interesting problem. It’s said for, you know, that there’s the intermediate state being will either enter into the father through his crown or through his mouth or into the mother’s womb directly. If it there’s an attraction aversion, there’s an attraction to the male and the female having sexual intercourse.
But if the being is going to be reborn as a male then it’s repulsed that gets angry at the father and enters into the mother directly. If it’s going to be born as a female it’s attracted to the male and enters either through the mouth or the crown or the head. And anyway, some way or another the intermediate state being enters into the union of the sperm and egg that is the fertilized ovum, the fertilized egg. And so this is not necessarily to be taken literally. This is quite open to dispute how this all takes place.
They were then having entered into this fertilized egg, there occurs the dying process of the intermediate state being. There will occur the clear light and the very first moment after that clear light of death of the intermediate state being is the birth state. It is the initial connection to a new life. And then the reverse process of reassociation of this subtle mind wind with a new physical basis going to take place, the association with more and more grosser states of physical matter with the corresponding coarsening grosser states of consciousness arising serially correspondingly. So we’ve repeated this process again and again and again, you know, again and again from beginning of this time.
So this gives you some idea of some of the reasoning around rebirth and perhaps some of the mechanics of actually taking rebirth. I think it’s useful to know that, at least as I said, you don’t have the misconceptions I did that somehow this body is going to fly up in the air somewhere and take rebirth. Really that’s a little less plausible than you might say. As I said in my introduction that I’m not trying to make anybody believe anything in particular. There are enough people who in the world who espouse a belief in the existence of rebirth but their belief is not reflected in the way they lead their life, you know, their actual behavior.
So I tried simply to raise a few questions and explain some of the reasoning and the mechanics of rebirth so that, you know, you can think about it maybe in a new way Because it perhaps will have some important implications in your life, in the way we lead our life. The theory of reincarnation, if taken deeply seriously, holds the implication that death is not simply the end, not the easy release from sorrow we always imagined it to be. This insight may well be a lifesaver in more than one way for some of us because it might lead us to take the matter of human liberation much more seriously. The fact is we don’t have to be liberated. We have to choose to be liberated.
We have to want to be liberated and we have to want it very badly. If we were to suppose that this unsatisfactory state in which we find ourselves presently were simply going to come to an end at the moment of our death, we would probably never want it as badly as is necessary to achieve it. Thank you.