A Commentary on the Afterlife
The reality of the mind:  a Buddhist perspective

Although everything on earth seems stable and solid, nothing here is permanent. Like water, snow and ice, life is always shifting and changing form. All existence is one kind of state or another. This means living in an atmosphere of uncertainty - moving without a place to rest. In this world, we pass through the spiritual state of physical existence. Here, we want to make something lasting and secure, but no one has been able to accomplish this. Our life is always in the hands of death. At death, our experience is completely out of our control. Our experience is completely naked. What is the best path through this spiritual state?  It is a question of waking up right now, looking at your own mind. Look at it when it is calm and still and when it is running wild. This is what Buddha did and what he taught. This is what Jesus meant when he said  "the Kingdom of God is within you".

Soon we all will die. All our hopes and fears will be irrelevant.

Out of illuminous continuity of existence, which has no origin and which has never died, human beings project all the images of life and death, terror and joy, demons and gods. These images become our complete reality. We submit without thinking to their dance. In all the movements to this dance, we project our greatest fears on death and we make every effort to ignore it. Illusions are as various as the moon reflecting on a rippling sea. Beings become easily caught in the net of confused pain. We must develop compassion boundless as the sky so that all may rest in the clear light of our own awareness.

At death, we lose everything we thought was real. Unless we can let go of all the things we cherished in our life we are terrified. We cannot stop struggling to hold on to our old life. All our fear and yearning will drag us into yet another painful reality.

We are always wandering through transitional spiritual states. Difficulty in leaving behind your old life can cause you to wander in painful uncertainty. The spiritual state of dying lasts from the beginning of the body's physical collapse until the body and consciousness separate. While we are living, the elements of earth, water, fire and air together support and condition our consciousness. Death occurs when this is no longer the case. Now, without the screens and filters of daily life, at this time, mind itself can be seen directly. In the spiritual state of dying, it is important to recognize your own true nature.

At death, there is an experience of piercing illuminosity, pure white light, the clear radiance that rises directly from one's own basic nature. Now, there is no darkness, no separation, no direction and no shape, only brilliant light. This boundless sparkling radiance is mind, free from the shadows of birth and death - free from any boundaries of any kind. Now all pervasive light engulfs you completely. All of space is dissolved into pure light. This radiance is the mind of God, the mind of all the awakened ones. Recognizing this is all that is necessary for liberation from birth and rebirth. If one does not recognize his divine nature, he will fall into a dreamless sleep. In three days time, all his emotions will be vivid and intense. Though it seems to him he is entering into a new reality, it is still the reality of his own mind. The person wanders back to the familiar sites and people of his old life. His own mind will arise before him in unfamiliar ways. The dead person does not know if he is alive or dead. Even so, he can see his family crying. The person must leave his former life behind if he is to progress.

If the dead person is unable to recognize the luminosity of mind itself, his experience now takes the shape of random imagery of his former life. He sees his friends and relatives calling out to him and they cannot hear his replies. Death has cut him off from them and sorrow strikes his heart. He sees his family and relatives crying. He can see his bed but he is no longer the one lying there. Instead, there is a corpse.

Soon he will experience the intense presence of his own emotional states as peaceful and raging light forms. Now, he will meet his mind in the form of projections which seem vivid and entirely real. Now he will see penetrating blue light shining all around him. This is the essence of consciousness, God Himself. His wisdom is like a mirror reflecting everything. He is the form of consciousness in its complete purity. This wisdom is inseparable from the dying person's own heart. But also he will see a diffuse white light which he must avoid if he is to achieve liberation. If he follows the allure of the soft white light, he will find himself ensnared in the temporary pleasures of being born as a god, living in Lordly ignorance of the passage of time and subject to unexpected death.

If this path is taken, the wisdom of his very heart and mind takes the form of spiritual entities. There will be peaceful spiritual entities that emanate from his heart and wrathful ones that emerge from his brain.

They will appear one by one and then all together. The peaceful spiritual  entities are complete and immovable. If he cannot bear to enter their vast benevolent space, if he cannot let go of self-centeredness and fear, these deities will become terrifying wrathful ones. If he recognizes them as an expression of his own mind, they are the unsparing face of wakefulness. The wrathful forms emerging from the brain appear before him actually and clearly as if they were real in their own right. The terror and anger he feels are his own efforts to evade from being completely awake. He wanders uncertainly in the landscape of his own mind. If he recognizes this as his own projections, liberation is instantaneous. These wrathful forms are the presence of his innate wisdom, the vivid form of his own wakefulness. He must recognize them as a reflection of his own mind. Recognition and liberation are simultaneous.

All of us feel sparks of anger, flickers of passion, twinges of jealousy, small moments. From these seeds, we grow to become the jealous person. We say "this is what I am" and we act accordingly. But these are just our masks and we forget that we are wearing them.  We run from the ones that others wear. The wrathful spiritual entities are our own mind and it is impossible to run away from them. They are the sharpness of our own clarity. They are all in our mind.

Then altogether and all at once, the peaceful and wrathful spiritual entities come before him. If he does not recognize them as his own projections, then they transform into the terrifying image of the Lord of Death. This too is his own projection. But if he doesn't accept that, his fear and turmoil force him to wander on in terror to the spiritual state of rebirth. He leaves the spiritual state of the nature of mind. Again he is lost and wandering, so now he seeks to end his suffering by being born into a solid and familiar place.

Now in the spiritual state of rebirth, all his senses have become extremely acute. His consciousness is like a body without substance. In this body, the person can, by a mere thought, travel to anywhere. As if he had miraculous powers, he can pass through mountains and circle the universe. He can enter anywhere but nowhere can he rest. In the pain of his endless wandering, the thought of being born now promises great relief. The person can still see his family, but they no longer know he is with them. The person is driven on the winds of hope and fear like a leaf that is carried in the wind.

If he is still unable to recognize his own nature, his anger, lust and confusion become ever more intense, ever more solid. They at last appear to him as entire realms where he may stop and dwell. The image of his former body becomes faint and the image of his future body becomes clear. Any birth seems better than his current pain.

Since everyone is caught in these spiritual states of suffering, what can we do? People make hell realms out of their own anger. They make worlds out of passion. We project our emotional states and believe it is the real world. But no matter what, everyone longs for compassion. Everyone wishes to be awake. The best thing is to develop genuine compassion for all living things and for ourselves too. If we do not truly care for others we cannot know our own mind. We can have lofty insights and pure impulses, but then return to our old habits without even noticing it. We must work all the time to open our hearts and look for the truth. Otherwise there is neither understanding nor a purpose for understanding. Also, as life goes by, it is a good idea to keep your sense of humor.

The person is now coming to the end of his journey. As he reaches the end of the spiritual state of rebirth, the features of the world he is to enter will become very clear to him. If he pays attention now, he will find his way to a favorable rebirth. The person is now on the path to rebirth. He must choose carefully where he is to be born. In all the possibilities that are present before him, he must choose his new life. If he chooses a good human birth in a good place, he can continue on the path of recognizing his own mind. Even though he is desperate for a home, a dark cave in a forest can lead to a birth in the animal realm. If he is consumed by yearning, the realm of hungry ghosts can become a never-ending realm of hunger and thirst for him. Rage, bitterness, and anger open all the images of hell. It is best to avoid the extremes of pleasure or pain when selecting a new birth. It is best to be born where the person can still recognize the luminous essence of his own mind.

He will not remember much of his journey when he is born again. It will be like starting out new.  Though death is always something to be mourned, being born is not something to be celebrated. There is an old Tibetan Buddhist saying: "When we are born, we cry, but the whole world is overjoyed. When we die, the world cries and we can become overjoyed when we find the great liberation."