Metaphorically, the real Titanic of Samsara is having the wrong view, as it will sink you every time. Especially the big one of believing in a permanent, inherently existent self—or ceaseless soul—that is independent, monolithic, and in which one takes an unshakable or dogmatic conceptual refuge for eternity. Strong wrong religious views such as this which people are willing to die for, are the last attachment—the supreme grasping at a view which is a fixed position about the nature of reality. As Lord Manjushri dictated in person to Lama Sakyapa, Sachen Kunga Nyingpo, If there is grasping, you do not have the view. Famously, this is found in the four line teaching, ‘Parting from the Four Attachments.’
Perhaps it’s somewhat unkind to fault people for going astray in this way, as the Buddha attested the marks of existence to be impermanence, dissatisfaction, and no self-same soul or stable essence. (Then again, as my root Guru said, one’s best friend is the one who points out one’s faults most directly.) Further, the newly minted Buddha pinpointed four principal sufferings: birth, aging, sickness, and death—universal to all beings. Death is unavoidable once one is born as a human, or any other form of being, in the six different realms of existence. That is, unless one becomes very familiar with the cleansing and transforming power of the very subtle nature of our mind.
There are, as well, many protective measures that improve our good fortune, moment to moment, lifetime to lifetime. This begins with choosing well what actions we resort to and in what objects and behaviors our ignorance, arising in unconscious formations, take refuge. Notably, stress eating, drinking and doping, compulsive sex, desiring, coveting, trash talking and hating. Karma—good, bad, and neutral (the status quo)—infallibly reaps results similar to their causes. Obvious examples of this are haters becoming hated and covetous or jealous people becoming alone. More subtly, it’s said the faithless end up in arid lands or are more quickly delivered into the hands of their enemies. I currently reside on one of the few remaining bad roads in our city. As we bounce down it, uncomfortable and penitent, I often speculate on the collective causes of this resultant bad karma.
But if one is or becomes a knowledge holding Vajrayana practitioner, and certainly as a siddhi or adept—right karmic choices become increasingly more possible, as one’s conduct becomes conducive to purification and transformation. Even as a beginner, one’s choosing of the Dharma is a wise choice, as it’s uniquely good in the beginning, good in the middle, and even better at the end.
Also, as safety and security is one of a handful of primary concerns, according to the tenets of Dr. Glasser’s ’Reality Therapy,’ it’s best to reconsider exactly what one is taking refuge in, moment to moment, year to year, life to life. Especially given the plethora of overnight philosophies and quick-fix quackeries in the age of too much information. As Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who brought Vajrayana to the West, use to brag, ‘But the Buddha’s credentials are over twenty-five hundred years old!’ Even a so-called ‘Reality Therapy,’ so practical and convincing, at the end of life might only be useful in planning your will and making thoughtful funeral arrangements. OK. But the Buddhist vehicles Shravaka and Mahayana—culminating in the lightening quick, resultant Vajrayana—can deliver one to ‘the deathless state.’
How then does a familiarity with the very subtle nature of mind mitigate the suffering of death? It’s because death is an imagining of the gross mind about the demise of its alleged origin, a seemingly permanent self. But this deeply entrenched ‘impossible self’ (see Berzin, ‘Study Buddhism’) is just ignorance of its truer, inherently empty nature. This is revealed to the yogin as a ceaseless continuum during daily sadhana sessions, or in post-sessions, where the very subtlest communications of mind are tapped.
Geshe Dakpa Topgyal teaches: “If we don’t know the nature of the mind or subtle consciousness, it’s very difficult to understand the possibility of life after death. The material body ends with death, but the very subtle consciousness continues, from past to present, present to future. The mind is divided into the gross mind, the subtle mind, and the very subtle mind. The gross mind depends on the body. As soon as body functions stop, gross mind stops. The subtle mind, which underpins the five senses, provides information to the very subtle mind. Neither the gross mind nor the subtle mind goes from past to present, present to future, carrying information from life to life.” (www.scdharma.org/teachings/gross-mind-subtle-mind-and-very-subtle-mind)
The karmic choices and last resorts created in our suffering continuum begin with eight bodies of consciousnesses: the five sense-consciousnesses (of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and bodily sense), mentation (mano or citta), the defiled self-consciousness (kliṣṭamanovijñāna), and the storehouse or substratum consciousness (ālayavijñāna). This seventh, defiled self-consciousness—a personalized copy of the ālayavijñāna, or ‘storehouse’ eighth consciousness—shapes a karmically defiled future existence. These imprints, known as samskara—impressions, recollections, or physiological imprints—are largely obscurations, emotive and cognitive, of the manas or ego, and can be transformed, purified, and ‘emptied’ by awareness of the very subtle mind.
The late Jeffrey Hopkins, during a fascinating interview about losing his memory decades ago from Lyme disease, attests here to the nature of the very subtle mind:
Jeffrey [As] I said before, if you had never experienced something deeper [in your consciousness] you would probably think that was it. But there is plenty deeper than that! In the division of gross, subtle and very subtle it’s pre-subtle.
Robina So you mean like sometimes when you go to sleep and you’re half conscious of what’s happening and half in the other state?
Jeffrey No. It’s much subtler than that. Within the gross mind there are all sorts of subtler levels. When you get to the mind of white light, your consciousness is so fused entirely with it, there’s no sense of you are in the white light; your consciousness is white light. Here my experience was, so to speak, like my fingernails were white light! – something that’s yours but just slightly distant; more of a sense of ‘I am floating.’ There’s no body, but there’s a center. So that’s actually still at the gross level.(fpmt.org/mandala/archives/older/mandala-issues-for-1995/may/)
Consider further what Geshe Dakpa Topgyal says about what happens to most afflicted being—or non-adepts—at the time of dying: “Four reasons prove the possibility of rebirth and reincarnation. Let us consider one of the four: In the very last moment of consciousness of a dying person, conceptual thoughts have ceased because the brain, heart, breath have stopped. So the gross mind has stopped. What’s left is a neutral mind, an unbiased mind. It continues. This consciousness has mere knowing, mere clarity, and mere experience. When we are dying, no matter who we are we experience four types of fear: fear of losing the self, fear of separating from loved ones, fear of leaving possessions behind, and fear of not remaining in the world. These fears intensify our attraction to the world, our desire to remain part of it. This attraction or desire controls our subtle consciousness and forces contact with the world. The connection is through the gross body. The subtle consciousness is attracted to the gross body, and the moment subtle consciousness makes contact with a gross body, rebirth occurs.”
This is piteous. Since impermanence with its sting of death is the first suffering, existentially what everybody really craves is a continuum that is ceaseless, unimpeded, and nonintropedal—an immediate escape or flight from harm, dissatisfaction, and demise. So entering the Vajrayana (‘tantrayana’ or ‘mantrayana’)—the supreme continuum—with its transcendent functions of Guruyoga, and the two deity-yoga processes of creation and completion, is the wisest thing to do.
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