Cultivating Light

2023, August, Issue 60

“My fear and doubts have vanished like mist

into the distance, never to disturb me again.

I will die content and free from regrets.

This is the fruit of Dharma practice.”

~Milarepa~

When we aspire to awaken, which is really cultivating the enlightened mind of Bodhicitta, then this must certainly be followed by meditation.  Spiritual Practice is essential.  Although meditation will never, in itself, produce your awakening, it produces the conditions for awakening, making your mind open to that.  It is, perhaps, the best way to discover the door to realization.  When we have learned to meditate effectively, we will learn to be able to maintain the level of relaxation and stability that is necessary.

This may take a great deal of time and effort, even though awakening itself takes absolutely no effort whatsoever.  When we begin to awaken, we are learning to step into that luminous state of awakening, where nothing whatsoever is hidden.  We are training to open our heart and mind completely.  This can be rather disturbing, if our negative past actions are still overwhelming our mind.  Even though our karma is not real, we carry that within our consciousness.  We might think we are awakening and then we stop ourselves with an obstruction, maybe thinking that we don’t deserve to awaken, because of something we regret.

It is an illusion to think that anything can ever be hidden.  Meditation reveals this to our conscious conceptual mind.  This is the essence of why generating good karma is essential, as well.  It’s not that you will be judged by some supreme being or a host of deities, it’s that you will judge yourself, based upon your own negative emotions.  You will create a demon that prevents you from becoming an enlightened being.  This is very serious, and it is why we must do whatever we can to obliterate all the negativity we have generated since beginningless beginnings.  By all means, we must awaken, or we will simply continue as before, causing pain and suffering for everyone, for all eternity.

What is this notion of creating good karma, of making each step count as a blessing, bringing light into the world.?  Why should we accumulate actions that create positive beneficial conditions for everyone we encounter?  When we are floating helpless in this Ocean of Despair and Suffering, or when we are flying uncontrollably through the death bardo, we become rather obsessed about our own problems, if we haven’t first obtained the key of Bodhicitta.  We’re too fixated on our own bad fortune, our own pain and suffering.  We haven’t generated Bodhicitta in our lives; and, so, we are completely at the mercy of our own negative karma, or our harmful actions that continue from one lifetime to another.  We live wanting to not face the consequences of anything that we have done.  We want everything hidden, and we continue in this way.

When it is time to die, suddenly we panic, realizing that everything will be lost.  On top of this, when we fly through energetic clouds of so many things we hadn’t known, we realize that everything is being revealed.  Our life becomes stripped of all we had, and we can see that.  Some call this a life review.  We see our own life with clarity, and it is also completely exposed to the elements.  How we impacted everyone we encountered, including ourselves, how we changed the world with our actions, how we treated ourselves by the way we lived, all becomes apparent.  We can’t stop this process of exposure when we die.

I would say that a fairly common reaction to death is to freak out at some point.  This is what happens when you are not ready, if you have not prepared for death.  This journey through the death bardo can be extremely energetic, and also disturbing.  If we are attached to our old life, then the death bardo is a place where we realize that our old life isn’t coming back.  That, it seems, is when people have more negative experiences.

With my experience, I had prepared myself in this lifetime and a whole host of other lifetimes.  If you have read both Timeless Luminosity and The Frog: A Spiritual Autobiography, Spanning Many Lifetimes, you should have some idea of why my death experience was quite positive.  I’ve been working at awakening for many lifetimes, starting about 2,600 years ago.  I have some idea of what becoming the Dharmakaya for an eternity actually takes.  Even in this lifetime, I’ve been extremely intense with my commitment to awakening.  I realized the Nature of Mind after one encounter with a Dzogchen Master, which should not be surprising to anyone.  My other lifetimes had a great deal to do with that.

When we die, everything is utterly revealed.  When we enter the light, our heart and mind need to open utterly, fully and completely.  If we are to remain, this openness become stable.  It is important to become awareness. 

Every step we take, every breath, every action, every ripple we send throughout the universe, must dispel darkness, or we will be doomed to repeat our own miserable fate, without a hope in the world of ever escaping.  We must cultivate an indestructible practice of Bodhicitta.  

Blessings in Light,

Robert Aho