Discovering who we really are,
harrumph, harumpity bump,
thinking we are so important,
in our noggin, in our limited noggin,
here we are with our eyes that barely work,
our mind that doesn’t know how to think,
and we’re hard of hearing too;
So, we think we know it all,
just like a toddler
telling everyone what to do!
Boy are we smart!
We’ve got it all figured out,
Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph
Harrumph . . .
A poem by Robert Aho © 2025
Little by little, slowly, very slowly, I am remembering more detailed aspects of my death. This has not been so easy, for some reason, even though I sit in contemplation, opening my heart and mind to what is. It seems that the experience was so vast that the details become lost, just as a person who lives a very long lifetime can’t remember exactly what they had for lunch twenty years ago on this date.
When I look with my mind, I see this condition we can experience between thoughts, beyond concept and belief, that is bright beyond ordinary human comprehension, which is what I experienced for an eternity, beyond time and space. When I look at my aspiration to go back to my failing body, with this intention of helping all beings, I see the dread of returning to the utterly useless complexity of samsara. I see life happening everywhere throughout our universe and across the vast array of universes, across the multiverse and beyond what we mere humans can fathom or even find names that could explain what that is.
I had a sense that life is not just on our little rock we call Earth. It’s obvious that life is everywhere that we can imagine. In new worlds, it generally doesn’t take long for life to arise. We have this assumption, based upon nothing whatsoever, something wedged in our fantasies, that life is special only to our world. In reality, many life forms exist in places we can’t imagine, and life abounds throughout our little speck of a universe. Life everywhere tends to generally be this most sweet venture, utterly peaceful, naïve, a fresh and open reflection of who we really are. This bright condition that is our natural self somehow becomes all possibilities. We don’t need to do anything in order to recognize that. This becomes obvious at some point to the Spiritual Practitioner who maintains a serious adherence to deep meditation and contemplation.
What happens in cyclic existence or samsara, however, is the water becomes muddied by dark forces, by our disturbing emotions of fear, anger and hate. We begin to cling to things that we think might give us some relief from those disturbances, which are truly unpleasant to begin with. We then make the effort to engage in that, bringing that darkness into our lives. We work hard at engaging these shadows of mind, these phantasms who are not real. We work very hard to snuff out our own light when we do that.
Of course, if you understand reality only a little bit through meditation, you will immediately see the fallacy of our world, as well as all the worldly concerns which only bring disaster. You will immediately see the comedy unfolding when someone tries to cause trouble, or tries to hide from the light of our true nature, or does whatever they can to cover up what is vast beyond anything imaginable. Our Real Nature is like the bright open sky; yet, here we are, thinking we know everything, and we live in a little speck of dust covered by a hard shell. We think we’re pretty important within our tiny little out-of-the-way world, because that is all that we can see or even fathom most of the time. We have nothing to compare it with, unless we let go, opening our heart and mind in the process.
So, the frustration I face when trying to explain the death bardo to people who are interested is in utilizing vocabulary that can be understood and that actually brings benefit. When some people hear that I’m utilizing Buddhist ways of explaining, they immediately reject that, thinking that it’s a religion, not realizing that it’s really a methodology for investigating reality beyond what we think or believe. Many people reject religion, simply because they see it as just another form of fantasy. That is why I chose Buddhism, because it is not really a religion and it has absolutely no use for fantasy, unless it is simply utilized in a temporary way on our path of discovery.
I also did not utilize Western Science, even though studies of quantum physics come somewhat close and could be useful in certain ways. The problem is that it also relies upon belief, and it simply does not go far enough. There is a limit to Western Science, and it is within the paradigms created by the various schools of thought. My decision when rejecting this viewpoint was based upon a need to go much further.
When I advocate this idea of people awakening, I’m really talking about opening your heart and mind to reality. To do this is not so easy. We all need to look within, and this means Spiritual Practice.
Blessings in Light,
Robert Aho