100 uh 100 verses in chapter 3 103 i mean 103 3 verses in chapter 3. so you don't have uh all of them at your disposal as yet by the way would anybody like to we have more of chapter 3 translated than this but anybody like to type it you would anybody else time we're supposedly going to study the intermediate form, the intermediate being a little bit more. But one thing we haven't studied here, which is discussed somewhat more in later parts of Chapter 3, is the process of dying. In Western history,

[01:04]

Western tradition, we have the four humors, is that right? What are they? Phlegmatic, caloric. Phlegmatic, caloric. What? Sanguine. Sanguine. And bilious. What are the four humors? humors. Humors are bile, phlegm. There's personality types and then there's the humors. The four humors are bile and phlegm are two. In Buddhist

[02:10]

medicine, they have three humors, or they're called doshas. Three doshas. Bile, phlegm, and air. Or bile, phlegm, and wind, actually. Would someone please consult Aristotle and find out what the four humors are? Who's going to do that? knows about Aristotle? Nobody? Fire, air, wind, and water. No. Those are the four elements. Aristotle also talked about those. And the Buddhist four elements and the Greek four elements are the same in that sentence. Nobody wants to find out what Aristotle said? Okay. Anyway, these are humors, in a sense.

[03:22]

They're called doshas here because dosha, I think, is related to some root meaning to destroy. a uh cosmic era a kalpa comes to end comes to an end by virtue of these these uh phenomena in the form of wind fire and water are what destroy the age. Well, wind is wind. I believe water would be phlegm and fire is bile.

[04:27]

Bile, phlegm, and wind. Wind is the predominant one. It's related there to and dominates them or controls them. So by concentrating on wind, you can follow the process by which the four great elements which compose the body are disturbed or dissolved. teaching about the wind and bile and phlegm and how their changes in the way they work, disturb the Fourier elements, is not our usual.

[05:42]

We weren't raised in our modern scientific age to think about things in these ways. Probably if you look back before the 17th century in Europe, among alchemists and so on, probably you'll find some teaching which will be quite similar to this. This process is not particularly, it's once again not a Buddhist process, it's a process inherent to human situations. So in the same way that hells are similar all over the world, the phenomena of death is similar all over the world. And the way of seeing it might change. But in fact, these days, even though science is interested in this process, in fact they haven't given us—we don't learn too much about it in school, about the process of death. Did anybody here learn anything about it? About how to experience it or how it happened?

[06:44]

Did you ever take any courses on it? There's some observations, I think, about what people look like when they die, and there's maybe some observations about what they say they're experiencing. But it's rather crude as far as I've been able to find. And the most detailed and coherent information comes from the ancient traditions. One of the reasons for this is that particularly in the area of, I think modern science is pretty good at watching a subject, in other words, watching an object of study, another person who's dying. They can make those observations fairly well. But not too many of us know very many people that have systematically discussed and described the process of death, and then that's been taken down, and that lore has been accumulated until more and more subtle discriminations and patterns of the process have been conveyed to us.

[07:51]

Whereas in the ancient traditions, having talked Lots of people talked about what they're experiencing when they're dying, have accumulated over the ages until finally they have a pretty clear sense of what people experience as they die. Now, in this book, Death, Intermediate State, and Rebirth, the Buddhist articulation, which is the base source of it, is Abhidharma Kosha and other Buddhist texts, the basic description is in quite a bit more detail than we usually experience or usually have heard about. So the process of death is described in there quite clearly, both from what it looks like from the outside and from what the person experiences as they're going through the process.

[08:54]

what the, what Tantric Buddhists do with this. Yes? In describing the concept of death and articulating it, it seems possible for me to describe what they're going through up to a certain point of the end, depending on the description that they're talking about, kind of the actual moment that happens quite a bit after, so how would they have articulated that, through meditational experience or through People do return from that point sometimes. And you can also experience it in daily life. If you're sharp, if you're very sharp, you can experience it in daily life. And that's finally what we'd like to get to. That's why I'm bringing it up. But you have to be, I think, a rather somewhat ordinary person.

[10:09]

By ordinary, I mean ordinary good person approaching death would have pretty clear experience of these phases. But it would take a really sharp person to catch it in daily life because it's much faster in daily life. In fact, I tried it recently a few times without going to sleep to try to get him tired to catch these phases. catch some of them but then if you did it with somebody it would be easier somebody could kind of particularly me since i go to sleep you know i can go sleep like that so it's hard sometimes to catch too much in one breath but for people that have more trouble sleeping going to sleep or if someone would sort of keep annoying you as you're going to sleep I gently, undistractively annoy you, sort of keep pushing you every time you seem to be going.

[11:11]

You might be able to stretch it out a little bit. But still, it's very fast, because then what you do is you sort of wobble back and forth in the process. You wouldn't be that the process gets slowed down, but rather you'd sort of go into it and come back out of it. Yes? No, it's not only when you go to sleep. It happens every time you change realms. So the process that they describe is that, you can read about it in this book, and when you get the Abhidharma Kosha typed out for you, you can read about it there too, somewhat. Basically, what's happening is that, at death anyway, let's talk about physical death first, the way that these energetic forces, which they're calling winds for short, which include various humors. The way they function in the body ordinarily gives energy to various processes of ordinary life like swallowing, urinating, defecating, digestion, and so on.

[12:25]

As death approaches, they stop flowing through the organs. They recede from the organs. Organs stop functioning. as usual, and they recede from them and become more concentrated within the body. As this happens, the person stops being able to function so well and starts lying down and so on. At a certain point, when this process has gone along quite a ways, when deaths started to come on quite fast now, the the wind destroys or dissolves the first element, the first great element in the structuring of the body, namely the earth element. And so the first thing to go is vision, which is, a lot of people have that experience.

[13:34]

and the tactile, the sense of the body as being a base goes. Along with this, there's images around this time, and images start to go too. After that, the being then is predominated by the earth element, meaning the water element. And then the kinds of images that occur that dominate are more like smoky, smoky type or foggy type of experiences. Visual. But not really visual, like outside, since eye is gone now. What? the first phase at just before the earth element dissolves you you see images and so on but when earth element dissolves in other words dissolves means that that the consciousness no longer arises from the earth element usually consciousness arrives depending on the four great elements earth fire water and air

[15:08]

four elements, those four aspects of physical experience, usually are present in a living being, in a living human. It's upon those that sense consciousnesses are supported. All the physical experiences we have are derived from those four. Now, because of this wind, this energetic change, the wind destroys part of the foundation of physical experience. thing it destroys the earth the earth element which is the supportive the supportive aspect of physical experience yes well um first of all you should meditate on on the four great elements okay four great elements

[16:10]

are dharmas in the Theravada Abhidharma system. In the Sarvastavadan Abhidharma system, the four great elements are not considered to be dharmas. They're considered to be the essential qualities that come together to produce the physical dharmas that you directly experience. Most people do not directly experience the four great elements except in meditation. In Theravada Abhidharma, they say they have the derived material elements like color, sound, smell, and so on. Plus they have the four great elements. Meditating on the four great elements means that you actually get into what is the nature of earth, what is the nature of air, what is the nature of water, what is the nature of fire.

[17:13]

Um, when I was at Esalen last spring, uh, remember a guy named, his name was, uh, is it Richard Alpert? Is that the guy, my LSD guy? Richard Alpert, Ram Dass? What's the other guy's name? Metzner? Huh? Is it Ralph Metzner? Oh, I know, I think his name is Metzner. He's one of the, he, he, Metzner, Alpert and Leary, right? Is it Ralph Metzner? Does anybody know the name Metzner? Yeah, I think his name is Metzner. And he doesn't look like a hippie anymore. I won't say anything about him, but he did this slide show with music on the four great elements. And seeing that slide show, you don't need the slide show, but for people that need a little help, it how you just you get into just think of all the different ways all the different kinds of water that there are all the different kinds of earth that there are all the different kinds of fire that there are all the different kinds of wind or air that there are and just think about them think about them with your eyes your ears your body in every way that you can experience them because in fact every physical experience you have is coming from a combination of those four and then you can go back

[18:42]

through your physical experience and find out experience them all every physical experience has all four so every physical experience connects to each one but usually you don't you never experience one by itself but you can still go back and experience it when you do that then you can go see how they're all off then you can have a feeling for how all four go into each one so each color each smell each taste each touch and each sound contain these four these four aspects of earth fire air and water and this is uh once again unusual in to our upbringing uh here in the west in this era but another way to ask is why do you think there are those elements why do you think you see them It's not gross element earth, either.

[19:43]

It's the quality of earth. You know, the quality of water is to contain. Water has a containing aspect. Fire has a protecting, I mean a perfecting element. The nature of wind is movement, and the nature of earth is support. Or solidity. So regular water contains movement, and support regular air contains support containment uh movement and heat regular fire contains support containment movement and heat and regular whatever earth contains support movement Can you see that?

[20:48]

But just as those, and even those are gross combinations of derived material. Even a color is that way. Yes? Water is containment. I mean, how does it include things? Can you jump in water and have it contain you? Can you immerse yourself in water? Well, air contains, air, regular air contains. That's why I said air contains, but air's characteristic is, rather than containment, it's emphasizing movement. Now, regular air, if you think of regular air, just the kind of air you usually might think of, that air you might say, well, that seems like that contains as much as water, but does you feel as contained by air as you do by water? in dry air? Dry, warm air, do you feel is contained by it as you do by dry, by water, warm water?

[21:52]

Do you? No, I don't think so. But this is still water, and water contains movement, and air contains containment. Real, regular air, common idea of air, or experience of air, has all fours, so you won't, air will contain. But the element air emphasizing just the movement quality so just think about all the things that air does this as a teaching of what they mean by movement and the movement that is in that is in all material heat and movement are inseparable kinetic energy or brownian movement is a measure of heat and it's in its movement kinetic energy is heat is seen by caloric energy caloric content is seen by movement so they're all intermingled but still you can meditate and get an experience of all four okay so first you meditate on the four great elements then in conjunction with these forget elements in a living being there are these other forces and so something kind of there's some picture of some some movement or some once again movement or heat

[23:14]

again you'll have these same things will be will be functioning in the living being and wind is is uh wind is like like breath in one sense okay so in another sense wind is like um uh urine in another sense wind is like blood in our sense wind is like bile another sense wind is like phlegm so you're emphasizing the movement aspect of all those materials throughout the body which is very much our idea of energy in the working of the body then you're emphasizing the wind element the wind controls the others okay so wind is a way to in but you know breathing is a way to get in touch with the wind element as it functions in the body or rather meditating on breathing is a way to get it meditating or experiencing the wind. And we would say then that at the point of death, there's a change in your experience.

[24:26]

If you were able to experience, there's a change in your way of your experiencing. For those who have some sense, there would be a change in the way you'd experience the movement of energy through the body as death approaches. It would recede from certain areas of functioning. And soon, that aspect of the four-grade elements, which we call Earth, starts to... You can't any longer... You can't experience it anymore. In other words, you can't be conscious of it. So part of the support of consciousness, consciousness is supported on four-grade elements, part of the... One of the pillars of consciousness falls away. Because the wind, which can be represented by breath, no longer... can relate to it or no longer does relate to it. Another way to put it is, excuse me, that there's this material possibility of four great elements in any material event.

[25:31]

Our consciousness comes to rest or identify or locate itself in conjunction with a certain location of four great elements. that that uh resting or that relating to this particular location of four great elements that consciousness of it then is in a sense the wind and the bile and the phlegm okay these are ways to describe the way we the ways we are aware of their descriptions of conscious relationships with material. As the conception of death starts to lose its power, which is imbued at birth, the consciousness recedes from its involvement in the four great elements.

[26:32]

As it recedes, it recedes in a stereotypic fashion, namely it recedes from the pillar of earth first. So as wind, bile, and phlegm characterize our humors of the conscious relationship to material, as consciousness recedes from its conception of a body, it recedes first from the earth aspect of the body. In other words, its relationship to the earth aspect through air or through wind it recedes as it recedes through air or wind it recedes through fire and water or through phlegm and bile also so as the air recedes from the liver the bile stops flowing as the air recedes from the uh stomach as the breath recedes as the

[27:36]

as the wind recedes, as the breath recedes, as the air recedes, digestion recedes from the stomach. So the body stops functioning in those areas on that account. And in that way then, the consciousness then, shortly after each time it recedes, it recedes from one pillar, then the next pillar to be receded from or dissolved in terms of dissolved as a point of support for consciousness that becomes more salient to the experiencer the meditator the dying person so the water is next then consciousness recedes from the water support then consciousness recedes from the fire support i believe then consciousness recedes from air support at that point You've entirely receded from the body, and there's no physical base anymore.

[28:40]

At that point, people usually say the person is dead. Actually, they can say they're dead before that. Yes? Underneath the concession, do the intention have a lot to do with whatever it happens, you know? I mean, the person wants to... That's right. You wanted, or rather, you created a conception which has involved, consciousness created a conception which involved itself in a physical reality, in a physical sphere, 70 years before or whatever. Now, the power of that conception is wearing out. If one saw some reason to continue it, maybe one could recreate it somehow, extend it somehow. Because I'm really... i think if you could but most people there's not too much point you can do it though if you had some particular reason you could do it but for buddhists at a point like this it's not so much to extend it but as much as possible keep track of it because if you

[30:03]

know what it's if you if you can understand what's going on this you can you can traverse this these are tremendous changes just as we talked about last week about the tremendous changes you go through at the beginning in the embryonic stages these are similarly there are there are tremendous changes and you really have to stay on your horse with all you've got not to be swept away by all this hang around by, if you direct yourself towards certain physical locations, in those locations you might have, those events might have a different composition of the four great elements than another part of the world.

[31:17]

So each thing is composed of four, but the differences between material events is the differences in the four. So if you hang around by the ocean your whole life, hanging around in the mountains your whole life there might be overall a different distribution of these four essential qualities of material existence than if you hang on other parts or if you make your body if you eat certain ways you can make your body more one kind of body than another kind of body you can make your body more of a fire body or more of a water body why don't you want to first let's hang with Maybe some people make fire bodies and want to be near water. I don't know.

[32:20]

We all make our bodies anyway, whatever kind of body we make. It goes according to our conception. First of all, you conceive of a body, then you conceive of a self. Once you conceive of a body and a self, then you conceive of an environment to put your body or yourself. So we're constantly going through life conceiving, conceiving, conceiving. Imagining, imagining. thinking up life again and again. And the way you think at different points has different effects. The way you think in the intermediate realm has the effect of incarnating you in a certain way. The way you think later in your life has an effect on the size of muscles you have or how many pimples you have or whether your hair is long or short or whether you wear glasses or not. So our concept of ourself and our physical concept as it manifests itself this way our mental concept as it manifests itself as a self, and so on. Then we have cars or not. So, you change your body according to what you think about yourself.

[33:27]

Some people, some men remove all their hair, so they won't grow a beard. Some men grow a beard out. And similarly, you move in certain parts of the world, accordance with your conception of what you are and what's happening so you you go to the water because it works with your idea of yourself or what's best for you or something i don't think i don't think you space out that much more than on the average i don't think people space out more than usual some people will get sharpen up at that time because they've heard this is the time to pay attention other people chicken out and do worse than usual but in general if you're working if you're conscious all if you're a very conscious person and you're always trying to figure out what's happening you'll probably do pretty well during these during these high speed transition phases

[34:47]

with these monumental reorganizings of, you know, physical and conceptual base of existence, you'll probably be able to stay somewhat attentive to that, too. Especially if you actually try to, you know, practice on the transition, think about the transition. If you go around thinking about these things all the time, like thinking about this chapter, what's taught here a lot, you probably do pretty well when you die. But I think generally distracted people space out when they die, and concentrated people generally stay fairly concentrated and go through pretty well and come out the other side concentrated too and having you know quite a bit of a say about you know what they think is happening yes four-grade elements are what make those eleven um rupa dharmas okay and these four in the abhidharma these these eleven dharmas or these eleven dharmas are said to be objects uh well five of them are objects six of them are objects of consciousness and five of them are our receptive capacities for the consciousness or of their their their capacities

[36:29]

can relate to the objects or the fields of activity all right so what what's your question what yeah that i thought maybe it was well um that's uh That's this nice part here, Karaka 18A and 18AD. Those two Karakas are talking about that. Maybe we could go to that section now, at least. I think we could read this section separately. By the way, before I read this section, I just wanted to finish that sequence. And that is, at a certain point, the physical base of consciousness is removed.

[37:33]

The winds have... It isn't exactly that the winds are attacking the basis of existence. It isn't like the winds are buffeting the four great elements and knocking the body out. It's rather that the winds are withdrawing their participation with the four great elements. that's what i mean by if you watch your body die it's not that the body disappears it's that there's a withdrawal of functioning okay so the organs are still there it is that you can watch the you can watch the body in a sense you watch the consciousness withdraw from the body it recedes from the body it they describe it as it's like you know when you go on a mirror and then you watch them and you watch the the fog the mirror you know makes a little circle or whatever and you watch the the thing we see the the the fog we see from the mirror it goes so in that way the the functioning or the energy in the body recedes from from various or recedes into this area right here in inside the body it recedes into this area right here which is called the heart chakra

[39:00]

And for people with bad karma, it recedes from here first. For people with good karma, it recedes from the bottom up. So there's a recession or an abandoning of conscious participation with the body. When there's no longer conscious participation in the body, the body starts functioning. That shows how we feel that The functioning of the body, that's why you have conscious control over your organs, if you want. You can see that when you die, because as consciousness withdraws from the organs, they stop functioning. At that point, when it's completed, the body's completely not functioning. However, there are still stages of mental support. There are still mental objects which can support some consciousness. And then those are abandoned. So even after all this, there still can be various kinds of thoughts, not physical thoughts anymore, but some kind of various concepts can still occur.

[40:13]

And then those are dropped. At that point, the experience of the meditator or the dying person, I say meditator or dying person because you can do this when you're not dying, is white. Internally, a white experience. This is no longer physical white. This is mental white. you no longer have eye organ. Then red, then black, and then what we call clear light. Light luminosity that's not color, not even mental color. In other words, emptiness. In other words, no thing existing aside from its causal relationships. And that's why in Buddhism we say that when a person dies, they attain nirvana. die at that point of death people actually are confronted with the facts they see emptiness so everybody attains nirvana at that point however if you're not aware of the process by which it happened then at that point when you see the clear light you go into the intermediate realm and the process occurs in the other direction

[41:36]

light black red white and the body pillars come back and you have another body but this is an intermediate round body okay yes all the organs all the organs of the being that you're heading for well that's that's been so not be a good time to read that if you go to karaka 17. okay just before karaka 17 it says the being which has full consciousness knows

[42:44]

that it is entering the womb, that it resides there, that it departs from there. The sutra also teaches the garbha vakrantis, the chakra vartan and the two svabhyabyas, by reason of great purity of action and knowledge. The two svabhyabhyas are the Pratyeka Buddha and Sambuddha. All these designations are anticipators. One speaks, one means to speak of the being who in this existence will be a Chakravartan and so on. So Chakravartan enters in full consciousness, enters into incarnation, into the womb. Chakravartan knows i am conceiving of a birth and i will enter the womb now however after they do that conception and they become a zygote they forget so uh they do pretty well though that's a good start the pratyeka buddha however can after it conceives of birth in other words

[44:11]

conceives of a relationship with a material base, it stays aware during the embryonic phase. However, at birth it forgets. Whereas the Buddha and advanced bodhisattvas, not just low-level bodhisattvas, advanced bodhisattvas stay conscious through the whole process. They were all chakravartans, but chakravartans, pratyega Buddhas, and Buddhas and advanced bodhisattvas can stay aware during intermediate realm. Intermediate realm is not such a big change as taking incarnation in one of the five realms, because intermediate realm, your organs come like that. So it's not that it's one big change.

[45:13]

It's not change after [...] change. And it's not that far off from where you're going to be. So intermediate realm is not so heavy as actually reincarnating. In fact, these three kinds of beings can make that transition and stay aware through that and stay aware even as they decide to be born. only one that is the buddha and the bodhisattva can stay aware of that whole tremendous process if they can do that they have a fairly good chance if they keep it up during their life they'll also be able to do it of course buddhas will be able to do it at death too and then in life and death however buddhas uh depending on which school of buddology you're studying buddhas usually don't keep doing it over and over because what it means to be a buddha is that you just you know you As that Buddha, you don't keep coming around again.

[46:15]

You just do that Buddha once, and you let somebody else do it the next time. You actually give up that aspect. But the bodhisattvas are changing all the time, and they don't really have a name. They can leave and come again in a particular world system, and it's all right. What? Well, Buddha is not like the Buddha is something, you know. Buddha is just a certain role in the inner world system of an enlightened teacher with a certain name. And they come and they go because it turns out it's more helpful to people if you actually go than if you stay forever. That's what they decided. They decided that it's more helpful to the Dharmakaya Buddha. found that it's it's more helpful to send these nirmanakaya buddhas for a limited stay that it teaches people better they teach while they're while they're there they're teaching and then also one of their teachings is that they go because although they're very helpful when they're there the teaching of going teaches something that they can't teach when they're there there's certain things you can't learn from somebody when they're present so they go but uh they are still just buddha for that

[47:42]

They have their role of Buddha just for that time and then that function. So it's not that they go someplace, but rather that the helpfulness, compassion does that. And it does it in pulses, and each time it does it, it has a certain name. It's not an identity. From our point of view of having an identity, we approach that as much as we are just helping being. rather than we're an identity and we're just totally helping being then we're like that too we just come and go apparently and the apparentness is only the only reason why we apparently do it is because it's helpful to apparently do it we don't really believe in the apparent coming or the apparent going when we can see that completely then we you know in other words you when you can go through this process of birth and death with detachment then your life becomes like a Buddha.

[48:44]

Or that type of living is Buddhist or Buddha-like existence. Namely, existence is only an apparent show for the benefit of beings that are also involved in apparent show but are attached to it and therefore suffer. So in that sense, Buddhas are just like grease, cosmic grease. cosmic lubrication. They just help things do what they're doing better. People are still going to be born and are still going to die, but going through this process, these apparent changes, to have beings that go through it just to help others go through it, seems to make it all the better. The conceiving of the next existence is done in the intermediate existence.

[49:58]

However, the karma that projects you in the intermediate existence and makes you inclined towards conceiving it in a certain way is done prior to that. existence is apparent appears to be not so much a chance to change the way you have been if you've been thinking a certain way if there if I mean we say if you have been okay allow me to say if you have been but I won't always say it but anyway if consciousness has been if consciousness imagines certain things by imagining certain things certain active forms of imagination certain patterns of consciousness called thinking uh once done once done means that now at this moment I imagine that they're once done okay once done doesn't mean once done then you can do it again but once done means right now I think once done other words I think I have done other words I have a memory

[51:25]

capacity of consciousness which remembers that i used to do this which means that right now i think i did it if i think i did it and i think i did it a lot then i think i'm going to do it again or i certainly i feel that i certainly can do it again so if i think i've been doing it if now i think i've done this a lot then i'm also able to think i can continue to do it if i'm in an intermediate realm and i think i done such and such a type of thinking a lot then i can think i can think it more i feel qualified to continue that type of thought therefore if you come into intermediate realm with a certain idea or if you are an intermediate realm with a certain idea of your past thoughts of what kind of a karmic habits you have then that will incline you towards a certain type of rebirth because you use the equipment you have you have to use it you use some equipment be reborn and you use the equipment you think you have now if you think you have no equipment you think you never thought anything before that's another kind of habit in other words it's not just that you have no idea to be free does not mean you have no idea of your past no because that's an idea of your past in other words to look back and say i never thought a thought before that would be a good one where do you think you'd wind up if you did that where do you think you'd wind up

[52:54]

You wouldn't be a rotisserie. Where would you be? Animal. You'd wind up to be an animal if you thought that way. That won't help. That trick won't work. The one that works is, in the intermediate realm, you see whatever you see. I have these sets of habits that I imagine I have. And you see through them. Then you can be born whatever way you want. including to be born a human in a very good situation whatever way you want because you can you can dream up whatever conception you want you know you say i have the ability to conceive i can think i can think whatever i want and this is what i have thought but this is just what i have thought i can i could have thought something else as a matter of fact watch i'll think i i'll think that something else see now i change what i thought i had thought i can re i can reimagine constantly what my past thoughts have been i can reimagine constantly what my habits have been anyway that's what my habits are they are the ones i think i have and now the ones i think i'm going to have or the birth i think i'm going to take is this one when you have that ability to see through your habits that you always think you have because you have the ability to remember you have the ability to think of the future you have the ability to conceive of the present since you have that ability what is the nature of your ability now to say you don't have it is is just a trick an animal trick

[54:22]

wish that you had something else other than what you did have and be angry at yourself that will send you to hell that's in other words you imagine that you've committed great sins that will send you to hell because you imagine I've killed many people therefore I know I can kill many more so or I've been I've been trying always to have more and more pleasure I've always tried to have better and better pleasure therefore you go to hungry ghost or you imagine yourself as as a as being very good you know very very good very very excellent meditator i was always extremely concentrated i was always attending very high yogic states go to heaven or i was trying to attain fairly high states but i never really did it and so on and so forth and i did some bad things but not too bad and you know i'm sort of confused and you go to human but if you understand if you can put on any of those shows And know that they're just shows.

[55:25]

And remake show after show after show and see through each one. Then you're a bodhisattva and you can go wherever you want and do whatever you want and save beings in any realm. And you know exactly how long, if you go to some realm, you know exactly how long you'll be there. And you know what it'll be like because it'll be like what you think. So you know exactly what it's like. However, you do not predict what will happen. You cannot predict what will happen, but you know the type of existence you're going to get into. That's not the same as, say, you know it's going to happen. Your expectation still won't hold up to what happens, but you still know the type of existence you're going to go into because, in fact, that's the way you think. It's not the way it is, it's the way you think. Okay? These are called the four, in several sutras, this is Abhidharma, right?

[56:27]

Abhidharma supposedly gets its material from culling it from the sutras. And in this sutra, which is the Diga Nikaya, Roman numeral three, one or three, it talks about, it's a sutra that teaches things in ones and twos and threes and fours and fives and sixes and sevens and eights and nines and tens. So under fours, Four modes of what they call descension. You know, ascension and descension. Or four modes of coming into incarnation. Moreover, Lord, this too is unsurpassable. The way namely in which the exalted one teaches the norm concerning the method, the descension at rebirth. There are four modes of descension. Thus, who descends into the mother's womb unknowingly abides there unknowingly and departs unknowingly this is the first mode next is one who enters into the mother's womb knowingly persists there and departs then unknowingly this is the second mode again one descends and persists knowingly but departs unknowingly this is the third mode again one descends into the mother's womb knowingly persists there knowingly and departs then knowingly

[57:50]

This is the fourth mode of dissension. Unsurpassable, Lord, is this concerning dissension at rebirth. In other words, that's really a good teaching that you have there on that. Now, in this Theravada text, it says that the four modes are held by Buddha Gosia to be the mental evolution at rebirth of, first of all, human beings generally, are born unknowingly, they abide unknowingly, and are born unknowingly. That's most human beings, what we call prataginas, non-people that haven't entered the Buddhist path. Two, the second category is the 80 great terras, 80 great elders of Buddhism. Fourth is the two chief disciples of any Buddha, pratyekha Buddhas, and bodhisattvas. beginning bodhisattvas.

[58:52]

And three is the omniscient bodhisattvas, that is, bodhisattvas that are in their last rebirth. These are given by Buddha Gosha. So the ones who take birth this way are ones who died very consciously and were not, probably were almost entirely unconfused by the process of death. Maybe they made a few mistakes, but now they've learned from the few mistakes they made the last time out, and now when they come in they're making no more mistakes. None of that stuff is confusing them. No.

[60:05]

I don't think so. I think it means, if you are totally conscious through the death, I would suggest that it may, there's various possibilities, but I would say that it might be that the first time anywhere you went through the birth conscious, the birth, I don't know which is first. the first time you go through the birth one knowingly at the three phases might be the time that just follows the last time you went through the death making some mistakes okay now you could say the first time you go through the death phase making no mistake would follow the birth where you the last birth where you made just a tiny mistake okay at some point either during one birth or death some point in where you'll stop you'll stop spacing out and you'll follow the whole process but at one point you might almost make it on a birth or on a death and then in the next birth or in the next death you'll stay conscious the whole time okay so but this if you if you've already i would suggest that if you've already been born consciously once then probably that follows a death where you're totally conscious

[61:32]

Now, the people who are not born totally conscious, they may have died totally conscious, but they also may have died and similarly missed some point in the death process. Some part of it confused them. And so some parts of the birth phase confuse them. Or they can't stay with it somehow. They can't believe. Because there's still some attachment. You see, the basic thing is that if there's any attachment to self, when you go through these tremendous changes you can't you can't hang on you know because you're trying to hold on to this and here you have these fantastic changes happening so for example uh at conception all right so if you turn to the uh right after that it has the kalala okay the our buddha Hesan and the Gana and the Prashaka, okay?

[62:42]

These are the five, these are the five, these aren't Buddhist. These are common, not commonly known, but known to yogis in India at the time of Buddha and before, five embryonic stages. can you find those and these five embryonic stages uh you know i don't i couldn't find i don't have a book on them how do they translate them what i haven't translated is kalala is the first embryonic stage which persists which consists of blood and semen and this is uh the time shortly after conception. Our Buddha means a long cylindrical mass.

[63:48]

And this is supposedly in the second half of the first month or in the beginning of the second month. Pessin is more like a glob or piece of flesh. And it also means muscle. And this is the fetus a little bit later in the process. And the gana means compact, hard, or solid. Any compact mass of substances. And it's in the second month, later part of the second month still. And the prasaka means literally having great branches. What?

[64:56]

Having great branches, big branches. And this is the phase in the embryo where the hands and feet become articulated. So once again, probably through various miscarriages over the years, they found these babies at these various stages, at various points in the pregnancy, and they have these four, at least these five basic stages that they figured out. All right. Now, what did they say there? Okay. Do they translate those phases? Do they have Sanskrit? Before this, you know, it's interesting. Everything's sort of mixed together, but I think it's all right. The first stage of conception is like this. This is the zygote or the kalala.

[66:03]

This is the first idea that you have about it. zygote, we call it zygote, fertilized eggs. This is the semen. They didn't know about in those days, I guess, eggs, and eggs are pretty small, and sperms are really quite tiny. Maybe certain yogis knew, but anyway, popular knowledge didn't know that there was actually sperms in eggs. What they thought was just, all they knew about was semen, because you know semen is not the sperm. Semen is the carrier of the sperms. Sperms are actually a tiny part of what the male contributes. even though there's 250,000 of them or something often. Then the blood is the mother's, the egg is in the midst of lots of stuff too. So the egg is in the midst of mother's tissue, or actually it says literally impure substances of the mother.

[67:10]

Indian chauvinism was down on women's areas around there. And the males, contributions. Anyway, they get together somehow. And in that situation is the being conceived in there. So this is the idea that you actually conceive. Shortly after that, you get a different idea. You get this idea. That's a big change in your ideas. Most people probably give up right there. other words you conceive you conceived of a type of thinking that when it incarnates it incarnates like this and then shortly after it does this you did that but you didn't know so you met if you have a self-concept and you map it onto this you don't know it's going to go to this so you give up do you understand what

[68:19]

What's the what? The point of two-celled organisms. So you first conceive in a zygote form. Then the concept gets split into two. And if you have attachment to self and you put it down to here and you say, oh, this is it, then what are you going to do here? And then as you know, the next thing that happens is this. Which is a tetrahebron. First you have a point, then you have a line, then you have a tetrahedron. And then you go to 8, and 12, and so on. And at a certain point, it involutes. It gives two surfaces because at a certain point, I guess it's at 60, you can no longer make one surface out of it. It has to sort of unfold on itself. And then after that, it spreads out into a line. And that's the phase where it gets to be a cylinder with a primitive streak down it. with all these changes these are changes in concept these are concept these are numbers they're numbers it's basically numbers it's ideas and you can't keep up with the changes if you identify with one then you have two then you have four and even if you could follow that arithmetic stuff pretty soon it stops being arithmetic

[69:51]

Or this is geometrical, too. Either way, you can't figure out. It's too complicated. You think, well, I'm staying with it, and all of a sudden it unfolds. What do you do then? Pretty soon it's this nice big sphere, and then all of a sudden it collapses on itself, and then it stretches out. It's hard to stay with it. It's all conceptual, though. It's perfectly conceptual. You can sit down and it's mathematical. However, it's hard to have an attachment to self to this concept. As a matter of fact, it's impossible. As a matter of fact, the scientists or mathematicians that figured this out had no attachment to self. They had a breakthrough when they saw that. They let go of their idea of self. There's so many possibilities. You couldn't figure this out, what they've learned by an attachment to self. They broke through, they concentrated, and they let go, and they saw how that happened. if you can do that you can stay with this process it's a conceptual process but if you attach to the concept you wouldn't be able to follow it however if you do if you're not attached to anything here you can follow it quite easily just like i can get up here and do the mathematics of it and you can follow it but if you attach at any phase at the spherical space and you say oh now i understand that's it and you and you map onto that and you see it growing like this

[71:17]

you wouldn't be able to stand it with it in folds you wouldn't be able to follow it if you attach to it but if you don't attach to it then i could explain how why it has to be and you say oh that's beautiful as a matter of fact when somebody's explaining how the cells evolved to you geometrically and number wise you can follow it because you're not attached but if you had given an answer before you've done the problem yourself and given an answer and then somebody else came up and said it differently you might you might be attached to your answer right and have trouble understanding their breakthrough, their mathematical breakthrough. Well, it's the same thing with your body. You actually have some kind of mathematical understanding, and you follow along either one step or two steps or ten steps, but at a certain point, if you attach to your understanding at all, you lose it, and there's a conflict, and then you're not conscious anymore. Conscious means that you actually see what's happening, that the idea that you have of it is the idea that it is it is an idea this is an idea is your idea this idea if your idea is this idea you are conscious if your idea is this and it changes to eight then you're unconscious because you don't even know the idea you have okay so the process of birth from the very beginning all the way through is a conscious evolution this is conscious evolution

[72:48]

being aware means you're aware of your conscious evolution and if you don't watch how consciousness evolves on this material base then you're called not knowing and so if you can study this process get a biology book watch how the cells do it and study it and then follow your mind studying it follow your mind and see if you can follow the process if you can you're training yourself at birth and death all this stuff then uh Keith Critchlow is a guy who visited here a while ago he's done this thing on embryology and also on geometry and also shown how this is perfectly reflected in for example at the front of medieval churches the way they're organized is embryology embryology is the same as ascension into divinity because all you do is you follow the embryology if you follow the embryology you can follow the ascension into divinity which is just following conscious evolution just staying with the way your mind is thinking is basically it so that's what the whole thing is is you stay with the way the mind is functioning but now we're coming into the mind functioning in this strange realm where it it now disentangles itself it withdraws itself from

[74:16]

physical support. In other words, consciousness withdraws in its relationships with a physical base. And then it goes into another realm where it has a body, but a body that's not evolved like... That's the thing about intermediate incarnation is that it's so simple. You can follow it. But then again, when you come out of the intermediate realm, you go into a much more complicated transition. And it's very hard to follow it. And then... when you come out of that, if you've been able to stay with this stuff, then you can stay with the day-to-day, but apparently, percentage-wise, smaller changes in your body. Your body's constantly changing, just like it's constantly changing here, but it seems like the scale is smaller. Here it seems like it's twice different. It's 50% different. Whereas now, the difference is complete and yet it's not really 50 percent it's 100 but not quite as different as one self and two cells you can stay with that you might be able to stay with this this change and as exercise because we don't have the big changes that we used to have and we're going to soon have big changes like we used to have pretty soon it's recommended that you actually force yourself

[75:44]

try on thinking about big change that's what this is about it's asking you to even though you're not going through these big changes why don't you open this book and read about these big changes and think about these big changes that they're talking about here at death and think about the big changes that they're talking about at life at birth see if you can see the relevance of thinking about this if you can see how this is relevant to your life here and in fact the teaching is that you actually go through the same thing you go through it very quickly many times during your life this is in a sense a grosser and slower process of what we're doing already in daily life but there we we we don't have the advantages that we have now now we have all kinds of yogic advice yogic instruction about how to stay alert enough to follow the same processes that occurs many times during this life but it happens faster so it's harder to follow you have to be sharper but you can be sharper because you can repeat the same experiment again and [...] again so the first few million times you do it you'll miss it but here you only get this is a one time a body trip this thing and so is death but you can practice

[77:12]

birth and death, many times during the lifetime, so that you can, when you get to this phase, you'll be well conditioned at following change, at staying with the evolution of your concepts, the evolution of your consciousness, by doing repetitive experimentation until you can stay with one particular experiment all the way through. So, in other words, study Abhidharma until you thoroughly understand it, In other words, thoroughly make it relevant and actually can experience this. So, as I was saying, just as when you die, you go through these seven phases or eight phases. When you go to sleep, you go through these two. And when you dream, you go through these two. And when you come out of the dream, you go through them. And when you wake up, you go through them. When you go to sleep, you go from ordinary images, ordinary concepts, to white light. When you have a dream, you go from white light to ordinary images.

[78:17]

When you come out of the dream, you go from ordinary images to white light. And when you wake up, you go from white light back to ordinary images. So in a dream you go, you die, you're reborn, you die, and you're reborn again, and then you're back out. just right where you are you're doing zazen so you don't have to do any of this stuff if you don't want to this is this is an approximation to just being able to sit if you can just sit you do all this okay so our teaching is the teaching that you get at 8 30 zazen instruction here and teaching that you do when you're a perfectly adept zen master are the same teaching and in between

[79:28]

you want to you can get into some of this other stuff to see if this makes sense to you but it's just buddhist practice not this event this is what happens to you anyway buddhist practices can you get if this happens to you can you stay with it so our practice this is what this practice is what we call sambhogakaya practice the practice of of trying to stay with these particular events and then it's more dharmakaya practice other words you just sort of go right through it okay so this is that if you look in the Tibetan look of the dead they talk about the wrathful deities and the beneficent deities and the knowledge bearers and so on these beings are the changes that you go through in the intermediate realm these beings are the that happens to you as you're in uncertain space between births okay and that's what you need to learn how to be conscious of there so all this is like it's more like it's not really zen practice exactly in zen practice more you you try to get to the source and then after you get to the source you should be able to make sense of this material but you don't have to right now yes

[80:51]

It doesn't say that they're not born in the Arupa heavens. It says that you don't, you aren't born in the Arupa heavens through intermediate being. Intermediate beings aren't born in the Arupa heavens either. Intermediate beings aren't born in, it's a question of when you get born in the Arupa Datu or the Kama Datu, you're always reborn there through intermediate being. Okay? So if you're in Kamadatu and you die in Kamadatu and you're going to be reborn in Kamadatu, you always go through intermediate realm. If you die in Kamadatu and you're going to be born in Rupadatu, then you always go through intermediate realm. If you die in Rupadatu and you're going to be reborn in Rupadatu, you go through intermediate realm. But if you're going to be reborn in Arupadatu, you do not go through intermediate realm. And that's because Rupadatu, Arupadatu has no body.

[82:13]

So as soon as you conceive, have the mind to be reborn in Rupadhatu, that's already being reborn there. See, the other realms, you die of one realm, you go into intermediate realm, and then you get reincarnated in the other realm. In this case, as soon as you think of Arupadhatu, that's it, because there's no body. So the concept of thinking that produces Arupadhatu, is is that's it that's so you don't go through it it's not that intermediate beings are not reborn in rupadhatu well it's sort of that in the sense that you don't become an intermediate being and then be reborn so people can go directly from uh rupadhatu to aripadhatu without going through intermediate except they're not people with you know arms and legs the rupadatu type of beings, or rupadatu type of gods, actually.

[83:21]

Except human beings can be those gods. Yes. I have one more question. You mentioned perfection in relation to the fire. Fire brings things to perfection. That's its characteristic. Well, heat is also its characteristic. talk about that next time but basically fire burns away imperfections and that's that's great heat so we'll continue next time with this this book by the way the section in this book on intermediate realm is pretty close to the Abhidharma Kosha. He's mostly using... It's not the Abhidharma Kosha literally, but it's Tsangkhapa's commentary on the Abhidharma Kosha.

[84:23]

So this section on intermediate being is a nice summary of the Abhidharma Kosha on intermediate being, if you want to read it. It's mixed in... There's a Mahayana Abhidharma written by a Sangha of Asubandhu's brother called Abhidharma... and it's it's a little bit different from the abhidharma kosha it's more more mahayana oriented but it's still abhidharma and a little bit of that book is mixed in with the abhidharma kosha but it's basically i think you can see it's quite close and i don't think it'll be confusing for you to read that section on intermediate realm in that book it's a good summary what it's called death intermediate realm, and rebirth. Is that it? Death, intermediate state, and rebirth. And there's some in the library, and also I think there's some paperbacks for sale.

[85:28]

If you want to read it and there's not enough in the library, just tell Mary that she can put more in the library. you get a did did you does everybody have an outline of chapter three from the yeah would somebody uh did people that took this class before have given online it's from it's from the analytical study of the abdharmakosha you didn't get it huh well i think meredith forgot anyway would you remind her to give it to you

[86:11]

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