Now when the bardo of dying is dawning upon me,

I will abandon grasping, attachment, and the all-desiring mind,

Enter undistracted the clear essence of the instructions

And transfer into the space of unborn self-awareness.

As I leave this conditioned body of flesh and blood

I will know it to be a transitory illusion.

Death is a process of dissolution, described in terms of the elements of body and mind being progressively absorbed from coarse to subtle, one by one.

It seems to be a unique and final event, yet this transformation is actually taking place all the time. All the elements that make up our existence are continuously arising and dissolving again: birth and death occur at every moment.

Whenever we have the feeling of something coming to an end or of trying to hang on to it, that is a taste of the bardo of dying.

Even when the ordinary coarse and subtle elements have dissolved, grasping continues, and so the continuity of the mind stream is kept going on a very subtle level, along with its associated karma.

It is said that at the final moment of the dissolution process, the luminosity of death appears to all sentient beings. Just before that moment, we experience the peak point of this bardo, where we are caught between the desire for continued existence and the fear of annihilation.

To the ego, there seems to be nothing besides these two alternatives; we are imprisoned by the logic of either existence or non-existence, since we have no experience of a state that transcends them both.

The confusion of most living beings is too great to face such an inconceivable dilemma, and they simply black out into unconsciousness.

The instruction given for this bardo is the practice of transference, the total transformation of one’s consciousness, at the moment just before death.

This practice can be done in several different ways, according to one’s level of understanding and experience, so that the mind merges either directly into the awakened state itself or into some particular aspect of it, to which one feels connection and devotion.

If the mind of the dead person has not been liberated in this way, it will awaken in the next bardo after a period of unconsciousness.

Source: Based on Fremantle, Francesca. Luminous Emptiness. Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

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