AS THE GROUND LUMINOSITY DAWNS AT DEATH, an experienced practitioner will maintain full awareness and merge with it, thereby attaining liberation. But if we fail to recognize the Ground Luminosity, then we encounter the next bardo, the luminous bardo of dharmata.
The teaching on the bardo of dharmata is a very special instruction, one specific to Dzogchen practice and treasured at the heart of the Dzogchen teachings over the centuries. Initially I felt some hesitation about publicly presenting this most sacred of teachings, and in fact if there had not been any precedent I might not have done so at all. However, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and a number of other books that refer to the bardo of dharmata have already been published, and have led to some naive conclusions. I feel it is extremely important, and timely, to make available a straightforward clarification of this bardo, putting it into its authentic context. I should stress that I have not gone into any detail about the advanced practices involved; none of these practices could, under any circumstances, ever be done effectively except with the instructions and guidance of a qualified master, and when the commitment and connection with that master is kept completely pure.
I have gathered insights from many different sources in order to make this chapter, which I feel is one of the most important in this book, as lucid as possible. I hope that through it some of you will make a connection with this extraordinary teaching, and be inspired to investigate further and to begin to practice yourselves.
The Sanskrit word dharmata, chö nyi in Tibetan, means the intrinsic nature of everything, the essence of things as they are. Dharmata is the naked, unconditioned truth, the nature of reality, or the true nature of phenomenal existence. What we are discussing here is something fundamental to the whole understanding of the nature of mind and the nature of everything.
The end of the dissolution process and dawning of the Ground Luminosity has opened up an entirely new dimension, which now begins to unfold. One helpful way I have found to explain it is to compare it with the way night turns into day. The final phase of the dissolution process of dying is the black experience of the stage of “full attainment.” It is described as “like a sky shrouded in darkness.” The arising of the Ground Luminosity is like the clarity in the empty sky just before dawn. Now gradually the sun of dharmata begins to rise in all its splendor, illuminating the contours of the land in all directions. The natural radiance of Rigpa manifests spontaneously and blazes out as energy and light.
Just as the sun rises in that clear and empty sky, the luminous appearances of the bardo of dharmata will all arise from the all-pervading space of the Ground Luminosity. The name we give to this display of sound, light, and color is “spontaneous presence,” for it is always and inherently present within the expanse of “primordial purity,” which is its ground.
What is actually taking place here is a process of unfoldment, in which mind and its fundamental nature are gradually becoming more and more manifest. The bardo of dharmata is one stage in that process. For it is through this dimension of light and energy that mind unfolds from its purest state, the Ground Luminosity, toward its manifestation as form in the next bardo, the bardo of becoming.
I find it extremely suggestive that modern physics has shown that when matter is investigated, it is revealed as an ocean of energy and light. “Matter, as it were, is condensed or frozen light . . . all matter is a condensation of light into patterns moving back and forth at average speeds which are less than the speed of light,” remarks David Bohm. Modern physics also understands light in a many-sided way: “It’s energy and it’s also information—content, form and structure. It’s the potential for everything.”1
The bardo of dharmata has four phases, each one of which presents another opportunity for liberation. If the opportunity is not taken, then the next phase will unfold. The explanation I am giving here of this bardo originates in the Dzogchen Tantras, where it is taught that only through the special advanced practice of luminosity, Tögal, can the true significance of the bardo of dharmata be in any real sense understood. The bardo of dharmata, then, figures with far less prominence in other cycles of teachings on death in the Tibetan tradition. Even in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which also belongs to the Dzogchen teachings, the sequence of these four phases is only implicit, as if slightly hidden, and does not appear there in such a clear and ordered structure.
I must stress, however, that all words could possibly do is give some conceptual picture of what might happen in the bardo of dharmata. The appearances of this bardo will remain just conceptual images until the practitioner has perfected the Tögal practice, when each detail of the description I am about to give becomes an undeniable personal experience. What I am trying to give you here is some sense that such a marvelous and amazing dimension could exist, and to complete my description of the whole of the bardos. I also profoundly hope that this complete description could act perhaps as some kind of reminder when you go through the process of death.
1. Luminosity—The Landscape of Light
In the bardo of dharmata, you take on a body of light. The first phase of this bardo is when “space dissolves into luminosity”:
Suddenly you become aware of a flowing vibrant world of sound, light, and color. All the ordinary features of our familiar environment have melted into an all-pervasive landscape of light. This is brilliantly clear and radiant, transparent and multicolored, unlimited by any kind of dimension or direction, shimmering and constantly in motion. The Tibetan Book of the Dead calls it “like a mirage on a plain in the heat of summer.” Its colors are the natural expression of the intrinsic elemental qualities of the mind: space is perceived as blue light, water as white, earth as yellow, fire as red, and wind as green.
How stable these dazzling appearances of light are in the bardo of dharmata depends entirely upon what stability you have managed to attain in Tögal practice. Only a real mastery of this practice will enable you to stabilize the experience and so use it to gain liberation. Otherwise the bardo of dharmata will simply flash by like a bolt of lightning; you will not even know that it has occurred. Let me stress again that only a practitioner of Tögal will be able to make the all-important recognition: that these radiant manifestations of light have no existence separate from the nature of mind.
If you are unable to recognize this as the spontaneous display of Rigpa, the simple rays and colors then begin to integrate and coalesce into points or balls of light of different sizes, called tiklé. Within them the “mandalas of the peaceful and wrathful deities” appear, as enormous spherical concentrations of light seeming to occupy the whole of space.
This is the second phase, known as “luminosity dissolving into union,” where the luminosity manifests in the form of buddhas or deities of various size, color, and form, holding different attributes. The brilliant light they emanate is blinding and dazzling, the sound is tremendous, like the roaring of a thousand thunderclaps, and the rays and beams of light are like lasers, piercing everything.
These are the “forty-two peaceful and fifty-eight wrathful deities” depicted in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. They unfold over a certain period of “days,” taking on their own characteristic mandala pattern of five-fold clusters. This is a vision that fills the whole of your perception with such intensity that if you are unable to recognize it for what it is, it appears terrifying and threatening. Sheer fear and blind panic can consume you, and you faint.
From yourself and from the deities, very fine shafts of light stream out, joining your heart with theirs. Countless luminous spheres appear in their rays, which increase and then “roll up,” as the deities all dissolve into you.
3. Wisdom
If again you fail to recognize and gain stability, the next phase unfolds, called “union dissolving into wisdom.”
Another fine shaft of light springs out from your heart and an enormous vision unfolds from it; however, every detail remains distinct and precise. This is the display of the various aspects of wisdom, which appear together in a show of unfurled carpets of light and resplendent spherical luminous tiklés:
First, on a carpet of deep blue light appear shimmering tiklés of sapphire blue, in patterns of five. Above that, on a carpet of white light, appear radiant tiklés, white like crystal. Above, on a carpet of yellow light, appear golden tiklés, and upon that a carpet of red light supports ruby red tiklés. They are crowned by a radiant sphere like an outspread canopy made of peacock feathers.
This brilliant display of light is the manifestation of the five wisdoms: wisdom of all-encompassing space, mirror-like wisdom, equalizing wisdom, wisdom of discernment, and all-accomplishing wisdom. But since the all-accomplishing wisdom is only perfected at the time of enlightenment, it does not appear yet. Therefore there is no green carpet of light and tiklés, yet it is inherent within all the other colors. What is being manifested here is our potential of enlightenment, and the all-accomplishing wisdom will only appear when we become a buddha.
If you do not attain liberation here through resting undistracted in the nature of mind, the carpets of light and their tiklés, along with your Rigpa, all dissolve into the radiant sphere of light, which is like the canopy of peacock feathers.
4. Spontaneous Presence
This heralds the final phase of the bardo of dharmata, “wisdom dissolving into spontaneous presence.” Now the whole of reality presents itself in one tremendous display. First the state of primordial purity dawns like an open, cloudless sky. Then the peaceful and wrathful deities appear, followed by the pure realms of the buddhas, and below them the six realms of samsaric existence.
The limitlessness of this vision is utterly beyond our ordinary imagination. Every possibility is presented: from wisdom and liberation to confusion and rebirth. At this point you will find yourself endowed with powers of clairvoyant perception and recollection. For example, with total clairvoyance and your senses unobstructed, you will know your past and future lives, see into others’ minds, and have knowledge of all six realms of existence. In an instant you will vividly recall whatever teachings you have heard, and even teachings you have never heard will awaken in your mind.
The entire vision then dissolves back into its original essence, like a tent collapsing once its ropes are cut.
If you have the stability to recognize these manifestations as the “self-radiance” of your own Rigpa, you will be liberated. But without the experience of Tögal practice, you will be unable to look at the visions of the deities, which are “as bright as the sun.” Instead, as a result of the habitual tendencies of your previous lives, your gaze will be drawn downward to the six realms. It is those that you will recognize and which will lure you again into delusion.
In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, periods of days are allotted to the experiences of the bardo of dharmata. These are not solar days of twenty-four hours, because in the sphere of dharmata we have gone completely beyond all limits such as time and space. These days are “meditation days,” and refer to the length of time we have been able to rest undistracted in the nature of mind, or in one single state of mind. With no stability in meditation practice, these days could be minutely short, and the appearance of the peaceful and wrathful deities so fleeting that we cannot even register they have arisen.
Now when the bardo of dharmata dawns upon me,
I will abandon all fear and terror,
I will recognize whatever appears as the display of my own Rigpa,
And know it to be the natural appearance of this bardo;
Now that I have reached this crucial point,
I will not fear the peaceful and wrathful deities, that arise from the nature of my very own mind.
The key to understanding this bardo is that all the experiences that take place in it are the natural radiance of the nature of our mind. What is happening is that different aspects of its enlightened energy are being released. Just as the dancing rainbows of light scattered by a crystal are its natural display, so too the dazzling appearances of dharmata cannot be separated from the nature of mind. They are its spontaneous expression. So however terrifying the appearances may be, says the Tibetan Book of the Dead, they have no more claim on your fear than a stuffed lion.
Strictly speaking, however, it would be wrong to call these appearances “visions” or even “experiences,” because vision and experience depend upon a dualistic relationship between a perceiver and something perceived. If we can recognize the appearances of the bardo of dharmata as the wisdom energy of our very own mind, there is no difference between perceiver and perceived, and this is an experience of non-duality. To enter into that experience completely is to attain liberation. For, as Kalu Rinpoche says, “Liberation arises at that moment in the after-death state when consciousness can realize its experiences to be nothing other than mind itself.”2
However, now that we are no longer grounded or shielded by a physical body or world, the energies of the nature of mind released in the bardo state can look overwhelmingly real, and appear to take on an objective existence. They seem to inhabit the world outside of us. And without the stability of practice, we have no knowledge of anything that is non-dual, that is not dependent on our own perception. Once we mistake the appearances as separate from us, as “external visions,” we respond with fear or hope, which leads us into delusion.
Just as in the dawning of the Ground Luminosity recognition was the key to liberation, so here in the bardo of dharmata it is also. Only here it is the recognition of the self-radiance of Rigpa, the manifesting energy of the nature of mind, that makes the difference between liberation or continuing in an uncontrolled cycle of rebirth. Take, for example, the appearances of the hundred peaceful and wrathful deities, which occur in the second phase of this bardo. These consist of the buddhas of the five buddha families, their female counterparts, male and female bodhisattvas, the buddhas of the six realms, and a number of wrathful and protective deities. All emerge amidst the brilliant light of the five wisdoms.
How are we to understand these buddhas or deities? “Each one of these pure forms expresses an enlightened perspective of a part of our impure experience.”3 The five masculine buddhas are the pure aspect of the five aggregates of ego. Their five wisdoms are the pure aspect of the five negative emotions. The five female buddhas are the pure elemental qualities of mind, which we experience as the impure elements of our physical body and environment. The eight bodhisattvas are the pure aspect of the different types of consciousness, and their female counterparts are the objects of these consciousnesses.
Whether the pure vision of the buddha families and their wisdoms manifests, or the impure vision of the aggregates and negative emotions arises, they are intrinsically the same in their fundamental nature. The difference lies in how we recognize them, and whether we recognize that they emerge from the ground of the nature of mind as its enlightened energy.
Take, for example, what manifests in our ordinary mind as a thought of desire; if its true nature is recognized, it arises, free of grasping, as the “wisdom of discernment.” Hatred and anger, when truly recognized, arise as diamond-like clarity, free of grasping; this is the “mirror-like wisdom.” When ignorance is recognized, it arises as vast and natural clarity without concepts: the “wisdom of all-encompassing space.” Pride, when recognized, is realized as non-duality and equality: the “equalizing wisdom.” Jealousy, when recognized, is freed from partiality and grasping, and arises as the “all-accomplishing wisdom.” So the five negative emotions arise as the direct result of our not recognizing their true nature. When truly recognized, they are purified and liberated, and arise themselves as none other than the display of the five wisdoms.
In the bardo of dharmata, when you fail to recognize the brilliant lights of these wisdoms, then self-grasping enters your “perception,” just as, one master says, a person who is seriously ill with a high fever will begin to hallucinate and see all kinds of delusions. So, for example, if you fail to recognize the red, ruby light of the wisdom of discernment, it arises as fire, for it is the pure essence of the fire element; if you fail to recognize the true nature of the golden radiance of the equalizing wisdom, then it arises as the element earth, because it is the pure essence of the earth element; and so on.
This is how, when self-grasping enters into the “perception” of the appearances of the bardo of dharmata, they are transformed, you could almost say solidified, through that into the various bases of delusion of samsara.
One Dzogchen master uses the example of ice and water to show how this lack of recognition and self-grasping unfold: Water is usually liquid, an element with wonderful qualities, that purifies and quenches thirst. But when it freezes, it solidifies into ice. In a similar way, whenever self-grasping arises it solidifies both our inner experience and the way we perceive the world around us. Yet just as in the heat of the sun ice will melt into water, so in the light of recognition, our unbound wisdom nature is revealed.
Now we can see exactly how, after the dawning of the Ground Luminosity and the bardo of dharmata, samsara actually arises as a result of two successive failures to recognize the essential nature of mind. In the first the Ground Luminosity, the ground of the nature of mind, is not recognized; if it had been, liberation would have been attained. In the second the energy nature of the nature of mind manifests, and a second chance for liberation presents itself; if that is not recognized, arising negative emotions start to solidify into different false perceptions, which together go on to create the illusory realms we call samsara, and which imprison us in the cycle of birth and death. The whole of spiritual practice, then, is dedicated to directly reversing what I would call this progress of ignorance, and so of de-creating, de-solidifying those interlinked and interdependent false perceptions that have led to our entrapment in the illusory reality of our own invention.
Just as when the Ground Luminosity dawned at the moment of death, here too in the bardo of dharmata, liberation cannot be taken for granted. When the brilliant light of wisdom shines out, it is accompanied by a display of simple, comforting, cozy sounds and lights, less challenging and overwhelming than the light of wisdom. These dim lights—smoky, yellow, green, blue, red, and white—are our habitual, unconscious tendencies accumulated by anger, greed, ignorance, desire, jealousy, and pride. These are the emotions that create the six realms of samsara: hell, hungry ghost, animal, human, demigod, and god realms, respectively.
If we have not recognized and stabilized the dharmata nature of mind in life, we are instinctively drawn toward the dim lights of the six realms, as the basic tendency toward grasping, which we have built up during life, begins to stir and awaken. Threatened by the dynamic brilliance of wisdom, the mind retreats. The cozy lights, the invitation of our habitual tendencies, lure us toward a rebirth, determined by the particular negative emotion that dominates our karma and our mindstream.
Let us take an example of the appearance of one of the peaceful buddhas from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which will illustrate this whole process. The master or spiritual friend addresses the consciousness of the dead person:
O son/daughter of an enlightened family, listen without distraction!
On the third day, a yellow light will arise which is the pure essence of the element earth. Simultaneously, from the yellow southern buddha field known as “The Glorious,” the Buddha Ratnasambhava will appear before you, his body yellow in color, and holding a wish-fulfilling jewel in his hand. He presides upon a throne borne up by horses and is embraced by the supreme female consort, Mamaki. Around him are the two male bodhisattvas, Akashagarbha and Samantabhadra,4 and the two female bodhisattvas, Mala and Dhupa, so that six buddha bodies appear from within the expanse of rainbow light.
The inherent purity of the skandha of feeling—which is the “equalizing wisdom”—a yellow light, dazzling and adorned with tiklés of light, large and small, radiant and clear, and unbearable to the eyes, will stream toward you from the heart of Ratnasambhava and his consort, and pierce your heart so that your eyes cannot stand to gaze at it.
At exactly the same time, together with the light of wisdom, a dull blue light representing the human realm will come toward you and pierce your heart. Then, driven by pride, you will flee in terror from the intensity of the yellow light, but delight in the dim blue light of the human realm, and so become attached to it.
At this moment do not be afraid of the piercing yellow light, in all its dazzling radiance, but recognize it as wisdom. Let your Rigpa rest in it, relaxed, at ease, in a state free of any activity. And have confidence in it; have devotion and longing towards it. If you recognize it as the natural radiance of your own Rigpa, even though you do not have devotion and have not said the necessary prayer of inspiration, all the buddha bodies and rays of light will merge inseparably with you, and you will attain buddhahood.
If you do not recognize it as the natural radiance of your own Rigpa, then pray to it with devotion, thinking, “This is the light of the compassionate energy of Buddha Ratnasambhava. I take refuge in it.” Since it is in fact the Buddha Ratnasambhava coming to guide you amid the terrors of the bardo, and it is the light-ray hook of his compassionate energy, so fill your heart with devotion to it.
Do not delight in the dim blue light of the human realm. This is the seductive path of habitual tendencies which you have accumulated through intense pride. If you are attached to it you will fall into the human realm, where you will experience the suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death, and you will miss the chance to emerge from the swamp of samsara. This (dull blue light) is an obstacle blocking the path to liberation, so do not look at it, but abandon pride! Abandon its habitual tendencies! Do not be attached (to the dull blue light)! Do not yearn for it! Feel devotion and longing for the dazzling, radiant yellow light, focus with total attention on the Buddha Ratnasmabhava, and say this prayer:
Alas!
When through intense pride I wander in samsara,
May the Buddha Ratnasambhava lead the way
On the radiant path of light which is the “equalizing wisdom,”
May the supreme female consort Mamaki walk behind me;
May they help me through the dangerous pathway of the bardo,
And bring me to the perfect buddha state.
By saying this prayer of inspiration with deep devotion, you will dissolve into rainbow light in the heart of the Buddha Ratnasambhava and his consort and become a Sambhogakaya Buddha5 in the southern buddha-field known as “The Glorious.”
This description of the appearance of the Buddha Ratnasambhava concludes by explaining that through this “showing” by the master or spiritual friend, liberation is certain, however weak the dead person’s capacities may be. Yet, even after being “shown” many times, the Tibetan Book of the Dead says, there are those who, because of negative karma, will not recognize and gain liberation. Disturbed by desire and obscurations and terrified by the different sounds and lights, they will flee. So, on the following “day,” the next buddha, Amitabha, the Buddha of Limitless Light, with his mandala of deities, will appear in all the splendor of his dazzling red light, manifesting together with the dim, seductive, yellow light-path of the hungry ghosts, which is created out of desire and meanness. And so the Tibetan Book of the Dead introduces the appearance of each of the peaceful and wrathful deities in turn in a similar way.
I am often asked: “Will the deities appear to a Western person? And if so, will it be in familiar, Western forms?”
The manifestations of the bardo of dharmata are called “spontaneously present.” This means that they are inherent and unconditioned, and exist in us all. Their arising is not dependent on any spiritual realization we may have; only the recognition of them is. They are not unique to Tibetans; they are a universal and fundamental experience, but the way they are perceived depends on our conditioning. Since they are by nature limitless, they have the freedom then to manifest in any form.
Therefore the deities can take on forms we are most familiar with in our lives. For example, for Christian practitioners, the deities might take the form of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Generally, the whole purpose of the enlightened manifestation of the buddhas is to help us, so they may take on whatever form is most appropriate and beneficial for us. But in whatever form the deities appear, it is important to recognize that there is definitely no difference whatsoever in their fundamental nature.
In Dzogchen it is explained that just as a person will not recognize the Ground Luminosity without a true realization of the nature of mind and a stable experience of Trekchö practice, so without the stability of Tögal hardly anyone can recognize the bardo of dharmata. An accomplished Tögal practitioner who has perfected and stabilized the luminosity of the nature of mind has already come to a direct knowledge in his or her life of the very same manifestations that will emerge in the bardo of dharmata. This energy and light, then, lie within us, although at the moment they are hidden. Yet when the body and grosser levels of mind die, they are naturally freed, and the sound, color, and light of our true nature blaze out.
However, it is not only through Tögal that this bardo can be used as an opportunity for liberation. Practitioners of Tantra in Buddhism will relate the appearances of the bardo of dharmata to their own practice. In Tantra the principle of deities is a way of communicating. It is difficult to relate to the presence of enlightened energies if they have no form or ground for personal communication. The deities are understood as metaphors, which personalize and capture the infinite energies and qualities of the wisdom mind of the buddhas. Personifying them in the form of deities enables the practitioner to recognize them and relate to them. Through training in creating and reabsorbing the deities in the practice of visualization, he or she realizes that the mind that perceives the deity and the deity itself are not separate.
In Tibetan Buddhism practitioners will have a yidam, that is, a practice of a particular buddha or deity with which they have a strong karmic connection, which for them is an embodiment of the truth, and which they invoke as the heart of their practice. Instead of perceiving the appearances of the dharmata as external phenomena, the Tantric practitioners will relate them to their yidam practice, and unite and merge with the appearances. Since in their practice they have recognized the yidam as the natural radiance of the enlightened mind, they are able to view the appearances with this recognition, and let them arise as the deity. With this pure perception, a practitioner recognizes whatever appears in the bardo as none other than the display of the yidam. Then, through the power of his practice and the blessing of the deity, he or she will gain liberation in the bardo of dharmata.
This is why in the Tibetan tradition the advice given to laypeople and ordinary practitioners unfamiliar with the yidam practice is that whatever appearances arise, they should consider them, and recognize them immediately and essentially as Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of Compassion, or Padmasambhava, or Amitabha—whichever they have been most familiar with. To put it briefly, whichever way you have practiced in life will be the very same way by which you try to recognize the appearances of the bardo of dharmata.
Another revealing way of looking at the bardo of dharmata is to see it as duality being expressed in its ultimately purest form. We are presented with the means to liberation, yet we are simultaneously seduced by the call of our habits and instincts. We experience the pure energy of mind, and its confusion at one and the same time. It is almost as if we were being prompted to make up our mind—to choose between one or the other. It goes without saying, however, that whether we even have this choice at all is determined by the degree and perfection of our spiritual practice in life.