SO OFTEN IN THE MODERN WORLD when someone dies, one of the deepest sources of anguish for those left behind to mourn is their conviction that there is nothing they can now do to help their loved one who has gone, a conviction that only aggravates and darkens the loneliness of their grief. But this is not true. There are many, many ways we can help the dead, and so help ourselves to survive their absence. One of the unique features of Buddhism, and one of the ways in which the omniscient skill and compassion of the buddhas is most profoundly demonstrated, is in the many special practices available to help a dead person, and so also comfort the bereaved. The Tibetan Buddhist vision of life and death is an all-encompassing one, and it shows us clearly that there are ways of helping people in every conceivable situation, since there are no barriers whatever between what we call “life” and what we call “death.” The radiant power and warmth of the compassionate heart can reach out to help in all states and all realms.
The bardo of becoming, as it has already been described, may seem a very disturbed and disturbing time. Yet there is great hope in it. The qualities of the mental body during the bardo of becoming that make it so vulnerable—its clarity, mobility, sensitivity, and clairvoyance—also make it particularly receptive to help from the living. The fact that it has no physical form or basis makes it very easy to guide. The Tibetan Book of the Dead compares the mental body to a horse, which can be readily controlled by a bridle, or to a huge tree trunk, which may be almost immovable on land, yet once floated in water can be effortlessly directed wherever you wish.
The most powerful time to do spiritual practice for someone who has died is during the forty-nine days of the bardo of becoming, placing special emphasis on the first twenty-one days. It is during these first three weeks that the dead have a stronger link with this life, which makes them more accessible to our help. So it is then that spiritual practice has a far greater possibility of influencing their future, and of affecting their chances for liberation, or at least a better rebirth. We should employ every means possible to help them then, as after the physical form of their next existence begins gradually to be determined—and this is said to happen between the twenty-first and forty-ninth day after death—the chance for real change is very much more limited.
Help for the dead, however, is not confined to the forty-nine days after death. It is never too late to help someone who has died, no matter how long ago it was. The person you want to help may have been dead a hundred years, but it will still be of benefit to practice for them. Dudjom Rinpoche used to say that even if someone has gained enlightenment and become a buddha, they will still need all the assistance they can possibly get in their work of helping others.
The best and easiest way to help a dead person is to do the essential practice of phowa I have taught in Chapter 13, “Spiritual Help for the Dying,” as soon as we hear that someone has died.
In Tibet we say that just as it is the nature of fire to burn and of water to quench thirst, the nature of the buddhas is to be present as soon as anyone invokes them, so infinite is their compassionate desire to help all sentient beings. Don’t for one moment imagine that it would be less effective for you to invoke the truth to help your dead friend than if a “holy man” prays for them. Because you are close to the person who has died, the intensity of your love and the depth of your connection will give your invocation an added power. The masters have assured us: Call out to them, and the buddhas will answer you.
Khandro Tsering Chödrön, the spiritual wife of Jamyang Khyentse, often says that if you really have a good heart, and really mean well, and then pray for someone, that prayer will be very effective. So be confident that if someone you love very much has died, and you pray for them with true love and sincerity, your prayer will be exceptionally powerful.
The best and most effective time to do the phowa is before the body is touched or moved in any way. If this is not possible, then try to do the phowa in the place where the person died, or at least picture that place very strongly in your mind. There is a powerful connection between the dead person, the place of death, and also the time of death, especially in the case of a person who died in a traumatic way.
In the bardo of becoming, as I have said, the dead person’s consciousness goes through the experience of death every week, on exactly the same day. So you should perform the phowa, or whatever other spiritual practice you have chosen to do, on any day of the forty-nine-day period, but especially on the same day of the week that the person died.
Whenever your dead relative or friend comes into your mind, whenever you hear his or her name being mentioned, send the person your love, then focus on doing the phowa, and do it for as long and as often as you wish.
Another thing you can do, whenever you think of someone who has died, is to say immediately a mantra such as OM MANI PADME HUM (pronounced by Tibetans: Om Mani Pémé Hung), the mantra of the Buddha of Compassion, which purifies each of the negative emotions that are the cause of rebirth;1 or OM AMI DEWA HRIH, the mantra of Buddha Amitabha, the Buddha of Limitless Light. You can then follow that again with the practice of phowa.
But whether you do any of these practices or not to help your loved one who has died, don’t ever forget that the consciousness in the bardo is acutely clairvoyant; simply directing good thoughts toward them will be most beneficial.
When you pray for someone who was close to you, you can, if you wish, extend the embrace of your compassion to include other dead people in your prayers: the victims of atrocities, wars, disasters, and famines, or those who died and are now dying in concentration camps, such as those in China and Tibet. You can even pray for people who died years ago, like your grandparents, long-dead members of your family, or victims of wars, such as those in the World Wars. Imagine your prayers going especially to those who lost their lives in extreme anguish, passion, or anger.
Those who have suffered violent or sudden death have a particularly urgent need for help. Victims of murder, suicide, accident, or war can easily be trapped by their suffering, anguish, and fear, or may be imprisoned in the actual experience of death and so be unable to move on through the process of rebirth. When you practice the phowa for them, do it more strongly and with more fervor than you have ever done it before:
Imagine tremendous rays of light emanating from the buddhas or divine beings, pouring down all their compassion and blessing. Imagine this light streaming down onto the dead person, totally purifying and freeing them from the confusion and pain of their death, granting them profound, lasting peace. Imagine then, with all your heart and mind, that the dead person dissolves into light and his or her consciousness, healed now and free of all suffering, soars up to merge indissolubly, and forever, with the wisdom mind of the buddhas.
Some Western people who recently visited Tibet told me about the following incident they had witnessed. One day a Tibetan walking by the side of the road was knocked over and killed instantly by a Chinese truck. A monk, who happened to be passing, quickly went over and sat next to the dead man lying on the ground. They saw the monk lean over him and recite some practice or other close to his ear; suddenly, to their astonishment, the dead man revived. The monk then performed a practice they recognized as the transference of consciousness, and guided him back calmly into death. What had happened? Clearly the monk had recognized that the violent shock of the man’s death had left him terribly disturbed, and so the monk had acted swiftly: first to free the dead man’s mind from its distress, and then, by means of the phowa, to transfer it to a buddha realm or toward a good rebirth. To the Westerners who were watching, this monk seemed to be just an ordinary person, but this remarkable story shows that he was in fact a practitioner of considerable power.
Meditation practices and prayers are not the only kind of help we can give to the dead. We can offer charity in their name to help the sick and needy. We can give their possessions to the poor. We can contribute, on their behalf, to humanitarian or spiritual ventures such as hospitals, aid projects, hospices, or monasteries.
We could also sponsor retreats by good spiritual practitioners, or prayer meetings led by great masters in sacred places, like Bodhgaya. We could offer lights for the dead person, or sponsor works of art related to spiritual practice. Another method of helping the dead, especially favored in Tibet and the Himalayas, is to save the lives of animals due to be slaughtered, and release them again into freedom.
It is important to dedicate all the merit and well-being that spring from any such acts of kindness and generosity to the dead person, and in fact to all those who have died, so that everyone who has died may obtain a better rebirth and favorable circumstances in their next life.
Remember, the clairvoyant consciousness of the person in the bardo of becoming is seven times clearer than in life. This can bring them either great suffering or great benefit.
So it is essential that after someone you love has died, you are as aware as possible in all your behavior, so as not to disturb or hurt them. For when the dead person returns to those left behind, or those invited to practice on their behalf, they are able, in their new state of being, not only to see what is going on but to read minds directly. If relatives are only scheming and quarreling about how to divide up their possessions, only talking and thinking of attachment and aversion, with no real love for the dead person, this can cause them intense anger and hurt or disillusion, and they will then be drawn by these turbulent emotions into an unfortunate rebirth.
For example, imagine if a dead person saw spiritual practitioners supposedly practicing for him but with no sincere thought in their minds for his benefit, and with their minds preoccupied with trivial distractions; the dead person could lose any faith he might ever have had. Imagine too if a dead person had to watch her loved ones distraught and helpless with grief; it could plunge her into deep grief also. And if a dead person were to discover, for example, that relatives only made a show of loving her because of her money, she could become so painfully disillusioned that she returned as a ghost to haunt the inheritor of her wealth. You can see now that what you do and how you think and how you behave after people have died can be of crucial importance, and have a far greater impact on their future than you can possibly imagine.2
You will see now why it is absolutely essential for the peace of mind of the dead person that those who are left behind should be harmonious. This is why, in Tibet, when all the friends and relatives of the dead person assembled, they were encouraged to practice together and to say, as much as possible, a mantra such as: OM MANI PADME HUM. This is something that everyone in Tibet could do and knew would definitely help the dead person, and which inspired them all to an act of fervent communal prayer.
The clairvoyance of the dead person in the bardo of becoming is also what makes the practice done by a master or experienced spiritual practitioner on his or her behalf of such exceptional benefit.
What a master does is to rest in the primordial state of Rigpa, the nature of mind, and invoke the mental body of the dead person roaming in the bardo of becoming. When the mental body comes into the master’s presence, through the power of meditation, he or she can point out the essential nature of Rigpa. Through the power of its clairvoyance, the bardo being then can see directly into the master’s wisdom mind, and so there and then be introduced to the nature of mind and be liberated.
Whatever practice an ordinary practitioner can do as well for a close friend who has died can, for the same reason, be of enormous help. You might do the practice, for example, of the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities associated with the Tibetan Book of the Dead, or you might simply rest in a steady state of compassion; especially if you then invoke the dead person and invite him or her into the heart-core of your practice, it can be of immense benefit.
Whenever Buddhist practitioners die we inform their master, all their spiritual teachers, and their spiritual friends, so they can immediately start practicing for them. Usually I collect the names of people who have died, and send them to great masters I know in India and the Himalayas. Every few weeks they will include them in a purification practice, and once a year in a ten-day intensive group practice in the monasteries.3
1. The Tibetan Book of the Dead
In Tibet, once the phowa practice has been done for the dying person, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is read repeatedly and the practices associated with it are done. In eastern Tibet we used to have a tradition of reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead for the whole forty-nine days after death. Through the reading, the dead are shown what stage of the process of death they are in, and given whatever inspiration and guidance they need.
Westerners often ask me: How can a person who is dead hear the Tibetan Book of the Dead?
The simple reply is that the consciousness of the dead person, when it is invoked by the power of prayer, is able to read our minds and can feel exactly whatever we may be thinking or meditating on. That is why there is no obstacle to the dead person’s understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead or practices done on their behalf, even though they may be recited in Tibetan. For the dead person, language is no barrier at all, for the essential meaning of the text can be understood fully and directly by his or her mind.
This makes it all the more vital that the practitioner should be as focused and attentive as possible when doing the practice, and not merely performing it by rote. Also, as the dead person is living the actual experiences, he or she may have a greater capacity to understand the truth of the Tibetan Book of the Dead than we do!
I am sometimes asked: “But what happens if the consciousness has already fainted into an oblivious state at the moment of death?” Since we do not know how long the dead person will remain in that state of unconsciousness, and at what point he or she will enter the bardo of becoming, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is read and practiced repeatedly, to cover any eventuality.
But what about people who are not familiar with the teachings or the Tibetan Book of the Dead: Should we read it to them? The Dalai Lama has given us this clear guidance:
Whether you believe in religion or not it is very important to have a peaceful mind at the time of death. . . . From a Buddhist point of view, whether the person who dies believes in rebirth or not, their rebirth exists, and so a peaceful mind, even if it is neutral, is important at the time of death. If the person is a non-believer, reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead could agitate their mind . . . it could arouse aversion and so even harm them instead of helping them. In the case of a person who is open to it, however, the mantras or the names of the buddhas might help them to generate some kind of connection, and so it could be helpful. It is important to take into account, above all, the attitude of the dying person.4
Hand in hand with the reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead goes the practice of Né Dren, the ritual for guiding the dead, or Chang Chok, the ritual purification, in which a master will guide the consciousness of the dead person to a better rebirth.
Ideally, the Né Dren or Chang Chok should be done immediately after death, or at least within forty-nine days. If the corpse is not present, the consciousness of the deceased is summoned into an effigy or card bearing the likeness and name, or even a photograph, called a tsenjang. The Né Dren and Chang Chok derive their power from the fact that during the period immediately after death, the dead person will have a strong feeling of possessing the body of its recent life.
Through the power of the master’s meditation, the consciousness of the dead person, roaming aimlessly in the bardo, is called into the tsenjang, which represents the dead person’s identity. The consciousness is then purified; the karmic seeds of the six realms are cleansed; a teaching is given just as in life; and the dead person is introduced to the nature of the mind. Finally the phowa is effected, and the dead person’s consciousness is directed toward one of the buddha realms. Then the tsenjang, representing the individual’s old—now discarded—identity, is burned, and their karma is purified.
3. The Purification of the Six Realms
My master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche often used to say that the practice known as the “Purification of the Six Realms” was the best possible purification practice for a practitioner who has died.
The Purification of the Six Realms is a practice used in life that employs visualization and meditation to purify the body of each of the six main negative emotions, along with the realms of existence they create. It can also be used very effectively for the dead, and is particularly powerful because it purifies the root of their karma, and so of their connection with samsara. This is essential; if these negative emotions are not purified, they will dictate which realm of samsara the dead person will be reborn in.
According to the Dzogchen Tantras, the negative emotions accumulate in the psycho-physical system of subtle channels, inner air, and energy, and gather at particular energy centers in the body. So the seed of the hell realm and its cause, anger, are located at the soles of the feet; the hungry ghost realm and its cause, avarice, rest at the base of the trunk; the animal realm and its cause, ignorance, rest at the navel; the human realm and its cause, doubt, rest at the heart; the demigod realm and its cause, jealousy, rest at the throat; and the god realm and its cause, pride, rest at the crown of the head.
In this practice of the Purification of the Six Realms, when each realm and its negative emotion is purified, the practitioner imagines that all the karma created by that particular emotion is now exhausted, and that the specific part of his body associated with the karma of a particular emotion dissolves entirely into light. So when you do this practice for a dead person, imagine with all your heart and mind that, at the end of the practice, all their karma is purified, and their body and entire being dissolve into radiant light.5
4. The Practice of the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities
Another means to help the dead is the practice of the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities. (These deities are described in Chapter 17, “Intrinsic Radiance.”) The practitioner considers his or her entire body as the mandala of the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities; the peaceful deities are visualized in the energy center in the heart, and the wrathful deities in the brain. The practitioner then imagines that the deities send out thousands of rays of light, which stream out to the dead and purify all their negative karma.
The mantra of purification the practitioner recites is the mantra of Vajrasattva, the presiding deity of all the Tantric mandalas, and the central deity of the mandala of the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, whose power is invoked especially for purification and for healing. This is the “Hundred Syllable Mantra,” which includes “seed syllables” of each of the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities.6
You can use a short, six-syllable form of the Vajrasattva mantra: OM VAJRA SATTVA HUM (pronounced by Tibetans: Om Benza Satto Hung). The essential meaning of this mantra is, “O Vajrasattva! Through your power may you bring about purification, healing, and transformation.” I strongly recommend this mantra for healing and purification.
Another important mantra, which appears in the Dzogchen Tantras and the practices associated with the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is ‘A A HA SHA SA MA. The six syllables of this mantra have the power to “close the gates” to the six realms of samsara.
Generally in many Eastern traditions, cremation is the way of disposing of the corpse. In Tibetan Buddhism, there are also specific practices for cremation. The crematorium or funeral pyre is visualized as the mandala of Vajrasattva, or the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, and the deities are strongly visualized and their presence is invoked. The dead person’s corpse is seen as actually representing all his or her negative karma and obscurations. As the corpse burns, these are consumed by the deities as a great feast and transmuted and transformed by them into their wisdom nature. Rays of light are imagined streaming out from the deities; the corpse is visualized dissolving completely into light, as all the impurities of the dead person are purified in the blazing flames of wisdom. As you visualize this, you can recite the hundred-syllable or six-syllable mantra of Vajrasattva. This simple practice for a cremation was transmitted and inspired by Dudjom Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
The ashes of the body, and the tsenjang, can then be mixed with clay to make little images called tsatsa. These are blessed and dedicated on behalf of the dead person, so creating auspicious conditions for a future good rebirth.
6. The Weekly Practices
In a Tibetan environment practices and rituals happen regularly every seventh day after death, or if the family can afford it, for each of the forty-nine days. Monks are invited to do practice, especially the Lamas who are close to the family and had a link with the dead person. Lights are offered and prayers said continuously, especially until the time the body is taken out of the house. Offerings are made to masters and to shrines, and alms are given to the poor in the name of the dead person.
These “weekly” practices on behalf of the dead person are considered essential, since the mental body in the bardo of becoming undergoes every week, on the same day, the experience of death. If the dead person has enough merit as a result of positive actions in the past, then the benefit of these practices can give him or her the impetus to transfer to a pure realm. Strictly speaking, if a person passed away on a Wednesday before noon, the first week’s practice day would fall on the following Tuesday. If the person died after noon, it would fall on the following Wednesday.
Tibetans regard the fourth week after death as especially significant, because some say that most ordinary beings do not stay in the bardo longer than four weeks. The seventh week is also considered a critical juncture, as forty-nine days is taught to be generally the longest stay in the bardo. So on these occasions, masters and practitioners will be invited to the house, and the practices, offerings, and donations to the needy are performed on a grander scale.
Another offering ceremony and feast is held one year after the death, to mark the dead person’s rebirth. Most Tibetan families have annual ceremonies on the anniversaries of their teachers, parents, husbands, wives, brothers, and sisters, and on these days they will also give donations to the poor.
Among Tibetans, whenever someone dies it’s natural for relatives and friends to gather round, and everyone always finds some way or another to give a helping hand. The whole community provides strong spiritual, emotional, and practical support, and the dead person’s family is never left feeling helpless or at a loss or wondering what they can do. Everyone in Tibetan society knows that as much as possible is being done for the dead person, and that knowledge empowers those who are left behind to endure, accept, and survive the death of their loved ones.
How different it is now in modern society, where such community support has been almost entirely lost! I often think how such support could save the grief of bereavement from being prolonged and needlessly difficult, as it so often is.
My students who work as bereavement counselors in hospices have told me that one of the severest sources of anguish for the bereaved person is the belief that neither they nor anyone else can do anything for their loved one who has died. But there is, as I have been showing, a great deal that anyone can do to help the dead.
One way of comforting the bereaved is to encourage them to do something for their loved ones who have died: by living even more intensely on their behalf after they have gone, by practicing for them, and so giving their death a deeper meaning. In Tibet relatives may even go on a pilgrimage for the dead person, and at special moments and at holy places they will think of their dead loved ones and practice for them. The Tibetans never forget the dead: They will make offerings at shrines on their behalf; at great prayer meetings they will sponsor prayers in their name; they will keep making donations, for them, to spiritual projects; and whenever they meet masters they will request special prayers for them. The greatest consolation for a Tibetan would be to know that a master was doing practice for their dead relative.
Don’t let us half die with our loved ones, then; let us try to live, after they have gone, with greater fervor. Let us try, at least, to fulfill the dead person’s wishes or aspirations in some way, for instance by giving some of his belongings to charity, or sponsoring in her name a project she held particularly dear.
Tibetans often write letters of condolence to friends who are bereaved that might say something like this:
All things are impermanent, and all things die. You know this. It was only natural that your mother died when she did; the older generation is expected to die first. She was elderly and unwell, and will not resent having had to leave her body. And because you can help her now by sponsoring practices and doing good actions in her name, she will be happy and relieved. So please do not be sad.
If our friend has lost a child or someone close to them who seemed too young to die so soon, we tell them:
Now your little boy has died, and it seems as if your whole world has been shattered. It seems, I know, so cruel and illogical. I cannot explain your son’s death, but I do know that it must be the natural result of his karma, and I believe and know that his death must have purified some karmic debt that you and I cannot know about. Your grief is my grief. But take heart because now you and I can help him, through our practice and our good actions and our love; we can take his hand and walk by his side, even now, even when he’s dead, and help him to find a new birth and a longer life next time.
In other cases we might write:
I know your grief is vast, but when you are tempted to despair, just think how fortunate your friend is to have the masters practicing for her. Just think too, that at other times and in other places there has been no such spiritual help at all for those who died. Think, when you remember your loved one dying, how many people are dying in the world today, alone, forgotten, abandoned, and unsupported by any spiritual vision. Think of the people who died in the terrible, inhuman years of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, where spiritual practice of any kind was forbidden.
Remember too, when despair menaces you that giving in to it will only disturb the one who has died. Your sorrow may even drag her back from the path she may be taking toward a good rebirth. And if you are consumed by grief, you will cripple yourself from being able to help her. The steadier you are, the more positive your state of mind, the more comfort you will give her, and the more you will enable her to free herself.
When you are sad, have the courage to say to yourself: “Whatever feelings I am experiencing, they will all pass: even if they return, they cannot last.” Just as long as you do not try to prolong them, all your feelings of loss and grief will naturally begin to dissolve and fall away.
In our world, however, where we do not know that it is even possible to help the dead, and where we have not faced the fact of death at all, such a serene and wise reflection cannot be easy. A person who is going through bereavement for the first time may simply be shattered by the array of disturbing feelings, of intense sadness, anger, denial, withdrawal, and guilt that they suddenly find are playing havoc inside them. Helping those who have just gone through the loss of someone close to them will call for all your patience and sensitivity. You will need to spend time with them and to let them talk, to listen silently without judgment as they recall their most private memories, or go over again and again the details of the death. Above all, you will need simply to be there with them as they experience what is probably the fiercest sadness and pain of their entire lives. Make sure you make yourself available to them at all times, even when they don’t seem to need it. Carol, a widow, was interviewed for a video series on death one year after her husband had died. “When you look back on the last year,” she was asked, “who would you say had helped you the most?” She said: “The people who kept calling and coming by, even though I said ‘no.’”
People who are grieving go through a kind of death. Just like a person who is actually dying, they need to know that the disturbing emotions they are feeling are natural. They need to know too that the process of mourning is a long and often tortuous one, where grief returns again and again in cycles. Their shock and numbness and disbelief will fade, and will be replaced by a deep and at times desperate awareness of the immensity of their loss, which itself will settle eventually into a state of recovery and balance. Tell them this is a pattern that will repeat itself over and over again, month after month, and that all their unbearable feelings and fears, of being unable to function as a human being any more, are normal. Tell them that although it may take one year or two, their grief will definitely reach an end and be transformed into acceptance.
As Judy Tatelbaum says:
Grief is a wound that needs attention in order to heal. To work through and complete grief means to face our feelings openly and honestly, to express and release our feelings fully and to tolerate and accept our feelings for however long it takes for the wound to heal. We fear that once acknowledged grief will bowl us over. The truth is that grief experienced does dissolve. Grief unexpressed is grief that lasts indefinitely.7
But so often, tragically, friends and family of the bereaved expect them to be “back to normal” after a few months. This only intensifies their bewilderment and isolation as their grief continues, and sometimes even deepens.
In Tibet, as I’ve said, the whole community, friends and relatives, would take part during the forty-nine days after the death, and everyone was fully occupied in the activity of the spiritual help being given to the dead person, with all the hundred things there were to do. The bereaved would grieve, and they would cry a little, as is only natural, and then when everyone had left, the house would look empty. Yet in so many subtle, heartwarming ways, the bustle and support of those forty-nine days had helped them through a great part of their mourning.
Facing loss alone in our society is very different. And all the usual feelings of grief are magnified intensely in the case of a sudden death, or a suicide. It reinforces the sense that the bereaved are powerless in any way to help their loved one who is gone. It is very important for survivors of sudden death to go and see the body, otherwise it can be difficult to realize that death has actually happened. If possible, people should sit quietly by the body, to say what they need to, express their love, and start to say goodbye.
If this is not possible, bring out a photo of the person who has just died and begin the process of saying goodbye, completing the relationship, and letting go. Encourage those who have suffered the sudden death of a loved one to do this, and it will help them to accept the new, searing reality of death. Tell them too of these ways I’ve been describing of helping a dead person, simple ways they too can use, instead of sitting hopelessly going over again and again the moment of death in silent frustration and self-recrimination.
In the case of a sudden death, the survivors may often experience wild and unfamiliar feelings of anger at what they see as the cause of the death. Help them express that anger, because if it is held inside, sooner or later it will plunge them into a chronic depression. Help them to let go of the anger and uncover the depths of pain that hide behind it. Then they can begin the painful but ultimately healing task of letting go.
It happens often too that someone is left after the death of a loved one feeling intense guilt, obsessively reviewing mistakes in the past relationship, or torturing themselves about what they might have done to prevent the death. Help them to talk about their feelings of guilt, however irrational and crazy they may seem. Slowly these feelings will diminish, and they will come to forgive themselves and go on with their lives.
I would now like to give you a practice that can truly help you when you are suffering from deep sorrow and grief. It is a practice my master Jamyang Khyentse always used to give to people who were going through emotional torment or mental anguish and breakdown, and I know from my own experience it can bring enormous relief and solace. The life of someone teaching in a world like ours is not an easy one. When I was younger there were many moments of crisis and difficulty, and then I would always invoke Padmasambhava, as I still always do, thinking of him as the same as all my masters. And so I discovered for myself how transforming this practice is, and why all my masters used to say that the practice of Padmasambhava is the most useful when you go through turmoil, because it has the power you need to take on and survive the chaotic confusion of this age.
So whenever you are desperate, anguished, or depressed, whenever you feel you cannot go on, or you feel your heart is breaking, I advise you to do this practice. The only conditions to the effectiveness of this practice are that you need to do it with all your might, and that you need to ask, really to ask, for help.
Even if you practice meditation, you will have emotional pain and suffering, and a lot of things from your past lives or this one may emerge that will be difficult to face. You may find you do not have the wisdom or the stability in your meditation to deal with them, and that your meditation on its own is not enough. What you need then is what I call “a heart practice.” I always feel sad that people don’t have a practice like this to help them in times of desperation, because if you do, you will find you have something immeasurably precious, which will also become a source of transformation and continuing strength.
1. Invocation
Invoke in the sky in front of you the presence of whichever enlightened being inspires you the most, and consider that this being is the embodiment of all the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and masters. For me, as I have said, this embodiment is Padmasambhava. Even if you cannot imagine in your mind’s eye any one form, just feel the presence strongly and invoke his or her infinite power, compassion, and blessing.
2. Calling Out
Open your heart and invoke him or her with all the pain and suffering you feel. If you feel like crying, don’t hold back: let your tears flow, and really ask for help. Know that there is someone who is absolutely there for you, someone who listens to you, who understands you with love and compassion, without ever judging you: an ultimate friend. Call to him or her from the depths of your pain, using the mantra OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM, the mantra that has been used for centuries by hundreds of thousands of beings as a healing spring of purification and protection.
3. Filling the Heart with Bliss
Imagine and know now that the buddha you are crying out to responds, with all his or her love, compassion, wisdom, and power. Tremendous rays of light stream out toward you from him or her. Imagine that light as nectar, filling your heart up completely, and transforming all your suffering into bliss.
One way in which Padmasambhava appears is simply sitting in meditation posture, wrapped in his gown and robes, exuding an enchanting feeling of warm and cozy comfort, and with a loving smile on his face. In this emanation he is called “Great Bliss.” His hands lie relaxed in his lap, cradling a cup made from the top of a skull. It is full of the nectar of Great Bliss, swirling and sparkling, the source of all healing. He sits serenely on a lotus blossom, ringed by a shimmering sphere of light.
Think of him as infinitely warm and loving, a sun of bliss, comfort, peace, and healing. Open your heart, let out all your suffering; cry out for help. And say his mantra: OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM.
Imagine now thousands of rays of light streaming out of his body or from his heart: Imagine that the nectar of Great Bliss in the skull cup in his hands overflows with joy and pours down over you in a continuous stream of soothing, golden liquid light. It flows into your heart, filling it and transforming your suffering into bliss.
This nectar flow from the Padmasambhava of Great Bliss is the wonderful practice that my master used to teach: it has never failed to give me great inspiration and help in times of real need.
4. Helping Those Who Have Died
As you do this practice again and again, saying the mantra and filling your heart with bliss, slowly your suffering will dissolve in the confident peace of the nature of your mind. You will realize, with joy and delight, that the buddhas are not outside of you but always with you, inseparable from the nature of your mind. And what they have done through their blessing is to empower and nourish you with the confidence of the buddha within you.
Now, with all the power and confidence this practice has given you, imagine you are sending this blessing, the light of healing compassion of the enlightened beings, to your loved one who has died. This is especially vital in the case of someone who has suffered a traumatic death, as it transforms their suffering and brings them peace and bliss. In the past, you may have felt helpless in your grief and impotent to help your dear friend, but now through this practice you can feel consoled, encouraged, and empowered to help the dead person.
Don’t expect immediate results, or a miracle. It may only be after a while, or even much later, when you least expect it, that your suffering will shift. Do not have any expectation that it is going to “work,” and end your grief once and for all. Be open to your grief, as open as you are to the enlightened beings and buddhas in the practice.
You may even come to feel mysteriously grateful toward your suffering, because it gives you such an opportunity of working through it and transforming it. Without it you would never have been able to discover that hidden in the nature and depths of suffering is a treasure of bliss. The times when you are suffering can be those when you are most open, and where you are extremely vulnerable can be where your greatest strength really lies.
Say to yourself then: “I am not going to run away from this suffering. I want to use it in the best and richest way I can, so that I can become more compassionate and more helpful to others.” Suffering, after all, can teach us about compassion. If you suffer you will know how it is when others suffer. And if you are in a position to help others, it is through your suffering that you will find the understanding and compassion to do so.
So whatever you do, don’t shut off your pain; accept your pain and remain vulnerable. However desperate you become, accept your pain as it is, because it is in fact trying to hand you a priceless gift: the chance of discovering, through spiritual practice, what lies behind sorrow. “Grief,” Rumi wrote, “can be the garden of compassion.” If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.
And don’t we know, only too well, that protection from pain doesn’t work, and that when we try to defend ourselves from suffering, we only suffer more and don’t learn what we can from the experience? As Rilke wrote, the protected heart that is “never exposed to loss, innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness; only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free, through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.”8
When you are overwhelmed by your suffering, try to inspire yourself in one of those many ways I mentioned when I spoke of meditation practice in Chapter 5, “Bringing the Mind Home.” One of the most powerful methods I have found to soothe and dissolve sorrow is to go into nature, and especially to stand and contemplate by a waterfall, and let your tears and grief pour out of you and purify you, like the water flowing down. Or you could read a moving text on impermanence or sorrow, and let its wisdom bring you solace.
To accept and end grief is possible. One way that many people have used and found helpful is a variation on the method I explained for completing unfinished business. No matter how long ago your loved one died, you will find this most effective.
Visualize that all the buddhas and enlightened beings are in the sky above and around you, shining down their rays of compassionate light and giving you their support and blessing. In their presence grieve and say what you have to say, what is really in your heart and mind, to your loved one who has died.
Visualize that the person who is dead is looking at you with a greater love and understanding than he or she ever had while alive. Know that the dead person wants you to understand that he or she loves you and forgives you for whatever you may have done, and wants to ask for and receive your forgiveness.
Allow your heart to open and put into words any anger, any feelings of hurt, you may have been harboring, and let go of them completely. With your whole heart and mind, let your forgiveness go out toward the dead person. Tell him or her of your forgiveness; tell him or her of the regrets you feel for all the pain you may have caused.
Now feel with your whole being his or her forgiveness and love streaming toward you. Know in the depths of yourself that you are lovable and deserve to be forgiven, and feel your grief dissolve.
At the end of the practice, ask yourself if you can now truly say farewell and really let go of the person. Imagine the person turning and leaving, and then conclude by doing the phowa, or another practice for helping the dead.
This practice will give you the chance of showing your love once more, doing something to help the person who has died, and completing and healing the relationship in your heart.
You can learn so much, if you let yourself, from the grief and loss of bereavement. Bereavement can force you to look at your life directly, compelling you to find a purpose in it where there may not have been one before. When suddenly you find yourself alone after the death of someone you love, it can feel as if you are being given a new life and are being asked “What will you do with this life? And why do you wish to continue living?”
Loss and bereavement can also remind you sharply what can happen when in life you do not show your love and appreciation, or ask for forgiveness, and so can make you far more sensitive to your loved ones who are alive. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said, “What I try to teach people is to live in such a way that you say those things while the other person can still hear it.”9 And Raymond Moody, after his life’s work in near-death research, wrote: “I have begun to realize how near to death we all are in our daily lives. More than ever now I am very careful to let each person I love know how I feel.”10
So my heartfelt advice to those in the depths of grief and despair after losing someone they dearly loved is to pray for help and strength and grace. Pray you will survive and discover the richest possible meaning to the new life you now find yourself in. Be vulnerable and receptive, be courageous, and be patient. Above all, look into your life to find ways of sharing your love more deeply with others now.