FORTY YEARS AFTER the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the world is still ignorant of what has happened, ignorant of the extent of the terror, destruction, and systematic genocide that the Tibetan people have endured and are still enduring. Over 1 million people out of a population of 6 million have died at the hands of the Chinese; Tibet’s vast forests, as indispensable as those of the Amazon to the ecology of the world, have been cut down; its wildlife has been almost totally massacred; its plateaus and rivers have been polluted with nuclear waste; the vast majority of its six-and-a-half thousand monasteries lie gutted or destroyed; the Tibetan people face extinction, and the glory of their own culture in their homeland has been almost entirely obliterated.
From the very beginning of the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the 1950s, many terrible atrocities were committed. Spiritual masters, monks, and nuns were the first targets, because the Chinese Communists wanted above all to break the spirit of the people by wiping out all traces of religious life. Many, many stories have reached me over the years of extraordinary and moving deaths, in the worst possible circumstances, that witnessed and paid final tribute to the splendor of the truth the Chinese were desperate to destroy.
In the part of Tibet I come from, the province of Kham, there was an old khenpo, or abbot, who had spent many years in retreat in the mountains. The Chinese announced that they were going to “punish” him, which everyone knew meant torture and death, and sent a detachment of soldiers to his hermitage to arrest him. The khenpo was elderly and unable to walk, and the Chinese found him an old and mangy horse for his last journey. They sat him on the horse, tied him to it, and led the horse down the path from his hermitage to the army camp. The khenpo began to sing. The Chinese could not understand the words, but the monks who were taken with him said later that he was singing “songs of experience,” beautiful songs that sprang spontaneously from the depth and the joy of his realization. Slowly the party wound its way down the mountain, the soldiers in a stony silence and many of the monks sobbing; the khenpo, however, sang all the way.
Not long before the party arrived at the army camp, he stopped singing and closed his eyes, and the group then moved on in silence. As they crossed through the gate into the camp, they found the khenpo had passed away. He had quietly left his body.
What did he know that made him so serene, even in the face of death? What gave him even in those final moments the joy and fearlessness to sing? Perhaps he was singing something like these verses from “The Immaculate Radiance,” the last testament of the fourteenth-century Dzogchen master Longchenpa:
In a cloudless night sky, the full moon,
“The Lord of Stars,” is about to rise . . .
The face of my compassionate lord, Padmasambhava,
Draws me on, radiating its tender welcome.
My delight in death is far, far greater than
The delight of traders at making vast fortunes at sea,
Or the lords of the gods who vaunt their victory in battle;
Or of those sages who have entered the rapture of perfect absorption.
So just as a traveler who sets out on the road when the time has come to go,
I will not remain in this world any longer,
But will go to dwell in the stronghold of the great bliss of deathlessness.
This, my life, is finished, my karma is exhausted, what benefit prayers could bring has worn out,
All worldly things are done with, this life’s show is over.
In one instant, I will recognize the very essence of the manifestation of my being
In the pure, vast realms of the bardo states;
I am close now to taking up my seat in the ground of primordial perfection.
The riches found in myself have made the minds of others happy,
I have used the blessing of this life to realize all the benefits of the island of liberation;
Having been with you, my noble disciples, through all this time,
The joy of sharing the truth has filled me and satisfied me.
Now all the connections in this life between us are ending,
I am an aimless beggar who is going to die as he likes,
Do not feel sad for me, but go on praying always.
These words are my heart talking, talking to help you;
Think of them as a cloud of lotus-blossoms, and you in your devotion as bees plunging into them to suck from them their transcendent joy.
Through the great good of these words
May the beings of all the realms of samsara,
In the ground of primordial perfection, attain nirvana.
These are unmistakably the words of someone who has achieved the highest realization with all that it can bring: that joy and fearlessness and freedom and understanding that are the goal of the teachings and of human life. I think of masters like Longchenpa, and my own masters Jamyang Khyentse, Dudjom Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and I imagine beings who have their depth of realization as magnificent mountain eagles, who soar above both life and death and see them for what they are, in all their mysterious, intricate interrelation.
To see through the eyes of the mountain eagle, the view of realization, is to look down on a landscape in which the boundaries that we imagined existed between life and death shade into each other and dissolve. The physicist David Bohm has described reality as being “unbroken wholeness in flowing movement.” What is seen by the masters, then, seen directly and with total understanding, is that flowing movement and that unbroken wholeness. What we, in our ignorance, call “life,” and what we, in our ignorance, call “death”, are merely different aspects of that wholeness and that movement. This is the vast and transforming vision opened up to us by the bardo teachings, and embodied in the lives of the supreme masters.
To see death, then, through realized eyes, is to see death in the context of this wholeness, and as part, and only part, of this beginningless and endless movement. The uniqueness and power of the bardo teachings is that they reveal to us, by showing with total clarity the actual process of death, the actual process of life as well.
Let us look now again at what happens to a person who dies, at each of the three crucial stages of death:
1. At the culmination of the process of dying, after the dissolution of elements, senses, and thought states, the ultimate nature of mind, the Ground Luminosity, is for a moment laid bare.
2. Then, fleetingly, the radiance of that nature of mind is displayed and shines out in appearances of sound, colors, and light.
3. Next the dead person’s consciousness awakens and enters into the bardo of becoming; his or her ordinary mind returns, and takes on a manifestation—the form of the mental body—subject to the dictates of past karma and habits. These drive the ordinary mind to cling onto the illusory bardo experiences as something real and solid.
So what do the bardo teachings show us that death is? Nothing less than three phases of a process of gradual manifestation of mind: from out of its very purest state of the essential nature of mind, through light and energy (the radiance of the nature of mind), and into increasing crystallization into a mental form. What unravels with such clarity in the bardo of dying, the bardo of dharmata, and the bardo of becoming, the teachings show us, is a threefold process: first, enfoldment leading to laying bare; second, spontaneous radiance; and third, crystallization and manifestation.
The teachings draw us to go further. What they in fact show us—and I think this is a truly revolutionary insight, one that, when it is understood, changes our view of everything—is that this threefold pattern does not only unfold in the process of dying and death: It is unfolding now, at this moment, at every moment, within our mind, in our thoughts and emotions, and at every single level of our conscious experience.
Another way the teachings offer us of understanding this process is by looking at what is revealed at each phase of dying and death. The teachings speak of three levels of being, to which the Sanskrit name kaya is given. This word kaya literally means “body,” but signifies here dimension, field, or basis.
So let us look now at the threefold process from this perspective:
1. The absolute nature, uncovered at the moment of death in the Ground Luminosity, is called the Dharmakaya, the dimension of “empty,” unconditioned truth, into which illusion and ignorance, and any kind of concept, have never entered.
2. The intrinsic radiance of energy and light that is spontaneously displayed in the bardo of dharmata is called Sambhogakaya, the dimension of complete enjoyment, the field of total plenitude, of full richness, beyond all dualistic limitations, beyond space or time.
3. The sphere of crystallization into form revealed in the bardo of becoming is called Nirmanakaya, the dimension of ceaseless manifestation.
Remember now that when we looked at the nature of mind, we saw that it had these three same aspects: its empty, skylike essence, its radiant luminous nature, and its unobstructed, all-pervasive, compassionate energy, which are all simultaneously present and interpenetrating as one within the Rigpa. Padmasambhava describes this in the following way:
Within this Rigpa, the three kayas are inseparable and fully present as one:
Since it is empty and not created anywhere whatsoever, it is the Dharmakaya,
Since its luminous clarity represents the inherent transparent radiance of emptiness, it is the Sambhogakaya.
Since its arising is nowhere obstructed or interrupted, it is the Nirmanakaya.
These three being complete and fully present as one, are its very essence.1
The three kayas, then, refer to these three intrinsic aspects of our enlightened mind; they also, of course, refer to different capacities of our perception. The vast majority of us are limited in our vision, and only perceive the Nirmanakaya dimension of form and manifestation. This is the reason that for most of us the moment of death is a blank and a state of oblivion, for we have neither encountered nor evolved any way of recognizing the Dharmakaya reality when it arises as the Ground Luminosity. Nor do we have any hope of recognizing the Sambhogakaya fields as they appear in the bardo of dharmata. Because our entire life has been lived out within the realm of the impure perceptions of the Nirmanakaya manifestation, so at the moment of death we are transported directly back into that dimension; we awaken, frantic and distracted, in the bardo of becoming in the mental body, taking illusory experiences for solid and real just as we have in lives before, and stumbling helplessly, propelled by past karma, toward rebirth.
Highly realized beings, however, have awakened in themselves a perception completely different from our own, one that is purified, evolved, and refined to such an extent that, while they still dwell in a human body, they actually perceive reality in a totally purified form, transparent to them in all its limitless dimension. And for them, as we have seen, the experience of death holds no fear or surprises; it is embraced, in fact, as an opportunity for final liberation.
The three phases of the process we see unfolding in the bardo states in death can be perceived in other levels of consciousness in life also. Consider them in the light of what occurs in sleep and dream:
1. When we fall asleep, the senses and grosser layers of consciousness dissolve, and gradually the absolute nature of mind, we could say the Ground Luminosity, is briefly laid bare.
2. Next there is a dimension of consciousness, comparable to the bardo of dharmata, that is so subtle that we are normally completely unaware of its very existence. How many of us, after all, are aware of the moment of sleep before dreams begin?
3. For most of us, all that we are aware of is the next stage, when the mind becomes yet again active, and we find ourselves in a dream-world similar to the bardo of becoming. Here we take on a dream-body and go through different dream-experiences to a great extent influenced and shaped by the habits and activities of our waking state, all of which we believe to be solid and real, without ever realizing that we are dreaming.
Exactly the same process can be recognized in the workings of thoughts and emotions, and the manner in which they arise:
1. The Ground Luminosity, the absolute nature of mind, is the primordial state of Rigpa that exists before any thought or emotion.
2. Within its unconditioned space, a fundamental energy stirs, the spontaneous radiance of Rigpa, which begins to arise as the basis, the potential, and the fuel for raw emotion.
3. This energy can then take on the forms of emotions and thoughts, which eventually propel us into action and cause us to accumulate karma.
It is when we become intimately familiar with meditation practice that we can see this process with unmistakable clarity:
1. As thoughts and emotions gradually fall silent, and die away and dissolve into the nature of mind, we may momentarily glimpse the nature of mind, the Rigpa itself: the primordial state.
2. Then we become aware that out of the stillness and calm of the nature of mind unfolds a movement and raw energy, its very self-radiance.
3. If any grasping enters into the rising of that energy, the energy inevitably crystallizes into thought forms, which in turn will carry us back into conceptual and mental activity.
Now that we have looked at the way this process reproduces itself in sleep and dream, and the very formation of thought and emotion, let us see it at work in our day-to-day experience of our everyday life.
This is best done by looking closely at one movement of joy or anger. Examine that movement and you will see that there exists always a space or gap before any emotion begins to arise. That pregnant moment before the energy of emotion has a chance to arise is a moment of pure, pristine awareness, in which we could, if we let ourselves, have a glimpse of the true nature of mind. For an instant the spell of ignorance is broken; we are totally freed from any need or possibility of grasping, and even the notion of “clinging” is made ridiculous and redundant. However, instead of embracing the “emptiness” of that gap, in which we could find the bliss of being free from and unburdened by any idea, reference, or concept, we grasp at the dubious security of the familiar, comforting drama of our emotions, driven by our deep habitual tendencies. And this is how an inherently unconditioned energy arising from the nature of mind is crystallized into the form of an emotion, and how its fundamental purity is then colored and distorted by our samsaric vision to provide a continuous source of everyday distractions and delusions.
If we really examine every aspect of our life, as I have shown, we will discover how we go through, again and again, in sleep and dream, in thoughts and emotions, that same process of the bardos. And the teachings reveal to us that it is precisely this fact—that we go through the process of the bardos again and again, in both life and death, and at all the different levels of consciousness—that gives us innumerable opportunities, now and also in death, for liberation. The teachings show us that it is the character, form, and uniqueness of the process that offer us either the chance for liberation or the potential for continuing in confusion. For every aspect of the whole process hands us at the same time the chance for liberation, or the chance for confusion.
The bardo teachings are opening a door to us, showing us how we can step out of the uncontrolled cycle of death and rebirth, the repetitive treadmill of ignorance, life after life. They are telling us that throughout this process of the bardos of life and death, whenever we can recognize and maintain a stable awareness of the nature of mind, Rigpa, or even when we can gain some measure of control over our mind, we can walk through that door toward liberation. Depending on the phase of the bardos it is applied in, depending on your familiarity with the View of the nature of mind itself, and depending on the depth of your understanding of your mind, its thoughts and emotions, this recognition will be different.
What the bardo teachings are also telling us, however, is that what happens in our mind now in life is exactly what will occur in the bardo states at death, since essentially there is no difference; life and death are one in “unbroken wholeness” and “flowing movement.” This is why one of the most accomplished Tibetan masters of the seventeenth century, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, explains the heart practices for each of the bardos—this life, dying, dharmata, and becoming—in terms of the state of our present understanding of the nature of thoughts and emotions, and of mind and its perceptions:
Recognize this infinite variety of appearances as a dream,
As nothing but the projections of your mind, illusory and unreal.
Without grasping at anything, rest in the wisdom of your Rigpa, that transcends all concepts:
This is the heart of the practice for the bardo of this life.
You are bound to die soon, and nothing then will be of any real help.
What you experience in death is only your own conceptual thinking.
Without fabricating any thoughts, let them all die into the vast expanse of your Rigpa’s self-awareness:
This is the heart of the practice for the bardo of dying.
Whatever grasps at appearance or disappearance, as being good or bad, is your mind.
And this mind itself is the self-radiance of the Dharmakaya, just whatever arises.
Not to cling to the risings, make concepts out of them, accept or reject them:
This is the heart of the practice for the bardo of dharmata.
Samsara is your mind, and nirvana is also your mind,
All pleasure and pain, and all delusions exist nowhere apart from your mind.
To attain control over your own mind;
This is the heart of the practice for the bardo of becoming.
We are now ready to look at one particular bardo, to see how our meditation practice, our understanding of emotions and thoughts, and our experiences in that bardo are all inextricably interlinked, and how our experiences in that bardo reflect back into our ordinary life. Perhaps the most helpful bardo to study is the bardo of dharmata, which is where the pure energy that will become emotion begins to emerge spontaneously as the intrinsic radiance of the nature of mind; and emotions, I know, are a main, almost obsessive preoccupation of people in the modern world. Truly to understand the nature of emotion is to advance very far on the path to liberation.
The deepest aim of meditation is to be able to rest, undistracted, in the state of Rigpa, and with that View to realize that whatever arises in the mind is never anything but the display of your own Rigpa, just as the sun and its million rays are one and indivisible. As Tsele Natsok Rangdrol says in his verse for the bardo of dharmata: “Whatever grasps at appearance or disappearance, as being good or bad, is your mind. And this mind itself is the self-radiance of the Dharmakaya . . .”
So when you are in the state of Rigpa, and when thoughts and emotions arise, you recognize exactly what they are and where they are springing from: then whatever arises becomes the self-radiance of that wisdom. If you lose the presence of that pristine, pure awareness of Rigpa, however, and you fail to recognize whatever arises, then it will become separate from you. It goes on to form what we call “thought,” or an emotion, and this is the creation of duality. To avoid this and its consequences is why Tsele Natsok Rangdrol says: “Not to cling to the risings, make concepts out of them, accept or reject them: this is the heart of the practice for the bardo of dharmata.”
That separateness, between you and the risings in your mind, and the duality it engenders, become spectacularly magnified after death. This explains how, without that essence of recognition of the true nature of the arisings within the mind, in the bardo of dharmata the sounds, lights, and rays that manifest can take on the objective reality of shocking, external phenomena that are happening to you. So what could you possibly do in such a situation but flee from the brilliant radiance of the peaceful and wrathful deities, and run to the dim, seductive, habitual lights of the six realms? The crucial recognition, then, in the bardo of dharmata is that it is the wisdom energy of your mind that is dawning: The buddhas and the lights of wisdom are in no sense separate from you, but your own wisdom energy. To realize that is an experience of nonduality, and to enter into it is liberation.
What is occurring in the bardo of dharmata at death, and whenever an emotion begins to arise in our minds in life, is the same natural process. What is at question is whether or not we recognize the true nature of the arising. If we can recognize the arising of an emotion for what it really is, the spontaneous energy of the nature of our own mind, then we are empowered to free ourselves from the negative effects or possible dangers of that emotion, and let it dissolve back into the primordial purity of the vast expanse of Rigpa.
This recognition, and the freedom it brings, can only be the fruit of many, many years of the most disciplined practice of meditation, for it requires a long familiarity with and stabilization of Rigpa, the nature of mind. Nothing less will bring us that calm and blissful freedom from our own habitual tendencies and conflicting emotions that we all long for. The teachings may tell us that this freedom is hard to win, but the fact that this possibility really exists is a tremendous source of hope and inspiration. There is a way to understand thought and emotion, mind and its nature, life and death completely, and that is to achieve realization. The enlightened ones, as I have said, see life and death as if in the palm of their hand, because they know, as Tsele Natsok Rangdrol wrote: “Samsara is your mind, and nirvana is also your mind; all pleasure and pain, and all delusions exist nowhere apart from your mind.” And this clear knowledge, stabilized through long practice and integrated with every movement, every thought, every emotion of their relative reality, has made them free. Dudjom Rinpoche said: “Having purified the great delusion, the heart’s darkness, the radiant light of the unobscured sun continuously rises.”
I often think of what Dudjom Rinpoche wrote: “The nature of mind is the nature of everything.” I wonder if this threefold process the bardos reveal is true not only, as we discovered, of all the different levels of consciousness and of all the different experiences of consciousness, both in life and death, but also perhaps of the actual nature of the universe itself.
The more I reflect about the three kayas and the threefold process of the bardos, the more fertile and intriguing parallels I find with the innermost vision of other spiritual traditions, and many seemingly very different fields of human endeavor. I think of the Christian vision of the nature and activity of God as represented by the Trinity, of Christ the incarnation being manifested in form out of the ground of the Father through the subtle medium of the Holy Spirit. Could it not be at least illuminating to envision Christ as similar to the Nirmanakaya, the Holy Spirit as akin to the Sambhogakaya, and the absolute ground of both as like the Dharmakaya? In Tibetan Buddhism the word tulku, incarnation, actually means Nirmanakaya, the constantly reappearing embodiment and activity of compassionate, enlightened energy. Isn’t this understanding very like the Christian notion of incarnation?
I think also of the Hindus’ threefold vision of the essence of God, called in Sanskrit satcitananda (sat-cit-ananda), which roughly translated means “manifestation, consciousness, and bliss.” For Hindus God is the simultaneous, ecstatic explosion of all these forces and powers at once. Again, fascinating parallels with the vision of the three kayas could be made: the Sambhogakaya could perhaps be compared to ananda—the bliss energy of the nature of God—Nirmanakaya to sat, and Dharmakaya to cit. Anyone who has seen the great sculpture of Shiva in the caves of Elephanta in India, with its three faces representing the three faces of the absolute, will have some idea of the grandeur and majesty of this vision of the divine.
Both of these mystical visions of the essence, nature, and action of the divine dimension show a distinct yet suggestively similar understanding to the Buddhist one of the different and interpenetrating levels of being. Isn’t it at least thought-provoking that a threefold process is seen at the heart of each of these different mystical traditions, even though they do view reality from their own unique standpoint?
Thinking about what the nature of manifestation might be, and the different but linked approaches to understanding it, leads me naturally to think about the nature of human creativity, the manifestation in form of the inner world of humanity. I have often wondered over the years how the unfolding of the three kayas and bardos could throw light on the whole process of artistic expression, and hint at its true nature and hidden goal. Each individual act and manifestation of creativity, whether it is in music, art, or poetry, or indeed in the moments and unfoldings of scientific discovery, as many scientists have described, arises from a mysterious ground of inspiration and is mediated into form by a translating and communicating energy. Are we looking here at yet another enactment of the interrelated threefold process we have seen at work in the bardos? Is this why certain works of music and poetry, and certain discoveries in science, seem to have an almost infinite meaning and significance? And would this explain their power to guide us into a state of contemplation and joy, where some essential secret of our nature and the nature of reality is revealed? From where did Blake’s lines come?
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.2
In Tibetan Buddhism the Nirmanakaya is envisioned as the manifestation of enlightenment, in an infinite variety of forms and ways, in the physical world. It is traditionally defined in three ways. One is the manifestation of a completely realized Buddha, such as Gautama Siddhartha, who is born into the world and teaches in it; another is a seemingly ordinary being who is blessed with a special capacity to benefit others: a tulku; and the third is actually a being through whom some degree of enlightenment works to benefit and inspire others through various arts, crafts, and sciences. In their case this enlightened impulse is, as Kalu Rinpoche says, “a spontaneous expression, just as light radiates spontaneously from the sun without the sun issuing directives or giving any conscious thought to the matter. The sun is, and it radiates.”3 So couldn’t one explanation of the power and nature of artistic genius be that it derives its ultimate inspiration from the dimension of Truth?
This does not mean that great artists can in any way be said to be enlightened; it is clear from their lives that they are not. Nevertheless it’s also clear that they can be, in certain crucial periods and in certain exceptional conditions, instruments and channels of enlightened energy. Who, really listening to the greatest masterpieces of Beethoven or Mozart, could deny that another dimension at times seems to be manifesting through their work? And who, looking at the great cathedrals of medieval Europe like Chartres, or the mosques of Isfahan, or the sculptures of Angkor, or the beauty and richness of the Hindu temples of Ellora, could fail to see that the artists who created them were directly inspired by an energy that springs from the ground and source of all things?
I think of a great work of art as like a moon shining in the night sky; it illuminates the world, yet its light is not its own but borrowed from the hidden sun of the absolute. Art has helped many toward glimpsing the nature of spirituality. Is one of the reasons for the limitations of much of modern art, however, the loss of this knowledge of art’s unseen sacred origin and its sacred purpose: to give people a vision of their true nature and their place in the universe, and to restore to them, endlessly afresh, the value and meaning of life and its infinite possibilities? Is the real meaning of inspired artistic expression, then, that it is akin to the field of the Sambhogakaya, that dimension of ceaseless, luminous, blissful energy, which Rilke calls “the wingéd energy of delight,” that radiance which transmits, translates, and communicates the purity and infinite meaning of the absolute to the finite and the relative, from the Dharmakaya, in other words, to the Nirmanakaya?
One of the many ways in which the example of His Holiness the Dalai Lama has inspired me has been in his unfailing curiosity about, and openness to, all the various facets and discoveries of modern science.4 Buddhism, after all, is often called “a science of the mind,” and as I contemplate the bardo teachings, it is their precision and vast, sober clarity that move me again and again to awe and gratitude. If Buddhism is a science of the mind, then for me Dzogchen and the bardo teachings represent the heart essence of that science, the innermost visionary and practical seed, out of which a vast tree of interconnected realizations has flowered and will go on to flower in ways that cannot now be imagined, as humanity continues to evolve.
Over the years and over many meetings with scientists of all kinds, I have become increasingly struck by the richness of the parallels between the teachings of Buddha and the discoveries of modern physics. Fortunately many of the major philosophical and scientific pioneers of the West have also become aware of these parallels and are exploring them with tact and verve and a sense that from the dialogue between mysticism, the science of mind and consciousness, and the various sciences of matter, a new vision of the universe and our responsibility to it could very well emerge. I have been more and more convinced that the bardo teachings themselves, with their threefold process of unfoldment, have a unique contribution to make to this dialogue.
From all the possible alternatives, I would like to focus here on one particular scientific vision, one that has especially absorbed me—that of the physicist David Bohm. Bohm has imagined a new approach to reality that, while being controversial, has inspired a great sympathetic response from researchers in all sorts of different disciplines: physics itself, medicine, biology, mathematics, neuroscience, psychiatry, and among artists and philosophers. David Bohm has conceived a new scientific approach to reality based, as the bardo teachings are, on an understanding of the totality and oneness of existence as an unbroken and seamless whole.
The multidimensional, dynamic order he sees at work in the universe has essentially three aspects. The most obvious one is our three-dimensional world of objects, space, and time, which he calls the explicate or unfolded order. What does he believe this order is unfolded from? A universal, unbroken field, “a ground beyond time,” the implicate or enfolded order, as he terms it, which is the all-encompassing background to our entire experience. He sees the relationship between these two orders as a continuous process where what is unfolded in the explicate order is then re-enfolded into the implicate order. As the source that organizes this process into various structures, he “proposes” (a word he likes to use since his whole philosophy is that ideas should be created out of the free flow of dialogue, and be always vulnerable) the super-implicate order, a yet subtler and potentially infinite dimension.
Could not a vivid parallel be drawn between these three orders and the three kayas and the process of the bardos? As David Bohm says: “The whole notion of the implicate order is, to begin with, a way of discussing the origin of form from out of the formless, via the process of explication or unfolding.”5
I am also inspired by David Bohm’s imaginative extension of this way of understanding matter that arose out of quantum physics to consciousness itself, a leap that I think will come to be seen as more and more necessary as science opens and evolves. “The mind,” he says, “may have a structure similar to the universe and in the underlying movement we call empty space there is actually a tremendous energy, a movement. The particular forms which appear in the mind may be analogous to the particles, and getting to the ground of the mind might be felt as light.”6
Hand in hand with his notion of implicate and explicate order, David Bohm has imagined a way of looking at the relationship between the mental and the physical, between mind and matter, called soma-significance. As he writes: “The notion of soma-significance implies that soma (or the physical) and its significance (which is mental) are not in any sense separately existent, but rather that they are two aspects of one overall reality.”7
For David Bohm, the universe manifests three mutually enfolding aspects: matter, energy, and meaning.
From the point of view of the implicate order, energy and matter are imbued with a certain kind of significance which gives form to their overall activity and to the matter which arises in that activity. The energy of mind and of the material substance of the brain are also imbued with a kind of significance which gives form to their overall activity. So quite generally, energy enfolds matter and meaning, while matter enfolds energy and meaning . . . But also meaning enfolds both matter and energy . . . So each of these basic notions enfolds the other two.8
Simplifying an exceptionally subtle and refined vision, you could say that for David Bohm meaning has a special and wide-ranging importance. He says: “This implies, in contrast to the usual view, that meaning is an inherent and essential part of our overall reality, and is not merely a purely abstract and ethereal quality having its existence only in the mind. Or to put it differently, in human life, quite generally, meaning is being . . .” In the very act of interpreting the universe, we are creating the universe: “In a way, we could say that we are the totality of our meanings.”9
Could it not be helpful to begin to imagine parallels between these three aspects of David Bohm’s notion of the universe and the three kayas? A deeper exploration of David Bohm’s ideas might perhaps show that meaning, energy, and matter stand in a similar relationship to each other as do the three kayas. Could this possibly suggest that the role of meaning, as he explains it, is somehow analogous to the Dharmakaya, that endlessly fertile, unconditioned totality from which all things rise? The work of energy, through which meaning and matter act upon one another, has a certain affinity to the Sambhogakaya, the spontaneous, constant springing forth of energy out of the ground of emptiness; and the creation of matter, in David Bohm’s vision, has resemblances to the Nirmanakaya, the continuous crystallization of that energy into form and manifestation.
Thinking about David Bohm and his remarkable explanation of reality, I am tempted to wonder what a great scientist who was also a really accomplished spiritual practitioner trained by a great master could discover. What would a scientist and sage, a Longchenpa and an Einstein in one, have to tell us about the nature of reality? Will one of the future flowerings of the great tree of the bardo teachings be a scientific mystical dialogue, one that we can still only barely imagine, but that we seem to be on the threshold of? And what would that mean for humanity?
The deepest parallel of all between David Bohm’s ideas and the bardo teachings is that they both spring from a vision of wholeness. This vision, if it was able to invigorate individuals to transform their consciousness and so influence society, would restore to our world a desperately needed sense of living interconnection and meaning.
What I am proposing here is that man’s general way of thinking of the totality, i.e., his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border (for every border is a division or break), then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.10
All the great masters would be in perfect agreement with David Bohm when he writes:
A change of meaning is necessary to change this world politically, economically and socially. But that change must begin with the individual; it must change for him . . . If meaning is a key part of reality, then, once society, the individual and relationships are seen to mean something different a fundamental change has taken place.11
Ultimately the vision of the bardo teachings and the deepest understanding of both art and science all converge on one fact, our responsibility to and for ourselves; and the necessity of using that responsibility in the most urgent and far-reaching way: to transform ourselves, the meaning of our lives, and so the world around us.
As the Buddha said: “I have shown you the way to liberation, now you must take it for yourself.”