Experiencing the Soul

Another type of seed we are sowing is our habits. Our mindstream is a continuous flow of untamed and negative emotional habits that are the source of much of our suffering in life and untold suffering after we die.

Many years ago, I brought a young Tibetan master, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, to meet a woman who was dying. When he came into her room, he introduced himself, and she expressed gratitude that he had come to see her. She said, "In the last few weeks, I was resisting my death, but now I think I have accepted it."

He looked at her with a twinkle in his eye and said,"I don't think so! She laughed and then admitted, "Yes, you're right."

After pulling up a chair to sit beside her, he turned and asked me in a stage whisper, "What should I tell her?" I suggested he tell her about the bardos, those periods of transition where we are suspended for a time between two seemingly real states of existence. I expected he would speak about the first bardo of death, when the nature of mind is fully revealed. But what he talked about was the third bardo of death: the bardo of becoming, the period between lives, from the moment when the person's consciousness leaves the body and begins to roam, until it takes rebirth.

Rinpoche proceeded to tell her: "After you die, everything will go on the same as it does now. You will have the same awareness as you have now: you will experience everything just as you do now." As he spoke these words, I reflected on how the dying woman might feel reassured to view death not as an end but simply as a continuation of awareness, independent of the body. But what he said next came as a complete surprise:

"Not only does awareness continue, but after death your habits continue." As I watched her face registering the message, I imagined that we shared the same response:" Oh, no, not my habits!"

Death is truly the fruition of all the seeds we have sown in this life, and a continuation of whatever is in our mind and heart from moment to moment.Death is a continuation of how we are right now, in life.