Summary of the death experience

Ken: This is our last teaching session together, so I’ve got a couple of things to say, but basically I want to use this as a summary and to clear up any questions or points that you might have. One was concerning the end stages of the death process, so I decided to look up a real authority on it.

Your sense faculties completely disintegrate, which means the ability to see, the ability to hear and so forth. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell are gone. You have a rapid series of hallucinations in which everything appears like a mirage, then hazy, then as weak flashes of light, then like a dim glow.

Wake Up To Your Life, Ken McLeod, p. 120

You don’t need to take notes; this is on page 120. “Then everything dissolves into light. You sense a movement of energy downward, and you’re in the field of light that has no center or periphery. There is no other, and all sense of aversion is gone.

In this phase, thought consciousness and the explicit conceptual sense of ‘I’ dissolve. The explicit sense of ‘I’ is a sense of being something that is unique, permanent, and independent. It sets us apart from the world and therefore functions as the basis of anger. As this pattern dissolves, the structures that support anger and aversion also dissolve. There is an experience of clarity without dimension. Traditionally, it is called the white brilliance and is likened to moonlight. It is the first of four experiences of sheer clarity that arise as the illusion of ordinary consciousness dissolves.

Then you feel a movement of energy upward and the light intensifies. If the first experience of light was like moonlight, the second experience is like sunlight. The sense of ‘I’ and any sense of attraction are gone. There is just an experience of light.

The second phase is the dissolution of the emotional mind and the implicit sense of ‘I’. The implicit sense of ‘I’ is the one that persists even when the mind is quiet and still. It sees everything as belonging to it and therefore functions as the basis of desire and attraction. As these structures dissolve, attraction ceases to function, and the more intense experience of clarity arises. This clarity is called the red brilliance and is likened to the sun. The clarity isn’t actually red; however, the color has symbolic significance and indicates a greater intensity than the previous experience.

The two movements of energy then converge. What was infinite light, now becomes infinite blackness—no up, no down, no right, no left, no central, no front, and no back. There’s nothing with which to orient yourself, just blackness.

The dissolution of the base ignorance is next. Base ignorance, or fundamental not-knowing, is the not-knowing on which the misperception of ‘I’ is based. As this fundamental not-knowing dissolves, a corresponding experience of clarity called the black brilliance arises. In this experience, there is no reference, no orientation. There is total blackness. The basis consciousness is dissolving into fundamental pristine awareness.

The dying process is reversible during the first two phases of dissolution, which is why a lot of people experience light in near-death experiences. When the third phase, the black brilliance, arises, the process can no longer be reversed. You are dead.

Next, the blackness dissolves and you experience an infinite field of light as if you were at the center of the sun. You experience total and utter emptiness indivisible from brilliant clarity. This is original mind. Rest in this brilliantly clear and empty original mind for a few minutes.

Pristine awareness is experienced as sheer clarity, more brilliant and intense than anything that has arisen before. According to the Tibetan tradition, at this point, if attention operates to a sufficiently high level of energy, full awakening is experienced. If attention is weak and unstable, base ignorance reasserts itself and obscures this clarity, habituated patterns reassert themselves, and the experience of separate existence begins again.” Okay?

Student: Well, that was well written. I’d like to find the guy who wrote it.

Meditation practice instruction: do nothing

Ken: Yeah. So, that maybe clarifies a few points. Now, let me deal first with meditation practice for this evening. Practice is about presence. And presence essentially means being present in the experience, not with but in the experience of whatever arises. All experience arises from what is called emptiness—original purity, the realm of totality, all of these different names—but it’s beyond any kind of definition as this or that—all experience, both awakened experience and confused experience. So, if you rest in experience deeply enough, eventually you end up in the realm of totality.

The dissolution of the elements that we experience in death corresponds to the dissolution of the fixation with the elements that arises in meditation practice. And all of this comes about in the end, simply by resting in experience and letting things unfold. To do so requires a level of attention that operates at a sufficiently high level of energy, that it is not disturbed or affected by what arises.

There are many methods by which we can raise the level of attention or energy in the attention, but the one that is most reliable and most accessible is simply the effort to experience what is arising right now. And yes, we’re pulled into distraction, and then we come back, and then we’re pulled into distraction again, and we come back. Every time we come back and rest, we transform disorganized energy into attention. This evening, in keeping with the progression of this retreat, I want you to be dead.

Student: Excuse me, you want us to be dead? [Laughter]

Ken: The sooner, the better. [Laughter] That’d be such a relief; it’d be such a relief. What do you do when you’re dead? Nothing, nothing. That’s what I want you to do this evening in your meditation. Do nothing.

Student: Cool. [Laughter]

Ken: I’ll be watching. Okay. You sit and do nothing.

Student: Easier said than done.

Ken: Now, thinking is doing something. Trying to generate certain states of mind is doing something. You may find going through the death process helpful to arrive at a state, but you do nothing because there’s a progression of letting go of this and letting go of that, one thing after another. So, if you find that helpful, by all means do it. But then, do nothing. Thoughts arise, do nothing. Thoughts go, do nothing. Extraordinary insights arise, do nothing. Now, if you find yourself in a thick, heavy state, stop, look around the room, move your body a little bit—not enough to disturb your neighbors, but just a little bit, change the posture slightly perhaps. Get really wide awake and clear and then go back to doing nothing. But hanging out in the dull, heavy state is not productive. You may only be able to do nothing for two or three minutes at a time, that’s okay. Then stop, take a little break, relax the posture a little bit, and then do nothing again.

Student: So, basically, we are to be in intention to do … and do nothing in that intention?

Ken: Well, if you’re sleeping, you’re doing something, aren’t you? Yes?

Student: Assuming we live until tomorrow morning, is this also our instruction for the morning?

Ken: Yes. Dave?

Dave: Are you just describing basic meditation practice? Isn’t that … isn’t it … when you say, “before you go into your exercises, get your stability of breath,” isn’t that basically what you’re doing? You’re just … you’re doing nothing. I mean why? I don’t see what the difference is. What you’re saying now is basic meditation practice.

Ken: Most of the time, when I teach basic meditation practice, I tell people to rest in the breath and the experience of breathing. From the perspective of this practice, that’s doing something.

Student: Oh, you don’t even stay with your breath?

Ken: Nope, you do nothing. Quite clear about this: nothing.

Student: All these years he’s been threatening to take your breath away. [Laughter]

Ken: Janneke?

Janneke: I was just wondering if you would like offer any techniques we might use to do nothing?

Ken: I’m not feeling generous today. [Laughs]

Janneke: I just asked.

Ken: Yes, you may ask. Okay? Steven?

Steven: When you try to do nothing, that’s doing something, it’s really tricky just to cease.

Ken: That’s right.

Steven: It would be like in a state of inertness, just inert, non-reactive.

Ken: Then you’re doing something, aren’t you? If you’re … “I’m going to do nothing now,” now you’re doing something. Yes. It’s not really an inert state, but I’ll let you explore it. Now, when you do this, a few thoughts may arise. “What’s the point of this?!”

Student: I’m going to kill Ken.

Ken: Yeah, well, you won’t be the first one with that thought. “This is boring.” Yeah, all kinds of things could arise. What do you do? Nothing, that’s right.

Student: So, you don’t rest in the experience, you just do nothing.

Ken: Yes, and if you do nothing, what happens?

Student: You end up in the experience.

Ken: Yes. Do you control the experience? No. So, whatever happens, all together now …

Student: You do nothing. [Laughter]

Ken: A little louder, please. [Laughter]

Student: What’s the difference between doing nothing in experience and experiencing thought?

Ken: Well, I guess you’ll tell me tomorrow. Or during the meditation interviews, what have you. Tom, do you have a question?

Tom: Yeah. When you say thoughts arise, do you mean don’t follow the thoughts? Don’t let them progress, or do nothing as the thoughts are going by?

Ken: Yes.

Tom: Well, that was helpful.

Ken: Thank you. How much do you have to hold on to when you’re dead?

Student: Nothing.

Ken: How much do you have to hold on to in this practice?

Student: Nothing.

Exploring change in the three worlds

Ken: Ah, you see? You can already feel how much of the time you spend doing something, can’t you? So, even at this retreat, you’re taking a break, doing nothing. Now, we started off with change. And in considering change, we considered three worlds. Not the ordinary, or what is ordinarily regarded as the external world, but the world of sensory objects, from which what is ordinarily regarded as the external world, is constructed. We have all of these sense impressions around us, and we put them together to form people on cushions, and carpet, and light, and sound, and so forth, and so forth. And then we relate to people on carpets, and light, and so forth, as objects in and of themselves, and now we feel like there’s a whole world out there.

But that’s not actually how it is, there’s just the sense impressions. So, that’s the first world of change. Then, the second world is the world of our body, it changes. And the third world is the world of our thoughts, and beliefs, and values, and outlooks, and so forth, and it changes. And these three worlds pretty well encompass the totality of our experience. In these three worlds, where’s the “I”, or what is the “I”? Anybody?

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: But what is “I” in these three worlds? Where in these three worlds does the “I” fall?

Student: [Unclear] in the world of our beliefs.

Ken: In the world of our beliefs, “I” is simply another experience. It’s an experience on which we place disproportionate emphasis. And we organize everything around it. But is it the “I” that actually experiences seeing? No, it would have us believe that, but it’s not. So, the “I” is simply another experience in the three worlds. And when we open to the totality of change, that’s one of the first things that happens. The sense of an “I”, a privileged “I”, separate from the world of experience, drops away.

A question: am I going to die?

Ken: So, the exploration of change, which seems to be very obvious and kind of trivial, when you really go into it, not only do you encounter all of your emotional resistance to change, but if you go far enough into the experience of change, you find yourself in the experience of what is. Then, the second thing at which we directed attention was the inevitability of death. In the meditation interviews I gave some of you a simplified approach, and I think this is a good, reliable, direct approach to the inevitability of death. Ask yourself, “Am I going to die?” Now, you’re going to answer that in one of two ways, “yes'”or “no.” If you say “yes”—how do you know you’re going to die?

Student: Well, there’s a lot of evidence.

Ken: Yeah, but how do you know? There’s beliefs, you can infer, but that’s not really knowing. How do you know you are going to die?

Student: Friends and my family …

Ken: Yeah, but what I’m doing is throwing this out, as a way to move deeper into that knowing. If you answer “no” to this question, how do you know you’re not going to die?

Student: I don’t.

Ken: Yeah. But either way, you question, and through that question you move into it. You follow? So, “Am I going to die?” And whether you answer “yes” or “no,” you ask, “How do I know that?” And then, through this, you come to a knowing which is more than just an intellectual knowing. You can feel the emotional resistance first, you penetrate the emotional resistance, and then something shifts inside, and there is a knowing. And that shift actually is connecting with your own mortality, which is often accompanied by feelings of nausea and fear, just by way of passing. And one needs to get to that level of knowing at least.

Then, the other question or other aspect is, that death, while inevitable, the time of death is completely uncertain. So, here you ask the question, “Could I die at any time?” And again, you might say “yes,” and you ask, “How do I know that?” And if you say “no,” you ask, “How do I know that?” And through the same process, you come to a non-intellectual appreciation, or apprehension, of the uncertainty of death—it could happen at any time. Then, you put these two together, experiencing both the certainty and uncertainty of death. And if you have opened to those two understandings more deeply than the intellectual, you’ll find when you hold both in attention, another level of awareness, or attention, forms. And that awareness is the beginning of the Middle Way, the Middle Way that doesn’t fall into either extreme of order or chaos.

Now, this has been developed in connection with dying, but it holds equally well for all other areas of life. And if you bring an awareness that holds both order and chaos into your daily life, you will find that you interact with things differently, less reactively. You’ll find the balance point, the point of response, directly. This does not function at the level of the intellect.

Then, we looked at the dying process itself. Now, there are two phases to the dying process—there’s the approach to death, and then there’s the actual process of dying. Because of time limitations, we didn’t do the meditations on approaching dying. They are, however, very useful, because this is where the admission of death into life actually takes place. In this book, I suggested three different scenarios—dying of old age, dying of a terminal illness, and dying in a car accident—because each of these is a different experience. And there are different things that come up.

One student I worked with couldn’t imagine what he would do if he received a diagnosis of a terminal illness. He just couldn’t do this meditation at all, he’d just sit down, and his mind would just go blank. So, when he saw me, I said, “Okay, you received a phone call from your doctor who said they just got some lab results, and he’d like you to come in and talk, and he suggests you bring your wife with you. And you go to the doctor, and he tells you that, quite unexpectedly, you have an advanced form of cancer—lymphoma or something like that—and you have six months approximately. And he sketches out a number of treatment options. You’re a bit stunned, so your wife asks most of the questions, and then you leave the office. When do you discuss this with your wife?”

And he looked at me and went, “What?” “Well, you’re walking with your wife, when you’re going to get to the elevator, and go down the elevator, and go out the lobby, and you’re going to go to the parking lot, you’re going to get in the car, you’re going to drive somewhere, possibly home, maybe go to a restaurant, have dinner—I don’t know. Are you not going to say anything? Somewhere in this process, you’re going to talk with your wife.” And this is the way that he had to approach the meditation in order to be able to do it—just what are the actual things? And that’s the way to do those meditations. What would you actually do in each of these circumstances?

You make it very real and vivid for yourself. That’s challenging, it’s difficult. What do you do with your possessions? Do you haul out your papers, make sure you have a living will, or trust, or what have you—all of these practical things. Who do you call? Who do you talk to, etc. I mean, all kinds of things, most of which we never think about. But it’s very useful to drive the point home about our death, to actually go through these, in detail.

And then the second part of that is what we did today, the actual dying process in which the world that you experience—in terms of sensory experience, the physical body, mental constructs of all kinds—dissolves into pure energy, emptiness, whatever you want to call it. And when you do this, although you encounter different kinds of fear and resistance and difficulties, the mind comes to rest. And it’s not simply a resting mind, it’s also very clear. And that clear, stable attention is the essence of practice. And so, this last stage of the retreat, the instruction for this evening, is to sit. Clear, stable attention, and do nothing, just there.

What happens after death?

Ken: Okay. Now, there’s one other thing that we’ve not had time for, and that’s the consideration of what happens after death. I’m not going to go into the quite elaborate descriptions of the bardo states, which the Tibetan tradition is known for. What does happen after death? What do you know happens after you die?

Student: The body decomposes.

Ken: Yes. If it isn’t burnt, it decomposes some other way. What else happens?

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Yes. You become … first day, possibly, a number of photographs, or pictures, or now DVDs and videotapes. And maybe something’s written about you in the newspaper, or maybe even a book. But eventually those too, those records too, disappear.

Student: But that isn’t really you.

Ken: That’s right. But this is what happens, right? But that’s what happens after you die. That’s what we know happens after we die. But as you say, that isn’t us—that’s the traces of us in the experience of somebody else’s world. Nothing’s left. It’s very important, very important. What does this mean about all the accumulation of wealth, power, etc., that we see rampant in the world today? Well, it’s not meaningless, it indicates something.

Student: It’s an attempt to defy it.

Ken: Exactly. All of that is a reaction to death, an attempt to deny that death is going to take place. Dave? Sorry. Okay, Chris?

Chris: I’m a hedonist. And I work to party, pretty much. I’m not accumulating wealth because, you know, I know I’m going to die at any moment.

Ken: Eat, drink, and be merry.

Chris: Pretty much.

Ken: Yeah. Okay.

Chris: You know, as long as … I don’t know if necessarily what you’re saying is true, along those lines.

Ken: But I wasn’t talking about you. I mean, people who accumulate tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, often knowingly causing great suffering for large numbers of people—that’s not you? [Laughter] But it’s all an attempt to deny death. Yeah. Julia?

Julia: In the world of ideas, people hope to be remembered for their ideas, or for their artistic creations in very much the same way.

Ken: Exactly.

Student: But some artists, however, I don’t think they necessarily would do the art because they want to be remembered, but it is something that just needs to do that, I mean, there is that.

Ken: Oh, there is that, but …

Student: There’s that, but I think also there’s a tremendous amount of structure that you build up around doing that that does have more of a sustaining of a legacy, all of that, and it’s built in.

Ken: As soon as you hear people talking about their legacy, you know, they’re going for immortality.

Student: Cryogenics.

Ken: It’s another effort to avoid death. Okay? And I don’t want to dwell on this very much, I just want to point out that’s another aspect. When you see that very little, if anything, of what is you continues after you die, what effect does this have on you? Julia?

Julia: I’m focused on doing those things that have meaning in the present and not things that have meaning in the future.

Ken: Yeah, it actually brings you into the present.

Student: And isn’t this when the compassionate part often wakes up, and you begin to look outside yourself to the other sentient beings?

Ken: Yes. Or to put it in a different way, you begin to open to the world you actually experience.

Student: And the suffering of others.

Ken: And the suffering that you see in the world, you yourself experience. And that’s the purpose of our practices, to be present in the world we actually experience, not the idea of a world that we have constructed. Okay. Jessica?

Jessica: Not on this exact point, but what’s the nausea or … that feeling that you say … I have experienced that, and I guess you’re saying it’s pretty consistent.

Ken: It’s the reaction of the biological conditioning to a threat.

Jessica: The organism.

Ken: Yeah. The body is programmed to live. So, anytime it experiences something that’s a threat to it, all of that stuff is activated, and one of the ways it’s activated is nausea. Because when you feel nausea, what do you do? Do you continue the activity that you’re doing? No, that’s its function, it’s to stop. You know, you come near the edge of a cliff, you feel [makes sound of dizziness], you retreat. That’s part of the survival tape, program. Okay?

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: You had a question, Janneke? What? I mean, just from my own experience, people don’t notice that they’ve transitioned from one pattern to another in waking life. They think they’re being utterly consistent, when their whole personality has changed because somebody said something. And so, given that that happens, odds are not real good. The other thing that I want to point out—it doesn’t make a lot of sense to talk about you. This is what I am right now, this whole experience. Another experience arises, perhaps. It’s another experience. What the connection with me is, that’s very tenuous. And I found that very helpful, I mean, if you take a traditional point of view, and yeah, okay, it all starts up again, and somebody experiences another life, then your practice of dharma becomes an act of generosity—you’re handing on less muck to the next person.

Jonathan: Yeah, that occured to me. [Unclear] The other functional question is what time does … [unclear]?

Ken: Right. We usually end it after morning meditation, after the early morning meditation. So we … or do we go right through? At 11:30, yeah, because the schedule tomorrow … yeah, ends at 11:30.

Student: So, breakfast in silence?

Ken: Yeah, breakfast in silence, and then we meet at 9:30 in the Zendo for meditation together. Then, at 11:30, we go to the fire circle and do the conclusion. Harry?

Harry: So, how do we know about the bardos and how is that communicated [unclear]?

The bardos

Ken: Well, I do not have an answer to that question. I have pieces of it. First off, every culture has its own view of what happens, and they differ. I have always had a reluctance to assume that Tibetan culture had a monopoly on truth. The view of the bardos, I think, comes out of experiences that arise through principally Vajrayana methods, particularly the methods associated with recognizing dreams and clear light, in which very, very subtle states of mind and a lot of different kinds of experiences arise.

For instance, one of the teachers in the Shangpa tradition, which is one of the transmissions I received through Rinpoche, the second major lineage holder in Tibet was called Mochokpa, and his main disciple was Kyergongpa. Kyergongpa came to Mochokpa once and said, “Well, I had this weird experience. There I was, dreaming, and I knew that I was dreaming, and somebody shot me with an arrow. And I died in my dream, and I went through the bardo states, and then I was reborn, and then I woke up from the dream.”

And Mochokpa said, “Hmm, not bad! I’ve never been able to do that.”

Make of that what you will, but I suspect it’s experiences like that, and those are things that come out of Vajrayana practices, that produce this view of what happens. And I don’t for a moment underestimate the ability and experience of some of these people, I mean, they’re quite extraordinary in their capacity of attention. So, they operate at a totally different level from anything I’ve experienced. I take it with a grain of salt, but there it is.

Student: So, the dying process itself that we’ve been going through is on a diferent level.

Ken: Yeah. It’s on a different level, yeah. People experience that through near-death experiences in many, many different ways. And also, as I said earlier, it’s a direct analog of the experience that is encountered in the dissolution of self, and that’s why this meditation on the dissolution of the elements is so very helpful for your practice. Because by doing this, you’re actually establishing a pathway for the dissolution of attachment to a sense of self. Helena?

Helena: But this is what they say in the Tibetan Book of the Dead as well, it’s just as much for me, as it is for the dying or death, the process of death. [Unclear]

Ken: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah?

Student: There’s specific meditation practices that are done when one is dying, there are people teaching those in Northern California, you know. So, there are certain chants or certain meditations—what about those, and how effective are they in helping to keep the attention?

Ken: I like to keep things very simple. The function of all of those chants is to create an environment in which a sense of presence is strongly established, so there’s a place for the person to die. And, as all of you experienced today, having someone that you trust guide you through the experience is very helpful. So, there’s great utility in those processes. As for the actual experience of dying, what meditation you do when you’re dying—Bokar Rinpoche, who is Kalu Rinpoche’s successor, always advises that you do the practice that you find in the middle of The Great Path of Awakening, that is you do taking and sending, and from taking and sending you let your mind rest in sheer clarity. That’s the best practice. Now, there are all kinds of fancy practices that are taught all over the place, but in a certain sense, all of them are trying to cheat death. And the main thing is, just be there, be in the experience. Michelle, last question.

Michelle: I have a question about duality, and it goes back to what we talked about the first or second day. I’ve had a lot of conversations in the past three or four months about how the current occupant of the White House sees things only in black and white and actually seems to view the slightest shade of gray as weakness, or a failure of character somehow. I understand what makes that us-and-them mentality so attractive to a lot of people, because it’s simple, but what makes it so powerful?

Ken: Its appeal. You don’t have to question anything. It’s all laid out—it’s this or that. And when you’re faced with a complex problem, complex situation, to meet that complex situation, you have to have a level of attention that can hold all of the complexities and the apparent contradictions simultaneously in just the way that we’re talking about holding certainty and uncertainty with respect to death. That requires a higher level of attention. When you have a higher level of attention, you’re necessarily aware of other stuff in you, because you are that much more awake. If there’s stuff in you, you don’t want to be aware of, then you don’t want that higher level of attention, and black and white is just really nice. That’s one way of looking at it.

Student: So that makes ignoring more possible?

Ken: Sadly, yes. Well, yes, black and white is very much organized, I mean, as I said, I think, on Wednesday evening, when you have a sense of right and wrong, and this is right, and that is wrong, then, inevitably, you’re going to be at war. You’re going to be at war, because all that has to happen is you encounter somebody else with a different sense of right and wrong, and since both of you are absolute, you’re going to be at war. Peter?

Peter: The first couple of weeks after September 11th, there was a big opening in the country that I didn’t expect to see at all. And it’s since closed down, I mean it has closed down, but it really gives me some kind of faith that things can open up again, ’cause I didn’t even believe that could happen, but there was a lot of people talking about how could this happen … [unclear].

Student: It’s not back—he wanted to underscore how careful everybody should be because of the baby bear. Not because of the baby bear, but because of the mother bear, he wanted me to …

Ken: … remind everybody …

Student: … in explicit terms. Be very careful.

Ken: In other words, don’t get between the mother bear and the baby bear.

Student: It’s probably a good idea if people are more together instead of walking by yourself. [Unclear] [Laughter]

Ken: We’re going to close here. So, this evening and in the morning, do nothing. If you can’t rest there, then do any of the practices—whether it’s change, holding the paradox, or going through the process of dying—that brings you back into attention, and then rest in doing nothing. And this is the meditation you’ll do from now to the end of the retreat.

Student: All eight meditations we’ll do this? There’s eight left.

Ken: Yeah. So, you’ll get a little practice.

Student: Can you just say it one more time?

Ken: Yes. You sit, do nothing. Now, if you’re just all over the place and there’s nothing going on whatsoever, you’re falling asleep or what have you, then do any of the three meditations that we’ve covered. And the three that I’m thinking of are: opening to the totality of change, which you experienced dissolving the sense of “I” and other, and bring you into presence; the second is opening or being in the paradox of: I’m going to die, I do not know when, and actually being right there, and I described how to move into that today; or thirdly, going through the process of dying, the dissolution of the elements, which also brings you into clarity and presence, and then just rest there again. So, in terms of the name of this retreat, it was a play on the words, you see. Death stalks us, but we also stalk death. You follow? Okay. Page four [Retreat booklet].

The great freedom from extremes
Is like a gallant lion lying
In the snow at ease, displaying
Its teeth fearlessly.
In this view do I trust.
Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one who holds this view.

The stag, dignified and calm,
Displays the many-pronged antlers of one taste.
He sleeps with ease on the plane of bliss and light.
In this practice do I trust.
Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one who practices.

The fish of ten virtues
With rolling golden eyes,
Swims in the river of continuous experience.
In this behavior do I trust.
Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one who acts this way.

The tigress of knowing mind itself
Is adorned with vivid stripes.
She is the glory of effortless good,
Moving confidently in the woods.
In this discipline do I trust.
Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one with discipline.

On the paper of positive and negative forms,
I wrote an essay with my knowing mind.
In the state of non-duality,
I watch and contemplate.
In this dharma do I trust.
Death leads to the path to freedom.
Death brings joy to one with dharma.

The purified essence of dynamic energy
Is like a great eagle flying
On the wings of means and wisdom
To the castle of non-being.
In this ability do I trust.
Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one with this ability.

The Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa vol. 2, Garma C.C. Chang. p. 607

So, we’ll continue to observe silence until 11:30 tomorrow.