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Plus, if there is rainfall, the rain is not a gentle rain like what we get.

That bardowa feels each and every drop of rain as if it were a huge golf ball that causes a tremendous pain in the body. And the wind is not a gentle small wind, it is so strong that you have no alternative but just to be carried along by it. These are the experiences in the bardo. These are still not the bad ones; the bad ones are terrible; I will not go into that in detail. This much will be enough for us to think the bardos are not necessarily wonderful and beautiful.

Normally people don't like to hear bad things. If somebody writes a book on bardo and writes about many bad things, the editors will cut it out, so you are not going to read it. There is both good and bad bardo. The good experiences you don't have to say much about. As we say, " At the time of the death may Lama Heruka with consort Vajrayogini receive me with flowers, and banners and cymbals and singing. 65 And actually, the gentleman who died in Delhi could hear the cymbals and singing before. So there is no question, that sort of bardo is the good bardo.

65 Vajrayogini sadhana.

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Then also, there is the phowa process, which is actually cheating death; you do not wait for a natural process of dying; before the normal process of death takes place, you transfer your consciousness to a safer ground. The rules of this practice are that you learn the phowa, you practice it, make it perfect, and then you occasionally practice it so that you do not forget. You cannot actually transfer your consciousness unless and until you are sure that you cannot survive. So before the difficulty, the terrible pain comes, you can transfer your consciousness through the power of phowa, which we have seen in a number of different areas. Many people did that, a number of times.

Then, of course, Vajrayogini practitioners have that uncommon inconceivable practice which is even better than phowa. So there are methods of 'how can I help myself during that period. Buddhism really provides a tremendous amount of help on that. Even if you can't do anything at the time of death, if you can just think about the Buddha, the Guru or the yidam that itself will help. A simple little thing, last minute even. Buddha has mentioned like twenty-two different ways of how you can help yourself at that time. Things like that are there.

There is one more thing I would like to share with you. Certain people have said to me, "I'm going to take a Buddha picture to a friend of mine who is dying, and show her before she dies." I said, "Hey, hey hold on, hold on. Does she know anything about Buddhism?" "No." " Better not." Because the people may get very upset, "What is she trying to do to me, force some devils on me or what?" Who knows what thoughts are going to come? So, instead of service, it becomes disservice. If the person knows about Buddha, and has some kind of understanding and faith in Buddha, then it helps. Otherwise, it is going to harm. So you have to be really careful.

How do you make the judgement of what to do? At the period of death, which is the very quietest moment, your consciousness is reduced to such a subtle level that it cannot really be positive or negative. It is totally focussed internally, deep down. To perceive anything external is out of the question. So, if you can, you use that opportunity to proceed farther on your path; this is an opportunity one takes. If you

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don't think you are going to get anything done, then there is no use in taking yourself through the narrow passage of death or bardo; so you transfer your consciousness, or do whatever you could. That's what you do.

25

Avoid hell rebirth

This Lamrim teaching was traditionally given to people who already accepted life after death. Normally they would say: after death you do not disappear, you will continue. Granted that you do continue, your continuation will be either a good one or a bad one. What the bad one is, is available here: hell rebirth. I know a lot of former Catholic friends have joined Buddhism hoping that there is no hell realm there, but unfortunately there is a hell realm in Buddhism, too. Maybe Buddha and Jesus had a conference; maybe they cooked up a story together, who knows? (laughs)

There are hell realms in Buddhism. There are eighteen-plus hell realms. There are eight hot ones, eight cold ones, and two nearby within the human level. Each one of those hot hell realms are surrounded by additional sufferings. Like the putrid swamp, [Tib. ro nya]: you try to go somewhere, and you find that your foot is stuck in some kind of swampy mud. You walk across and as you put your feet down they sink in as far as they can. When your leg sinks in the mud, the many insects in there eat up all your flesh. When you take your leg up, it heals again. the next leg goes down into the mud, gets eaten up, you pick it up, it heals again. And so on. There is also a 'sword-leaf forest' [Tib. 10 ma]. In that you see your friends, the lovers or children from your previous life yelling and screaming at you from the top of a tree. You try to climb up to help them but all the thorns of the tree will turn down and cut you into pieces. They are not simple, ordinary thorns, but big swords. By the time you get up there, you see those people down there. Then you come down, see the same thing again, and keep on repeating it. That is the what the surrounding hell realms are like.

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A lot of such sufferings are there. My first Lamrim teaching that I consciously remember was from Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, in Loseling. It was very similar to what we are doing, based on the Panchen Lama's commentary. Kyabje Rinpoche talked about the hell realms for three or four days. I was sitting, leaning on a pillar and sobbing and crying all the time for three or four days. That was my first Lamrim teaching.

The hell realms are real, for sure. The sufferings of the hell experience in human life are also real. Let me give you one more example. One of the hot hell realms is called 'revival'. What happens is, suddenly people start fighting and killing each other with weapons, until they are all dead. Suddenly a sound comes from the air, saying, " All may rise again!" So they go and pick up their weapons and fight and kill again. You die a hundred times a day and you rise a hundred times a day. That's why it is called 'continual resurrection'. No matter how much torture you go through, you don't die; when you are terribly wounded you just sort of faint and when you rise again, all these wounds have been healed and you're ready to fight again. You keep on continuously doing that till you get free from there.

That's just to give you a little idea. If you are interested in more, read Pabongka's Liberation in the palm of your hand66. There are a lot of other places where they describe the hell realms quite vividly, both cold and hot hells. I think in my Lamrim I didn't talk much about the hell realms because you didn't want to hear it at that time! Now the time is slightly different, so read it.

If we look in the history of Buddha Shakyamuni himself, he was once born in a hell realm. A vivid picture describes how a hell realm official used him like a horse to pull his horse cart. The hell official kept on beating him from behind. Suddenly Buddha developed compassion, not only for himself, but for his companion who tried to pull the horse cart and couldn't, and so got beating after beating. The Buddha had compassion for the great pain that person suffered. When he had that

66 Day Eleven.

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compassion, the hell official said, "How dare you to think that way?" and hit the hammer on that Buddha's head and he died. That's how he got free from that hell realm.

I'm not telling you a fairy tale story. Avoid hell rebirth. It is in our hand right now because we are responsible for what we do. Since I am responsible for myself, and you are responsible for yourself, we can do or undo right now. But if we don't talk about the hell realm at all, and we talk as if everything is wonderful and beautiful, there is no difference between 'love and light' and actual reality.

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Avoid hungry ghost rebirth

A little better than being in a hell realm is being born as a hungry ghost. They don't get food, and they get tremendous pains. It's funny, the Seventh Dalai Lama described the hungry ghosts as having stomachs like a mountain, yet their limbs being tiny little ones, maybe like those of a daddy long legs. They are normally said to have eighteen knots in the throat, that's why they can't eat. It's not that they are poor, many of them are extremely wealthy, much richer than Rockefellers. Really true. But they can't use their wealth, it is useless for them. So if you are wealthy and your wealth is useless, you may be a hungry ghost! Find out, can you eat it? Can you make use of it? Better find out. True!

As hungry ghost you are extremely greedy. You want everything for yourself, nobody else is allowed to have it. Yet you cannot use it at all. It has been cut down by the power of stinginess, and it is tremendous suffering. There are a lot of stories. Read Liberation in the palm of your hand. There is a story of one hungry ghost who went away from his family in search for food and could not find any food for twelve years. Finally he found some kind of dry spill, spit out by somebody who had dedicated it to the hungry ghosts. He got that after twelve years. His family sent a message to him through a teacher, asking him to return quickly with food. The teacher said, "How do I know it is

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your family member?" " Well, you won't make a mistake, because his right eye is not there, the right leg is not there, he is only a one-eyed, one-legged person." When that lama was doing a water offering, he saw the one, and he gave the message. Then the hungry ghost said, "I spent twelve years, I got this much only, so how can I go back and look after my family?" These sorts of examples are there. So it is not easy in the hungry ghost realm.

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Avoid animal realm rebirth

The next is the animal realm. That's a little easier for us to look at. We can see the tremendous amount of sufferings that animals have. How much they have, and what we have, compare it. We sit inside the room, the animals are outside. If we find cockroaches in our house, we kick them out. If they are lucky, somebody may come with a glass and catch them and take them out. If they are not lucky, we use some chemicals and destroy them.

Animals live outside, there is no shelter for them, and they suffer. Their nature is that they fight with each other. One of their greatest sufferings is that they eat each other. We use them to carry loads, we ride on top of them, if they're not going fast enough, we hit them and finally we kill them for meat or skin or deer musk, whatever. And they experience this, they get killed, not we, we just killed them. When the deer season comes, we just shoot the deer for no reason whatsoever. On top of that, some animals are so obedient or so stupid that if somebody comes with a knife to kill them, they can't run, or they run the wrong way. In former days, they used to kill cows by throwing them down a ravine. They used to chase them in one direction, and they all would push each other and try to get to the other side, so when they got on the cliff they fell down and were killed. These are the sufferings in the animal realm.

That is the picture of lower rebirth. What you do, you imagine that you are the animal over there about to be killed by somebody. Incidentally, there is an interesting story on this. There was a monk who always

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kept on saying, “Om mani peme hung" every minute. He had three animals, a goat, a cow and a sheep. They all thought, " Well, this fellow is a Dharma practitioner, he must be a kind person, we are safe here." I think the goat is the one who came to know earlier, " I doubt it very much, this fellow says ‘Om mani peme hung' by mouth all the time, but I don't think he thinks anything like that." One day, the man called the butcher. The butcher came. The animals said, " Something is going on, let's listen." The goat went and listened. The man was telling the butcher, "You've got to kill them, I need the meat and I will pay you." The butcher said, "I am so busy, I can't do it." And he said, "You got to! I will increase your money". Finally both of them agreed. The butcher came out and got ahold of the sheep first, because it was the easiest. He tied the sheep's legs together. The goat tried to hide the knife by digging a hole in the ground, but still couldn't save the sheep. This all happened while this fellow was standing there saying, "Om mani peme hung, om mani peme hung" ! He let the animals get killed, and he even paid a person to do it for him 67.

Killing is a terrible thing. Someone else loses his life completely. Killing with torture is even worse. You cannot have any heavier negativity than that: 1) desiring to kill, 2) taking action by torturing the being and finally 3) completing the job by separating life and body. It is a complete, powerful negativity. Such a powerful negativity, with all three factors working together, is a direct cause of taking rebirth in the hell realm. If two are okay, one is weak, you may go to the hungry ghost realm. If two are weak, and one is okay, you may go to the animal realm. That is how you determine how powerful the negativities

A vivid example for us is the mosquitoes. Sometimes, you get bitten by a mosquito or bedbug. You wake up in the middle of the night and try to see the little one. The first time you let it go, a second time you let it go, the third time you are determined to catch it. You get up, turn on the light, throw all your blankets off and look for that tiny little being wherever it is. Then you get it, you keep it tight in your

67 The story is told in more detail in Gelek Rinpoche, Lamrim Teachings, pg. 269-270.

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hand, "Now I got you!" You keep on rubbing it and torture it and you won't let it go. Then — maybe this is a Tibetan or Eastern habit — you put it in between two nails and squeeze it. And when you see that tiny little blood come out, you say, "Hey now!" This is a vivid example of a perfect karma of killing. Accidental killing is killing, but not complete, not perfect. Accidental killings will not take you to hell realm, they will take you somewhere else.

So, it is in your hands where would you like to be in the future, absolutely in your own hand, in nobody else's hand. You are responsible to yourself. How do we know where we will be taken? If you have been committing negativities, the negativities will give you a result of suffering. If you have been building up positivities, the consequence is rebirth in the human land, in the demi-god land, or among the samsaric gods. Dharma practitioners even have to go beyond that, because even a life as a samsaric god is just one lifetime. When you die there, where are you going to land? It's doing it all over again and again and again.

The continuation of contaminated identity is the actual samsara, the circle of life. The continuation of contaminated identity is the true samsara: it is nothing else. What do I mean by contaminated? Contaminated things are naturally suffering and they are empowered by the negativities we have committed. Even the wonderful human body, with unlimited capability, is contaminated, because in its nature it is suffering, created by a lot of negative as well as by positive causes. Since many of the negative karmic consequences are included, it is contaminated.

The key for us to avoid negative rebirth is to try to become uncontaminated. If you become uncontaminated, you have become pure. During the practice we visualize that light and liquid comes, and we become pure. They're not washing us, they're not washing our toe jam or toe cheese. The whole purpose of purifying here is becoming uncontaminated. Contaminated means suffering in nature and controlled by the negative emotions. So when you become purified, it means free of contamination. That's why we visualize being washed and cleaned. We do that for this reason.

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So any positive action we take is going to shape our future in a positive way; any action that we take that is negative is going to shape our future negatively. You don't have to go to a fortune teller, or an astrologer, or to the lamas to find out. We know what is going to happen; the prophecy is already given by Buddha, who said, "If you create positive karma, you have positive results; if you create negative karma, you have negative results." That's how whatever we would like our future to be, it is in our hand right now, right this moment. This is the right time, the right opportunity for us to do what we should do and what we can do.

There is plenty of information available, there are plenty of guides available, and there are plenty of sangha members available. There is a practice that you can do. We are introducing such a simple thing that even within the busy schedule of your life, without even making big adjustments, you could do it. Even if you are working fourteen or fifteen hours a day (nobody does, but everybody claims to!) you still have time to do things. That is the opportunity I am talking about. That is how you can make a difference to your life. You don't have to spend hours on it. You don't have to build up a number of mantras. You simply have to train your mind so that you function in a positive nature [or manner] and that becomes your habit. Right now, our habitual pattern is negative. Our neurosis controls us. We don't have to put efforts to do that, it is automatic. But when we want to do the opposite of what we are used to, every point is a struggle. Once it becomes a habit, we will automatically do it. It really doesn't need efforts then. Sometime ago, somebody came and said, "It creeps in within me." I was very happy with that statement, and have repeated it a number of times. When it creeps in within you, it is there, it is taking root, it is developing, it is growing, it is taking effect.

You should do your Dharma practice effortlessly, as though you are doing nothing happy, jolly, not so much pressurized. Walk slowly, whether or not there is rain or sleet. I get blamed; whether there is rain or sleet, or sun or whatever, I go the same speed, nothing different! Dharma practitioners really work that way. When you try to push yourself in a corner and say, "Oh I have to do this, I have to do

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this," you are not going to get anywhere. You may shave your head and go to the Himalayas or the forest in Thailand or something, but even then you will come back the same old groundhog! The real, true practice is within the mind. Understand and bring the awareness, correct your habitual patterns from the negative way into the positive way. That is true Dharma practice.

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Remember limitations of human rebirth

We said human life is great and wonderful. But every human being doesn't have the greatness we have. The opportunity of taking care of our negativity once for all is not there for everybody. That is the human limitation. Some are not interested. Some think it is silly. Some think it is totally useless. Some think it is a waste of time. Some think it is a trip. Some think, "It may be something, but I am busy," or "Maybe something but I don't believe it." Whatever the reasons may be, even human life has limitations. So we should really appreciate what we have.

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Avoid demigod rebirth

Avoid demigod rebirth because it is full of jealousy. As a demi-god you are always competing with someone better than you, so you have no peace. It's not constructive competition, it is really dreadful competition. The demi-gods always fight a war with the samsaric gods and they get killed all the time by their karmic power. So it is not constructive. Constructive competition is a different thing, it's good, we need it. Whoever can give you constructive Dharma, constructive criticism, is helping, is supporting; that is dharma activity. Constructive criticism, constructive competition is a help. But if it is going beyond that, to the point of destroying the other, it is not helping. Remember a few years ago, someone in some ice skating business, breaking Nancy Kerrigan' s leg — that is not constructive competition! That is the pure jealousy-oriented, anger-oriented destruction. The

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demi-gods always have jealousy. They try to kill those samsaric gods so that they can go up there and occupy their palaces and their wealth. Just like that we fight between groups and nations, Indian chiefs and white settlers and so forth. That is very much similar to this.

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Avoid samsaric god rebirth

We may think the god realm is great. They don't have much suffering and for a long time they enjoy their life. Their flowers are great. Their land is wonderful, Their companions are so nice. Everybody is handsome, beautiful, cute. The whole land is like that, almost like a pure land. All the water is pure, the air is pure, the ground is beautiful. It is like a sponge ground, you walk and it will go up and down, it adjusts to your own way of walking. You don't have much suffering. But you don't remember anything. You really enjoy being soaked in there. It's as good as having a nice experience of a high through usage of chemicals: I don't know whether marijuana is capable of delivering that or not, I have no idea, the bhang does! As good as that.

And when you suddenly wake up, you die, you go down. You know what happens? You are naturally dressed in flowers. Everywhere you go, everybody has such wonderful looking, and beautifully scented flowers as their decoration. Humans will never even see such quality! Seven days before you die, these flowers are going to die. So suddenly, when you see the flowers dying, you begin to worry, "What is happening?" The moment you worry, you have the karmic power to see what is going to be your future, what's going to be your next life. Suddenly you see you are going to be reborn as a pig in a Calcutta slum. Then you cannot bear it. You have to hide yourself in a corner to die, but the period of waiting is extremely long. Though it is seven days of god realm life, it is as long as a lifetime for us. During that period, your friends will not come to you because you got that disease. They totally shun and avoid you. If it is a close family type of relationship, they may give you some nice little flower mala that you can maybe wear one day. And they'll give it to you with a long stick, so they don't have to come near. Or maybe they will throw it at you! So

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you instead of appreciating receiving the flower, you feel terrible that you are abandoned, rejected. That is also extremely painful. Then, after that, again, the same thing repeats.

Buddha said, " Avoid samsara, nirvana is peace". He introduced nirvana as positive, samsara as negative.