The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (90 page)

You should be able to relate with a person’s bodily situation and detect the subtle deterioration in their physical senses: the sense of communication, sense of hearing, sense of physical body, sense of facial expressions—the whole thing is deteriorating. But at the same time, a person with a tremendously powerful will, who is used to putting on a superficial smile, can always put on a smile at the last minute of death, saying, “Okay, I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m absolutely splendid.” This person is trying to fight off their old age, trying to fight off their deterioration of the senses. That also could happen.

Just taking the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
in to someone’s deathbed and reading it to them doesn’t really do very much, except that the dying person knows that you are performing a ceremony of some kind. If you are going to relate with such a text, you should also have an understanding of the whole thing, so you do not just read the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
, but you try to speak in conversational terms. Such a conversation would go as such: “You are dying, you are leaving your friends and family. Your appreciated surroundings are no longer going to be there. You are going to be leaving us. But at the same time, there is something which continues in terms of death. There is a continuity. Your positive relationship to your friends and to the teachings continues. So work on that continuity, that basic continuity, which has nothing to do with ego. It is very loose ground, but at the same time there is some ground.

“When you die, you will have all sorts of traumatic experiences in leaving the body. Your old memories are coming back to you as well, in the form of hallucinations. That naturally happens to you when you die. But at the same time, there is our companionship, our friendship, and your basic being. I have been very close to you. Because of that I would not hesitate to tell you that you are going to die. The spiritual friend continues and friendship to the dharma continues as well. If anything happens to you in terms of visions, hallucinations, just relate with the actual happening rather than trying to run away from it. Just actually relate with what happens rather than trying to run away from it. Just do that. Don’t try to run away from it. Just relate with what is happening there; just relate with what is happening there. Just relate with that! Keep there! Just relate with that! There is ground. Just relate with that. It doesn’t matter what is happening. Relate with some ground. That is working; you are working your way through.”

At the same time that the dying person is supposedly deteriorating in intelligence and consciousness, he or she also develops another dimension of higher consciousness, an environmental feeling. It is exactly the same as a person going back to the womb: this environmental feeling develops. So if you are able to provide basic warmth and a basic sure quality that what you are telling is the truth rather than purely what you have been told to tell this person, that is extremely important. “Just relate with what is. Just relate with me, just relate with this. You are lying on the deathbed and you are dying. You are dying, just relate with this, just relate with what is happening to you. There is some continuity happening.”

It seems that in order to bring a person into the state of clear light, you have to have the basic ground to relate with the clear light, which is the solidness of the person. Your friends know that you are going to die, but they are not going to freak out about it. They actually are there, really there, positively there, fully there. And they are telling you that you are going to die. They know that you are going to die, but they are really there. If they are not really there, even if they are telling you that you are going to die, it is very suspicious. That sets off all sorts of chain reactions: something funny seems to be happening behind your back; it seems as though your friends are purely reciting what they’ve been told, as though they were programmed by a computer. So fully being there is very, very important when a person dies, and just relating with the simple things.

Relating with nowness is extremely powerful, because at this point for the dying person there is some uncertainty between body and mind, how to relate with those two situations. The only language that you could use is based on your speaking out of your own body: you’re using your mouth, tongue, teeth, and breath to speak to the person. You are communicating on that level to the other person, who is also living in that situation of body and brain and breath—which is deteriorating at that point. But you are relating with that situation. It seems that is the very important point: providing some solid ground, basic ground.

It seems that actually relating with the dying person is very important, to provide the whole ground of dying. Death is no longer a myth at that point. It is actually happening: “You are dying. We are watching you dying. But we are your friends, therefore we watch your dying. We believe in your rugged quality of leaving your body and turning into a corpse. That is beautiful. That’s the finest and best example of friendship that you could demonstrate to us: that you know that you are dying and we know that you are going to die. That’s really beautiful. We are really meeting together properly and beautifully, exactly at the point. It is fantastic communication.” That in itself is such a beautiful and rich quality of communication that it really presents a tremendous further inspiration as far as the dying person is concerned.

The point is to relate to people and to develop transmission or the meeting of the two minds. This happens between conversations, within the gaps: “This has nothing to do with your death, but let’s be together. Let’s open ourselves to each other simultaneously.

“Shall we do it? Let’s do it. Here we go. Let’s open our selves. That’s beautiful, let’s do it again.”

At the same time, it is good to try to save people from unnecessary troubles. If a person goes along with it, you could talk about their relationships to their parents and relatives. You see, there is a tendency when a person leaves his or her body to begin to think about their unsaid things: “I wish I could relate this to someone; I wish I could relate that to somebody.” There is tremendous regret going on. It is as though somebody is on a long voyage into a foreign country: “I wish I could tell this to somebody, so and so. Would you like to hear it? Would you like to see that?” On our long voyages, we can write letters, we can send telegrams, we can talk on the telephone; but unfortunately, the dying person has none of those relationships or means of communication. Therefore, it is quite likely that such a person is involved with a very depressed and paranoid situation. They would like to relate with people, to actually relate their experiences—their relationship to their family life or their particular concerns. So try to talk to them as well about their family relationships, their friends, what they would like to be. That actually should be discussed: “I would like to become a Ph.D., to get my doctorate in such and such a topic.” “You wanted to do that, but you can’t do that anymore because you are dying. Okay. You wanted to do that, didn’t you? But that is past. Now you are dying.” A person has to be really brave to communicate in that way. In any kind of situation like that, you should always talk about the ambitions of the person, which are very much a hindrance. Ambitions of any kind are the greatest hindrance to the person. It is as though they would ultimately like to relate to people, but they can’t. There is the tremendous claustrophobia of being completely cut off. So it is very important to relate to that directly.

Maybe if you’ve known that person for a long time, you could also bring up a conversation of what you did together in the past: “Do you remember when we first met that you ran into my car? We met together that time and decided to talk about our insurance policies and we got into this whole thing about meditation and Buddhism? That was beautiful. And now we are here.” Anything like that would be extremely helpful. In other words, the whole point is to present a very sane and solid personal situation to the person who is going to die, to relate directly and thoroughly as much as possible. That seems to be the whole point. Any questions?

Student:
I can imagine a person dying whose body may have a lot of troubles. With their remaining strength they may just want to be quiet and close their eyes and keep their body quiet and relaxed. In that case, a person talking to them at that time, constantly demanding their attention, would be really a terrible drag. They wouldn’t even have the strength to tell the person to be quiet, you know what I mean? [
Laughter
] I’m serious.

Vidyadhara:
Just be there, sit there. At least tell them that they are going to die. With a lot of people it actually happens that when their fundamental energy begins to run down, they can draw on their reserve energy, or their capital energy. At that point, they become very awake: they begin to talk, even to sit up. It happens quite a lot, you know. Then there is a chance to relate with them.

S:
What should be tried if one is trying to communicate with the dying person in the way you have suggested? What quality of perceptiveness should one be looking for?

V:
Well, that perceptiveness should be of the whole environment. It is exactly the same as a person giving an interview on meditation. You have some kind of feeling of the environment of the whole situation. If you are pushing too hard, that means you are being insensitive; if you are pushing too little, that means you are being extremely feeble and not energetic enough to apply your confidence in the person. Such perceptiveness purely depends on a person’s state of being. There is really no guidance for that at all. It has to be exactly based on your abilities, your sensitivity. It is not so much how wise or perfect you are, but how much the situation demands of you. If you accept that situation, then you’re going to come out as you should. That is very, very important.

S:
Rinpoche, what if you’re very emotionally involved with the person and you’re very disturbed about them dying. You may resent their dying, or be terrified that they’re dying, or have total double feelings about their dying—all sorts of very vivid emotions. And as you’re trying to communicate all this to them very directly, you’re also letting them know how you feel. I mean you’re giving up a certain amount of control in a way by staying in the situation—to them and to yourself. When you let them know how you feel, aren’t you laying a powerful trip on them?

V:
That does not cause any problems, particularly. There is room for them to be upset—always. That is a very important thing to know. There is room to communicate; there is room for you to get upset. That is extremely important to know, for then you feel there is room for everything, and the whole thing is very, very open. So you don’t have to be perfect at all. There is room for everything. That’s why you have been communicating with the person: “You are going to die; we are upset because you are going to die; we are going to lose you; blah, blah, blah, and so on and so on. But nevertheless, this is the case.” You should try to do that. You could cry, you know, anything! That is beautiful! There is always room. [
Laughs
]

S:
How would you like your students to relate to your death?

V:
Have a good party. [
Laughter
]

S:
Rinpoche, if one goes to a dying person and the person’s already dead, is there anything to do?

V:
I think so, in the sense that you have to be really there with the presence of that person. You see, the whole point is that you are really talking to yourself when you accept the dying person. It is really you telling yourself. If you regard the whole thing in that way, then your stability is part of that person. You’re appearing to yourself in a very stable way, so automatically you feel stable. And if there is a freaked-out person in the bardo state, you are also going to talk to that.

S:
Are there any problems with space and time?

V:
There is no distance: somebody in Japan could be somebody in America.

S:
Should this be done verbally, or should it be done symbolically?

V:
It depends on how sure you are of yourself. It is very ordinary, very literal. It depends on how much you trust yourself.

S:
What if you come across the victims of an accident or something, and you did not know any first aid, or whether they were going to die or not?

V:
Well, anybody studying the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
should have some knowledge of first aid. That’s very important.

S:
I think that death is very simple, that dying is a very simple situation.

V:
There’s nothing wrong with that. But generally, I must say that people in America, or people in the West altogether, are very immature and underdeveloped in terms of death. The whole thing is very concealed from them. It’s quite different from the American Indians, for instance. You can imagine being born as an American Indian and shooting game and sporting and killing and having bloody things happening constantly. Americans, or Westerners in general, are completely out of that range. They watch movies, which is not quite a natural situation at all. They regard death as purely fictional, like movies. And they are very limited in terms of actually seeing blood. That is one of the very biggest problems they have. They are bewildered by blood. It is a big thing to see a dead body or a corpse lying around. Our world has become too genteel, trying to seal off any of the real negative quality of death at all. There are not even any butcher shops in this country. Everything’s packaged with cellophane over it. There’s no chopping, no sawing, no meat hanging up. That is not quite enough to be a human being, not enough to be a living person on this earth. They don’t have enough raw and rugged qualities, which causes a lot of paranoia. In death as well—whenever there is blood or saliva coming out of the dying person, there are always tissues to wipe it off. The whole thing is completely cared for. Everything is white: the red and black and green sight of bodies is concealed by white constantly, which is extremely sad.