Suicide, Emotions, Dimensions, Realms and Phowa

[tulku]

I have been doing a lot of research on dimensions and death.

 

It seems to me that the state of emotions which we are in at the moment of our death determines where we go after our death.

 

Say if we are angry or lustful or fearful whatever, our consciousness will exit out of the lower chakras and we will end up in a lower dimension, possibly even hell.

 

However if we are courageous and compassionate and forgiving and we focus our state of mind on the crown chakra, our consciousness will exit out of our highest chakra and we will go to heaven.

 

So even if you commit suicide, but you do phowa and you concentrate on a loving, happy death and concentrate on your consciousness leaving out of your body through the highest chakra, i think you will end up in the buddhic and angelic dimensions.

 

Any thoughts on this matter?

[Lucky7Strikes]

You are just making speculations.

[Fū Yue]

the emotional body does not reflect the full spectrum of the mind's entanglement, what is causing those emotions is far more important.

[Marblehead]

Why not reflect on life instead of death?

 

Reflecting on anything except living reduces the time we all have available for living.

 

Use your time well.

[doc benway]

 

Any thoughts on this matter?

Who were you before you were born?

[tulku]

Suicide is a highly negative act if you have not practised sufficiently to have gained control of the death process. There were Lamas in Tibet who committed suicide through phowa3 because they knew that death by execution or through torture would not enable them to maintain awareness of the death process. If we cannot experience awareness in the dream state, then it is unlikely that we will experience awareness in the bardo state. If we cannot maintain awareness into sleep, through dreaming, and into waking, then we stand little chance of maintaining awareness through the more profound experience of death, bardo, and birth. For those of us who have not developed such practice, the state of mind at the moment of death is important. Dying with a happy mind is beneficial.

 

http://www.spacious-passion.org/shared/text/s/spacious_passion_ch_05_infinite_09_happy_mind_eng.php

[Lucky7Strikes]

Suicide is a highly negative act if you have not practised sufficiently to have gained control of the death process. There were Lamas in Tibet who committed suicide through phowa3 because they knew that death by execution or through torture would not enable them to maintain awareness of the death process. If we cannot experience awareness in the dream state, then it is unlikely that we will experience awareness in the bardo state. If we cannot maintain awareness into sleep, through dreaming, and into waking, then we stand little chance of maintaining awareness through the more profound experience of death, bardo, and birth. For those of us who have not developed such practice, the state of mind at the moment of death is important. Dying with a happy mind is beneficial.

 

http://www.spacious-passion.org/shared/text/s/spacious_passion_ch_05_infinite_09_happy_mind_eng.php

IMO, thinking about these things are just a waste of time. If you want to get technical, you should start with the awareness you have now, and the energetic make up you can verify of your own body, and go from there. Don't worry about those lamas, because you don't know what they knew.

 

It is also troubling that I get the sense that you are trying to justify suicide. As Fu Yue mentioned, you should look more into why you are being drawn to such ideas.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Lucky7Strikes

[goldisheavy]

I have been doing a lot of research on dimensions and death.

 

It seems to me that the state of emotions which we are in at the moment of our death determines where we go after our death.

 

Say if we are angry or lustful or fearful whatever, our consciousness will exit out of the lower chakras and we will end up in a lower dimension, possibly even hell.

 

However if we are courageous and compassionate and forgiving and we focus our state of mind on the crown chakra, our consciousness will exit out of our highest chakra and we will go to heaven.

 

I strongly disagree with this simplistic, almost mechanistic plumbing-like caricature. What happens after death is affected by your entire psyche. How you feel at the time of death is important, but it's not all that's important. Your core beliefs are important. Your mental habits and propensities are important. Your aspirations are important. Your fears are important, both present fears and buried, subconscious fears. Your wisdom and/or ignorance is important. Every single aspect of the psyche is important. Every single one. And chakras have nothing whatsoever to do with anything, unless you make belief in chakras a fundamental core belief for yourself, in which case it may start being important in some ways specifically for you and you alone.

 

In short, all of your being, all of your mind is important. Not just one feeling at the time of death.

 

So even if you commit suicide, but you do phowa and you concentrate on a loving, happy death and concentrate on your consciousness leaving out of your body through the highest chakra, i think you will end up in the buddhic and angelic dimensions.

 

This is possible, but chakras have nothing to do with anything. In Surangama Sutra Buddha specifically logically negates the idea that the body is like a hotel with doors. Please use critical thinking. Don't just absorb bits of tradition mindlessly. Test things for yourself. Investigate. Don't just accept what floats around at face value.

[goldisheavy]

Who were you before you were born?

 

*facepalm* That's not a helpful thing to say, imo. This is where Zen goes wrong.

[konchog uma]

i think its generally agreed by buddhists and some others (shaivite?) that ones karma and samskaric accumulations have more to do with their trajectory from the moment of death than how one feels at that moment.

[doc benway]

*facepalm* That's not a helpful thing to say, imo. This is where Zen goes wrong.

I disagree - I think it is more closely related to "who you are" after you die than is anything and everything that accumulates during life.

All of that stuff is what defines "me" during life.

It is absent after life ends when "you" let it all go and return to the source... as it were.

But then again, this is all speculation.

[Aetherous]

It seems to me like one of the main purposes of the mystery schools, and even some spiritual schools, is to experience the state of death while living.

 

I urge you to have your own experiences, by learning from these groups and practicing, rather than taking anyone's word for it. Words are meaningless. And then once you have experiences, question them.

 

Consider, if your experience (positive or negative) of the inner realms relies on the location in the physical body, while living, then what will happen when there is no more physical body?

 

Maybe it's just a fact that no one knows. Or maybe they do. I don't know.

[goldisheavy]

I disagree - I think it is more closely related to "who you are" after you die than is anything and everything that accumulates during life.

 

All of that stuff is what defines "me" during life.

 

It is absent after life ends when "you" let it all go and return to the source... as it were.

But then again, this is all speculation.

 

Aha! I knew it. So this suggestion is based on an assumption, isn't it? You think you didn't exist before birth, so you won't exist after death? Well, if you assume you didn't exist before birth, it's symmetrically logical that you won't exist after death either. The problem is that you did exist before birth and this can be logically proven.

 

And the proof is simple -- your mind needs to have context in order to understand and assimilate experience of any kind. So prior to even the first experience of "this" life, you already must have had some context to make sense of that experience. Where would this context come from? Almost obviously not from anything in this life.

 

I say "almost obviously" because for physicalists, what constitutes and substantiates continuity is physicality, matter and energy, stuff, substance. But again, the notion of substance can be dismantled by analysis.

 

So what do we have? Substance is a garbage idea that's easy to disprove and that's pretty much impossible to prove (it has to be taken on blind faith if you believe in substance). OK, then in the universe that's fundamentally insubstantial, what is the "substance" of continuity? What provides it? Easy. It's called mind! The unborn, deathless mind.

 

See how I explained things nice and simple? This is much better than "what were you before you were born" puzzle nonsense. Just say what you mean to say. Please don't throw around puzzles and witticisms.

 

And if you're going to throw around witticisms, a much superior one is not "who were you before you were born" but "who are you NOW??" Right now! Unlike your past, your present is actually available to you for empirical analysis. The past is only available through inference and logic, but not directly or experientially. If you understand who you are now, you'll understand who you will be after death and who you were in the past as well, before birth.

Edited April 9, 2012 by goldisheavy

[三江源]

 

See how I explained things nice and simple? This is much better than "what were you before you were born" puzzle nonsense. Just say what you mean to say. Please don't throw around puzzles and witticisms.

 

I really by far preferred what steve said. It was so nice and simple and spacious.

[goldisheavy]

It seems to me like one of the main purposes of the mystery schools, and even some spiritual schools, is to experience the state of death while living.

 

I urge you to have your own experiences, by learning from these groups and practicing, rather than taking anyone's word for it. Words are meaningless. And then once you have experiences, question them.

 

If words are meaningless, then your entire post is meaningless. Obviously that's false.

 

Consider, if your experience (positive or negative) of the inner realms relies on the location in the physical body, while living, then what will happen when there is no more physical body?

 

This question is based on an assumption. The assumption is that your physical body generates mind as an epiphenomenon of the brain activity. If you don't start with this assumption, what do you have?

 

To put it in other way, is the mind in the body, or is the body in the mind?

[goldisheavy]

I really by far preferred what steve said. It was so nice and simple and spacious.

 

That's because you already know everything. What matters in this case is what tulku prefers. He obviously has questions and doesn't know what will happen to him after death. So if tulku thinks steve is more helpful with his Zen puzzles, by all means, more power to steve.

 

Try to remember what it was like not to know things. Imagine you were confused and asked a question. How would you like it if you were given no straightforward answer? Wouldn't you be pissed?

Edited April 9, 2012 by goldisheavy

[Friend]

I would ask an expert someone who do Phowa Practise,perhaps from living lineage from a Temple a Lama, so why ask us?

[goldisheavy]

I would ask an expert someone who do Phowa Practise,perhaps from living lineage from a Temple a Lama, so why ask us?

 

Who is "us"? Maybe you don't feel you should be asked. That's fine. Speak for yourself. I am OK being asked these sorts of questions. If you want to say "Please don't ask me" you are well within your moral right to say so. Nothing more.

Edited April 9, 2012 by goldisheavy

[三江源]

That's because you already know everything. So true. What matters in this case is what tulku prefers. you are right! He obviously has questions and doesn't know what will happen to him after death. So if tulku thinks steve is more helpful with his Zen puzzles, by all means, more power to steve. I guess I am unclear at this point as to whether Tulku is a troll or not.. I dont know what he wants really.

 

Try to remember what it was like not to know things. Imagine you were confused and asked a question. How would you like it if you were given no straightforward answer? Like in Alice in Wonderland.. Wouldn't you be pissed? I get your point. But.. I always liked the spacious option. But also, YES. Not being answered properly on crucial matters , being misled, misdirected, evaded into labyrinthine time wasting,is boring.In the short term. Wether it is in the long term, a more productive route, is a possibility. On more abstract matters, I prefer a pointing finger and the space to look in the right direction. The reason, probably, is that when you spot something for yourself, you have followed a different neural pathway and changed yourself in some way, whereas with being told the answer, you are in consumer position, which is less satisfying.

[Friend]

Who is "us"? Maybe you don't feel you should be asked. That's fine. Speak for yourself. I am OK being asked these sorts of questions. If you want to say "Please don't ask me" you are well within your moral right to say so. Nothing more.

 

Interesting you say you know? Who told you?

[goldisheavy]

I get your point. But.. I always liked the spacious option. But also, YES. Not being answered properly on crucial matters , being misled, misdirected, evaded into labyrinthine time wasting,is boring.In the short term. Wether it is in the long term, a more productive route, is a possibility. On more abstract matters, I prefer a pointing finger and the space to look in the right direction. The reason, probably, is that when you spot something for yourself, you have followed a different neural pathway and changed yourself in some way, whereas with being told the answer, you are in consumer position, which is less satisfying.

 

I am in complete agreement with you cat. Yea, if tulku doesn't actually crave an answer and is just posturing with fake/troll questions, that's a different matter. But I don't know tulku (much) and I try not to assume too much about his motivation (at least at this point). Maybe he's a troll. What if someone who is not a troll reads this thread with the same question in mind?

 

I remember a time when I had serious questions. I was desperate for answers. If someone gave me a puzzle as an answer, I would be very upset. It's one thing to use koans as contemplative focal points when you are well beyond the elementary question phase. It's another thing to ask a basic question and to get an evasive answer or worse, to get as an answer a question that has a built-in false assumption at its core.

Edited April 9, 2012 by goldisheavy

[goldisheavy]

Interesting you say you know? Who told you?

 

Is being told the way to know anything? What if I tell you that the sky is green, does that mean you now know the sky is green, because I told you so? Obviously knowledge is not rooted in telling. Telling serves an important function in mental stimulation and in the shaping of convention. But convention is not knowledge. And mental stimulation can be very helpful, but it doesn't in and of itself lead to knowledge.

Edited April 9, 2012 by goldisheavy

[Apech]

Just to go back a bit ... the mystery schools did focus on experiencing death in this life as a mystical process because it reveals truths about the essence of our selves and the nature of reality (or is thought to). It is possible that this in itself is not real ... i.e. the process of the mystical death is not the same a 'real' death and these people were fooling themselves. However the point being I think is that they did not focus on death morbidly but as a source of revelation and possibly liberation ... perhaps another way of saying it is that the mystical death is life affirming.

 

The Egyptians (my favourite subject) put an enormous amount of time and energy into 'mapping' the death process ... but they were the opposite of morbid in their cultural expression generally.

 

I would also like to talk more about 'substance' i.e. the meaning or the lack of it ... if anyone has time ... but my time has run out as I am being summoned to supper.

 

Examine death but enjoy life ...

[三江源]

It's another thing to ask a basic question and to get an evasive answer or worse, to get as an answer a question that has a built-in false assumption at its core.

 

Yes indeed. Good point. What is this experience? Some kind of betrayal.

 

There is the mother archetype which nurtures, and the father archetype, which betrays. The mother nurtures you so you can grow, the father betrays so that you will no longer depend upon others.

[Friend]

Is being told the way to know anything? What if I tell you that the sky is green, does that mean you now know the sky is green, because I told you so? Obviously knowledge is not rooted in telling. Telling serves an important function in mental stimulation and in the shaping of convention. But convention is not knowledge. And mental stimulation can be very helpful, but it doesn't in and of itself lead to knowledge.

 

Then you can tell they way to attain the knowledge?