THE GREAT TRANSITIONS

     There are many stories of great lives but very few indeed of great deaths, accounts of how great beings die.

     The following reports, gleaned from several books, are rarely published examples of the way that spiritually advanced human beings make their graceful exits.

     But, bear in mind that even ordinary people, particularly those who have cultivated with a sincere and strong faith, can also die peacefully, memorably, and even joyfully. There been word of mouth reports of such experiences among the Pure Land devotees.

     There’s dignity, serenity, a sense of fulfillment, and even beauty in a great death.

Hui Neng (638-713)

     The Sutra spoken by the Sixth Ch’an patriarch Wei Lang aka Hui Neng contains a brief account of the final address made by the most famous Dhyana Master of the Tang dynasty in China.

     At the end of this farewell discourse on the Dharma, “he sat reverently until the third watch night (in autumn). Then he said abruptly to his disciples, “I am going now,” and in a sudden passed away.

     “A peculiar fragrance pervaded his room, and a lunar rainbow appeared which seemed to join up earth and sky. The trees in the wood turned white, and birds and beasts cried mournfully.” (1)

Koya (903-972)

      In Japan the Heian era (794-1183) saw the emergence of nembutsu (Buddha Recitation) sages who went from village to village urging people to recite the Buddha’s name. And Koya, the first prominent one among them, went to Kyoto to teach the townsfolk the Buddha Recitation practice for their salvation.

     It was he who wrote a poem, which reads:

         He who says the nembutsu (Namu-Amida-Butsu) even once

         Never fails to attain the lotus-seat.

     And Koya was the first to be named Amida hijiri (Amitabha sage).

     As recounted by Japanese Pure Land scholar Dr Hisao Inagaki:

        “On the day of his death, he put on a clean robe, held an incense-burner,

        and sat upright facing west (the direction of the Western Pure Land of Amitabha

        Buddha). He remarked to his disciples, “Many Buddhas and bodhisattvas have

        come to welcome me,” and then passed away.” (2)

Ryogen (912-985)

       A Tendai monk, Ryogen became daisojo (archbishop) in 981. He is said to have had three thousand disciples, and four special disciples including the great Genshin. In his late years he lived in Eshin-in at Yokawa, and passed away after chanting the nembutsu and contemplating Reality. (3)

     The first Tendai-Pure Land master, Ryogen was bestowed by the emperor the posthumous title of “Master Jie” (Master of Compassion and Wisdom).

     Regarding his commentary on part of the Contemplation Sutra, one of the three main Pure Land scriptures, Inagaki has written:

     “Concerning recitation of the nembutsu ten times, which, according to the Contemplation Sutra, becomes the cause for birth in the Pure Land, Ryogen explains the reason, saying that the mental power at the time of death is much stronger than that of ordinary times, with the result exceeding one’s mental efforts for a hundred years.” (4)

Genshin (942-1017)

     Genshin was a distinguished scholar-monk and artist as well as a prolific writer. By the age of 72, he had recited the nembutsu 200 million times.

     “When he lay on his deathbed at the age of 76, he kept correct mindfulness of Amitabha,” Inagaki records.

     “For seven days preceding his death, he did not take any food or drink, but kept concentrating on Amitabha.

     “On his last day, he cleansed his body and mouth, and while repeating the nembutsu, passed away as if falling asleep.” (5)

     Of his many Pure Land paintings, the best-known one shows Amitabha crossing the mountains to welcome a dying devotee.

     At the time of death, one meets Amitabha coming to welcome him to the Pure Land. And according to Genshin, this is one of the ten pleasures attending birth in the Pure Land. (6)

     The lotus flower into which one has been born opens in the Pure Land. One can then enable those closely related to oneself to be also born in the Pure Land.

     One can see Amitabha and hear the Dharma from him. One can visit other Buddhas to make them offerings. One advances on, without faltering or falling back, towards Buddhahood.

Milarepa (1040-1123)

     Milarepa is considered by many to be Tibet’s greatest saint. When ill one day, he talked of the merging of “the body that is mind-evolved only” into the Realm of Light. He told his disciples: “…Life is short, the moment of death unknown to you, so apply yourselves to meditation.”

     Later, he told two of his leading disciples: “I am going to the Realm of Happiness (Pure Land) first of all.”

     Then he sang a song, “ after which he seemed to sink into a trance from which he never awoke.” (7)

    

Patrul Rinpoche (1808-1887)

     “He was one of the great Nyingma teachers and writers, whose life and writings are cited even by scholars of other schools. Although he was one of the greatest scholars and adepts, he lived as a most humble and simple hermit. He spoke directly and loudly, but every word of his was the word of truth, wisdom, and caring,” Tulku Thondup has written about this towering 19^th century Tibetan master and teacher. (8)

     Up to his last public teaching at the age of seventy-six, which was attended by about a thousand people, Patrul taught The Aspirational Prayer for Taking Rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land of Amitabha as a daily prayer for many laypeople, and Avalokiteshvara’s powerful mantra OM MANI PADME HUM “as the perpetual breath of many people.”

     “At the age of seventy-eight, Patrul returned to Ko-o, his birth place. At the age of eighty, on the thirteenth of the fourth month of the Fire Pig Year (1887), he started to have some heath problems (after “very little sickness” throughout his life, to quote the third Dodrupchen).

     “On the eighteenth of the month he took his morning tea as usual. Then, before noon, he sat up naked in the Buddha posture and placed his hands on his knees.

     “Khenpo Kunpul was present, and Khenpo tried to put the clothes back on Patrul, but Patrul didn’t react. After a while, with his eyes open in the meditative glance, he snapped his fingers once and rested his hands in the gesture of contemplation, and his mind merged into the primordial purity…” (9)                                                            

Xu Yun (1840-1959)

     More recently, shortly before the great modern Ch’an master Xu Yun passed on in 1959, he implored his disciples to preserve the faith. “How to preserve it? The answer is in the word sila (morality, moral conduct).”

     The practice of sila (morality), dyana (meditation/meditative concentration), and prajna (wisdom) constitutes the essence of Shakyamuni Buddha’s teaching of the Noble Eightfold Path to consummate enlightenment.

     After voicing his farewell advice, Master Xu Yun brought his palms together and told his assistants to take good care of themselves. They left the room and returned an hour later to find that he had quietly passed away. He was 120 years of age.

     This special report in GRACEFUL EXITS continues: “When his body was cremated, the air was filled with a rare fragrance and a white smoke went up into the sky. In the ashes were found over a hundred relics of five different colors and countless small ones, which were mostly white.” (10)

Sung Wook Baek (1897-1981)

     The late Master Sung Wook Baek was the most prominent Korean Buddhist leader of the 20^th Century.

     According to his foremost disciple Master Jae Woong Kim: “Master Baek devoted his entire life to serving Buddha and enlightening sentient beings. On the nineteenth day of the eighth lunar month in 1981, eighty-four years to the day after he was born, he entered nirvana, lying on his side, with a peaceful expression on his face.” (11)

      

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910-1991)

     Tulku Thondup, author of many books on Tibetan Buddhism and a visitor scholar at Harvard University, has written with the benefit of personal experience and knowledge on this great Nyingma teacher, writer, lineage holder, and transmitter with numerous disciples in Tibet, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and the West:

     “…At the age of eighty-one, at three A.M. on the twentieth of the eighth month of the Iron Sheep year (September 28, 1991), his enlightened mind merged into the ultimate openness at a hospital in Thimbu, the capital of Bhutan…

     “He was one of the greatest learned and accomplished masters of Tibet of our age. He was tall and giant. When he was among other masters, he stood like a mountain in the midst of hills or shone as the moon among stars, not because of his physical prominence, but because of the breadth of his scholarship and the depth of his saintliness…

     “His kindness was boundless, and there was room for everybody. Whenever I had an audience, he gave me the feeling that there was a place for me reserved in his vast mind. If you watched carefully, you got the feeling that he was always in his meditative or realized wisdom of openness and reaching out to people with the power of compassion, love, and directness, without any alteration…” (12)

     This great Tibetan Buddhist has advised us: “Even if death were to fall upon you today like lightning, you must be ready to die without sadness and regret, without any residue of clinging for what is left behind.

     “Remaining in the recognition of the absolute view, you should leave this life like an eagle soaring up into the blue sky.” (13)

     The significance of this highly important and relevant message for everyone of us is beautifully and eloquently explained in one of the short but insightful essays penned by Sogyal Rinpoche:

     “In death all the components of the body and mind are stripped away and disintegrate. As the body dies, the senses and subtle elements dissolve, and this is followed by the death of the ordinary aspect of the mind, with all its negative emotions of anger, desire, and ignorance.

     “Finally nothing remains to obscure our true nature, as everything that in life has clouded the (original) enlightened mind has fallen away. And what is revealed is the primordial ground of our absolute nature, which is like a pure and cloudless sky…” (14)

     Recognition of the Clear Light of Buddha-nature at the moment of death leads to instant spiritual liberation. This is the message of the Nyingma masters. 

     NAMO AMITABHA BUDDHA 

Notes

1.       SUTRA SPOKEN BY THE SIXTH PATRIARCH ON THE HIGH SEAT OF “The treasure of

THE LAW, translated by Wong Mou-lam, Shanghai, 1929, and reprinted in Malaysia for free distribution.

2.       THE THREE PURE LAND SUTRAS, published by Nagata Bunshodo, Kyoto, 1995, p. 154

3.       Ibid., p. 157

4.       Ibid., p. 158

Birth (rebirth) in Amitabha Buddha’s Pure Land breaks all karmic bonds, terminates suffering and

Brings instant spiritual liberation to the faithful at the very moment of death.

5.     Ibid., p. 158

6.    In the Amitayus-dhana-sutra (Amitayus Contemplation Sutra): “Those who are thus able to recite the holy name (of Amida Buddha), when they come to the end of life, will be met by Amida Buddha and the Bodhisattvas of Compassion and Wisdom and will be led by them into the Buddha’s (Pure) Land, where they will be born in all purity of the white lotus…” – Extract in THE TEACHING OF BUDDHA, published by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, Tokyo, 1981 (11^th edition), p. 216.

7.    GRACEFUL EXITS: How Great Beings Die, compiled and edited by Sushila Blackman, published

by Weatherhill, New York, 1997, p. 126.,

8         Masters of Meditation and Miracles, by Tulku Thondup, edited by Harold Talbott, published by Shambhala, New Delhi, 2002, p. 201.

 9.    Ibid., p. 203  

10.   Ibid., pp. 99-101

Buddhists believe that the quality and quantity of relics reflects the level of spiritual attainment.      

11.  POLISHING THE DIAMOND. ENLIGHTENING THE MIND: Reflections of a Korean Buddhist Master, by Jae Woong Kim, translated from the Korean by Yoon Sang Han, published by Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1999. Author is head of the Diamond Monastery in Korea.. 

12.  Masters of Meditation and Miracles: Lives of the Great Buddhist Masters of India and Tibet, 

         pp. 294-295.

13.  GRACEFUL EXITS, p. 136

        

The absolute view refers to the Dharmakaya, the absolute Buddha-nature. And the soaring eagle symbolizes the spirit of liberation. Recognition of oneself in the radiant light of Buddha-nature brings about one’s spiritual liberation.

14.  GLIMPSE AFTER GLIMPSE, entry for August 24

       Pure Land devotees attain their spiritual liberation through their rebirth in Amitabha’s Pure Land.