Tibetan Buddhist
Lingza Chokyi's Near-Death Experience
By
Kevin Williams
A
curious phenomenon, little known in the West, but
familiar to Tibetans, is the delok. In Tibet, delok
means returned from death, and traditionally
deloks are people who seemingly "die" as a result of an
illness, and find themselves traveling in one of the six
bardo
realms -- one of the Tibetan Buddhist afterlife
states. They visit the hell realms, where they witness
the judgment of the dead and the suffering of hell, and
sometimes they go to paradises and Buddha realms. They
can be accompanied by a deity, who protects them and
explains what is happening. After a week the delok is
sent back to the body with a message from the
Lord of Death for the living, urging them toward
spiritual practice and a beneficial way of life. Often
the deloks have great difficulty making people believe
their story, and they spend the rest of their lives
recounting their experiences to others in order to draw
them toward the path of wisdom. The biographies of some
of the more famous deloks, such as
Dawa Drolma, one of
the great lamas of the century. At the age of 16 she
fell ill and died, but returned to her body after five
days. For the benefit of others she recorded every
detail of her experiences in the bardo and pure realms.
The experiences of deloks were often sung all over Tibet
by traveling minstrels. A number of aspects of the delok
correspond not only with, as you would expect, the bardo
teachings, such as the
Tibetan Book of the Dead, but also with the
near-death experience. Dawa Drolma is the author of the
book,
Delog: Journey to Realms Beyond Death, the source
for the information on this web page.
Lingza Chokyi was
a famous delok who lived in the sixteenth century. In
her biography she tells how she failed to realize she
was dead, how she found herself out of her body, and saw
a pig's corpse lying on her bed, wearing her clothes.
Frantically she tried in vain to communicate with her
family as they set about the business of the practices
for her death. She grew furious with them when they took
no notice of her and did not give her a plate of food.
When her children wept, she felt a "hail of pus and
blood" fall, which caused her intense pain. She tells us
she felt joy each time the practices were done, and
immeasurable happiness when finally she came before the
master who was practicing for her and who was resting in
the nature of mind, and her mind and his became one.
After a while she heard someone whom she thought was her
father calling to her, and she followed him. She arrived
in the bardo realm, which appeared to her like a
country. From there, she tells us, there was a bridge
that led to the hell realms, and to where the Lord of
Death was counting the good or evil actions of the dead.
In this realm she met various people who recounted their
stories, and she saw a great yogin who had come into the
hell realms in order to liberate beings.
Finally Lingza
Chokyi was sent back to the world, as there had been an
error concerning her name and family, and it was not yet
her time to die. With the message from the Lord of Death
to the living, she returned to her body and recovered,
and spent the rest of her life telling of what she had
learned. The phenomenon of the delok was not simply a
historical one; it continued up until very recently in
Tibet.
There are many
similarities to the teachings of the afterlife as
revealed by the Tibetan Book of the Dead and NDE. In the
NDE, the mind is momentarily released from the body, and
goes through a number of experiences akin to those of
the mental body in the "bardo of becoming." NDEs very
often begins with an
out-of-body experience: people can see their own
body, as well as the environment around them. This
coincides with what the Tibetan Book of the Dead
describes. In the bardo of becoming, the dead are able
to see and hear their living relatives, but are unable,
sometimes frustratingly, to communicate with them. The
mental body in the bardo of becoming is described in the
Tibetan Book of the Dead as being "like a body of the
golden age," and as having almost supernatural mobility
and
clairvoyance. NDE experiencers also find that the
form they have is complete and in the prime of life.
They find also that they can travel instantaneously,
simply by the power of thought.
In the Tibetan
teachings, the mental body in the bardo of becoming
meets
other beings in the bardo. Similarly, NDE
experiencers are often able to converse with others who
have died.
In the bardo of
becoming, as well as many other kinds of visions, the
mental body will see visions and signs of
different
realms. A small percentage of those who have
survived an NDE describe visions of inner worlds,
paradises, and
cities of
light with
transcendental music.
Of course, the
most astounding similarity is the encounter with the
Being of
Light, or the "Clear Light" as described in the
Tibetan Book of the Dead. According to the Tibetan
teachings, at the moment of death, the Clear Light dawns
in all its splendor before the dying person. It says:
"Oh son/daughter of an
enlightened family ... your Rigpa is inseparable
luminosity and emptiness and dwells as a great
expanse of light; beyond birth or death, it is,
in fact, the Buddha of Unchanging Light."
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Tibetan teachings
stress that by recognizing yourself as this Clear Light,
you will attain liberation from the
cycle of
reincarnation. Many NDE experiencers are convinced
the Being of Light is their Higher Self. This is
certainly in agreement with the Tibetan teachings.
The
life
review
appears again and again in NDE reports, and demonstrates
so clearly the inevitability of karma and the
far-reaching and powerful effects of all our actions,
words, and thoughts.
The central
message NDE experiencers bring back from their encounter
with death, or the presence of the Being of Light, is
exactly the same as that of Buddha and of the bardo
teachings: that the essential and most important
qualities in life are love and knowledge, compassion and
wisdom.
The bardo
teachings tell us that life and death are in the mind
itself. The confidence which many NDErs seem to have
after this experience reflects this deeper understanding
of mind.
Not all NDE
reports today, however, are positive, and this
corresponds to the Tibetan teachings as well. Some
people report terrifying experiences of fear, panic,
loneliness, desolation, and gloom, all vividly
reminiscent of the descriptions of the bardo of
becoming.
In many NDE reports, a
border or limit is occasionally perceived; a point of no
return is reached. At this border the person then
chooses (or is instructed) to return to life, sometimes
by the presence of light.Of course in the Tibetan bardo
teachings there is no parallel to this, because they
describe what happens to a person who actually dies.It
has been said the NDE can be viewed as an evolutionary
device to bring about a transformation in humanity as a
whole, over a period of years, in millions of persons (Ring,
1985).
Whether this is
true or not depends on all of us: on whether we really
have the courage to face the implications of the NDE and
the bardo teachings, and by transforming ourselves we
transform the world around us, and so, by stages, the
whole future of humanity.
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