The Time of Death
We all think about death from time to time, especially when there are
far more years behind us than in front. What happens to us when the
reaper finally takes our hand and leads us through the mysterious door
that separates life from not-life. Do we go to heaven, Hell, The
Summerlands or some place else? Perhaps our energies blend into a Cosmic
One-ness.
Maybe we are reincarnated into another body?
Does any of it make sense to a mind that cannot comprehend the
possibility of non-existence?
I became a Buddhist for about 9
months back in 2013 and worked with a group of Tibetan Buddhists of the Vajrayana
sect and one of their techniques was a meditation practice called Phowa
which is defined as 'The practice of conscious dying'. Although I never
went on the course designed to teach this, (It cost too much!), those I
spoke to who participated always said that the technique removed any
fear of dying that they had previously had. That it was a method of
transferring consciousness at the moment of death through meditation.
It's also worth noting that all who go on the course take an oath not to
reveal the specifics of what goes on.
Now I knew that Buddhists didn't generally believe in reincarnation, but instead believed in rebirth but I could never really understand the difference, after all when you believe that there is no permanent self how can anything be reborn? Then I started to consider TIME and how we relate to it.
Time seems to be illusionary and not something we can pin down and put in a box to be scrutinized. Our perception of it changes depending upon circumstances and a lot of it has to do with our state of mind. It has been suggested, by some thinkers that the more calm and focused we are, the more slices of the NOW we experience - the more 'timeslides' from the filmstrip of reality we experience which results in a higher degree of resolution that we perceive. This might be one of the goals, and ultimate results in meditation practices as a whole.
So consider this. What if our perception of time slows so much as death approaches, that at the very moment of death, it stops completely - for us. This might allow for our consciousness to live on indefinitely within a single expanded moment outside of time perception. The moment you would end up in would be flavoured by what you were thinking about at the moment of death, so you would need to be very careful at that moment so practising it before hand would be a must.
This would explain the notion of heaven and hell and how we might rejoin loved ones. We would live for eternity in the single moment of time at the point of death.
Maybe.
Shenarah
Now I knew that Buddhists didn't generally believe in reincarnation, but instead believed in rebirth but I could never really understand the difference, after all when you believe that there is no permanent self how can anything be reborn? Then I started to consider TIME and how we relate to it.
Time seems to be illusionary and not something we can pin down and put in a box to be scrutinized. Our perception of it changes depending upon circumstances and a lot of it has to do with our state of mind. It has been suggested, by some thinkers that the more calm and focused we are, the more slices of the NOW we experience - the more 'timeslides' from the filmstrip of reality we experience which results in a higher degree of resolution that we perceive. This might be one of the goals, and ultimate results in meditation practices as a whole.
So consider this. What if our perception of time slows so much as death approaches, that at the very moment of death, it stops completely - for us. This might allow for our consciousness to live on indefinitely within a single expanded moment outside of time perception. The moment you would end up in would be flavoured by what you were thinking about at the moment of death, so you would need to be very careful at that moment so practising it before hand would be a must.
This would explain the notion of heaven and hell and how we might rejoin loved ones. We would live for eternity in the single moment of time at the point of death.
Maybe.
Shenarah
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