Kategorie: Crazy Commentaries to the „Tibetan Book on Death“

Science, like actually all worldviews, consider itself to open the view and fathoms secrets, but actually even „open“ researchers on their adventurous journeys always search for answers, and in particular uncertainty and emptiness is unbearable for researchers, because what drives them is to reach certainty, clarity and useful answers. Needless to say that without question there are exceptions to that. For example in their first years young and open researchers sometimes are really open also for openness and the wisdom of “no-answer”, but that´s only true as long as they’re still young and fresh, when they get older, they as well want to close the holes and get reliable answers and even the progressive ones start to look for security and wisdom.

But quite obviously Buddhism was really completely different in that matter. Questions yes, but stay away from early conclusions. Buddhism offered new perspectives and approaches and also insights into procedures and the behaviour of people. You still find rules and regulations but practitioners stay aware of the fact that they themselves came up with them, they were all made up and created by human thinking. Buddhism needs no conclusions, not even for enlightenment. Always new wide worlds of questions, but just not result-oriented. That was by far to much to understand for me back then. I probably already understood theoretically that one disenchanted phenomena to a good extent by naming and categorizing them. But I was probably still of the opinion that that was exactly what the purpose of life was all about, namely: to disenchant and create clarity. I was socialized that way after all for the last fifteen years. It was almost all about disenchanting and explicitly Christian superstition. The adults rushed ahead there, but kept that rather still in the background of their minds in the area of the secret agendas. So magic was rather taboo for our parents, but not that much for us young hippies anymore. There grew a rather strong movement, and the representatives of Christianity stood helplessly by, because they didn’t want to defend magic anymore. Some even considered magic to be of the devil, who incidentally – too bad – no longer existed for them for a long time already either. Gaping emptiness in the churches? At least in Germany. Had the representatives of Christianity become lazy? Maybe they were in a kind of shock facing the results of science?

But I finally had to ask myself honestly whether I myself hadn’t also lost magic on my search for knowledge for example by getting involved in a new believe, for example the division into three bodies. I had applied the old scientific patterns that I had become used to. So I also just exchanged Christian faith for faith in scientific thinking and procedures? I had fallen for science, just like our Rudi Steiner unfortunatly as well. Well – it is also kind of funny. And I still now a days do have an immense respect for Rudi, namely for his honesty.

Anyway, this Tibetan Book of the Dead lay in front of my nose all day long and I kept trying to study it. Almost more than in the actual text, I rummaged around in Lama Govinda’s 400 footnotes. Lama Govinda explains in an easily understandable and clear way and often also emotionally, with good insight in the Western way of thinking. So his comments got a personal, familiar and actually also charming touch, precisely because he himself was not yet free from distinguishing between right and wrong? False understanding – correct understanding. But he also wanted to be a companion and of help through a jungle of new ways of seeing and proceeding that was still almost unknown in the West back then. Lama Govinda had become a genuine and deeply religious Buddhist in Asia: Questions and research yes, also comparing, but you don’t need binding answers at all to be happy.

From today’s perspective, one probably has to say that the first edition of the Book of the Dead from 1927 without comments and other frills was actually not so bad, and one could have simply continued to publish this text over and over again unchanged in this form into the seventies. But on the other hand me and my Western Buddhist friends got somehow even particularly inspired by the way Lama Govinda expressed himself.

Lama Govinda makes no distinction between physical body, ethereal body or astral body. But it’s often about body, speech and mind? And then further also about body, speech and mind of an enlightened one, which were then called in Sanskrit Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya and Dharmakaya.

Aha! Did I find Rudolf Steiner’s three bodies here again?… No. Quite certainly: No!

Here I now advise the highly revered reader to pause once again! Please! What has changed? What was different, what was new? Should this distinction between physical body, ethereal body and astral body really also disenchant? And why doesn’t the distinction between body, speech and mind disenchant just as much?

Here we should emphatically pause. We got a good point here. These comparisons can namely be extraordinarily helpful! Take some time for it! You don’t have to read this text to the end all at once. By the way: You don’t have to read the text to the end at all anyway of course. Go for a walk!

Even if that might be less scientifically and also medically usable, I exchanged something seemingly unambiguous and clear for something rather vague and imprecise? Just as well I could also say that I exchanged the view of body-, ethereal- and astral body that had emerged from a strong need for explanation, for solution, for body, speech and mind, which remain wide and open and possibly leave boundless room for magic to happen?

So: Body is a whole universe, speech another infinite universe and mind is likewise infinite, wide and open. Everything stays basically intangible and is a wide source of magic?

The attentive reader will understand that it couldn’t have been so easy for me, the youthful seeker, back then to give up the firm ground for example of the explanations of the three bodies – so physical body, ethereal body and astral body – which I had just laboriously worked out for myself, and which incidentally served me well in yoga, pranayama, meditation and other energy exercises, to instead engage with the magic and vastness of body, speech and mind. Doesn´t that show how almost desperately I was searching back then. I believe that the actual reason for this obsession was triggered by the wonders I became more and more aware of. Yes – I was surrounded by wonders. There were energetical things going on…? I increasingly recognized and opened up and connected with different foreign worlds even. And I found no way to exchange these feelings and ideas and no one to talk to because nobody seemed to be interested.

And then suddenly I realized, without any apparent reason, that my perception of myself and the world around me also had drastically changed. Something happened in me – with me – around me. I a kind of woke up and found myself in midst of a wonderful world. That wasn’t a process, but quite suddenly one day a switch simply flipped, and there it was: the magical world. Just like that. A change of perspective. Like waking up. A miracle. And connected with that was a deep breathing out, a relief? There was no going back. Many questions and ideas were quite simply just gone, transparent, and I recognized many things and rules and taboos as totally superfluous? The teaching of the three bodies was suddenly quite simply a helpful method and nothing more, arising under the pressure of the zeitgeist of the 19th century.

In the magical world there was no more dissecting, no comparing and naming and also no logic and no right or wrong, true or untrue, existent or non-existent. No above and no below anymore.

Surprisingly, I saw the Book of the Dead from one moment to the next with completely different eyes. It had become much more alive, more touchable and also much more colourful.

In reality there was no body-body, ethereal body and astral body! This subdivision were of course practical aids for energy work, for yoga, for pranayama, Tai Chi and for meditation, but no more than technical tools after all. And yes – it was painful to transcend these beloved distinctions, which means nothing other than to see through them and let them go forever. Maybe it was painful, but I can’t remember that. However it was: There was no going back anyway. The so-called materialistic intelligence lost its power over the awakening in a so-to-speak magical world and was exchanged for another a spiritual intelligence.

Phew…! That was an awakening! That was really something! And it reminded me in many ways of the first of my psychedelic LSD journeys. Very strongly even.

And „A rough wind was blowing out here!“… There was a very psychedelic song by Eric Burdon back then, in which you could hear how from inside of an egg a chick beats against the shell, then it cracks and crashes – a wonderful sound experience – and then you imagined how the chick sticks its head out of the egg, curious and cheeky, peeps a few times and then quite soon – dishevelled and still spattered with egg white – shocked and gasping for air says loudly and clearly: „Phew – but there is a rough wind blowing out here!“ So I felt like this chick, and for me too there was no going back into the security of the eggshells of explanations and definitions.

So, and so what? What should I do? Was there any action needed?

Theoretically I could have fled into a love relationship, new career plans or artistic activities. Or I could also have taken psycho pharmaceuticals to return to the safe old world, but honestly only in theory. I simply couldn’t and didn’t want to fool myself any more back then. There was no going back any more. Once you’ve opened the magical eye, there’s usually no going back. And besides, there were also feelings of homecoming, so to speak romantic and delightful feelings. Like after a head first dive into a mountain lake perhaps.

The reader may smile! I have to laugh myself right now. Winni naked in a mountain lake. That’s somehow quite a good image.

Enthusiastically I threw myself into the arms of the magical world of body, speech and mind, a world view that I knew from early childhood. And I had learned a lot by my crazy mother, who was a kind of witch all her life, with many many particular skills and insights and she taught me quite a bit. Thanks mom!

So – lets talk about body: Body now no longer in the sense of physical body, but more generally and wider: bodily things, solid things, like stone, earth, the human body, flesh, skin, limbs, water, mountains, fire, scales, cloth and wind. Banana and toenails. A universe becoming wider and wider the closer one looks.

The meaning of speech were all the various levels of communication, of being together: rivers and flows, energies, meditation, optical energy fields, sex and touch, common sharing and feeling, gestures and symbols. Hints and paintings. Part of speech also was surreal and abstract. Romance. Music. Mantras. Art. Magic spells and prayers. Poems and sitar sounds. Giving and sacrificing.

And finally then mind: immeasurable, thinking, vastness, feelings, creativity, will, anger, rays, object less meditation, universe, intelligence and also logic and conclusions but without binding conclusions and consequences.

So something very profound had quite surprisingly happened to me while browsing in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Lightning had struck, a door had quite simply opened by itself and I had become a mystic.

Finally – I can probably say from today’s perspective. And that hadn’t even happened on one of my then frequent LSD trips, but while pondering, contemplating and sensing, while browsing in this Book of the Dead which I basically didn’t understand; and by the way as far as that’s concerned, I still remained blocked. I was stuck in an encountering resistance in that matter.

But the immeasurable suddenly seemed conceivable and possible and my small, anxious world opened up, became more colourful, more radiant and crazier. It was no longer about the fortification and walling in of an I or self, no longer about survival or being important. No longer about right or wrong.

And not only the I, but even the whole world around us was illusory and had at least to a large extent only manifested and stabilized in the course of time, of growing up and through education and upbringing. Just in vain I searched out of habit in my newly discovered, magical world for confirmations, but there was nothing there of course. It was as if I tried to grasp a three-dimensional hologram. I had to get used to that. That would take some time definitely. Finally I saw through the self-imposed constrictions and limitations to which this constant search for results, for so-called facts had led.

Today I think that for such awakening the time must be ripe, and the circumstances, the environment and many details, and also chance had to play along and the other worldly beings on site. You can’t force something like that, that doesn’t work on command, but there are triggers for it for example in art and literature, and for me it was precisely Lama Govinda’s comments on this Tibetan Book of the Dead.

So I began to experience in a new way, and the magical words were now holistic, dancing, wide and uncertain. Incidentally, my social environment, namlely my family and friends, probably noticed actually little of it. Okay, I was dressed strangely like Leatherstocking back then, long-haired and unshaven. But it’s strange and interesting that it doesn’t stand out at all when you no longer constantly distinguish between right and wrong and search for explanations. But probably I got on people’s nerves back then without noticing. Was I too vague and woolly to them? On the other hand I was quite popular and gladly seen and even class representative, so it can’t have been too bad. My view on dying and passing away obviously changed. Again I had to ask myself what difference such a Tibetan Book of the Dead could make in case of a death. Such a holy text? And so new spaces arose for fresh approaches and courageous decisions.

Now the attentive reader will ask herself how I could probably look back on my fresh, recently experienced experiences with Buddha’s discourses in my new enthusiasm. Had I not raved not too long ago about how logically and consistently Buddha had simply enumerated all phenomena (dharmas) according to their names, origin, base and their passing away, ordered according to wholesome, unwholesome, neutral or elements of the stages of meditation. At first glance Buddha seemed to be actually himself a separator, dissector and distinguisher. Didn’t his logic behave there actually exactly like telescopes and scalpels to the dharmas? Well, the answer is simple: Buddha recommended looking precisely and keeping a lookout for beginning, middle and end of every phenomenon. But that did not mean looking out for results or something tangible. In fact this approach led to recognizing the emptiness of every single phenomenon even. So we were basically exactly on one wavelength, and precisely through that my view of the foundations and teachings of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni also expanded as well as my love for him. I understood the working with dharmas even better now. And Buddha became so to speak even more a down to earth person to me. Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha wasn’t entirely innocent in that matter either. (We’re still at the end of the sixties, and HermannHesse was in Germany very popular.)

Of course it made sense to create a list of all conceivable dharmas and also the stages of meditation. Calmly and even bookkeeping-wise. And in this context it also made sense to distinguish as meticulously precisely as possible. But there was also the meditation and the stages of meditation, and to look deeper by slowing down! Here every form of goal had to be transcended! Let time pass! Do nothing. Let even more time pass. Look with an open and wide mind. Then the magical world comes into view. Heartfelt congratulations! I reach out my hand to you my dear friend! Wonderful! Keep going!

So, and now all that was missing was that gods, angels, teeth-baring, blood-drooling demons, bloodsuckers, elves and trolls, protective goddesses, meditation buddhas and so on would peek around the corner. And I have to warn sheepishly, because I actually get to that too later on?

By all that a new and different kind of longing had awakened in me.

But for what reason actually? What? So what?

In any case, I wanted to change my life! It should take a new direction. So I simply unregistered from business school – the deputy director of the school begged me on his knees (without exaggeration: he really knelt before me): „Stay! Please don’t throw away your future!?“ But I found that even funny and strange as well. I felt like Van Gogh cutting off one of his ears. – My decision was firm: The ear must come off! Basta!

And so I then went to the local metalworking factory for a whole year, on one hand to find also mentally more earth and grounding, as I called it, and on the other hand quite simply also to earn money and thereby become independent and free.

And then I finally set off – by now we had 1973 –, on my pilgrimage to Asia. I wanted to go to India, to Buddha’s homeland and wanted to be open to surprises of all kinds? Hey Ho!!

I don’t want to stray too far from the topic at this point by telling about my adventures as a pilgrim to Asia, but I simply fast-forward a whole year, directly to South India into a Tibetan refugee camp, where there were two very important events in connection with the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The blue, bound Tibetan Book of the Dead itself had accompanied me on my journey for a long time. But high in the Himalayas in the Kullu Valley I barely survived pneumonia, probably only because my brother, who is a doctor, had contributed an antibiotic to my pilgrimage, and on top of that I still had the strength of youth and not the least: the blessed protectors and protective deities of the Kullu Valley in the Himalayas.

Recovered from inflammation and madness, I was then physically so weakened that I couldn’t drag my fourteen texts, partly bound books, any further. I had to drastically reduce my luggage, quite simply to survive and manage to return to civilization. So my edition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead remained under a bed frame in a log cabin in the Kullu Valley…

I had been on pilgrimage for a whole year already. By now we had the year 1974, and I had travelled with my Tibetan friend for a few weeks to Bylakuppe, South India, into a Tibetan refugee camp, to celebrate the New Year festivities with his family there.

His father and I slept in the living room on platforms – his was significantly higher than mine – and in the mornings at sunrise we both sat up properly and straight and began with our morning studies of religious texts, while the housewife supplied us with hot butter tea. And indeed Tashi’s father read the Tibetan Book of the Dead aloud every morning, of course in Tibetan. His 25-year-old son had suddenly dropped dead a few weeks before during field work. The family’s guru had now explained to the father that he should recite the Tibetan Book of the Dead aloud daily for the welfare of the deceased son and the whole family as well and think of his son while doing so. On the shrine stood a few objects that were supposed to remind us of the deceased. Here now the practical significance of the Book of the Dead in Tibetan society revealed itself. The father didn’t just read for the son, but he also deepened his own understanding of living and dying and his wife then sat as so often on the threshold between kitchen and living room, listened and recited mantras too awaken compassion and counted them on her prayer chain.

The second important event that I want to tell about here also took place in the refugee camp. On the last day of the old year the Tibetans gather and end the old year by witnessing the Black Hat dance. This dance is danced and celebrated at New Year – at the last day of the old year – by the highest masters, who then wear black hat costumes, put themselves in trance and then actually grow beyond themselves, an by the way incredibly impressive experience!

I was the only Westerner in the camp back then and so I was considered somewhat special. My friend pushed me to get introduce to the supreme master of the monastery, the venerable Penor Rinpoche. On the way to Penor Rinpoches little house, we passed a huge foundation of some kind. That must have been half a football field in size. Here and there a few steel rods protruded. It was cast in cement. On this foundation many young monks, small boys in monk robes, aged 5 to 12 years, were romping around. I think some of the child monks were playing football. In any case, I walked past it with my friend, and immediately a strange little boy caught my eye. He was maybe five or six years old. I somehow couldn’t take my eyes off him. This child had a very own charm and magic, a radiance shining in its own strange way? He was in the middle of the tangle of playing children, but I think he moved more calmly and sedately than the others. I continued to stare at the little one, and tried to find out why he was so special, but I couldn’t find an explanation and kept being enchanted, like romantic, like being in love. So I asked my friend: „What’s with this child there in front?“ Tashi immediately knew whom I meant and answered: „That’s the tulku – the reincarnation – of the deceased guru of Penor Rinpoche.“ In the first moment that explanation seemed pretty crazy to me. Although reincarnation was talked about everywhere, I had my doubts and still couldn’t really imagine it yet. But anyway the little one was quite obviously a real miracle? Such reincarnations of enlightened or almost enlightened masters are called tulku in Tibetan (the Sanskrit equivalent is Nirmanakaya, which means something like body of an enlightened one). In this moment I emphatically assured myself: „Reincarnation, at least of religious masters, that actually does exist.“… Meeting Penor Rinpoche shortly after was then actually the moment to finally faint, because he was complete vastness, power and intensity, as I had never experienced before.

A few weeks later I then also completely lost myself again at the blessing by the Dalai Lama. I changed into light and bliss. I still managed to stagger to my room back then, where I simply sat down motionless, upright on my bed for almost a whole day, which I then called meditation.

Later I met many enlightened masters and also always somehow got lost again, but it became more familiar to me to enter such enlightened energy fields – maybe it makes more sense to call them energy-free fields. I got used to it and for example I would have completely normal conversations about worldly things and exchange ideas during later encounters with the Dalai Lama. But at this first touch back then, I was overwhelmed, out of my mind and felt helpless and blissful at the same time.

So, and now I’ve probably definitely strayed from the topic… What was the topic again?