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Crossing the Ocean of Life and Death
- Book 163: Crossing the Ocean of Life and Death
- Chapter 11:
The Liberation Path of the Bardo Spirit
- Written by Sheng-yen Lu
- Translated and edited by True Buddha Foundation
- Translation Team (Cheng Yew Chung, Satch)
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With regards to the Path of Liberation of the bardo spirit, the Buddha had explained it very clearly in the Sutra of the Original Vows of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva.
For example, in chapter eight, the praises of the multitudes of Lord Yama states, `The Buddha explained to Deva Yamaraja as follows:
`The sentient beings in southern Jambudvipa are stubborn and adamant by nature. They are difficult to tame and control. This great Bodhisattva has, during hundreds of thousands of kalpas, saved and delivered such beings in every way and from all angles, and has led them to early liberation.
`Such people, even if they might fall onto major evil paths of existence as punishment for their sins, will give thanks for this Bodhisattva? power to use expediencies to free them from their fundamental karmic connections and to make them aware of all their actions and circumstances during their previous lives. However, since the sentient beings in Jambudvipa are heavily entangled with their evil habits, they would soon return to their evil habits. This Bodhisattva then has to take the trouble to work, for long kalpa after kalpa, to deliver and liberate them.
`It is just like someone who, having gone astray from his home, inadvertently finds himself trapped on some dangerous path swarming with yakshas, tigers, wolves, lions, lizards, serpents, vipers and scorpions. This straying person would meet with malice in every instant on that dangerous path. By chance, he encounters a wise man who knows and understands the great mystical power and is well-versed in how to combat, control and wipe out this malice, the evil poisons and yakshas. The wise man asks him, `Why do you take this path? What magic do you have for controlling all this malice and evil?`
`This straying person, on hearing these words, would suddenly realize that such a path was, indeed, dangerous and would retreat directly, leaving that path. Such a good, learned friend would lend him a hand to lead him away from that dangerous path.`
The reason I quote these paragraphs from the sutra is mainly to point out that the lost person is the bardo spirit. Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva is the wise man. The wise man advises the lost person to avoid falling into the three lower realms. He liberates erring sentient beings so that they may be reborn in the heavenly realms and seek rebirth in the Pure Land.
In addition, the sutra states, `O World Honored One, such a man or woman in Jambudvipa, approaching the end of his life, might be in a coma or an unconscious stupor and, thus, not be able to differentiate the virtuous from the evil; or he might even have totally lost his faculties of hearing and seeing. So his or her relatives should provide major offerings, read and recite the revered sutras, and invoke the names of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. These virtuous acts could divert the dead one away from evil paths, and all the Maras, demons and gods would then withdraw and be dispersed.`
The important part is that the Sutra states, `O World Honored One, if sentient beings could, at the end of their lives, hear the name of even one Buddha or of one Bodhisattva, or hear a sentence or verse from any Mahayana Sutra, I see that such people, with the exception of those who have committed the five unpardonable sins, will all be liberated from their minor evil karma, which otherwise would merit rebirth on evil paths of existence.`
The Ksitigarbha Sutra instructs us to:
* help the deceased perform good deeds
* help the deceased perform cultivation practice
* help the deceased by reading the sutras
* recite the Buddha`s name and mantra
* hang up a banner, and hang up a canopy
* make offerings of some incense and flowers to the statutes of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas
* burn incense to make offerings to one sentence or verse from the sutra
These steps are documented in the sutra, and they are very important.
Why do we switch to reading the Sutra of the Original Vows of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva? It is because this Sutra is beneficial to both the living and the dead. This Sutra was expounded by Sakyamuni Buddha while he was dwelling in the Trayastrimsha Heaven, and was preaching to his mother about Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, or the Earth Store Bodhisattva. Earth refers to the immovably huge earth, and store refers to the profound and secret thoughts that arise through stillness. This Bodhisattva succors sentient beings of the netherworld and those who dwell in the six realms. He has undertaken the heavy responsibility given by the Buddha to deliver sentient beings during the period between the passing of Sakyamuni Buddha and the coming of Tathagata Maitreya.
As Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva often helps and delivers beings from their suffering in the hell and nether realms, he has made a great vow: `I vow never to attain Buddhahood until hell is empty of all sentient beings.` Therefore, we acknowledge him as `Namo the great teacher of the netherworld, the one with great vow, Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva.`
I truly feel that the place of the greatest suffering in the six realms is none other than the hell realm. There are the major primary hells, the sixteen hells of eight hot and eight cold hells. Then there are the adjacent hells, which includes the sixteen subsidiary hells with four gates plus the original eight hot hells. There are also the isolated hells situated in mountains, deserts, under trees, at lakeside, and any other places which keep shifting and changing. These are hells manifested out of the karmic hindrances of human beings.
The respective punishments and their duration differ from hell to hell. The primary hells are the most tormenting, followed by the adjacent hells and then the isolated hells.
Seeing through my spiritual eye, I realize that the locations of hell are not limited to underground and under the ocean, but they exist in the human world as well. I often say that major hospitals are in fact major hells, as the patients being hospitalized are suffering due to their karmic consequences. We often see hospitals performing surgery on the brain, the throat, the liver, doing kidney transplantations, limb amputations, colon, stomach operations... good heavens! Aren`t these punishments of hell? Then there are cancers, diabetes, strokes, AIDS, mental disorders and so forth (as many as eighty four thousand types of illnesses). Aren`t these illnesses the punishments that the patients are being subjected to?
The suffering experienced on earth and the liberation of the bardo spirit resemble each other in terms of their basic makeup. The human world experiences suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and the non-existence of the self. I dare say that since the human world is part of the six realms of reincarnation, the physical being and the bardo spirit are differentiated by the concept of the subjective world and the objective world. There is little difference between the liberation of man through cultivation and the liberation of the bardo spirit.
What separates the two is that the human world involves an actual physical body that makes it more real than that of the bardo spirit, which being devoid of a physical body, is more illusory. Of course, when seen from the perspective of the bardo spirit, the sight of light images that appear after death seems very `real.`
For example: a man is having a dream, and in his mind, what he experiences in his dream is real. Only after awakening does he realize that it was just a dream. The reason why Tantric Buddhism teaches us the cultivation of dreams, which allows us to know our dreams, to dream vividly, to have lucid dreams, and to know the importance of cultivation while in the dream state, is because the bardo state is like a dream. If you can continue your cultivation in dreams by reciting the Buddha`s name and mantra, and clearly cultivate your practices in the dream state, taking refuge in the Guru, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, you would be able to attain liberation while in the bardo.
The Sutra of the Original Vows of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva clearly says to us that it is important to advise the dying or recently deceased to avoid the evil paths, leave the dark realms, and move towards the light, taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. As the Bodhisattva radiates light, the bardo spirit is able to remember his guru, principal deity and dharma protector, and consequently ripens the maturity of liberation, which separates the bardo spirit from the karmic influences created on earth, thereby allowing the bardo spirit to merge into the light of the Tathagata. In an instant, the bardo spirit is able to enter into the Pure Land of the Tathagata.
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