We enter the bardo, the intermediate state after # death , just as we enter dream after falling asleep. If our experience of # dream lacks clarity and is of confused emotional states and habitual reactivity, we will have trained ourselves to experience the processes of death in the same way.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that how we approach dreaming reflects our understanding of death and the afterlife.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche highlights the importance of clarity and awareness in our experiences, both in dreams and in the process of dying. He suggests that if we allow our dreams to be dictated by confusion and automatic reactions, we are likely to approach death with the same mindset, thereby emphasizing the need for mindfulness in both states to navigate the transitions more smoothly.
In practice
This quote could be shared in a meditation class to encourage mindfulness.
All experience and phenomena are understood to be a dream, this should not be just an intellectual understanding, but a vivid and lucid experience...Genuine integration of this point produces a profound change in the individual's response to the world. Grasping and aversion is greatly diminished, and the emotional tangles that once seemed so compelling are experienced as the tug of dream stories, and no more.
Ultimately we want to use dream to liberate ourselves from all relative conditions, not simply to improve them.
The natural purity of our mind is of no use to us if we are not aware of it, _x000D_ _x000D_ and if we do not integrate it with our moving mind. _x000D_ _x000D_ If we realize our innate purity, but only integrate with it from time to time, we are not totally awakened._x000D_ _x000D_ Being in total integration all the time is final realization
Dream, rather than let yourself be dreamt
From the body of the unborn essence arises the sphere of light, and from that sphere of light arises wisdom. From the wisdom arises the seed syllable and from the seed syllable arises the complete Mandala, the deity and the retinue.
The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.
The modern believer is not suspicious enough, which is perhaps why when they try to construct arguments in their defence, the convictions are left doing all the work and reason, debilitated by neglect, weakly fails to prop them up.
Isn't it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we're doing what we're doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?
Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by … not paying attention?
The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.
The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
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