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 cause of war is preparation for war.
The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
We know a thing by its opposite corollary; hot by having experienced cold; good by having decided what is bad; love by hate.
The need for certainty is the greatest disease the Mind faces
I personally chose to go vegan because I educated myself on factory farming and cruelty to animals, and I suddenly realized that what was on my plate were living things, with feelings. And I just couldn't disconnect myself from it any longer. I read books like 'Diet for a New America' and saw documentaries like 'Earthlings' and 'Meet your Meat,' and it became an easy choice for me.
The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral: by liberalizing the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by fortifying the will, it enables us to control, not society, but ourselves - a much more important thing; it prepares us to live more humanely in the present and to meet rather than to foretell the future.
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