What Is It That Gets Reborn? Q&A

...I think this person is trying to understand something conceptually that isn't really a concept. The Dalai Lama explains that there is the subtle mind and then there's the extremely subtle mind and then there's more coarse types of consciousness which are associated with the sense bases. Obviously when your body dies and you leave the consciousness associated with the eyes, nose, tongue and body, this body isn't going to go with you. Some people call it the mind stream. Some people call it the mental continuum. It is mind that goes. And it's interesting, they've done some studies when people die, there's a certain point where all of a sudden the body is 300g lighter. It seems to be that the mind weighs something but not much. I remember my sister and brother were at my sister's deathbed last year and they both felt a kind of a whoosh at the same time like a energy that lifted upward and my brother said to my sister, "Did you feel that?" My other sister said, "Yeah, she's gone now"...

Transcript

Let me say my greeting.

Good morning to our friends in North and South America.

Good afternoon to our friends in the UK and in Europe.

Good early evening to our friends in the Arab states and India.

Good evening to our friends in Thailand,

Malaysia,

Singapore,

Indonesia.

Good late evening to our friends in Australia.

Nice to see you.

Hope you're well.

We have about nine of our regular attendants are here in person this evening.

We have a live audience as well.

Okay,

See we have some questions.

Dear Pra Ajan,

There have been three dangerous incidents in my local area.

I was not physically harmed by any of these nor was I targeted myself but these events I observed did affect an inner sense of safety.

I'm aware that the world can be and often is unsafe and there are lots of reminders of this.

However,

This knowledge isn't giving me the courage or confidence to move forward in ways I should.

Do you have any advice regarding this?

So firstly,

I think it's normal,

Ordinary that if some frightening incidents occur around you to feel a little bit anxious,

Shocked and many parts of the world are becoming more dangerous.

The practice of metta,

I've found is very conducive to more resilient feelings of well-being.

So if we're living in a time where there appears to be more danger,

Loving kindness practice,

If we do it before we leave our home,

And take some feeling of inner well-being,

Inner safety with us,

Be very helpful.

The other benefit of loving kindness practice is it produces good karma and it is protective.

So if you cultivate your loving kindness diligently,

Then you're less likely to meet with a harmful incident.

So yeah,

I would increase the metta and share it with beings in your area,

Specifically,

Just before you leave your home.

Dedicate the merit to the beings in your suburb,

Your town.

May they be well,

May they be happy.

And another practice we do is we can dedicate merit to any beings we may have harmed.

This is another way that decreases the likelihood of personally meeting with accidents or harm.

Yes,

Increase your metta practice.

Dear Ajaan,

When anxiety is strong in our minds,

What is a good practice to do in that moment?

It feels difficult to do any work with the mind when this comes up.

Should we think through what worries us?

What works for you?

So if I'm feeling anxious about something,

I find trying to think about it doesn't help.

That kind of feeds it.

And so,

Again,

What I find helpful is metta practice.

But if it's a high level of anxiety,

Something that I found helpful is to do metta meditation in a lying down posture,

And to actually put your hand over the heart area.

So it's like you just place your hand,

Right hand,

On the heart area.

It's like a comforting feeling.

And then you just lie down and you,

May I be well,

May I be happy,

May I be well,

May I be happy.

And you just pacify the anxious feeling with a feeling of warmth and friendliness,

Of goodwill.

And then if that,

If the feelings of anxiety do calm down,

Then I would recommend that you get into a formal sitting posture and do your breath meditation.

But yeah,

Sometimes have a little lie down,

Spread loving kindness to yourself,

Be kind,

Be gentle,

Supportive.

And then when things are pacified a bit,

Sit up,

Give your attention to your breath,

Because the metta will help establish feelings of well-being.

Clear,

Sharp mindfulness of the breath will increase your quality of mindfulness.

When mindfulness is good,

There will be less proliferating thoughts.

And after the meditation,

Then that's often a time where you can think through if there's a thing that you need to address.

If you can bring the clarity that you got from your meditation to thinking through the challenge or the issue,

You will get better results,

Better understanding of how to approach challenges in life.

Metta is a very powerful practice,

But in order for it to become powerful,

One has to be disciplined with it.

So we need to do it every day.

It's part of our toolbox of meditation practices,

Particularly in a time where we hear a lot of news,

Or see a lot of images where it's actually natural that it would give rise to some feeling of anxiety,

That different weapons being moved around the planet,

Different geopolitical tensions,

Different policies being announced from different big countries.

It is a little bit scary time,

So I recommend lots of metta for yourself and everybody.

Support yourself.

And if we do die,

Which we will one day,

But if we die all of a sudden,

Then we have some well-being in the mind.

Take the merit of our metta practice with us wherever we go next.

I was a bit late in answering this question because Halloween has already passed,

But I will answer it.

Has Halloween passed already?

When is it?

30th of August.

Okay,

I'm in time.

Dear Ajahn,

I live in a western country,

So Halloween is coming up.

People walk around in costumes and sometimes they dress up as evil characters or watch horror movies,

Etc.

Is there any risk of actually being affected by evil or unwholesome energies or beings during this time?

Or can I just sit on the porch without worrying about this?

So,

I think Halloween originally came from a skillful tradition of all hellos,

Where people would make prayers for or dedicate merits,

Do something skillful,

Do something wholesome,

Dedicated to their ancestors.

So,

It has a beautiful origin,

But it seems to have degenerated into some strange,

Almost mockery of beings who may be experiencing challenging circumstances and being entities in lower realms.

So,

I do believe that if a lot of people are watching horror movies or dressing up as ghosts or and these kind of things,

That there might be some unskillful energies around.

The mind becomes like what it gives attention to.

And so,

If it was me and I was living in a big city or something where a lot of people were dressing as ghosts or skeletons or corpses or whatever,

I'd stay inside and I'd chant some chants and do some meditation and I wouldn't go out and I wouldn't watch a horror movie personally.

I would chant some protective chants on that evening.

Just as there are many beings in parallel realms and there are many realms and these things,

It's a bit like a radio station.

So,

If many,

Many people are tuning into a certain station,

Then that song is going to be playing all around you.

If the radio station is tuned to the ghost and demonic realm,

Then that's going to be kind of bringing those realms closer.

And if if people were actually making merit and actually thinking of their ancestors with kindness and dedicating merit to them,

That would be different.

That would be a different occasion because then you would also have devas who want to help those beings coming and helping.

But it's not quite the full practice anymore.

It's a bit strange.

And yeah,

The idea of celebrating entities in lower realms or finding them entertaining,

I wouldn't.

It's not very skillful.

So,

I have to think in terms of Buddhist practitioners who cultivate the four brahmaviharas,

We actually have compassion for beings who are struggling.

And so,

A lot of people think,

Thais and Asians in general are quite scared of ghosts.

And Westerners,

I find,

Are less scared,

But they don't like them.

And like they wouldn't,

A lot of people wouldn't want to go to a house if they thought it was haunted.

But something that people misunderstand is like,

When they see a ghost,

If people see a ghost and they might see something that comes to them with a missing head,

Or a missing arm,

Or a malformed face,

Or an image of a drowned woman,

Various things that people might see.

In Thai,

There's a particular word for this,

Pi dai hong,

The ghost that was a result of an inauspicious death.

People tend to think the ghost is coming to scare them,

Taking that form.

And what's actually the case is that is the form that the ghost has.

And very often they're coming to us for help.

People interpret it as them coming to scare them.

And what happens is if you have a sudden death that you weren't expecting,

And you grasp onto your body with every bit,

Every ounce of attachment that you have,

Kind of bring to mind how it is when you slip on a path,

Live in a cold country might be a frost on a on a steps and you begin to slip or if you live in a tropical country and it's monsoon,

If you slip on the mud and that that feeling that you have is as you slip and you're about to fall,

The way you just grasp everything in that moment.

That's when you get to glimpse just how much attachment there is to life and your body.

And so people die all of a sudden,

Stab wound,

Gunshot.

They grab on to the last moment,

They grab onto their body,

But then the consciousness can't stay in the body because the body dies.

And the consciousness leaves,

Taking the form of the last moments of that birth.

So that's why people see people with hot,

With bleeding wounds,

People who drowned,

Car accidents.

And it's one of the reasons we have to train ourselves to be mindful of death.

And so that when we are dying,

There is enough mindfulness to note this is death,

The body is dying,

It's time to let go rather than grasping with every ounce of craving and attachment that we have.

But to mock beings,

Dress up like zombies,

Ghouls,

Ghosts,

Skeletons,

And kind of make a mockery of this is I don't,

It's not skillful.

I don't think it's not a practice of compassion.

And so yeah,

I would not participate.

And I wouldn't be too close to it.

Just do my regular Buddhist practice.

And,

You know,

If you have a nice log cabin outside of the city,

Maybe I'd go there for the weekend or just go come back when it all calms down.

If you don't,

Close the doors,

Chant.

We have in Buddhism,

The protective verses,

They're called the parittas.

You chant the parittas and go to bed early.

We even do that on New Year's.

These days we chant,

It'd be so good.

I remember when I was a layman,

I was giving up partying.

I was like,

What are you doing this New Year's Eve?

I'm going to sleep at nine o'clock.

It'd be sensible.

Get up early and meditate the next day.

Start the year well.

Dear Ajahn,

Today I came across the term upasamanusati.

This is a recollection of peace.

It is mentioned in the Visuddhimagga.

Do you have any idea of any method of practicing upasamanusati?

So the way Tanajanan explained it,

Upasama means the highest.

So the recollection of the highest literally is nibbana.

So the upasamanusati is to recollect the goal or the result.

So this is a suitable practice for someone who may have glimpsed it or experienced it,

Is to then recollect the insight they have.

So sometimes people do long meditation retreats and they may have a vipassana jnana,

A vipassana insight.

They may have an experience of letting go and a sense of self disappears for a period of time.

Mind experiences coolness,

Peacefulness,

A sense of emptiness.

So any true insight will be knowing emptiness,

Emptiness of permanence,

Emptiness of suffering,

Emptiness of self.

And there's a particular quality to that of having let go of things that clutter the mind and obstruct the mind from seeing the ultimate empty nature of phenomenon.

So if a person has had some insight experiences,

If a person has had a temporary liberation,

Then that's a practice that one can do,

Recollecting those experiences.

And sometimes it can be a bit like a tuning fork,

That when you incline the mind to remembering that,

You can experience something similar again.

And so it is an advanced practice and a subtle meditation,

But for people who have had some insight experience,

Very powerful.

And vipassana jnana,

Valid insight experiences,

They're very powerful,

But they do become a memory.

And it's not the unshakable insight that stream entry is.

So what tends to happen is the ignorance creeps back into the mind and clouds the mind of clear seeing,

Latent tendency to grasp the things that being a self and solid and satisfactory comes back.

But it because the mind that experiences true insight was very peaceful when it had that insight,

It does leave a very deep imprint in the mind.

And so when we recollect it,

We can get some,

Sometimes can get some approximation of that experience.

That's a good thing to do.

And if we haven't had such an experience yet,

A sense of truly seeing one of those three characteristics and a sense of letting go and experiencing emptiness and the coolness of non grasping,

Then try to do some intensive meditation retreats and aim at trying to have one of those experiences while you have the precious human birth and you've met with these teachings.

Dear Ajahn,

I've been reflecting deeply on what happens after death,

Especially in relation to consciousness.

I remember that when you were asked before,

You mentioned that some aspect or stream of our mind continues after death.

I would like to ask you for a deeper explanation.

What exactly continues after death?

Which part of our consciousness or mental stream is it?

And how should we understand this in practice?

Thank you.

So I think this person is trying to understand something conceptually that isn't really a concept.

It's the Dalai Lama explains that there is the subtle mind,

And then there's the extremely subtle mind.

And then there's more coarse types of consciousness,

Which are associated with eyes,

Ears,

Nose,

Tongue and body.

So obviously,

When you when your body dies,

And you leave,

The consciousness associated with the eyes,

Nose,

Tongue and body of this body isn't going to go with you.

But the some people call it the mind stream.

Some people call it the mental continuum.

It is mind that goes.

And it's interesting,

They've done some studies that when people die,

There's a certain point that I can't remember exactly how much I think it's about 300 grams.

There's a certain point where all of a sudden,

The body is 300 grams lighter.

And it seems to be that the mind weighs something,

But not much.

So I remember my sister and brother were at my sister's deathbed last year.

And they,

They both felt a kind of a whoosh at the same time,

Like a energy that lifted upward.

And my brother said to my sister,

Did you feel that?

My other sister said,

Yeah,

She's gone now.

And what's interesting is the body stayed alive for a couple more days.

So that this kind of course,

Consciousness associated with the body,

Physical consciousness,

Kept breathing.

But there was no lucidity,

No sense of presence,

Nobody felt she was in the room.

And both my sister and my brother felt the moment that she left.

So I just give that as a bit of an anecdotal.

People do experience this.

And what is also interesting,

We have to look at when we look at the anecdotal evidence,

It's extremely common for close relatives of deceased people to dream of that person or for that person to enter their dream in a two or three days after they die.

And for all intents and purposes,

They often look like that person.

And they're able to talk.

So what is that?

In Thai you call it a subtle body.

So it's the I guess it's the remnant of the last life,

The imprints on consciousness that that left.

Now,

If a person didn't know that they were dying,

Or is really,

Really attached,

If that mental continuum hangs around,

It takes the form of a ghost.

And then you have effectively had a ghost rebirth.

What is very,

And so you know,

If a person wants to know what is it that carries on,

What is it that carries on,

Well think about what a ghost is.

Disembodied consciousness that didn't go anywhere yet.

But there's something there.

It weighs about 300 grams.

What's interesting,

If you think further,

It can enter a dream,

It can talk,

Probably even has feelings in terms of emotions.

So maybe it wants to say something to a deceased person.

It wants them to feel at ease,

Wants them to know they're okay.

So it's also very common that after the first two or three days,

People don't see them again.

So that's if a consciousness that is moving,

Transmigrating to its next birth,

Pops in and says goodbye to a few relatives,

Shows them that they're okay.

Then they go to their next birth.

In the Tibetan tradition,

They say is there some kind of a bardo experience that lasts for six weeks or something.

I personally,

I personally don't believe that.

I,

I've asked my own teachers,

They said,

No,

Most people,

It's three or four days,

Three or four days,

They'll have to go on to their next birth.

And if they don't,

They'll probably get stuck for quite a long time.

So it's like,

You know,

We probably all know what it's like to miss a flight.

You know,

You had a ticket,

You had a spot on the plane.

And if you didn't make it in time,

You miss the flight.

So we have to be ready to go,

We have to be paying attention.

And people who have potent merits,

That's oftentimes a spontaneous deva rebirth.

And they,

They may not be able to enter other people's minds in forms of dreams,

Because their experiences is so is so subtle.

They've gone to a much more subtle realm.

It seems to be the people who have like some kind of intermediate karma,

Likely to have a human birth.

Those seem to be the ones that can pop into people's dreams.

So mental continuum,

And subtle mind.

Sometimes a being hangs around that looks like the being they were,

But they don't appear to be a ghost.

What's that?

So there is this thing called a bumma deva.

This is the angels or the heavenly beings that are closest to the earth.

So if a died,

Wants to hang around their family and their house and had merit,

They will sometimes look like the person they were.

But with a youthful body,

Nice complexion,

Lovely clothes,

That person is not a ghost.

And in terms of how that's experienced,

Sometimes people will see a white light go past them.

But they don't get the cold shiver up the spine.

They might they may sense a benevolent presence,

Like a friend.

And so in Thailand,

They have these little shrine houses in the corners of their yards,

That they make offerings to the bumma devas,

The beings that were there before they were there.

And it's kind of a deal,

I'll offer you a can of soda and give you some flowers and offer some incense and keep an eye on the house,

You know.

And,

You know,

People go to the temple,

And they say to the to their bumma devas,

Okay,

Come with me and make a merit,

You can come to come and rejoice.

And there's a kind of a just,

You know,

It's less and less now,

Because Thailand is becoming more materialist.

But in the past,

It was just a basic understanding that you share the world with beings in close parallel realms,

And you invite them to join your merit making activities and rejoice and dedicate merit with them.

Similarly,

With the ghosts,

They dedicate merit to the ghosts and try to help them along.

But can you understand it,

I'm just trying to give anecdotal stories of how people in kind of traditionally relate to these things.

Can you really understand it as a concept?

Is there any kind of?

Yeah,

I think the best thing that prepares us for death,

And understanding subtle mind is meditation.

So if you meditate,

And you get skilled enough that you have 20 to 30 minutes of peace in every hour of meditation that you do,

You meditate 10 or 15 minutes or some thoughts,

Mind becomes a bit peaceful,

Occasional thought,

20 minutes later,

Some thinking,

But there's this 20 minute period where there's not a strong sense of self,

Not a lot of grasping,

Spacious,

Porous experience of mind where the body,

The perception of the body is not impinging much.

Just kind of notice that oftentimes people don't notice it because of this absence of all these other things.

But we it's good to notice what's that like,

What's it like for 20 minutes with not much thoughts,

Not much sense of a body,

Not making a self.

And then you're getting a bit of a sense for subtle mind,

Presence of mind.

And that's probably what's going to go with you to the next life,

That sense of presence of mind.

And that's letting go of things.

And the more familiar you can become with being with a peaceful mind,

And letting things go,

Putting things down.

So you're putting down your thoughts about the past,

Putting down things,

Thoughts about the future,

And being with the breath,

Being with the breath until the breath leads the mind to a peaceful state,

And then you're with the peacefulness.

The more skilled you get,

The more comfortable you get at putting things down and feeling the well-being that comes from putting things down,

The more possible it's going to be for you to put down this life at the end,

When it's time to go.

The more that you will trust that the mind has a capacity to just be okay,

It's okay to let go,

And then be truly present,

Then you'll probably know what to do.

And if something comes to help you,

Have a sense of is it trustworthy,

And you can go.

We're a really developed practitioner.

The dying process,

For someone who's doing a lot of meditation,

The dying process offers us opportunities for further insight,

As we see the way the mind lets go of the elements,

The four elements,

For paying attention.

Apparently,

If you're fortunate enough to die somewhat slowly,

With presence of mind,

You will experience letting go of the earth element,

Then the water element,

Then the wind element,

Then the fire element,

And that all has feelings associated with it,

And then mind leaves the body.

Yeah,

A bit rambling,

But I hope that's helpful to some of you.

I wish you a auspicious,

Peaceful death,

Much insight,

And fortunate transmigration until liberation.

Reviews

Thank you. Many helpful words. 🙏🙏

I enjoy your talks. Christmas Eve it will be three years since my husband died And it’s a very loving and powerful thing to see how spirit connects I especially found it interesting that the instant the body dies it loses 300 g or about 2/3 of a pound.

I just finished 30 minutes of morning meditation using the timer and you just uploaded this talk. Happy to listen to you again.Thank you Phra Ajahn🙏🏿

Thank you that’s was good explanation 🙏🏻😍🕊️