Lord of Death

(From a text)

At the end of a long meeting yesterday, I had a little surprise to perk me up after what had been a very exhausting night.

If you ask me what I like in this world, if you ask me what I am good at in this world, or what I am interested in, there’s not much I can say that I really like or I am okay at apart from Dharma. I love my Lama, and I love what I do even if sometimes my mind gets the better of me.

Oh yes, I know it sounds all so YSG (a Rinpoche-abbreviation for “you’re so good”, a sarcastic term referring to people attempting to portray they are oh-so holy) but it’s true.

I have my list of cravings – I like ang moh men, soy lattes, reading, pretty pictures, gossip magazines, lying in bed watching a DVD, new technology, aimlessly surfing the Internet – but at the end of the day, I’m a greedy little so-and-so when it comes to Dharma gifts!

And that’s the beauty of Rinpoche’s teachings. Rinpoche is always telling us we don’t have to give up who we are when we become Buddhist; all we do is change our motivation for wanting it all, and become better, kinder versions of ourselves.

So yesterday, when my mind was scattered and my eyes had lost all sense of coordination, Yamantaka was sent to blow my mind away. Excitement set in, and then I went home feeling calm and happy.

For so wrathful a deity, when I see him, I see the love of a father for their child – he really knows how to make me feel at peace and at ease.

How does Yamantaka terminate death?

This question depends upon the meaning ascribed to the term death – but one way in which this ability can be identified is through the enlightening activity of wisdom. The wisdom mind is able to perceive that death has no intrinsic, concrete existence: our understanding of death emerges solely from the conventions of the world. Also, when we achieve the same realisation of Yamantaka – who is a Buddha – then we have transcended death.

There are three types of death spoken of in the Yamāntaka Tantra : Outer death is the regular end of life, which is embodied by Yama, Lord of Death, who resides in the south, seven stories under the earth. The inner death is ignorance of the true nature of non-dual reality. Instinctive habitual grasping and aversion to objectively “real” objects and subjects arises from this ignorance. The secret death is dualistic appearance on the subtlest level of clear light mind and illusory body. With the practice of Yamāntaka one overcomes those types of death and gains immortality as a Buddha.

death, photo, teacher, Tsem Tulku Rinpoche, work Reflections and Teachings