VI. Tukdam

Because of our lack of familiarity with these subtle aspects of mind (the dharmakaya and sambhogakaya), most people go unconscious at the end of the inner dissolution. They miss the bardo of dharmata, and regain consciousness in the bardo of becoming. We will return to these last two bardos later. A practitioner with some familiarity with the dharmakaya, however, enters meditative absorption. This is called tukdam (an honorific term for meditative practice), and it indicates some level of enlightenment.1

Tukdam signals the union of the mother and child luminosities that we discussed earlier. If we recognize our primordial mother, we will dissolve into her embrace and attain enlightenment. If we don’t have recognition, or the recognition is partial, we will unwittingly leap out of her lap and begin the paradoxical search for her outside. This constitutes the leap from the bardo of dharmata into the bardo of becoming—and our next life. This metaphor becomes a literal description of our entry into samsara as we physically “leap” out of our mother’s lap during birth.

That we return to this primordial mother at death, and leave her at birth, is expressed by the poet Rabindranath Tagore:

1 Some teachers say it occurs at the very end of the bardo of dying, others say it signals entry into the bardo of dharmata. One way to delineate the three bardos altogether is that they are separated by a moment of unconsciousness, or black out. At the end of the bardo of dying, we black out as we go unconscious. If we’re lucky, we wake up in the bardo of dharmata and attain enlightenment. If we do not, we black out in terror as the wrathful deities aren’t recognized and wake up in the bardo of becoming. If we don’t attain liberation in this bardo, we black out as we dive into our next body. There is therefore a “black line” that separates each bardo. While not directly related to tukdam, another sign of accomplishment at death, especially for Dzogchen masters, is the appearance of a perfectly pure sky, with perhaps a rainbow or two. The bardo literature is also replete with stories about “rainbow body,” of which there are several types (great transference rainbow body, great rainbow body, small rainbow body). In these instances, a master will literally dissolve into rainbow light after death, leaving behind hair, fingernails, and teeth. Or they will shrink into the size of a small child, while retaining their adult proportions and features, finally disappearing without leaving a trace. Many realized masters, however, also die very ordinary deaths. We are in no position to judge the realization of a master based on how they die. See Mind in the Balance, Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity, by B. Alan Wallace, p. 183-186 for more on these forms of rainbow body. See also Incarnation, The History and Mysticism of the Tulku Tradition of Tibet, by Tulku Thondup, p. 78-83, 91- 93.

1 The night kissed the fading day

With a whisper.

“I am death, your mother,

From me you will get new birth.”2

As caretakers, it’s important to be aware of the signs of tukdam. If they manifest, we need to know what to do. The mind of someone in tukdam is resting in meditation at the heart. They’re still in their body, and this presence is noticeable. They don’t look dead, but like they’re asleep. There’s warmth around the heart, the body doesn’t start to smell, and rigor mortis doesn’t set in. If you pinch the skin it returns to normal. If you pinch the skin of someone whose life force has left the body, it tends to stay where you pinch it. It doesn’t retract.3

To avoid disrupting their samadhi, and therefore their best chance for attaining enlightenment, the classical instruction is not to disturb the body for at least three days.

Depending on the instructions left by that person, we need to be sensitive to these signs of tukdam. It happens more than we think. We will return to this topic when we discuss organ donation, and whether or not that disrupts tukdam (see page [xxx]).

The amount of time someone spends in tukdam, and therefore in the bardo of dharmata, is measured in meditation days. The bardo of becoming, and the forty-nine

2 Rabindranath Tagore, quoted in Deepak Chopra, Life After Death, The Burden of Proof (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006), 17.

3 Tsele Natsok Rangdrol offers this important caveat: “According to some scholars and adepts, although the general presumption is that all people who remain in the body for a longer time after death are in meditation [tukdam], that is not always certain: Some may be clinging to their bodies out of attachment.” (Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, quoted in Tulku Thondop, Peaceful Death Joyful Rebirth, A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook, (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005), 219.)

2 days taught in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, are normal solar days.4 A meditation day is five times the length of time you can rest your mind now without distraction. If you can rest for five minutes, a meditation day lasts twenty-five minutes.5

At a certain point, intentionally or through the reactivation of the winds of karma, consciousness leaves the body out of one of nine portals. The red bindu continues its ascent, and can sometimes be seen as blood coming out of the nose or mouth. The white bindu continues its descent, and can sometimes be seen as a white discharge from the urethra. This separation of the red and white bindus releases the indestructible bindu at the heart, where consciousness is held. The winds of karma reignite, and we are blown off into the bardo of becoming.6 Stiffening of the body, odor, coolness around the heart,

4 The reason we see a sun and a moon now, and experience time, is because we have a sun and moon within us, ie, because we have red and white bindus. When those bindus are gone, and the subtle body that houses them dissolves, so does our conception of solar days, and time altogether. Even though The Tibetan Book of the Dead talks about the visions that arise over twelve “days” in the bardo of dharmata, time doesn’t exist as we know it. Bardo beings experience a kind of twilight haze, and do not sleep. There is no night and day.

5 There are two forms of nirvana that relate to tukdam, and can dictate the time one spends in it. At the level of the “hearers” (shravaka), one can attain the blissful state of complacent nirvana, and remain absorbed in various forms of samadhi, of which tukdam is one, for almost as long as one wishes. Because the extinction (“nirvana” literally means “blowing out”) of ego is so blissful, it’s easy to get attached to this egoless bliss. You don’t want to move. Non-abiding nirvana is the nirvana of the Buddhas, and is more evolved. Your compassion moves you out from the dharmakaya (complacent nirvana) and into the rupakayas so that you can benefit others. A Buddha doesn’t actually leave the dharmakaya, for the dharmakaya remains as the ultimate benefit for oneself (which is realizing that there isn’t one). The dharmakaya is the empty enduring quality of the awakened mind. It is the rupakayas that manifest in the world of form as the ultimate benefit for others. In this regard, the rupakayas are literally wisdom in action, or compassion. As the master Kamalashila said: "The Buddhas have already achieved all their own goals, but remain in the cycle of existence for as long as there are sentient beings. This is because they possess great compassion. They also do not enter the immensely blissful abode of nirvana like the Hearers. Considering the interests of sentient beings first, they abandon the peaceful abode of nirvana as if it were a burning iron house. Therefore, great compassion alone is the unavoidable cause of the non-abiding nirvana of the Buddha." (The Dalai Lama, Stages of Meditation, root text by Kamalashila, Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and Jeremy Russell, trans. (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2001), 44.)

6 Most teachers say that the luminous bardo of dharmata occurs when one is still in the body, which makes the most sense, since the hundred shitro deities reside in the body. A few say that it arises once the bindu has left the body.

3 inflexibility of the skin, and the fact that they just look dead are other signs that death is complete, and that consciousness has left the body.

4