Tantra and Death — Liberation Through Dying
Tantra provides the most comprehensive map of the dying process in any spiritual tradition — using the dissolution of the body's elements and the arising of the clear light as the greatest opportunity for liberation.
For Tantra and Vajrayana, death is not the tragedy it appears to be from the ordinary perspective but the greatest spiritual opportunity — the moment when all the barriers of ego dissolution that a lifetime of practice has worked toward are achieved naturally and inevitably. The Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) describes in detail the dissolution of the five elements at death (earth into water, water into fire, fire into air, air into space), the arising of the radiant clear light of the Dharmata (the nature of all phenomena), the peaceful and wrathful deity visions of the Chonyid Bardo, and the selection of rebirth in the Sidpa Bardo. For the trained practitioner, each stage offers a specific opportunity for liberation. The degree of liberation achieved depends entirely on the degree of recognition — which is why the practices of one's lifetime matter so much: they are rehearsal for the supreme moment of death.
Practice now as if every moment might be your last. When death comes, all the practice of a lifetime will arise as recognition.
The Tibetan bardo teachings hold that the 'clear light' of pure awareness dawns at the moment of death, and that one trained to recognize it can attain liberation in that instant.
Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
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- What Tantra says about illness and the body failing
The Bardo Thodol describes dying as an ordered sequence — earth dissolving into water, water into fire, fire into air, air into space, then the clear light of the Dharmata. Vajrayana treats this as the event a lifetime of practice was rehearsing, which makes a failing body an approach to the examination rather than a defeat.