Fearlessness in the face of death

Dzogchen Beara, 17-23 June 2001

“Now when the bardo of the moment before death dawns upon me,
I will abandon all grasping, yearning and attachment,
[and] enter undistracted into the clear awareness of the teaching...”
—from The Main Verses of the Six Bardos.
When we leave this life, what we have to look out for are our own emotional obscurations, because attachment and aversion are decoys, traps that will delude and mislead us. Hope and fear are emotional mines, ready to explode the moment we step on them.
We should know our fears, discover what teachings and practices help us when we are in their grip, and do the appropriate practice when they arise. The ultimate key to abandoning hope and fear is the recognition of our true nature, and the trust and confidence that springs from that recognition. Analysing the nature of shunyata gives us the conviction to contradict whatever our ignorant, conditioned mind is telling us. Discovering unconditional love within us, a wise love that sees everything and is not dependent on any thing or person, dissolves all our confusion.
Even though the Buddhist teachings can give our lives so much meaning, we can sometimes wonder why they haven’t helped us more. The answer is simple—we haven’t been practising them! The teachings are an entire science of the mind, and if we apply them wholeheartedly, we can revolutionise ourselves by embodying them.