The following excerpt is from Delog: Journey to Realms Beyond Death, by Chagdud Rinpoche 's mother, Delog Dawa Drolma, to be published by Padma Publishing in December of 1994. (See back cover for further details.) The first portion is taken from Rinpoche's Introduction, the second from Chapter One.
My mother was revered throughout Tibet for her extraordinary powers as a lama, but she was more famous for being a delog, one who crossed the threshold of death and returned to tell about it. This was not a visionary or momentary near-death experience. For five full days she lay cold, breathless, and devoid of any vital signs, while her consciousness moved freely into other realms, often escorted by the wisdom goddess White Tara. She undertook her journey as a delog according to instructions she had received from Tara in visions, but against the wishes of her lamas, who pleaded with her not to take such a risk.
It is remarkable that she, a young woman of sixteen, had so much confidence in her meditation that she prevailed over very wise, much older lamas. However, she herself had been recognized as an emanation of White Tara, a powerful force of enlightened mind for the longevity and the liberation of sentient beings ....
The direct experience of other realms did indeed invest my mother with great spiritual authority when she taught of correct conduct and karmic cause and effect. No one doubted her words, not only because great lamas such as Tromge Trungpa had witnessed her corpse coming back to life, but also because she knew the whereabouts of buried coins and actions of the deceased before their deaths–things that she could not possibly have known without having been told directly by those she encountered as a delog ....
Delog Dawa Drolma' s account here is as vivid as that of a tourist describing a country he or she has visited, yet hers is really a journey of consciousness through the pure and impure displays of mind. It begins when, as instructed by Tara, "I let my mind settle. In a spacious and extremely blissful frame of mind, I experienced a state of sheer lucidity.... I was fully aware of the fundamental condition of my mind in all its ordinariness. Because that awareness was unimpeded, it was as though I could hear all sounds and voices in all lands, not just those in my immediate environment."
When ordinary grasping and aversion, and ignorance of object-subject duality completely fall away, one experiences uncontrived, naked awareness–absolute, nondual, beyond concept, emptiness replete with all pure qualities and the potential to manifest as appearance inseparable from emptiness. This is buddha nature, obscured and unrecognized in sentient beings, but completely revealed in enlightened ones.
To provide benefit, enlightened beings spontaneously emanate realms of pure appearance such as Padmasambhava's Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain, Avalokiteshvara' s Potala Mountain, and Tara's Yulokod. Practitioners who have purified their mindstreams and who have accumulated vast merit through their virtue can experience pure realms invisions, in dreams, or, as my mother did, as a delog. Her account is quite specific in its cosmological geography and detailed in its descriptions, yet it is clear that the realms she visited are the rich display of the nature of mind, experienced when meditation breaks through the limitations of ordinary perception.
The pure realms are the display of mind, but so also are the bardo state and the six destinations of rebirth. The difference is that the pure realms are the display of enlightened awareness, while the six realms and the bardo are the displays of delusion and the projections of mind's poisons....
Despite the fact that the realms of cyclic existence are in the absolute sense empty in nature, the mere projection of mind's poisonous delusions, on a relative level the suffering of beings trapped there is undeniable. As Dharmaraja (Lord of Death) and his minions demonstrate again and again, no lies or pretenses mitigate one's karma. One's life passes before one's eyes with every good and bad deed clearly delineated; karmic results arise accordingly. Although the consequences of killing and harming others are horrible beyond imagination, the lovely descriptions of the pure realms inspire one to practice deity meditation and to realize the qualities of mind's pure nature.
After one dies, even as karmic forces propel one's consciousness to rebirth in the six realms, if one has previously practiced well enough to have the presence of mind to invoke one's meditational deity with faith, one is instantaneously reborn in that deity's pure realm ....
The delog experience is extraordinary, marvelous, even within the esoteric context of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. Yet Delog Dawa Drolma's account has the power and immediacy of direct experience, and I trust that those who read it will find that the phenomena of the realms correspond to aspects of their own mind's experience. May her words inspire the highest spiritual attainment; may they guide whoever reads them to the dominions of the victorious ones.
.... On the morning of the twenty-sixth day of the lunar month, as the sun peeped over the horizon, I beheld the exalted and venerable Tara actually present before me within a mass of rainbow light, her form white like a vase of crystal. She held an arrow decorated with silk ribbons, with which she blessed me.
From the direction of the Mountain of Glory on the minor continent of Chamara a rainbow of five parallel bands of colored light penetrated my meditation room. Along this pathway came an escort of four young women dressed in silks and adorned with ornaments of bone. The dakini of the east, Goddess with Power over Longevity, was brilliant white and held a silk-beribboned arrow and a vase. The dakini of the south was Akyang Tara, the dakini of the west was Tara of the Turquoise Dragon, and the dakini of the north was Goddess of the North.
They placed me in a litter covered with variegated silk patterned in red and white. Immediately, the dakinis of the four classes and I joined together in chanting aloud the Seven-Line Supplication and reciting the vajra guru and mani mantras continuously. My mind expanded into a supremely blissful state, the essential nature of sheer lucidity in which I could not cling to anything as good or bad in the ordinary sense, like unborn space that is nothing at all in and of itself, yet with a natural radiance that was absolutely unimpeded. This harmonious and spontaneous meditative experience emerged as the inconceivable array of a cloud mandala, the entire vast range of pure experience.
I then had the sensation of climbing higher and higher into vaguely defined space, more swiftly than a wild white tailed vulture soaring into the heavens. As this dramatic experience was unfolding like a shifting phantasmagoria, I suddenly found myself in a place that I did not recognize. In the center of a vast plain, so spacious and ethereal that it seemed the sky had fallen to the earth, was a large rock face shaped like a heart .... I experienced this realm as an actual place .... Seated there was he who is the essence in which all sources of refuge and all victorious ones unite .... the Guru of Orgyan, Padma T'hod T'hreng Tzal, the deathless Lake-Born Vajra himself....
When this girl beheld the perfectly proportioned mandala of the great Orgyan's visage, I gazed on it insatiably. All of my usual ill-defined perceptions spontaneously ceased, and I experienced an ineffable, inconceivable, and inexpressible state, like a mute person tasting cane sugar. For a short while I rested in this state of mind, at once joyful and sad ....
To the right of the throne, on another high throne, sat the venerable master of compassion, the great threefold vajra holder, the sublime guide Dechhen Dorje (also known as Drimed Khachod Wangpo). He was the latest powerful manifestation of a series of holy incarnations over many lifetimes....
Drimed Khachod Wangpo showed his great affection by replying to me " .... Between me and the great Lama Orgyan there is not the slightest difference. Despite the conventional labels of "birth" and "death," for me there is not in the ultimate sense the slightest erroneous notion of birth or death.
"All those sentient beings who have had any connection–positive or negative–with me, this old man Dechhen Dorje, have been led to the Mountain of Glory on the continent of Chamara, the pure realm of the victorious ones of the three kayas, like a flock of birds startled by a pebble thrown from a sling. Even now, I give you my solemn word that those students and servants who are capable of supplicating me will become buddhas simultaneously.
"You who suffer on my account be vigilant in your devotion, seeing the lama as the dharmakaya of buddhahood. Be vigilant in your compassion, understanding the six classes of beings to be your parents. Be vigilant in your practice of virtue, not tarnishing anything you undertake with selfish vested interests. Be vigilant in your mantra repetition and meditation practices, not falling into the eight worldly influences, understanding the six-syllable mani mantra alone to be sufficient for your practice. Be vigilant in your formal practice, subsuming everything within your own true mind! Don't make mistakes! Don't make mistakes!
"As soon as you shed this human body, I will lead all of you to this pure realm like a goose leading her goslings. Just see if I don't, by the Three Jewels! When you return to the human realm, relate all of these messages to Tromge Kundun, to the households of the region, and to my dear students. Do as I say, for even if they were to meet with me directly I would have nothing further to tell them."
.... I asked, "When will you return?"
He answered, "For the present I shall go to the pure realm known as the Charnel Ground of Erupting Volcanoes to teach the Heart Drop of Chetzun to those gathered there. Although much might be said of the manner in which my incarnation will be born after that, do not write these things down, for they require a seal of secrecy!
"Now then, my girl, it is dangerous for you to remain in this realm and you should not come here again. You should return to the human realm and be of benefit to living beings. Before three years are out I shall be reborn there once again .... "
The following excerpt is from Delog: Journey to Realms Beyond Death, by Chagdud Rinpoche 's mother, Delog Dawa Drolma, to be published by Padma Publishing in December of 1994. (See back cover for further details.) The first portion is taken from Rinpoche's Introduction, the second from Chapter One.
My mother was revered throughout Tibet for her extraordinary powers as a lama, but she was more famous for being a delog, one who crossed the threshold of death and returned to tell about it. This was not a visionary or momentary near-death experience. For five full days she lay cold, breathless, and devoid of any vital signs, while her consciousness moved freely into other realms, often escorted by the wisdom goddess White Tara. She undertook her journey as a delog according to instructions she had received from Tara in visions, but against the wishes of her lamas, who pleaded with her not to take such a risk.
It is remarkable that she, a young woman of sixteen, had so much confidence in her meditation that she prevailed over very wise, much older lamas. However, she herself had been recognized as an emanation of White Tara, a powerful force of enlightened mind for the longevity and the liberation of sentient beings ....
The direct experience of other realms did indeed invest my mother with great spiritual authority when she taught of correct conduct and karmic cause and effect. No one doubted her words, not only because great lamas such as Tromge Trungpa had witnessed her corpse coming back to life, but also because she knew the whereabouts of buried coins and actions of the deceased before their deaths–things that she could not possibly have known without having been told directly by those she encountered as a delog ....
Delog Dawa Drolma' s account here is as vivid as that of a tourist describing a country he or she has visited, yet hers is really a journey of consciousness through the pure and impure displays of mind. It begins when, as instructed by Tara, "I let my mind settle. In a spacious and extremely blissful frame of mind, I experienced a state of sheer lucidity.... I was fully aware of the fundamental condition of my mind in all its ordinariness. Because that awareness was unimpeded, it was as though I could hear all sounds and voices in all lands, not just those in my immediate environment."
When ordinary grasping and aversion, and ignorance of object-subject duality completely fall away, one experiences uncontrived, naked awareness–absolute, nondual, beyond concept, emptiness replete with all pure qualities and the potential to manifest as appearance inseparable from emptiness. This is buddha nature, obscured and unrecognized in sentient beings, but completely revealed in enlightened ones.
To provide benefit, enlightened beings spontaneously emanate realms of pure appearance such as Padmasambhava's Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain, Avalokiteshvara' s Potala Mountain, and Tara's Yulokod. Practitioners who have purified their mindstreams and who have accumulated vast merit through their virtue can experience pure realms invisions, in dreams, or, as my mother did, as a delog. Her account is quite specific in its cosmological geography and detailed in its descriptions, yet it is clear that the realms she visited are the rich display of the nature of mind, experienced when meditation breaks through the limitations of ordinary perception.
The pure realms are the display of mind, but so also are the bardo state and the six destinations of rebirth. The difference is that the pure realms are the display of enlightened awareness, while the six realms and the bardo are the displays of delusion and the projections of mind's poisons....
Despite the fact that the realms of cyclic existence are in the absolute sense empty in nature, the mere projection of mind's poisonous delusions, on a relative level the suffering of beings trapped there is undeniable. As Dharmaraja (Lord of Death) and his minions demonstrate again and again, no lies or pretenses mitigate one's karma. One's life passes before one's eyes with every good and bad deed clearly delineated; karmic results arise accordingly. Although the consequences of killing and harming others are horrible beyond imagination, the lovely descriptions of the pure realms inspire one to practice deity meditation and to realize the qualities of mind's pure nature.
After one dies, even as karmic forces propel one's consciousness to rebirth in the six realms, if one has previously practiced well enough to have the presence of mind to invoke one's meditational deity with faith, one is instantaneously reborn in that deity's pure realm ....
The delog experience is extraordinary, marvelous, even within the esoteric context of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. Yet Delog Dawa Drolma's account has the power and immediacy of direct experience, and I trust that those who read it will find that the phenomena of the realms correspond to aspects of their own mind's experience. May her words inspire the highest spiritual attainment; may they guide whoever reads them to the dominions of the victorious ones.
.... On the morning of the twenty-sixth day of the lunar month, as the sun peeped over the horizon, I beheld the exalted and venerable Tara actually present before me within a mass of rainbow light, her form white like a vase of crystal. She held an arrow decorated with silk ribbons, with which she blessed me.
From the direction of the Mountain of Glory on the minor continent of Chamara a rainbow of five parallel bands of colored light penetrated my meditation room. Along this pathway came an escort of four young women dressed in silks and adorned with ornaments of bone. The dakini of the east, Goddess with Power over Longevity, was brilliant white and held a silk-beribboned arrow and a vase. The dakini of the south was Akyang Tara, the dakini of the west was Tara of the Turquoise Dragon, and the dakini of the north was Goddess of the North.
They placed me in a litter covered with variegated silk patterned in red and white. Immediately, the dakinis of the four classes and I joined together in chanting aloud the Seven-Line Supplication and reciting the vajra guru and mani mantras continuously. My mind expanded into a supremely blissful state, the essential nature of sheer lucidity in which I could not cling to anything as good or bad in the ordinary sense, like unborn space that is nothing at all in and of itself, yet with a natural radiance that was absolutely unimpeded. This harmonious and spontaneous meditative experience emerged as the inconceivable array of a cloud mandala, the entire vast range of pure experience.
I then had the sensation of climbing higher and higher into vaguely defined space, more swiftly than a wild white tailed vulture soaring into the heavens. As this dramatic experience was unfolding like a shifting phantasmagoria, I suddenly found myself in a place that I did not recognize. In the center of a vast plain, so spacious and ethereal that it seemed the sky had fallen to the earth, was a large rock face shaped like a heart .... I experienced this realm as an actual place .... Seated there was he who is the essence in which all sources of refuge and all victorious ones unite .... the Guru of Orgyan, Padma T'hod T'hreng Tzal, the deathless Lake-Born Vajra himself....
When this girl beheld the perfectly proportioned mandala of the great Orgyan's visage, I gazed on it insatiably. All of my usual ill-defined perceptions spontaneously ceased, and I experienced an ineffable, inconceivable, and inexpressible state, like a mute person tasting cane sugar. For a short while I rested in this state of mind, at once joyful and sad ....
To the right of the throne, on another high throne, sat the venerable master of compassion, the great threefold vajra holder, the sublime guide Dechhen Dorje (also known as Drimed Khachod Wangpo). He was the latest powerful manifestation of a series of holy incarnations over many lifetimes....
Drimed Khachod Wangpo showed his great affection by replying to me " .... Between me and the great Lama Orgyan there is not the slightest difference. Despite the conventional labels of "birth" and "death," for me there is not in the ultimate sense the slightest erroneous notion of birth or death.
"All those sentient beings who have had any connection–positive or negative–with me, this old man Dechhen Dorje, have been led to the Mountain of Glory on the continent of Chamara, the pure realm of the victorious ones of the three kayas, like a flock of birds startled by a pebble thrown from a sling. Even now, I give you my solemn word that those students and servants who are capable of supplicating me will become buddhas simultaneously.
"You who suffer on my account be vigilant in your devotion, seeing the lama as the dharmakaya of buddhahood. Be vigilant in your compassion, understanding the six classes of beings to be your parents. Be vigilant in your practice of virtue, not tarnishing anything you undertake with selfish vested interests. Be vigilant in your mantra repetition and meditation practices, not falling into the eight worldly influences, understanding the six-syllable mani mantra alone to be sufficient for your practice. Be vigilant in your formal practice, subsuming everything within your own true mind! Don't make mistakes! Don't make mistakes!
"As soon as you shed this human body, I will lead all of you to this pure realm like a goose leading her goslings. Just see if I don't, by the Three Jewels! When you return to the human realm, relate all of these messages to Tromge Kundun, to the households of the region, and to my dear students. Do as I say, for even if they were to meet with me directly I would have nothing further to tell them."
.... I asked, "When will you return?"
He answered, "For the present I shall go to the pure realm known as the Charnel Ground of Erupting Volcanoes to teach the Heart Drop of Chetzun to those gathered there. Although much might be said of the manner in which my incarnation will be born after that, do not write these things down, for they require a seal of secrecy!
"Now then, my girl, it is dangerous for you to remain in this realm and you should not come here again. You should return to the human realm and be of benefit to living beings. Before three years are out I shall be reborn there once again .... "
The following excerpt is from Delog: Journey to Realms Beyond Death, by Chagdud Rinpoche 's mother, Delog Dawa Drolma, to be published by Padma Publishing in December of 1994. (See back cover for further details.) The first portion is taken from Rinpoche's Introduction, the second from Chapter One.
My mother was revered throughout Tibet for her extraordinary powers as a lama, but she was more famous for being a delog, one who crossed the threshold of death and returned to tell about it. This was not a visionary or momentary near-death experience. For five full days she lay cold, breathless, and devoid of any vital signs, while her consciousness moved freely into other realms, often escorted by the wisdom goddess White Tara. She undertook her journey as a delog according to instructions she had received from Tara in visions, but against the wishes of her lamas, who pleaded with her not to take such a risk.
It is remarkable that she, a young woman of sixteen, had so much confidence in her meditation that she prevailed over very wise, much older lamas. However, she herself had been recognized as an emanation of White Tara, a powerful force of enlightened mind for the longevity and the liberation of sentient beings ....
The direct experience of other realms did indeed invest my mother with great spiritual authority when she taught of correct conduct and karmic cause and effect. No one doubted her words, not only because great lamas such as Tromge Trungpa had witnessed her corpse coming back to life, but also because she knew the whereabouts of buried coins and actions of the deceased before their deaths–things that she could not possibly have known without having been told directly by those she encountered as a delog ....
Delog Dawa Drolma' s account here is as vivid as that of a tourist describing a country he or she has visited, yet hers is really a journey of consciousness through the pure and impure displays of mind. It begins when, as instructed by Tara, "I let my mind settle. In a spacious and extremely blissful frame of mind, I experienced a state of sheer lucidity.... I was fully aware of the fundamental condition of my mind in all its ordinariness. Because that awareness was unimpeded, it was as though I could hear all sounds and voices in all lands, not just those in my immediate environment."
When ordinary grasping and aversion, and ignorance of object-subject duality completely fall away, one experiences uncontrived, naked awareness–absolute, nondual, beyond concept, emptiness replete with all pure qualities and the potential to manifest as appearance inseparable from emptiness. This is buddha nature, obscured and unrecognized in sentient beings, but completely revealed in enlightened ones.
To provide benefit, enlightened beings spontaneously emanate realms of pure appearance such as Padmasambhava's Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain, Avalokiteshvara' s Potala Mountain, and Tara's Yulokod. Practitioners who have purified their mindstreams and who have accumulated vast merit through their virtue can experience pure realms invisions, in dreams, or, as my mother did, as a delog. Her account is quite specific in its cosmological geography and detailed in its descriptions, yet it is clear that the realms she visited are the rich display of the nature of mind, experienced when meditation breaks through the limitations of ordinary perception.
The pure realms are the display of mind, but so also are the bardo state and the six destinations of rebirth. The difference is that the pure realms are the display of enlightened awareness, while the six realms and the bardo are the displays of delusion and the projections of mind's poisons....
Despite the fact that the realms of cyclic existence are in the absolute sense empty in nature, the mere projection of mind's poisonous delusions, on a relative level the suffering of beings trapped there is undeniable. As Dharmaraja (Lord of Death) and his minions demonstrate again and again, no lies or pretenses mitigate one's karma. One's life passes before one's eyes with every good and bad deed clearly delineated; karmic results arise accordingly. Although the consequences of killing and harming others are horrible beyond imagination, the lovely descriptions of the pure realms inspire one to practice deity meditation and to realize the qualities of mind's pure nature.
After one dies, even as karmic forces propel one's consciousness to rebirth in the six realms, if one has previously practiced well enough to have the presence of mind to invoke one's meditational deity with faith, one is instantaneously reborn in that deity's pure realm ....
The delog experience is extraordinary, marvelous, even within the esoteric context of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. Yet Delog Dawa Drolma's account has the power and immediacy of direct experience, and I trust that those who read it will find that the phenomena of the realms correspond to aspects of their own mind's experience. May her words inspire the highest spiritual attainment; may they guide whoever reads them to the dominions of the victorious ones.
.... On the morning of the twenty-sixth day of the lunar month, as the sun peeped over the horizon, I beheld the exalted and venerable Tara actually present before me within a mass of rainbow light, her form white like a vase of crystal. She held an arrow decorated with silk ribbons, with which she blessed me.
From the direction of the Mountain of Glory on the minor continent of Chamara a rainbow of five parallel bands of colored light penetrated my meditation room. Along this pathway came an escort of four young women dressed in silks and adorned with ornaments of bone. The dakini of the east, Goddess with Power over Longevity, was brilliant white and held a silk-beribboned arrow and a vase. The dakini of the south was Akyang Tara, the dakini of the west was Tara of the Turquoise Dragon, and the dakini of the north was Goddess of the North.
They placed me in a litter covered with variegated silk patterned in red and white. Immediately, the dakinis of the four classes and I joined together in chanting aloud the Seven-Line Supplication and reciting the vajra guru and mani mantras continuously. My mind expanded into a supremely blissful state, the essential nature of sheer lucidity in which I could not cling to anything as good or bad in the ordinary sense, like unborn space that is nothing at all in and of itself, yet with a natural radiance that was absolutely unimpeded. This harmonious and spontaneous meditative experience emerged as the inconceivable array of a cloud mandala, the entire vast range of pure experience.
I then had the sensation of climbing higher and higher into vaguely defined space, more swiftly than a wild white tailed vulture soaring into the heavens. As this dramatic experience was unfolding like a shifting phantasmagoria, I suddenly found myself in a place that I did not recognize. In the center of a vast plain, so spacious and ethereal that it seemed the sky had fallen to the earth, was a large rock face shaped like a heart .... I experienced this realm as an actual place .... Seated there was he who is the essence in which all sources of refuge and all victorious ones unite .... the Guru of Orgyan, Padma T'hod T'hreng Tzal, the deathless Lake-Born Vajra himself....
When this girl beheld the perfectly proportioned mandala of the great Orgyan's visage, I gazed on it insatiably. All of my usual ill-defined perceptions spontaneously ceased, and I experienced an ineffable, inconceivable, and inexpressible state, like a mute person tasting cane sugar. For a short while I rested in this state of mind, at once joyful and sad ....
To the right of the throne, on another high throne, sat the venerable master of compassion, the great threefold vajra holder, the sublime guide Dechhen Dorje (also known as Drimed Khachod Wangpo). He was the latest powerful manifestation of a series of holy incarnations over many lifetimes....
Drimed Khachod Wangpo showed his great affection by replying to me " .... Between me and the great Lama Orgyan there is not the slightest difference. Despite the conventional labels of "birth" and "death," for me there is not in the ultimate sense the slightest erroneous notion of birth or death.
"All those sentient beings who have had any connection–positive or negative–with me, this old man Dechhen Dorje, have been led to the Mountain of Glory on the continent of Chamara, the pure realm of the victorious ones of the three kayas, like a flock of birds startled by a pebble thrown from a sling. Even now, I give you my solemn word that those students and servants who are capable of supplicating me will become buddhas simultaneously.
"You who suffer on my account be vigilant in your devotion, seeing the lama as the dharmakaya of buddhahood. Be vigilant in your compassion, understanding the six classes of beings to be your parents. Be vigilant in your practice of virtue, not tarnishing anything you undertake with selfish vested interests. Be vigilant in your mantra repetition and meditation practices, not falling into the eight worldly influences, understanding the six-syllable mani mantra alone to be sufficient for your practice. Be vigilant in your formal practice, subsuming everything within your own true mind! Don't make mistakes! Don't make mistakes!
"As soon as you shed this human body, I will lead all of you to this pure realm like a goose leading her goslings. Just see if I don't, by the Three Jewels! When you return to the human realm, relate all of these messages to Tromge Kundun, to the households of the region, and to my dear students. Do as I say, for even if they were to meet with me directly I would have nothing further to tell them."
.... I asked, "When will you return?"
He answered, "For the present I shall go to the pure realm known as the Charnel Ground of Erupting Volcanoes to teach the Heart Drop of Chetzun to those gathered there. Although much might be said of the manner in which my incarnation will be born after that, do not write these things down, for they require a seal of secrecy!
"Now then, my girl, it is dangerous for you to remain in this realm and you should not come here again. You should return to the human realm and be of benefit to living beings. Before three years are out I shall be reborn there once again .... "
The following excerpt is from Delog: Journey to Realms Beyond Death, by Chagdud Rinpoche 's mother, Delog Dawa Drolma, to be published by Padma Publishing in December of 1994. (See back cover for further details.) The first portion is taken from Rinpoche's Introduction, the second from Chapter One.
My mother was revered throughout Tibet for her extraordinary powers as a lama, but she was more famous for being a delog, one who crossed the threshold of death and returned to tell about it. This was not a visionary or momentary near-death experience. For five full days she lay cold, breathless, and devoid of any vital signs, while her consciousness moved freely into other realms, often escorted by the wisdom goddess White Tara. She undertook her journey as a delog according to instructions she had received from Tara in visions, but against the wishes of her lamas, who pleaded with her not to take such a risk.
It is remarkable that she, a young woman of sixteen, had so much confidence in her meditation that she prevailed over very wise, much older lamas. However, she herself had been recognized as an emanation of White Tara, a powerful force of enlightened mind for the longevity and the liberation of sentient beings ....
The direct experience of other realms did indeed invest my mother with great spiritual authority when she taught of correct conduct and karmic cause and effect. No one doubted her words, not only because great lamas such as Tromge Trungpa had witnessed her corpse coming back to life, but also because she knew the whereabouts of buried coins and actions of the deceased before their deaths–things that she could not possibly have known without having been told directly by those she encountered as a delog ....
Delog Dawa Drolma' s account here is as vivid as that of a tourist describing a country he or she has visited, yet hers is really a journey of consciousness through the pure and impure displays of mind. It begins when, as instructed by Tara, "I let my mind settle. In a spacious and extremely blissful frame of mind, I experienced a state of sheer lucidity.... I was fully aware of the fundamental condition of my mind in all its ordinariness. Because that awareness was unimpeded, it was as though I could hear all sounds and voices in all lands, not just those in my immediate environment."
When ordinary grasping and aversion, and ignorance of object-subject duality completely fall away, one experiences uncontrived, naked awareness–absolute, nondual, beyond concept, emptiness replete with all pure qualities and the potential to manifest as appearance inseparable from emptiness. This is buddha nature, obscured and unrecognized in sentient beings, but completely revealed in enlightened ones.
To provide benefit, enlightened beings spontaneously emanate realms of pure appearance such as Padmasambhava's Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain, Avalokiteshvara' s Potala Mountain, and Tara's Yulokod. Practitioners who have purified their mindstreams and who have accumulated vast merit through their virtue can experience pure realms invisions, in dreams, or, as my mother did, as a delog. Her account is quite specific in its cosmological geography and detailed in its descriptions, yet it is clear that the realms she visited are the rich display of the nature of mind, experienced when meditation breaks through the limitations of ordinary perception.
The pure realms are the display of mind, but so also are the bardo state and the six destinations of rebirth. The difference is that the pure realms are the display of enlightened awareness, while the six realms and the bardo are the displays of delusion and the projections of mind's poisons....
Despite the fact that the realms of cyclic existence are in the absolute sense empty in nature, the mere projection of mind's poisonous delusions, on a relative level the suffering of beings trapped there is undeniable. As Dharmaraja (Lord of Death) and his minions demonstrate again and again, no lies or pretenses mitigate one's karma. One's life passes before one's eyes with every good and bad deed clearly delineated; karmic results arise accordingly. Although the consequences of killing and harming others are horrible beyond imagination, the lovely descriptions of the pure realms inspire one to practice deity meditation and to realize the qualities of mind's pure nature.
After one dies, even as karmic forces propel one's consciousness to rebirth in the six realms, if one has previously practiced well enough to have the presence of mind to invoke one's meditational deity with faith, one is instantaneously reborn in that deity's pure realm ....
The delog experience is extraordinary, marvelous, even within the esoteric context of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. Yet Delog Dawa Drolma's account has the power and immediacy of direct experience, and I trust that those who read it will find that the phenomena of the realms correspond to aspects of their own mind's experience. May her words inspire the highest spiritual attainment; may they guide whoever reads them to the dominions of the victorious ones.
.... On the morning of the twenty-sixth day of the lunar month, as the sun peeped over the horizon, I beheld the exalted and venerable Tara actually present before me within a mass of rainbow light, her form white like a vase of crystal. She held an arrow decorated with silk ribbons, with which she blessed me.
From the direction of the Mountain of Glory on the minor continent of Chamara a rainbow of five parallel bands of colored light penetrated my meditation room. Along this pathway came an escort of four young women dressed in silks and adorned with ornaments of bone. The dakini of the east, Goddess with Power over Longevity, was brilliant white and held a silk-beribboned arrow and a vase. The dakini of the south was Akyang Tara, the dakini of the west was Tara of the Turquoise Dragon, and the dakini of the north was Goddess of the North.
They placed me in a litter covered with variegated silk patterned in red and white. Immediately, the dakinis of the four classes and I joined together in chanting aloud the Seven-Line Supplication and reciting the vajra guru and mani mantras continuously. My mind expanded into a supremely blissful state, the essential nature of sheer lucidity in which I could not cling to anything as good or bad in the ordinary sense, like unborn space that is nothing at all in and of itself, yet with a natural radiance that was absolutely unimpeded. This harmonious and spontaneous meditative experience emerged as the inconceivable array of a cloud mandala, the entire vast range of pure experience.
I then had the sensation of climbing higher and higher into vaguely defined space, more swiftly than a wild white tailed vulture soaring into the heavens. As this dramatic experience was unfolding like a shifting phantasmagoria, I suddenly found myself in a place that I did not recognize. In the center of a vast plain, so spacious and ethereal that it seemed the sky had fallen to the earth, was a large rock face shaped like a heart .... I experienced this realm as an actual place .... Seated there was he who is the essence in which all sources of refuge and all victorious ones unite .... the Guru of Orgyan, Padma T'hod T'hreng Tzal, the deathless Lake-Born Vajra himself....
When this girl beheld the perfectly proportioned mandala of the great Orgyan's visage, I gazed on it insatiably. All of my usual ill-defined perceptions spontaneously ceased, and I experienced an ineffable, inconceivable, and inexpressible state, like a mute person tasting cane sugar. For a short while I rested in this state of mind, at once joyful and sad ....
To the right of the throne, on another high throne, sat the venerable master of compassion, the great threefold vajra holder, the sublime guide Dechhen Dorje (also known as Drimed Khachod Wangpo). He was the latest powerful manifestation of a series of holy incarnations over many lifetimes....
Drimed Khachod Wangpo showed his great affection by replying to me " .... Between me and the great Lama Orgyan there is not the slightest difference. Despite the conventional labels of "birth" and "death," for me there is not in the ultimate sense the slightest erroneous notion of birth or death.
"All those sentient beings who have had any connection–positive or negative–with me, this old man Dechhen Dorje, have been led to the Mountain of Glory on the continent of Chamara, the pure realm of the victorious ones of the three kayas, like a flock of birds startled by a pebble thrown from a sling. Even now, I give you my solemn word that those students and servants who are capable of supplicating me will become buddhas simultaneously.
"You who suffer on my account be vigilant in your devotion, seeing the lama as the dharmakaya of buddhahood. Be vigilant in your compassion, understanding the six classes of beings to be your parents. Be vigilant in your practice of virtue, not tarnishing anything you undertake with selfish vested interests. Be vigilant in your mantra repetition and meditation practices, not falling into the eight worldly influences, understanding the six-syllable mani mantra alone to be sufficient for your practice. Be vigilant in your formal practice, subsuming everything within your own true mind! Don't make mistakes! Don't make mistakes!
"As soon as you shed this human body, I will lead all of you to this pure realm like a goose leading her goslings. Just see if I don't, by the Three Jewels! When you return to the human realm, relate all of these messages to Tromge Kundun, to the households of the region, and to my dear students. Do as I say, for even if they were to meet with me directly I would have nothing further to tell them."
.... I asked, "When will you return?"
He answered, "For the present I shall go to the pure realm known as the Charnel Ground of Erupting Volcanoes to teach the Heart Drop of Chetzun to those gathered there. Although much might be said of the manner in which my incarnation will be born after that, do not write these things down, for they require a seal of secrecy!
"Now then, my girl, it is dangerous for you to remain in this realm and you should not come here again. You should return to the human realm and be of benefit to living beings. Before three years are out I shall be reborn there once again .... "
The following excerpt is from Delog: Journey to Realms Beyond Death, by Chagdud Rinpoche 's mother, Delog Dawa Drolma, to be published by Padma Publishing in December of 1994. (See back cover for further details.) The first portion is taken from Rinpoche's Introduction, the second from Chapter One.
My mother was revered throughout Tibet for her extraordinary powers as a lama, but she was more famous for being a delog, one who crossed the threshold of death and returned to tell about it. This was not a visionary or momentary near-death experience. For five full days she lay cold, breathless, and devoid of any vital signs, while her consciousness moved freely into other realms, often escorted by the wisdom goddess White Tara. She undertook her journey as a delog according to instructions she had received from Tara in visions, but against the wishes of her lamas, who pleaded with her not to take such a risk.
It is remarkable that she, a young woman of sixteen, had so much confidence in her meditation that she prevailed over very wise, much older lamas. However, she herself had been recognized as an emanation of White Tara, a powerful force of enlightened mind for the longevity and the liberation of sentient beings ....
The direct experience of other realms did indeed invest my mother with great spiritual authority when she taught of correct conduct and karmic cause and effect. No one doubted her words, not only because great lamas such as Tromge Trungpa had witnessed her corpse coming back to life, but also because she knew the whereabouts of buried coins and actions of the deceased before their deaths–things that she could not possibly have known without having been told directly by those she encountered as a delog ....
Delog Dawa Drolma' s account here is as vivid as that of a tourist describing a country he or she has visited, yet hers is really a journey of consciousness through the pure and impure displays of mind. It begins when, as instructed by Tara, "I let my mind settle. In a spacious and extremely blissful frame of mind, I experienced a state of sheer lucidity.... I was fully aware of the fundamental condition of my mind in all its ordinariness. Because that awareness was unimpeded, it was as though I could hear all sounds and voices in all lands, not just those in my immediate environment."
When ordinary grasping and aversion, and ignorance of object-subject duality completely fall away, one experiences uncontrived, naked awareness–absolute, nondual, beyond concept, emptiness replete with all pure qualities and the potential to manifest as appearance inseparable from emptiness. This is buddha nature, obscured and unrecognized in sentient beings, but completely revealed in enlightened ones.
To provide benefit, enlightened beings spontaneously emanate realms of pure appearance such as Padmasambhava's Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain, Avalokiteshvara' s Potala Mountain, and Tara's Yulokod. Practitioners who have purified their mindstreams and who have accumulated vast merit through their virtue can experience pure realms invisions, in dreams, or, as my mother did, as a delog. Her account is quite specific in its cosmological geography and detailed in its descriptions, yet it is clear that the realms she visited are the rich display of the nature of mind, experienced when meditation breaks through the limitations of ordinary perception.
The pure realms are the display of mind, but so also are the bardo state and the six destinations of rebirth. The difference is that the pure realms are the display of enlightened awareness, while the six realms and the bardo are the displays of delusion and the projections of mind's poisons....
Despite the fact that the realms of cyclic existence are in the absolute sense empty in nature, the mere projection of mind's poisonous delusions, on a relative level the suffering of beings trapped there is undeniable. As Dharmaraja (Lord of Death) and his minions demonstrate again and again, no lies or pretenses mitigate one's karma. One's life passes before one's eyes with every good and bad deed clearly delineated; karmic results arise accordingly. Although the consequences of killing and harming others are horrible beyond imagination, the lovely descriptions of the pure realms inspire one to practice deity meditation and to realize the qualities of mind's pure nature.
After one dies, even as karmic forces propel one's consciousness to rebirth in the six realms, if one has previously practiced well enough to have the presence of mind to invoke one's meditational deity with faith, one is instantaneously reborn in that deity's pure realm ....
The delog experience is extraordinary, marvelous, even within the esoteric context of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. Yet Delog Dawa Drolma's account has the power and immediacy of direct experience, and I trust that those who read it will find that the phenomena of the realms correspond to aspects of their own mind's experience. May her words inspire the highest spiritual attainment; may they guide whoever reads them to the dominions of the victorious ones.
.... On the morning of the twenty-sixth day of the lunar month, as the sun peeped over the horizon, I beheld the exalted and venerable Tara actually present before me within a mass of rainbow light, her form white like a vase of crystal. She held an arrow decorated with silk ribbons, with which she blessed me.
From the direction of the Mountain of Glory on the minor continent of Chamara a rainbow of five parallel bands of colored light penetrated my meditation room. Along this pathway came an escort of four young women dressed in silks and adorned with ornaments of bone. The dakini of the east, Goddess with Power over Longevity, was brilliant white and held a silk-beribboned arrow and a vase. The dakini of the south was Akyang Tara, the dakini of the west was Tara of the Turquoise Dragon, and the dakini of the north was Goddess of the North.
They placed me in a litter covered with variegated silk patterned in red and white. Immediately, the dakinis of the four classes and I joined together in chanting aloud the Seven-Line Supplication and reciting the vajra guru and mani mantras continuously. My mind expanded into a supremely blissful state, the essential nature of sheer lucidity in which I could not cling to anything as good or bad in the ordinary sense, like unborn space that is nothing at all in and of itself, yet with a natural radiance that was absolutely unimpeded. This harmonious and spontaneous meditative experience emerged as the inconceivable array of a cloud mandala, the entire vast range of pure experience.
I then had the sensation of climbing higher and higher into vaguely defined space, more swiftly than a wild white tailed vulture soaring into the heavens. As this dramatic experience was unfolding like a shifting phantasmagoria, I suddenly found myself in a place that I did not recognize. In the center of a vast plain, so spacious and ethereal that it seemed the sky had fallen to the earth, was a large rock face shaped like a heart .... I experienced this realm as an actual place .... Seated there was he who is the essence in which all sources of refuge and all victorious ones unite .... the Guru of Orgyan, Padma T'hod T'hreng Tzal, the deathless Lake-Born Vajra himself....
When this girl beheld the perfectly proportioned mandala of the great Orgyan's visage, I gazed on it insatiably. All of my usual ill-defined perceptions spontaneously ceased, and I experienced an ineffable, inconceivable, and inexpressible state, like a mute person tasting cane sugar. For a short while I rested in this state of mind, at once joyful and sad ....
To the right of the throne, on another high throne, sat the venerable master of compassion, the great threefold vajra holder, the sublime guide Dechhen Dorje (also known as Drimed Khachod Wangpo). He was the latest powerful manifestation of a series of holy incarnations over many lifetimes....
Drimed Khachod Wangpo showed his great affection by replying to me " .... Between me and the great Lama Orgyan there is not the slightest difference. Despite the conventional labels of "birth" and "death," for me there is not in the ultimate sense the slightest erroneous notion of birth or death.
"All those sentient beings who have had any connection–positive or negative–with me, this old man Dechhen Dorje, have been led to the Mountain of Glory on the continent of Chamara, the pure realm of the victorious ones of the three kayas, like a flock of birds startled by a pebble thrown from a sling. Even now, I give you my solemn word that those students and servants who are capable of supplicating me will become buddhas simultaneously.
"You who suffer on my account be vigilant in your devotion, seeing the lama as the dharmakaya of buddhahood. Be vigilant in your compassion, understanding the six classes of beings to be your parents. Be vigilant in your practice of virtue, not tarnishing anything you undertake with selfish vested interests. Be vigilant in your mantra repetition and meditation practices, not falling into the eight worldly influences, understanding the six-syllable mani mantra alone to be sufficient for your practice. Be vigilant in your formal practice, subsuming everything within your own true mind! Don't make mistakes! Don't make mistakes!
"As soon as you shed this human body, I will lead all of you to this pure realm like a goose leading her goslings. Just see if I don't, by the Three Jewels! When you return to the human realm, relate all of these messages to Tromge Kundun, to the households of the region, and to my dear students. Do as I say, for even if they were to meet with me directly I would have nothing further to tell them."
.... I asked, "When will you return?"
He answered, "For the present I shall go to the pure realm known as the Charnel Ground of Erupting Volcanoes to teach the Heart Drop of Chetzun to those gathered there. Although much might be said of the manner in which my incarnation will be born after that, do not write these things down, for they require a seal of secrecy!
"Now then, my girl, it is dangerous for you to remain in this realm and you should not come here again. You should return to the human realm and be of benefit to living beings. Before three years are out I shall be reborn there once again .... "
