Although we may cling to this life and fear its end, beyond death there is mind; and where there is mind, there is uninterrupted display: spacious, radiant, and continually manifesting. — Dzogchen Ponlop1
These words from the Tibetan Buddhist abbot and writer Dzogchen Ponlop (b. 1965) will, no doubt, strike different readers in different ways. To a materialist, these words are absurd. What mind? Perhaps radical materialism is, ultimately, nothing more than a failure of the imagination. If you cannot imagine something beyond the finality of death, is that so very different from a despairing prisoner who no longer can imagine life outside their locked cell?
But even if we are able to conceive of the “mind beyond death” as the abbot describes it, the next question that might arise is, whose mind? Is it my own little, individual mind that greets me in its spacious, radiant, manifesting suchness? Or is it some sort of universal mind, big mind, the mind of the universe, the mind of the All? Is death, as a fall into the “mind beyond,” not unlike the experience of love here on earth, which seems to be a falling into bliss and meaning and a sense of connection?
To theists, the low-hanging fruit here is irresistible; of course the mind beyond death is the mind of God! Even if the word “God” makes you twitch, there are nine billion names to choose from.2 Perhaps the mind of the Goddess, or Atman, or Spirit… what name do you wish to give to that which has no name or all names?
“Silence is God’s first language.” Words from Thomas Keating, with echoes of Rumi and John of the Cross. If this is so, we need no name for the spacious and radiant one. Death, it seems, is continually manifesting (over a million human beings will die this week3). So it makes sense to me that the mind of silence will continually manifest as well.
Perhaps there is really just one fundamental question of life: are we safe? Even if you believe there is no mind after death, how do you answer this question? And for those of us who do say “yes” to mind continually manifesting, we cannot be anything other than safe — for we are in that space that is spacious, radiant, and heart-openingly, beautifully silent.
Dzogchen Ponlop, Rinpoche. Mind Beyond Death (Kindle Edition), p. 11.
With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke.