On describing his near death experience:
"Suddenly ...boom! ... awareness and emptiness became one, indivisible just as it always is ... No me separate from the universe. No direction. No within or without. No perception or nonperception. No self or non-self. No living, no dying ...
As a drop of water placed in the ocean becomes indistinct, boundless, unrecognizable, and yet still exists, so my mind merged with space ... No separate me loved the world. The world was love. My perfect home. Vast and intimate. Every particle was alive with love, fluid, flowing, without barriers. I was an alive particle, no interpretative mind, clarity beyond ideas. Vibrant, energetic, all-seeing.
... There was no individual anything, no dualistic perception. No body, no mind, only consciousness. The cup that had contained empty space had broken, the vase had shattered, extinguishing inside and outside. Through meditation I had known child luminosity, but never had I known such intense union of child and mother luminosity - emptiness infusing emptiness, the bliss of love and tranquility." (pp. 225-227) Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
A beautiful telling, masterfully guided by Helen Tworkov's deep sensitivity to the subtlety and nuances of Rinpoche's deepest musings and experiences of impermanence, sickness, death, nonbeing/being (at the same time). To me, the relationship of similarity between this near-death experience and mystical experience, including 'my own', between other tellings of NDEs and deep psychedelic experience, helps to bring Tibetan teachings of emptiness into a bigger family where all speak of being held in a larger tenderness of love, joy, unfathomable peace and meaning, and sense of Being/being .... sigh ... home.
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