Ven Huangbo Xiyun (776 - 856 CE), a native of Fuzhou in Fujian province, is one of the great Chan masters of the Tang Dynasty. He is also the teacher of Ven Linji Yixuan, founder of the Linji (Rinzai) school of Chan Buddhism. His teachings, recorded in 2 books, "The Dharma Essence of Chan Master Huangbo's Heart Tranmission" & "Wanling Records of Chan Master Huangbo", have a far-reaching influence on Chan or Zen practitioners up to this day.Huangbo had this to say for instructions to a dying person:
"If an ordinary man, when he is about to die, could only see that -
The 5 aggregates & the 4 elements as void and not Self;
The True Mind as formless and neither coming nor going;
His nature as something neither beginning at his birth nor ceasing at his death, but as perfect and unmoving in its very core;
His mind and its projections as One --
If he could thus enter straight into sudden enlightenment, he would no longer be entangled by the 3 Realms and become a World Transcender.
One should not even have the faintest tendency towards rebirth.
If you should behold the glorious vision of all the Buddhas coming to receive you, surrounded by every kind of auspicious manifestations, you should feel no desire to follow them.
If you should behold all sorts of horrific forms surrounding you, you should also experience no fear. Simply forget your own mind and become one with the Dharmakaya, gaining absolute freedom.
This is the essential principle."
How should we understand this? It means that a person, whether living or dying, must come to the realization that our entire physical & mental world is totally illusionary. The true mind is like a movie screen. The elements, aggregates, sense organs, its objects, & our consciousness; all these are movie images projected onto the screen. These moving images tells all sorts of stories, some happy, others sad, some long, some short, but all coming to an end at some point of time. But the screen? It simply remains as a screen no matter how many movies have been projected onto it. Since time immemorial, this screen has always remained the same for all Buddhas & sentient beings alike. However, due to the obstruction of Avijja, sentient beings never see the screen itself, only the movies on the screen. They believe these ever-moving series of images to be their self, their life, their only reality. Death is like the short intermission between one movie & the next. At this point where all images dissolve temporarily, it is the easiest to see the movie screen, provided one possesses the Right View.
Therefore the Chan practitioner must cultivate Right View & let it be permanantly carved into one's mind. Even if you do not reach enlightenment in this life, it will surely guide you to enlightenment when you recall it at the moment of death.
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Huangbo had this to say for instructions to a dying person:
"If an ordinary man, when he is about to die, could only see that -
The 5 aggregates & the 4 elements as void and not Self;
The True Mind as formless and neither coming nor going;
His nature as something neither beginning at his birth nor ceasing at his death, but as perfect and unmoving in its very core;
His mind and its projections as One --
If he could thus enter straight into sudden enlightenment, he would no longer be entangled by the 3 Realms and become a World Transcender.
One should not even have the faintest tendency towards rebirth.
If you should behold the glorious vision of all the Buddhas coming to receive you, surrounded by every kind of auspicious manifestations, you should feel no desire to follow them.
If you should behold all sorts of horrific forms surrounding you, you should also experience no fear. Simply forget your own mind and become one with the Dharmakaya, gaining absolute freedom.
This is the essential principle."
I pay homage to this teaching of Ven. Master Huangpo.
One can recite this instruction to one own relative who is on his/her death bed. It is very benificial for dying person.
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