The moon-faced one, seeking understanding, asked: “Please, tell me briefly about death—what makes death pleasant or painful, and what truly happens after dying?” In response, it was explained that at the end of the body, there are three kinds of people who face death: the ignorant, the practitioner of concentration, and the one endowed with discernment. Among these, those who have practiced concentration and those who possess discernment depart from the body with happiness and peace, leaving it behind without sorrow. But the one who has not attained such concentration does not find liberation; instead, the ignorant, when their own death approaches, experience suffering, helplessness, and despair. Those who are attached to sense objects, overwhelmed by the force of deep-seated impressions, sink into profound dejection, like a lotus that has withered away. If one’s mind is not refined by the teachings of scripture and is devoted to the company of the wicked, then, at the time of death, an inner burning arises, as if the person were cast into fire. As death draws near, hoarseness of voice and impaired vision appear, bringing a state of destruction that depresses the mind. The dying person’s appearance becomes utterly dark, as if daylight has suddenly turned into night. His form seems to wander aimlessly, enveloped in a thick, cloud-like gloom. Pain afflicts his vital points, and his vision reels as if among trees; earth appears to become sky, and sky seems as earth. He spins like the turning wheel of a well, tossed about as if in the ocean, drawn as if into the sky, his mind inclining toward a dense, clouded sleep. It is as if he has fallen into a dark pit, wedged between rocks; his tongue grows dull, as if paralyzed, and his mind feels torn apart. He senses himself falling from the sky’s path, caught in a whirlpool, riding a swift chariot, heading toward the mouth of the Himalayas. He perceives himself spinning the world as if making it luminous, touching the midst of fire, whirled about by some force, standing like a machine driven by the wind. He is tossed like an illusion, pulled as if by a rope, revolving in a whirlpool, set as if in a device of blades. Like a blade of grass driven by the great wind of the ocean, he is carried far by a flood, falling as if into a submarine fire. It is as if he is endlessly falling through the sky, into a deep abyss, caught in the swirl of a wheel, experiencing the reversal of mountain and earth. He feels as if he is falling without end, or leaping up in all directions, startled by roaring sounds, his senses fully awakened. Gradually, all his perceptions of meaning grow dark, just as the directions lose their brightness when the sun sets. His memory thins, unable to distinguish before from after, as when sight is lost in all directions at the end of twilight in the west. Bewildered, he loses the power of mental imagination; lacking discernment, he sinks into great delusion. When this delusion takes hold, the breath does not; when the breath ceases to function as in life, delusion arises fully. Through the mutual reinforcement of delusion and confused perception, the living being becomes insensible, like a stone, as if this were its natural state. One may wonder why the body, though whole in its limbs, experiences pain, delusion, fainting, confusion, disease, and insensibility. This is understood as the activity known as karma, the vibration present at the beginning of creation. If suffering is present at this time, it lasts only for that duration. Just as a cluster of branches sways by its own nature, so too does this suffering arise from the expansion of consciousness—there is no other cause. When, due to pain, the channels of the body cease their natural contraction and expansion, the vital airs leave the body and return to their own state. When these vital airs enter but do not exit, or exit but do not enter, when they no longer move through the channels, then death occurs by this cessation. When the air neither enters nor exits, because the channels are impaired, the person is said to be dead. The awareness, “I must perish at this time,”—this knowledge, previously understood, proceeds toward that death when compelled. Yet the awareness arising from the initial creation, “I must act thus,” never leads to the destruction of the seed-form of consciousness. The very nature of consciousness is perception, which is inseparable from itself; thus, apart from consciousness, there is nothing else in birth or death. Sometimes there is turbulence like a whirlpool, sometimes calmness like a river, sometimes gentleness—such is the nature of living consciousness. Just as the joints of a long creeper are found in its middle, so too are births and deaths found in the continuity of conscious existence. Consciousness, the person, is never truly born nor does it die; it merely perceives this illusion, like confusion in a dream. The person is nothing but pure consciousness—when and where could it ever perish? And what else could a person be apart from consciousness? Consider: from the beginning of time until now, whose consciousness has died, what, and how? Countless bodies die, but consciousness remains undiminished. If the mind were to die in just one being, then with the death of that one, all would have died here. It is only the diversity of tendencies that the living being experiences for itself; for these alone, birth and death are designated by name. Thus, in truth, nothing is born nor does anyone die; the living being merely tumbles in the whirlpool of tendencies. Because the appearance of birth and death is ultimately impossible, that tendency, by reasoning “it does not exist,” is destroyed through firm knowledge.