Suppose a person is about to die. This critical stage may be
compared to the flickering of a lamp just before it is
extinguished.
To this dying man is presented by a Kamma, a Kamma Nimitta,
or Gati Nimitta.
By Kamma is here meant some good or bad action committed during his
lifetime, or immediately before his dying moment. Kamma Nimitta, or
symbol, means a mental reproduction of any sight, sound, smell,
taste, touch or idea which dominated at the time of the commission
of some salient activity, good or bad, - such as a vision of knives
or dying animals, in the case of a butcher, patients, in the case
of a kind physician: an object of worship, in the case of a devotee
and so forth.
By Gati Nimitta, or "symbol of destiny" is a meant some sign of the
place where he is to take rebirth. Such a symbol frequently
presents itself to dying persons and stamps its gladness or gloom
upon their features. When these indications of the future birth
occur, and if they are bad, they might at times be remedied. This
is done by influencing the thoughts of the dying man. Such
premonitory visions of destiny may be fire, forests, mountainous
regions, a mother's womb, etc.
Death according to Buddhism is the cessation of the
psycho-physical life of any one individual existence. It
takes place by the passing away of vitality (ayu), i.e. psychic and
physical life (jivitindriya), heat (usma) and consciousness
(vinnana).
Death is not the complete annihilation of a being, for though the
particular life-span ended, the force which hitherto
actuated it is not destroyed.
Just as an electric
light is the outward visible manifestations of invisible electric
energy, even so we are the outward manifestations of invisible
Kammic energy. The bulb may break, and the light may be
extinguished, but the current remains and the light may be
reproduced in another bulb. In the same way, the Kammic force
remains undisturbed by the disintegration of the physical body, and
the passing away of the present consciousness leads to the arising
of a fresh one in another birth. But nothing unchangeable or
permanent "passes" from the present to the
future.
Just as the wheel
rests on the ground only at one point even so, strictly speaking,
we live only from one thought-moment. We are always in the present,
and that present is ever slipping into the irrevocable past. Each
momentary consciousness of this ever-changing life-process, on
passing away, transmits its whole energy, all the indelibly
recorded impressions, to its successor. Every fresh energy
consciousness therefore consists of the potentialities of its
predecessors and something more. At, death, the consciousness
perishes, as truly is does every moment, only to give birth to
another in a rebirth. This renewed consciousness inherits all the
past experiences. As all impressions are indelibly recorded in the
ever-changing palimpsest-like mind and as all potentialities are
transmitted from life to life, irrespective of temporary physical
disintegrations, reminiscence of past births or past incidents
becomes a possibility. If memory depends solely on brain cells, it
becomes an impossibility.
The continuity of the flux, at death, is unbroken in point of time,
and there is no breach in the stream of consciousness. The only
different between the passing of one thought to another in lifetime
and of the dying thought-moment to the rebirth consciousness, is
that in the latter case a marked perceptible physical death is
patent to all.
