The Process of Death

After the manas definitively leaves the body and departs, the eighth consciousness cooperates with the departure from the body. The process of death is very complex; it may take eight hours or more than ten hours before death truly occurs. When the eighth consciousness relinquishes part of the physical body, the body becomes cold and stiff, because the four great elements have disintegrated. At this time, what is the manas doing? Has it left the body? When the six consciousnesses cease, the manas will leave the body, but because the manas grasps at all dharmas, including its own corpse, it will certainly still cherish and attend to its own corpse. Therefore, the tathāgatagarbha cannot completely ignore this corpse, though the way it manages it must be greatly different from the way it manages the five-aggregate body. Consequently, the corpse after all cannot have the functions and roles of a five-aggregate body, and will gradually rot and disappear. Then the manas grasps at the remaining bones, and the tathāgatagarbha likewise cannot completely ignore the bones, though the way it manages them differs from how it managed the five-aggregate body and the corpse, until the bones gradually weather away and vanish.

Even if the manas does not grasp at the corpse and bones, the corpse and bones still bear a person's individual markers and information, which will not be erased. One with great supernatural powers, by means of a single bone, can know all information about the bone's owner, past and future. If you do not want others to know, the only way is not to do it yourself; the traces of karma created can never be erased. Over countless kalpas, a person has performed innumerable farces, only he himself has forgotten them all, and merely goes to watch other people's farces.