The Process of Death

After the manas definitively leaves the body and departs, the eighth consciousness cooperates with the leaving of the body. The death process is very complex; it may take eight hours or more than ten hours before true death occurs. As for the part where the eighth consciousness abandons the body: the physical 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; however, the way it manages the corpse must be greatly different from the way it manages the five-aggregate body. Consequently, the corpse after all cannot have the functions and operations of a five-aggregate body, and it will gradually rot and disappear. Then the manas grasps at the remaining bones, and the tathāgatagarbha likewise cannot completely ignore the bones; the way it manages the bones is still different from the way it manages the five-aggregate body and the corpse, to the point that the bones gradually weather away and vanish.

Even if the manas does not grasp at the corpse and bones, the corpse and bones still carry a person's individual marks and information, which will not be erased. A possessor of great supernatural powers can, by means of a single bone, come to know all information about the bone's owner, past and future. If you want others not 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.