Thoughts about ‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’
Jeroen
Not all those who wander are lostNetherlands Veteran
I’ve never read very far into this book, but considered that now was the right time for me to tackle it, after hearing that for many people it helped them with the loss of a loved one. I am still working through the death of my father, all the things he meant to me are only very gradually becoming clear. I’m reading the revised 10th anniversary edition, printed in 2002.
One section from the first chapter that made an immediate impact on me is where Sogyal talks about the effect of people’s belief in reincarnation on their willingness to care for the planet, and on their relations with others. He says one of the first questions asked by a high lama of new visitors is about their belief of an afterlife and what happens after death, because it determines so many other views.
To me, for undefinable reasons this solidified my belief in reincarnation.
Comments
It’s interesting how the book teaches about death, and through death it tackles the subject of impermanence. It reminds me a lot of Atisha’s nine point contemplation on death, which also talks about the uncertainty of when death will come. Teaching Buddhist principles from this standpoint gives a new poignancy to its wisdom.
I’m now on chapter three.
I was just reading chapter five, on ‘bringing the mind home’, which is about meditation and builds on previous sections on the nature of mind. I found it useful, to gain a clearer understanding of what to do with the mind while meditating on the breath.
I’m now on chapter six, on reincarnation, karma and rebirth, and one sentence I came across which echoed in my understanding was ‘karma can be both a friend and a teacher.’ It is so that a lot of people see karma as something to be escaped, or a bringer of suffering from previous lives. But in reality karma teaches you goodness, and can also bring blessings from previous lives. Namaste and a good morning to you.
In the section on the natural bardo of living, there is a piece on doubts. In it there is written ‘in today’s society, there are few people who examine doubts with the care they deserve, to slowly unravel, dissolve and heal them.’ I thought it was very pregnant, in that often doubts are considered enough reason to abandon a position. It calls to mind the retreat of animist thinking in the face of Christianity, and the retreat of Christianity in some parts of the world in favour of materialist thinking.
Ezra Klein just had on Stephen Batchelor to talk about his new book Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times where he emphasizes a practice based on doubt and wonder. Not sure how related it is, but I found it interesting and had thought to make a post on it.
Stephen Batchelor looks happier and older in that picture than I’ve seen him before, I guess not being a monk agrees with him. Although it’s been a few years since he made that change…
I just came across a section in which there was talk of how anybody in the West could declare themselves a spiritual teacher and start talking about enlightenment and gather followers. This isn’t true in Tibetan culture, where much attention is paid to the lineage of your teachers. This then functions as a safeguard on the purity of the teachings.
I found the later parts of the book to be less interesting. The long section on how to communicate with dying people felt more like a sermon and less like the transmission of a teaching, and the section on the bardo’s came across like a long advertisement for Tibetan cultural concepts.
The book ends with a conclusion that its teachings are a timely and essential infusion of thinking about spirituality and death into Western society. There is a question and answer session at the back which attempts to answer such questions as “will a westerner see deities in the bardo?”
There is also a long section on near-death experiences, which mostly attempts to cast the western concept of the near death experience in a Tibetan shape. I found it more and more difficult to connect with the Tibetan cultural content of the book as the book went on.
On the whole it is a good book, but it is more about death and dying than it is about living. The early promise where the author says he will reveal how the teachings for dying and living fit together is not entirely fleshed out.
I also found it to be too “Tibetan” to be truly applicable to Western audiences. The introduction by the Dalai Lama says that Sogyal was uniquely placed to form a bridge between Western readers and Tibetan wisdom because of his education, but he tends largely back to the Tibetan influences of his childhood.
If you grow up in the Tibetan system of tulku’s and lama’s from a young age, I think you have a different and more natural connection with cultural features such as deities and incarnate saints and Buddha’s. But an instruction like seeing one’s guru as the Buddha is very difficult for a westerner to accept.