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The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: The Spiritual Classic & International Bestseller; Revised and Updated Edition (平装)
by Sogyal Rinpoche, Patrick D. Gaffney, and Andrew Harvey
| Category:
Spirituality, Eastern philosophy |
| Market price: ¥ 208.00
MSL price:
¥ 178.00
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In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
This book, a modern classic, deals with the meaning of life and death with such an astounding simplicity and depth. |
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AllReviews |
  1 2 Total 2 pages 13 items |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
If you can join a study group - do it! This text is a miracle and my favorite lesson was that of Tonglen.
What it came down to was that I needed to take on the Buddhist practice of Tonglen - having compassion for another's pain without absorbing it but recognizing that they are doing the best they can and we can simply send them love to heal fully.
I never could let a certain person go until I forgave what happened and have compassion for it all. This doesn't mean that I condone certain things in our past situation. It just means that I know that none of it was intentional or malicious on his part. He never intended to hurt me or make me feel bad. He did the best he could and he didn't have the tools to see things objectively from another angle. That is his cross to bear and his lessons to learn. Only he can do it for himself. But I understand now that I couldn't do anything to relieve him of his pain. So I was not a failure and neither was he. The timing was wrong for a relationship on both ends. That said, there was a lot of love on my part for him and his family and that will never change. You always love those who mattered, even if they are gone. I have no intention of doing anything beyond feeling compass- sionate and forgiving in my heart over things. He is not a bad person and my wish is that one day he sees a healthier way to live and be. Through the practice of tonglen, all I can say for myself is that I now won't close the door on people who truly have changed.
Like the Anais Nin quote: Then the time came when the pain of staying a tight bud become greater than the risk it took to bloom. Tonglen and Buddhist compassion is one way to be the space for one to bloom. |
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Richard Schwartz (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
I have found this a substantial book, one of valuable information, worth the time invested. I am not a person of formulas, recognizing the ambiguity in existence, differentiating from stagnation in frozen logic in blue prints of absolutes and that of relativity, which dwells in values but with the ability to adjust in flexible variations according to the particular and continually changing positions. And yet here is a formula, however I put a degree of value in such as to other sources that in relative ways confirm this. First, the fact that near-death experiences from both patients and doctors, both Eastern and Western, have similar relational interpretations to this book appears to confirm it's value, as opposed to formulas based on mere speculation.. I would like to cite its antiquity and that of my admiration for Buddhist concepts, but that is speculative and such arguments are used in many erroneous concepts which support contradicting teachings. However, along with near-death experiences, there are also the recorded experiences of psychedelic plant users, both observed objectively and experienced subjectively, which appear to conform to much of the bardos written about in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Doctors Timothy Leary, Richard Albert and Ralph Metzler had also connected such experiences with this and in their book, The Psychedelic Experience, along with various other intellectuals, spiritual and divinity students, psychologists and various other students in the discovery of the mind. And third, the application which Sogyal Rionpoche has given to the different bardos applied to the processes of sleep and dreaming and that of the thought process itself in human thinking, I think brings forth much value to this writing, to be taken in serious considerations, within degrees of course. So with these three factors, I find this book extremely enlightening and beneficial for the studies in science, spirituality and anthropomorphic interpretations on the death experience.
This book reveals the Tibetan guru disciple culture, far apart from charlatan practices of religious cults so prevalent in Western culture. This guru-disciple relationship is crucial in the Tibetan culture, joined in with years of spiritual practice in meditation and mind recognition comparable to western psychology that emulates Eastern Buddhist thinking. Sogyal Rinpoche writes of the impermanence of human life and how death is so crucially important as a part of life and the denial of such in the Western culture. His analysis of the nature of the mind, the Rigpa, and different meditative methods, mantras, objects, posture & etc., of bringing the mind back home, out from its habitual karmic thoughts into the "gaps" or spaces between thoughts into the true nature of the mind, the silent unchanging pure awareness of true self behind all thoughts, the delicate balance and paradox of relaxation and awareness.
In this, there is karma, the laws of cause and effect based on both individual and collective intentions which result in actions, the intensions or motivations behind them as their strength and how karmic creativity determines how we as artists dance to life in either positive or negative thoughts. It is here we must take full responsibility as this will determine our future lives and habitual thinking.
The first bardo is birth, the second is one's lifetime from childhood through adulthood, the third is the moment before death, the fourth begins the clear light of pure consciousness in the journey in death and beginning of a series of opportunities for the soul or consciousness that is departing the body. If the soul recognizes the clear light it becomes free from the karmic wheel with no more need to incarnate. In the fifth bardo the clear becomes dull and one encounters the peaceful and wrathful gods of desire and aversion. The sixth bardo is that of reincarnation, the opportunities have been missed and the soul must be physically reborn.
In the bardo of dying we loose all habitual perceptions and obtain a momentary glimpse of naked consciousness, the Ground Luminosity. However only experienced meditators, or those that have achieved degrees of mental awareness in the gaps beyond habitual thought of grasping and aversion during their life will even recognize this, for the rest it is as though we are unconscious and never become aware to this, the opportunity is lost. We then enter in the bardo of dharmata, also a fleeting and momentary glimpse, of our energy body with dazzling array of colors and patterns. There are instructions as to what the various colors mean and actions to take, which points to our attachments of grasping and aversions and fears. Most of us also are anaware of what is happening and enter into the bardo of becoming, where we exist as a mental body. It is here we are extremely vulnerable to our thoughts, where our life training determines how we think and what happens to us. One positive thought can immediately send us to bliss, one negative to hell. We can witness our bodies, other people and roam about. We can deny we are dead, are hungry thinking we have a body, where incense or smoke can act as pleasures to whatever sense is still remaining as a mental body.
There are the practices of tonglen and phowa, consisting of mental visualizations and mantras for ourselves, the dead and all sentient beings. There are the methods of increasing compassion and the definition of what that really means. Sogyal instructs us not only how to die, but how to help others that are dying, the relatives and those who wish to help those dying and those who have already died. Sogyal also goes into the near death experiences as written about by Raymond Moody and Kenneth Ring and the thoughts on dying of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.
I particularly enjoyed how Sogyal compares the processes of the bardos as the same processes in our thinking we do every day, as well as the process of sleeping and dreaming we also perform daily. At the culmination of the process of dying, we experience the Dharmakaya, after the dissolution of elements, senses, and thought-states, the ultimate nature of the mind, the Ground Luminosity, is for a moment laid bare. We are empty, perceive the unconditioned truth. Then we experience the fleeting nature of energy in bardo of dharmata, the Samhogakaya, displayed in colors, sounds and lights, the dimension of complete enjoyment beyond dualism and space and time. And then we awaken in the bardo of the becoming, the Nirmanakay, as we attach ourselves again to our habits of thinking, clinging to our illusionary perceptions as real and solid when in reality it is only our mind, not external reality. Much of this occurs in certain degrees when we sleep and when we think. Like the Ground Luminosity, unaware we enter into a gap, the Rigpa where thoughts arise. If we are aware, we can let the thoughts go and rest in awareness. Yet, it is here, simliar to existing in the bardo of becoming, where most of us then cling, grasp and attach to the thoughts produced, carrying us into mental and conceptual activity.
Sogyal also goes into science and physics comparing thoughts of David Bohm, which I found truly enlightening and substantial in the ideas endorsed in this book and the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism in general. This book has much more information that cannot be all explained in a short review. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Sogyal Rinpoche conveyed his subject and I found this book wonderful in the spiritual exploration of the mind, meditation and ultimately the realm of death and our preparation for it.
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Richard Schwartz (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
I have found this a substantial book, one of valuable information, worth the time invested. I am not a person of formulas, recognizing the ambiguity in existence, differentiating from stagnation in frozen logic in blue prints of absolutes and that of relativity, which dwells in values but with the ability to adjust in flexible variations according to the particular and continually changing positions. And yet here is a formula, however I put a degree of value in such as to other sources that in relative ways confirm this. First, the fact that near-death experiences from both patients and doctors, both Eastern and Western, have similar relational interpretations to this book appears to confirm it's value, as opposed to formulas based on mere speculation.. I would like to cite its antiquity and that of my admiration for Buddhist concepts, but that is speculative and such arguments are used in many erroneous concepts which support contradicting teachings. However, along with near-death experiences, there are also the recorded experiences of psychedelic plant users, both observed objectively and experienced subjectively, which appear to conform to much of the bardos written about in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Doctors Timothy Leary, Richard Albert and Ralph Metzler had also connected such experiences with this and in their book, The Psychedelic Experience, along with various other intellectuals, spiritual and divinity students, psychologists and various other students in the discovery of the mind. And third, the application which Sogyal Rionpoche has given to the different bardos applied to the processes of sleep and dreaming and that of the thought process itself in human thinking, I think brings forth much value to this writing, to be taken in serious considerations, within degrees of course. So with these three factors, I find this book extremely enlightening and beneficial for the studies in science, spirituality and anthropomorphic interpretations on the death experience.
This book reveals the Tibetan guru disciple culture, far apart from charlatan practices of religious cults so prevalent in Western culture. This guru-disciple relationship is crucial in the Tibetan culture, joined in with years of spiritual practice in meditation and mind recognition comparable to western psychology that emulates Eastern Buddhist thinking. Sogyal Rinpoche writes of the impermanence of human life and how death is so crucially important as a part of life and the denial of such in the Western culture. His analysis of the nature of the mind, the Rigpa, and different meditative methods, mantras, objects, posture & etc., of bringing the mind back home, out from its habitual karmic thoughts into the "gaps" or spaces between thoughts into the true nature of the mind, the silent unchanging pure awareness of true self behind all thoughts, the delicate balance and paradox of relaxation and awareness.
In this, there is karma, the laws of cause and effect based on both individual and collective intentions which result in actions, the intensions or motivations behind them as their strength and how karmic creativity determines how we as artists dance to life in either positive or negative thoughts. It is here we must take full responsibility as this will determine our future lives and habitual thinking.
The first bardo is birth, the second is one's lifetime from childhood through adulthood, the third is the moment before death, the fourth begins the clear light of pure consciousness in the journey in death and beginning of a series of opportunities for the soul or consciousness that is departing the body. If the soul recognizes the clear light it becomes free from the karmic wheel with no more need to incarnate. In the fifth bardo the clear becomes dull and one encounters the peaceful and wrathful gods of desire and aversion. The sixth bardo is that of reincarnation, the opportunities have been missed and the soul must be physically reborn.
In the bardo of dying we loose all habitual perceptions and obtain a momentary glimpse of naked consciousness, the Ground Luminosity. However only experienced meditators, or those that have achieved degrees of mental awareness in the gaps beyond habitual thought of grasping and aversion during their life will even recognize this, for the rest it is as though we are unconscious and never become aware to this, the opportunity is lost. We then enter in the bardo of dharmata, also a fleeting and momentary glimpse, of our energy body with dazzling array of colors and patterns. There are instructions as to what the various colors mean and actions to take, which points to our attachments of grasping and aversions and fears. Most of us also are anaware of what is happening and enter into the bardo of becoming, where we exist as a mental body. It is here we are extremely vulnerable to our thoughts, where our life training determines how we think and what happens to us. One positive thought can immediately send us to bliss, one negative to hell. We can witness our bodies, other people and roam about. We can deny we are dead, are hungry thinking we have a body, where incense or smoke can act as pleasures to whatever sense is still remaining as a mental body.
There are the practices of tonglen and phowa, consisting of mental visualizations and mantras for ourselves, the dead and all sentient beings. There are the methods of increasing compassion and the definition of what that really means. Sogyal instructs us not only how to die, but how to help others that are dying, the relatives and those who wish to help those dying and those who have already died. Sogyal also goes into the near death experiences as written about by Raymond Moody and Kenneth Ring and the thoughts on dying of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.
I particularly enjoyed how Sogyal compares the processes of the bardos as the same processes in our thinking we do every day, as well as the process of sleeping and dreaming we also perform daily. At the culmination of the process of dying, we experience the Dharmakaya, after the dissolution of elements, senses, and thought-states, the ultimate nature of the mind, the Ground Luminosity, is for a moment laid bare. We are empty, perceive the unconditioned truth. Then we experience the fleeting nature of energy in bardo of dharmata, the Samhogakaya, displayed in colors, sounds and lights, the dimension of complete enjoyment beyond dualism and space and time. And then we awaken in the bardo of the becoming, the Nirmanakay, as we attach ourselves again to our habits of thinking, clinging to our illusionary perceptions as real and solid when in reality it is only our mind, not external reality. Much of this occurs in certain degrees when we sleep and when we think. Like the Ground Luminosity, unaware we enter into a gap, the Rigpa where thoughts arise. If we are aware, we can let the thoughts go and rest in awareness. Yet, it is here, simliar to existing in the bardo of becoming, where most of us then cling, grasp and attach to the thoughts produced, carrying us into mental and conceptual activity.
Sogyal also goes into science and physics comparing thoughts of David Bohm, which I found truly enlightening and substantial in the ideas endorsed in this book and the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism in general. This book has much more information that cannot be all explained in a short review. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Sogyal Rinpoche conveyed his subject and I found this book wonderful in the spiritual exploration of the mind, meditation and ultimately the realm of death and our preparation for it.
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