Last year, this year, the waxing and waning moons, The days, nights and indivisible time moments are all impermanent. If we reflect carefully, we too are face to face with death. Grant your blessing, so that we may become resolute in our practice! page 11
I read and study , analyze and summarize that which comes to me in the form of "teachings" in the same way I read, studied, analyzed, and summarized poetry in my English Lit classes. I do so with great interest, reverence, and a desire to grasp the message being shared in both a conceptual way and a very ineffable way. It is almost like trying to solve some great riddle contained in the words and some even greater riddle that lies beneath the words. I have done that with The Bible, A Course in Miracles, The Gita, The Upanishads, The Tao Te Ching, and so many other great teachings. Now I am doing it with, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which just happens to be like poetry in many degrees.
Yet I know it is a "sacred teaching" that was protected and held from the world for centuries by its "lineage holders". Would these holders deem my approach to reading this a sacrilegious thing to do? Here is me, a lay person who doesn't even deem herself a Buddhist, with so little expertise , so little indoctrinated knowledge trying to grasp a selfish understanding from this ancient scripture. Do I have a right to do that with this or any such text? I really don't know. Yet, here I am pulled to these teachings and gobbling them up like they were my sustenance. I guess I truly am a Jhana Yogi.
So I finished the first two chapters. A guide to " prayer" and mantra recitation practice is offered in these chapters. Through those guided recitations, we see many of the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, mostly on the impermanent nature of things that we tend to erroneously cling to or avoid. It offers a reminder to recognize these attachments, as well as a request for us to revamp our commitment to practice so we become more skillful in our actions, speech and thinking. It a reminder that we are all capable of Buddha-hood (being liberated by direct awareness of truth) if we first recognize the errors of our ways and commit to pursuing the skillful and virtuous path. A call to see how compassion is needed for all of us, who have yet to see and understand the truth of who we are beyond the "obscurations" of our minds, is repeated again and again. And there is this reminder of the major point of this book (I suppose) which is the need for us to face that which we are most afraid to face...this concept of the impermanence of our bodily lives...to face death. Great liberation, we are told, lies in being able to do that.
That is what I feel called to do lately, for whatever reason, to understand death. Death is the mother fear of all fears and in the western world we are surrounded by an epidemic of fear. Fear and wrong view is at the root of most of our illusion-based suffering. We need to face that which we fear in order to see it clearly and transcend it. I personally want to transcend my fear for self and for others. That is why I finally got this book that I have been meaning to read for a very long time.
Anyway...I suggest you read it yourself if you feel inclined. What I am seeking from the book may not come out in words so I am not sure what I will be able to offer here, from it as I read it.
All is well.
Padmasambhava, Terton Karma Lingpa (revealer of text) , Gyurme Dorj(translator) Graham Coleman and Thupten Jinpa(editors) (2005) The Tibetan Book of the Dead: First Complete Translation. Penguin Books: London
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