{"collection":"Buddhism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/tib/sogyal.htm","path":"bud/tib/sogyal.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/bud/tib/sogyal.htm","text":"From: SDHARGAY@UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Sonam)\nDate: Sun, 26 Sep 1993 16:24:15 EST\n____________________________________________________________\nLIFESTYLE: HOW TO LIVE FREE OF FEAR OF DEATH; TIBETAN LAMA\nSPEAKS OF MORTALITY\n-------------------------------------------------------------\nThe Boston Globe\nSeptember 21, 1993, Tuesday, City Edition\nBy James L. Franklin, Globe Staff\nEverybody is worried about dying, the Tibetan teacher Sogyal\nRinpoche said. \"But to die is extremely simple. You breathe out,\nand you don't breathe in.\"\nA ripple of laughter passed through the 400 people crowded\ninto a conference room recently at Interface in Cambridge, a\ncenter for alternative religious, health and psychological\nprograms.\nThey'd come to see a lama, a Tibetan monk, who is noted for\nhis ability to speak to Westerners and who, in a little less\nthan a year, has sold nearly 100,000 copies of a book of Buddhist\nteachings, \"The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.\"\nRinpoche - a religious title meaning \"precious one\" - left his\nhomeland as a child in 1959, studied in Catholic schools in India\nand in Britain at Trinity College, Cambridge, and set out to\nbring the ancient tradition of Tibet to bear on the anxieties\nof men and women in Europe and North America.\n\"I'm not a very good lama,\" he insisted to an interviewer. He\nspeaks often of his own teachers, his \"masters,\" some of whom he\nserved as translator when they came to the West.\nThe book is the result of doing what his teachers told him, to\npass on the ancient teaching to a new world, as \"a service to\nhumanity.\" That includes, he says, teaching Westerners\n\"discernment\": which Buddhist teachings to use and which to\nignore, how to find a teacher and persevere on the path to\nenlightenment.\nAnd he is succeeding in drawing new students to Buddhism, said\nSteve Zimmerman of Watertown, who leads classes at Rinpoche's\nlocal Rigpa center there. \"Because he was raised largely in the\nWest, he has much greater understanding of Westerners.\"\nDavid F. Gibbs, 45, a social worker at the Merrimack Valley\nHospice in Lowell, said he once found Tibetan Buddhism \"too\nritualistic and elaborate, beyond my cultural experience.\"\nNow he finds Rinpoche's teaching has helped him \"develop more\ncompassion and understanding,\" in seeing how the people who come\nto the hospice \"are distinct from their behavior, how they are\nmore than what they are thinking or feeling or doing.\"\nFor part of the 10 years he spent preparing the book, Rinpoche\nworked in the hospice movement in Britain, helping those who face\nimminent death as a result of cancer, AIDS or other serious\nillnesses. He came to believe that much of what is wrong in\nWestern society arises from the denial of death.\n\"I feel this denial of death actually complicates problems\nthat exist in Western society,\" Rinpoche said in the interview.\n\"It is why there is no long-term vision, not very much thought for\nthe consequences of actions, little or no compassion.\"\n\"People see death as terrible, as tragic. Because they want to\nlive, they see death as the enemy of life and therefore deny\ndeath, which then becomes even more fearful and monstrous.\"\nBeneath this fear of death lies \"the ultimate fear . . . the\nfear of looking into ourselves,\" he said.\nBut death can be a friend, he told the crowd at Interface.\n\"Death holds the key to the meaning of life,\" which is why\nTrappist brothers regularly greet each other with the Latin\nphrase memento mori, \"remember you are dying,\" Rinpoche said.\n\"Remembering . . . brings life into focus . . . It sorts out\nyour priorities, so you do not live a trivial life . . . It helps\nyou take care of the most important things in life first. Don't\nworry about dying; that will happen successfully whether you\nworry about it or not.\"\nHe warns his students not to think about death \"when you are\ndepressed,\" but rather \"when you are on holiday or impressed by\nmusic or natural beauty.\"\nBut he knows that \"when I am not practicing,\" or meditating in\na disciplined way, \"I am afraid of death.\" He has worried, too,\nabout the death of the lamas with whom he left Tibet. \"A whole\ngeneration of legendary masters is passing away - sometimes I\nwonder what the future is going to hold,\" he said.\nRinpoche is hopeful when he remembers living teachers, such as\nthe Dalai Lama, who wrote the foreword to his book. But he knows\nthat the possible loss of Tibet is another experience of\nimpermanence, of death, like that all human beings must face.\nHis goal is to help the dying, those who care for them, and\nall who listen, to \"face our own mortality and realize how much\nlove, how much compassion is in you,\" he told an interviewer.\n\"This dying forces you to look into yourself. And in this,\ncompassion is the only way. Love is the only way.\"\nGRAPHIC: PHOTO\n*************************************************************\nSend your comments or questions to Sonam Dargyay\nInternet\nUsenet\nPost your contributions to TIBET-L@iubvm.bitnet at\nLISTSERV@iubvm.bitnet.\n************************************************************","title":"How To Live Free of Fear of Death","type":"page"}