by Charles T. Tart
University of California
Davis, California 95616
Institute of Noetic Sciences
1992

from ParadigmSys Website

"What is it I hope for from this book? To inspire a quiet revolution in the whole way we look at death and care for the dying, and the whole way we look at life, and care for the living."

This is the most important book I have reviewed for IONS members, but I must start with some words of warning.

First, this review is about death. Parts of you may not want to read it, and your mind can come up with good reasons for skipping on to something else. There are so many more important things to do, aren't there? But it's also about the quality of your life, for if you won't deal with your mortality, you cannot have more than a partial life, a shadow of a life.

As this book says,

"If we look into our lives we will see clearly how many unimportant tasks, so-called "responsibilities" accumulate to fill them up. One master compares them to "housekeeping in a dream." We tell ourselves we want to spend time on the important things of life, but there never is any time.

 

Even simply to get up in the morning, there is so much to do: open the window, make the bed, take a shower, brush your teeth, feed the dog or cat, do last night's washing up, discover you are out of sugar or coffee, go and buy them, make breakfast the list is endless.

 

Then there are clothes to sort out, choose, iron, and fold up again. And what about your hair, or your makeup? Helpless, we watch our days fill up with telephone calls and petty projects, with so many responsibilities or shouldn't we call them 'irresponsibilities'?"

As a second warning, I cannot be completely objective about this book as I have my personal fears of and problems with death and life.

Like most of us, I have a "theoretical" interest in death and what might happen after death. My interest is theoretical in that I seldom reflect on death with all my faculties, especially my emotions, but just with my intellect. Intellect is cool and distancing. Why not be cool and distant? Despite knowing better, I tend to automatically think of death, as most of us do, as something that happens to others, not to me personally.

I also know, but seldom even think about, that tuning out reality my death, my life, in this case in any fashion, is costly. But I can put off thinking about death to some vague future time, can't I?

I had planned to review Sogyal Rinpoche's book last weekend but other, important tasks (conveniently?) intervened.

Well, I know about my automatic tendencies to avoid anything unpleasant, and I try to work against it. I also pray each day that whatever is higher in our universe will guide me to learn what is import ant, even if I'm avoiding it. Perhaps it was a "coincidence," or perhaps an answer to my prayers, but Sunday morning I suddenly had a severe pain in my abdomen and ended up taking my first ambulance ride into an emergency room.

It seemed to me that I probably had some obstruction of the bowels that would require surgery. While the odds were good that I would survive, I could die in surgery. Was I ready for my death? Not anywhere near to the degree I would like.

My pain turned out to be due to a kidney stone passing: death was put off into the vague future again. Well, thank you universe for this reminder to live life fully, to keep working on understanding my deeper mind, and to be ready for death. I suppose a few hours of severe pain is a cheap price for such a good reminder.

But I hope I can get by with more gentle reminders in the future!

Now, my final warning. I cannot write here in a completely "objective" manner as only a scientist who has studied relevant areas and can so give an unbiased report on the book. I am a scientist who has studied relevant areas, but since hearing Sogyal Rinpoche lecture almost a decade ago I have regularly attended retreats of his, for I felt that what he was teaching and embodying was important to my (and others) spiritual development. So I am not detached from the book and its author.

On the other hand, no friend has ever suggested that I tend to become a mindless devotee of anyone. I have had several spiritual teachers that I have great respect for, but I maintain my independence of thought and belief, as doing that is important in the role I see for myself of trying to bridge spiritual traditions and the scientific world.

So I may be biased in this review in ways I'm not aware of, but it would be quite remiss of me not to bring The Tibetan Book of Life and Death to your attention.

Sogyal Rinpoche is what Tibetan Buddhists call a tulku, a being so highly enlightened and evolved that, at her or his death, instead of passing beyond our ordinary worlds with their suffering to realms of ultimate bliss, a tulku deliberately chooses to reincarnate here in order to continue helping others find the way to enlightenment.

This tulku idea is what the pragmatic and scientific parts of my mind call "fancy stuff" or "mythological gloss" that I am not too comfortable with. I have no way of verifying the truth or falsity of this, and the idea of a tulku tends to create, in most Western minds, grandiose (and infantile) fantasies about a magic being who will solve your problems for you.

On a more realistic level, Sogyal Rinpoche is a man I have known and studied with, a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly a teacher of Dzogchen, a tradition of developing a deep mindfulness that leads to ultimate enlightenment.

I can't say much about enlightenment from personal experience, but I can say that Rinpoche is a very intelligent, knowledgeable, dedicated, and compassionate man, and a pioneer in attempting to bring the essence of Tibetan Buddhist understandings to us in a way Westerners can understand and use.

In spite of my need for independence as a scholar and scientist, in spite of my psychological defenses and resistances, I have learned a great deal from studying with him, and so I can say that The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is one of the most important books ever published. If you want a better death and, just as importantly, a better life I cannot recommend this book too highly.

Let's sample some of the book.

Most IONS members are well aware of how lopsided the development of our culture has been, of the dominance of materialism and scientism at the expense of the human spirit.

As Rinpoche points out,

"Sometimes I think that the greatest achievement of modern culture is its brilliant selling of samsara [living in a state of illusion] and its barren distractions. Modern society seems to me a celebration of all the things that lead away from the truth, make truth hard to live for, and discourage people from even believing that it exists. And to think that all this springs from a civilization that claims to adore life, but actually starves it of any real meaning; that endlessly speaks of making people "happy," but in fact blocks their way to the source of real joy."

Now let's look more specifically at death. In the Tibetan Buddhist cosmology, the time of death is what we might call one of "high leverage." Normally we identify our consciousness with our body, which patterns and constrains it.

As the body and brain break down and consciousness goes through various stages of freeing itself from the body (discussed in detail in the book), deliberate and healthy actions of consciousness can have a much greater effect in moving you toward liberation and/or a much better new incarnation than similar actions during ordinary life. That's the high leverage.

By the same token, unskilled, maladaptive actions can make things worse. Thus there is a great deal of practical as well as "spiritual" as if we can really separate these two categories advice in the book on preparing for death, helping others prepare, and acting skillfully during the dying process.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is much more practical and useful than the old classic Tibetan Book of the Dead in this way and you don't have to be a Buddhist to benefit from the advice.

While the word "death" in the title strongly attracts (and repels) our attention, the way we live our life has enormous effects on how we die and what goes on afterwards. The best preparation for death is to become more and more enlightened in this life. Sogyal Rinpoche frankly amazes me in the way he has distilled the essence of years of his teachings on how to live and recognize one's inner essence, one's rigpa, in this book.

Whatever label we put on ourselves Buddhist, Christian, agnostic, etc. there is a spiritual reality that is our common heritage, simply by virtue of being human.

If only we had sup port for discovering our deep nature:

"Despite this massive and nearly all-pervasive denial of their existence, we still sometimes have fleeting glimpses of the nature of mind....I think we do, sometimes, half understand these glimpses, but modern culture gives us no context or framework in which to comprehend them. Worse still, rather than encouraging us to explore these glimpses more deeply and discover where they spring from, we are told in both obvious and subtle ways to shut them out.

 

We know that no one will take us seriously if we try to share them. We can be frightened by them, or even think we are going mad. So we ignore what could really be the most revealing experiences of our lives, if only we understood them. This is perhaps the darkest and most disturbing aspect of modern civilization its ignorance and repression of who we really are."

You do not have to accept everything in this book I don't but it calls to and supports something deep in our nature.

I cannot really "review" The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying in a comprehensive way: there is too much in it to summarize, such as the gentle yet profound instructions on Dzogchen meditation, and much of the material is of a kind my heart responds to and wants to understand and practice, without being able to yet. I can only tantalize you with a few more glimpses.

Reflecting on the social and planetary consequences of our rejection of death, for example, Sogyal Rinpoche notes:

"I am reminded of what one Tibetan master says: "People often make the mistake of being frivolous about death, and think, 'Oh well, death happens to everybody. It's not a big deal, it's natural. I'll be fine.' That's a nice theory until one is dying."

One [type of person] views death as something to scurry away from and [an]other as something that will just take care of itself. How far they both are from understanding death's true significance!

All the greatest spiritual traditions of the world, including of course Christianity, have told us clearly that death is not the end.

They have all handed down a vision of some sort of life to come, which infuses this life that we are leading now with sacred meaning. But despite their teaching, modern society is largely a spiritual desert where the vast majority imagine that this life is all that there is. Without any real or authentic faith in an afterlife, most people live lives deprived of any ultimate meaning.

I have come to realize that the disastrous effects of the denial of death go far beyond the individual:

"They effect the whole planet. Believing fundamentally that this life is the only one, modern people have developed no long-term vision. So there is nothing to restrain them from plundering the planet for their own immediate ends and from living in a selfish way that could prove fatal for the future."

This book is also unique in giving many glimpses into the life of a person who was raised to be a spiritual teacher in a now endangered culture that was pervaded by spirituality.

I will end this review by quoting the beginning of the first chapter, describing Sogyal Rinpoche's introduction to death:

"My own first experience of death came when I was about seven. We were preparing to leave the eastern highlands to travel to central Tibet. Samten, one of the personal attendants of my master, was a wonderful monk who was kind to me during my childhood. He had a bright, round, chubby face, always ready to break into a smile.

 

He was everyone's favorite in the monastery because he was so good-natured. Every day my master would give teaching and initiations and lead practices and rituals. Toward the end of the day, I would gather together my friends and act out a little theatrical performance, reenacting the morning's events. It was Samten who would always lend me the costumes my master had worn in the morning. He never refused me.

Then suddenly Samten fill ill, and it was clear he was not going to live. We had to postpone our departure. I will never forget the two weeks that followed. the rank smell of death hung like a cloud over every thing, and whenever I think of that time, the smell comes back to me. The monastery was saturated with an intense awareness of death. This was not at all morbid or frightening, however; in the presence of my master, Samten's death took on a special significance. It became a teaching for us all.

Samten lay on a bed by the window in a small temple in my master's residence. I knew he was dying. From time to time I would go in and sit by him. He could not talk, and I was shocked by the change in his face, which was no so haggard and drawn. I realized that he was going to leave us and we would never see him again. I felt intensely sad and lonely.

Samten's death was not an easy one. The sound of his labored breathing followed us everywhere, and we could smell his body decaying. The monastery was overwhelmingly silent except for this breathing. Everything focused on Samten.

Yet although there was much suffering in Samten's prolonged dying, we could all see that deep down he had a peace and inner confidence about him. At first I could not explain this, but then I realized what it come from: his faith and his training, and the presence of our master. And though I felt sad, I knew then that if our master was there, everything would turn out all right, because he would be able to help Samten toward liberation. Later I came to know that it is the dream of any practitioner to die before his master and have the good fortune to be guided by him through death.

As Jamyang Khyentse guided Samten calmly through his dying, he introduced him to all the stages of the process he was going through, one by one. I was astonished by the precision of my master's knowledge, and by his confidence and peace. When my master was there, his peaceful confidence would reassure even the most anxious person.

 

Now Jamyang Khyentse was revealing to us his fearlessness of death. Not that he ever treated death lightly: He often told us that he was afraid of it, and warned us against taking it naively or complacently. Yet what was it that allowed my master to face death in a way that was at once so sober and so lighthearted, so practical yet so mysteriously care free?

 

That question fascinated and absorbed me.

Samten's death shook me. At the age of seven, I had my first glimpse of the vast power of the tradition I was being made part of, and I began to understand the purpose of spiritual practice. Practice had given Samten an acceptance of death, as well as a clear understanding that suffering and pain can be part of a deep, natural process of purification.

 

Practice had given my master a complete knowledge of what death is, and a precise technology for guiding individuals through it."