how to live free of fear of death_ tibetan lama sogyal rinm

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  • 7/30/2019 How to Live Free of Fear of Death_ Tibetan Lama Sogyal Rinm

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    From: [email protected] (Sonam)Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1993 16:24:15 EST

    ____________________________________________________________LIFESTYLE: HOW TO LIVE FREE OF FEAR OF DEATH; TIBETAN LAMASPEAKS OF MORTALITY-------------------------------------------------------------The Boston GlobeSeptember 21, 1993, Tuesday, City Edition

    By James L. Franklin, Globe Staff

    Everybody is worried about dying, the Tibetan teacher SogyalRinpoche said. "But to die is extremely simple. You breathe out,and you don't breathe in."

    A ripple of laughter passed through the 400 people crowdedinto a conference room recently at Interface in Cambridge, acenter for alternative religious, health and psychologicalprograms.

    They'd come to see a lama, a Tibetan monk, who is noted forhis ability to speak to Westerners and who, in a little lessthan a year, has sold nearly 100,000 copies of a book of Buddhist

    teachings, "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying."

    Rinpoche - a religious title meaning "precious one" - left hishomeland as a child in 1959, studied in Catholic schools in Indiaand in Britain at Trinity College, Cambridge, and set out tobring the ancient tradition of Tibet to bear on the anxietiesof men and women in Europe and North America.

    "I'm not a very good lama," he insisted to an interviewer. Hespeaks often of his own teachers, his "masters," some of whom heserved as translator when they came to the West.

    The book is the result of doing what his teachers told him, to

    pass on the ancient teaching to a new world, as "a service tohumanity." That includes, he says, teaching Westerners"discernment": which Buddhist teachings to use and which toignore, how to find a teacher and persevere on the path toenlightenment.

    And he is succeeding in drawing new students to Buddhism, saidSteve Zimmerman of Watertown, who leads classes at Rinpoche'slocal Rigpa center there. "Because he was raised largely in theWest, he has much greater understanding of Westerners."

    David F. Gibbs, 45, a social worker at the Merrimack ValleyHospice in Lowell, said he once found Tibetan Buddhism "too

    ritualistic and elaborate, beyond my cultural experience."

    Now he finds Rinpoche's teaching has helped him "develop morecompassion and understanding," in seeing how the people who cometo the hospice "are distinct from their behavior, how they aremore than what they are thinking or feeling or doing."

    For part of the 10 years he spent preparing the book, Rinpocheworked in the hospice movement in Britain, helping those who faceimminent death as a result of cancer, AIDS or other serious

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    illnesses. He came to believe that much of what is wrong inWestern society arises from the denial of death.

    "I feel this denial of death actually complicates problemsthat exist in Western society," Rinpoche said in the interview."It is why there is no long-term vision, not very much thought forthe consequences of actions, little or no compassion."

    "People see death as terrible, as tragic. Because they want tolive, they see death as the enemy of life and therefore denydeath, which then becomes even more fearful and monstrous."

    Beneath this fear of death lies "the ultimate fear . . . thefear of looking into ourselves," he said.

    But death can be a friend, he told the crowd at Interface."Death holds the key to the meaning of life," which is whyTrappist brothers regularly greet each other with the Latinphrase memento mori, "remember you are dying," Rinpoche said.

    "Remembering . . . brings life into focus . . . It sorts outyour priorities, so you do not live a trivial life . . . It helpsyou take care of the most important things in life first. Don'tworry about dying; that will happen successfully whether you

    worry about it or not."

    He warns his students not to think about death "when you aredepressed," but rather "when you are on holiday or impressed bymusic or natural beauty."

    But he knows that "when I am not practicing," or meditating ina disciplined way, "I am afraid of death." He has worried, too,about the death of the lamas with whom he left Tibet. "A wholegeneration of legendary masters is passing away - sometimes Iwonder what the future is going to hold," he said.

    Rinpoche is hopeful when he remembers living teachers, such asthe Dalai Lama, who wrote the foreword to his book. But he knows

    that the possible loss of Tibet is another experience ofimpermanence, of death, like that all human beings must face.

    His goal is to help the dying, those who care for them, andall who listen, to "face our own mortality and realize how muchlove, how much compassion is in you," he told an interviewer.

    "This dying forces you to look into yourself. And in this,compassion is the only way. Love is the only way."

    GRAPHIC: PHOTO

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