#DALAI LAMA QUOTES GOODREADS TRIAL#

If we fail, we should at least try to be reborn in an area where Buddhism is practised, so we can have another go. The stakes are high: either we become enlightened and attain buddhahood or we are reborn to experience all over again the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death, stranded in 'the swamp of cyclic existence'.

Ideally, he should have a soothing, melodious voice, to calm us down. Even the totally unprepared needn't despair, however, provided a qualified guru is on hand to read out the relevant bits to our corpse.

#DALAI LAMA QUOTES GOODREADS TRIAL#

Advanced yogis can make trial runs by inducing a deathlike state, but after death the rest of us must try to remember what we've read in The Tibetan Book of the Dead and put it into practice. This idea fascinated Jung, who revered The Tibetan Book of the Dead as a great psychological work.ДЄccording to Highest Yoga Tantra (from which The Tibetan Book of the Dead derives), only during the process of dying can we achieve liberation from the cycle of existence.

These deities are enormous, blotting out the sky, and some have the heads of tigers, vultures, crocodiles, scorpions or bats, but they are also all in our minds. The trick is not to be afraid and to remember that you don't have a body any more, so he can't hurt you. If you are very unlucky, Yama (representing the forces of impermanence and the laws of cause and effect) will chop off your head, lick out your brains and drink your blood, then eat you. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a kind of Baedeker for the afterlife, and like the best guidebooks its reassuring refrain is 'Don't panic!' After death, it says, you will be assailed by thunderous sounds and bewildering apparitions as first the peaceful deities rise before you, then the wrathful ones, who drink blood and eat the entrails of bloated corpses. Translated by Gyurme Dorje, edited by Graham Coleman with Thupten Jinpa 496pp, Penguin Classics, ВЈ25

Dalai lama quotes goodreads