Revisited: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

I first started reading this book in late 2008/early 2009. It was a few years after I started practicing Tibetan Buddhist meditation techniques. I really don't know why I was drawn to it, or to any of the other spiritual teachings I'm drawn to for that matter. But this one, it has been sitting with me for a while.

This book written in four parts - the first being Living and and the second being Dying. Back when I started reading it, it definitely resonated, but it was probably a little beyond my true comprehension at the time. And it highlighted to me a deeply held fear of death, in that I was never able to read the second part of the book. I could read the part called 'Living' but I couldn't face reading the part called 'Dying', or anything beyond that.

So it sat on the bookshelf for a long time. I knew that one day I would pick it up again. And now it seems that's where I am.

While I did understand my readings of the first part of this book years ago, to read it now, after experiencing this and this and this, my understanding is deep. It resonates like no other, and it tells me what I need to know. Because at 35 years of age, I have come to accept that death is a reality, it is natural, it is in everything. It is in us humans, it is in animals, it is in the birds and the fishes and the trees. Without death, there can be no life.

And so I've come to see that it is actually a pretty important thing, death. And it is something deserving of my attention now, because with the knowledge of death, I can live my life more fully. And if this is a fear that I can truly let go of, then really - what else is there to fear? And where there is an absence of fear, love can flourish and a life can truly be lived.

So this is where I'm spending my evenings at the moment, back where I was 7 years ago. Another cycle, this one feels like a big one.