ONE OF MY OLDEST STUDENTS, who has watched this book develop over the years, asked me not so long ago: “What in your heart of hearts do you really want to happen through this book when it is published?” The image immediately came into my mind of Lama Tseten, whom as a boy I had seen dying, and of his calm and gentle dignity in death. I found myself saying: “I want every human being not to be afraid of death, or of life; I want every human being to die at peace, and surrounded by the wisest, clearest, and most tender care, and to find the ultimate happiness that can only come from an understanding of the nature of mind and of reality.”
Thomas Merton wrote: “What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.”1 We spend millions of dollars every minute on training people to kill and destroy, and on bombs and planes and missiles. But we spend hardly anything, in comparison, on teaching human beings the nature of life and death, and helping them, when they come to die, to face and understand what is happening to them. What a terrifying, sad situation this is, and how revealing it is of our ignorance and our lack of true love for ourselves and for each other! More than anything, I pray that the book I have written could contribute in some small way to changing this situation in the world, could help awaken as many people as possible to the urgency of the need for spiritual transformation, and the urgency of the need to be responsible for ourselves and others. We are all potential buddhas, and we all desire to live in peace and die in peace. When will humanity really understand that, and truly create a society that reflects in all of its areas and activities that simple, sacred understanding? Without it, what is life worth? And without it, how can we die well?
It is crucial now that an enlightened vision of death and dying should be introduced throughout the world at all levels of education. Children should not be “protected” from death, but introduced, while young, to the true nature of death and what they can learn from it. Why not introduce this vision, in its simplest forms, to all age groups? Knowledge about death, about how to help the dying, and about the spiritual nature of death and dying should be made available to all levels of society; it should be taught, in depth and with real imagination, in schools and colleges and universities of all kinds; and especially and most important, it should be available in teaching hospitals to nurses and doctors who will look after the dying and who have so much responsibility toward them.
How can you be a truly effective doctor when you do not have at least some understanding of the truth about death, or how really to care spiritually for your dying patient? How can you be a truly effective nurse if you have not begun to face your own fear of dying and have nothing to say to those who are dying when they ask you for guidance and wisdom? I know many well-meaning doctors and nurses, people of the most sincere openness to new ideas and new approaches. I pray that this book will give them the courage and the strength they will need to help their institutions absorb the lessons of the teachings and adapt to them. Isn’t it time now that the medical profession should understand that the search for the truth about life and death and the practice of healing are inseparable? What I hope from this book is that it will help inspire everywhere a debate about what exactly can be done for the dying, and the best conditions for doing it. A spiritual and practical revolution in the training of doctors and nurses, in the vision of hospital care, and in the actual treatment of the dying is urgently needed, and I hope this book will make a humble contribution to it.
I have expressed again and again my admiration for the pioneering work that is being done in the hospice movement. In it at last we see the dying being treated with the dignity they deserve. I would like here to make a deep plea to all the governments of the world that they should encourage the creation of hospices and fund them as generously as possible.
It is my intention to make this book the foundation of several different kinds of training programs. These would be for people of all kinds of backgrounds and professions, and specifically for all those implicated in the care of the dying: families, doctors, nurses, clergy of all denominations, counselors, psychiatrists, and psychologists.
There is a whole, rich, as yet far too little known body of medical revelations in Tibetan Buddhism, as well as prophecies by Padmasambhava, concerning in detail the diseases of this age. I would like to make a strong plea here for funding to be poured into serious research of these astonishing teachings. Who can say what healing discoveries might not be made, and how the anguish of diseases such as cancer and AIDS, and even those that have not yet manifested, might not be alleviated?
So 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 so the whole way we look at life and care for the living.
While this book was being written, my great master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche left his body on Friday, September 27, 1991, in Thimphu, Bhutan. He was eighty-two years old and had spent his entire life in the service of all beings. Who of any of those who saw him will ever forget him? He was a huge, glowing mountain of a man, and his majesty would have been overwhelming had there not always emanated from him the most profound calm and gentleness and rich, natural humor, and that peace and bliss that are the signs of ultimate realization. For me and for many others he was a master of the accomplishment and importance and grandeur of Milarepa, of Longchenpa, of Padmasambhava, even of the Buddha himself. When he died, it was as if the sun had gone out of the sky, leaving the world dark, and a whole glorious age of Tibetan spirituality had come to its close. Whatever the future holds for us, I am certain none of us will ever see anyone like him again. Just to have seen him once, even for a moment, I believe, is to have had sown in you a seed of liberation that nothing will ever destroy, and that will one day flower completely.
There were many astonishing signs before and after Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s death that witnessed his greatness, but the one that shook and moved me most happened more than four thousand miles away, in southern France, in a place called Lerab Ling, near Montpellier, which is going to be dedicated to the creation of a retreat center under his blessing. Let one of my students who lives and works at the center tell you what happened:
That morning the sky stayed dark longer than usual, and the first sign of dawn was a deep red line on the distant horizon. We were going to town; and as we approached the top of our road, the tent that houses the shrine, pitched on the site of our future temple, came into view on the crest of the hill on our right. Suddenly a beam of sharp sunlight pierced the half-light and fell directly onto the white shrine tent, making it glow intensely in the early morning. We carried on, and as we came to the turning in the road to take us into town, some sudden impulse made us glance back toward the tent. By now the sky was light. We were astounded. A brilliant rainbow stretched across the entire valley, its colors so bright and alive, it felt as though we could reach out and touch it. Rising up from the horizon on our left, it arched across the sky. What was mysterious was that there was not a hint of rain—just the rainbow itself, vivid and radiant against the vast, empty sky. It was not until the following evening that we heard that this was the very day that Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche had passed away in Bhutan. We all felt certain that the rainbow was a sign of his blessing, descending on us all, and on Lerab Ling.
When Buddha lay dying in a forest grove in Kushinagara, surrounded by five hundred of his disciples, he said to them, with his last breath: “It is in the nature of all things that take form to dissolve again. Strive with your whole being to attain perfection.” Those words have come to me often since the passing of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. Is there any more poignant teaching on impermanence than the passing of a supreme master, one who had seemed the very axis of the world? It made all of us who knew him and were his disciples feel alone, thrown back upon ourselves. Now it is up to all of us to carry forward and try to embody as far as we can that tradition he so nobly represented. It is up to us to do what the Buddha’s disciples did, when left alone in the world without his radiance: to “strive with our whole being to attain perfection.”
That rainbow that arched over the morning sky of France and over the valley by Lerab Ling is a sign, I feel, that Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche is blessing, and will continue to bless, the whole world. Freed of his body, he lives now in the unconditioned, timeless splendor of the Dharmakaya, with the power all those who attain enlightenment have of being able to help across all limitations of time or space. Believe in the level of his attainment and call upon him with your whole heart, and you will find that he will be with you instantly. How could he, who loved all beings with such a perfect love, ever abandon us? And where would he go to, who had become one with everything?
How fortunate we were that a master such as he, who embodied all that the Tibetan tradition was, should be with us for thirty years after the fall of Tibet, and teach in the Himalayas, in India, in Europe, in Asia, in the United States. How fortunate we are to have hundreds of hours of tapes of his voice and his teachings, many videos that convey something of the majesty of his presence, translations into English and other languages of some of the rich outpourings of his wisdom mind. I think in particular of the teachings he gave in the south of France near Grenoble in the last year of his life, when, gazing out toward the valley and the mountains, in a setting of almost Tibetan grandeur, he granted the transmission of the most important Dzogchen teachings to 1,500 students, many of them, which gave me particular joy, students of mine from all over the world. A number of the masters present felt that through this act in the last year of his life, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was placing his seal definitively on the coming of these teachings to the West, and blessing their reception with the accumulated power of lifetimes of meditation. For my part, I felt, with amazed gratitude, that he was giving his blessing also to all that I had been trying to do for the teachings in the West over the years.
To think of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and of what he has done for humanity is to find gathered and displayed in one person the greatness of the gift Tibet is giving to the world.
It has always seemed to me far more than a coincidence that Tibet fell finally in 1959, just at the moment when the West was about to open its heart and mind to the traditions of Eastern wisdom. So just at the moment when the West was receptive, some of the deepest teachings of that tradition, which had been preserved in the pure solitude of the mountain land of Tibet, could be given to humanity. It is vital now, at all costs, to preserve this living tradition of wisdom, which the Tibetan people have suffered immeasurably to make available to us. Let us remember them always in our hearts, and let us all, also, work to see that their land and its traditions are returned to them. These great teachings I have shared with you cannot be practiced openly by the very people who guarded them so long. May the day come soon when the monasteries and nunneries of Tibet rise again from their rubble, and the vast spaces of Tibet again are dedicated to peace and the pursuit of enlightenment.
A large part of the future of humanity may depend on the reestablishment of a free Tibet, a Tibet that would act as a sanctuary for seekers of all kinds and of all faiths, and as the wisdom heart of an evolving world, the laboratory in which highest insights and sacred technologies could be tested, refined, and enacted again, as they were for so many centuries, to serve now as an inspiration and help to the whole human race in its hour of danger. It is hard to find the perfect environment to practice this wisdom in a world like ours; a Tibet restored, purified by tragedy and with a determination renewed by all that it has suffered, would be that environment, and so of crucial importance for the evolution of humanity.
I would like to dedicate this book to the hundreds of thousands who died in the terror in Tibet, witnessing at the end their faith and the wonderful vision of the Buddha’s teachings, and to those who have died this past century in similarly appalling conditions: to the Jews, to the Cambodians, to the Russians, to the victims of two world wars, to all those who died abandoned and unremembered, and to all those who go on and on being deprived of the opportunity to practice their spiritual path.
Many masters believe that the Tibetan teachings are now entering into a new age; there are a number of prophecies by Padmasambhava and other visionary masters that foretell of their coming to the West. Now that this time has come, I know that the teachings will take on a new life. This new life will necessitate changes, but I believe that any adaptations must spring from a very deep understanding, in order to avoid betraying the purity of the tradition or its power, or the timelessness of its truth. If a depth of understanding of the tradition is fused with a real awareness of the problems and challenges of modern life, adaptations will arise that will only strengthen, enlarge, and enrich the tradition, revealing ever deeper layers of the teachings themselves, and making them even more effective in dealing with the difficulties of our time.
Many of the great Tibetan masters who have visited the West in the last thirty years have now passed away, and I am certain that they died praying that the teachings would benefit not only Tibetans, not only Buddhists, but the whole world. I think they knew exactly how valuable and how revelatory the teachings would be when the modern world grew ready to receive them. I think of Dudjom Rinpoche and Karmapa, who chose to die in the West itself, as if to bless it with the power of their enlightenment. May their prayers for the transformation of the world and for the illumination of the hearts and minds of humanity be fulfilled! And may we who received their teachings be responsible to them, and strive to embody them!
The greatest challenge that spiritual teachings such as Buddhism face in this transition from their ancient settings to the West is how, in a turbulent, fast-paced, and restless world, students of these teachings can find ways to practice them with the calm and steady consistency that they require for the realization of their truth to be possible. Spiritual training, after all, is the highest and in some ways the most demanding form of education, and it must be followed with the same dedicated and systematic application as any other kind of serious training. How can we accept that to train to be a doctor requires years of study and practice, but all we require for our spiritual path through life are chance blessings, initiations, and occasional encounters with different masters? In the past, people stayed in one place and followed a master all their lives. Think of Milarepa, serving Marpa for years before he was spiritually mature enough to leave him and practice on his own. Spiritual training requires a continuous transmission, working with the master and learning, following him or her with ardor and subtle skill. The main question for the future of the teaching in the modern world is how those who are following the teachings can be helped and inspired to find the right inner and outer environment in which fully to practice them, follow them through, and come to realize and embody their heart essence.
The teachings of all the mystical paths of the world make it clear that there is within us an enormous reservoir of power, the power of wisdom and compassion, the power of what Christ called the Kingdom of Heaven. If we learn how to use it—and this is the goal of the search for enlightenment—it can transform not only ourselves but the world around us. Has there ever been a time when the clear use of this sacred power was more essential or more urgent? Has there ever been a time when it was more vital to understand the nature of this pure power and how to channel it and use it for the sake of the world? I pray that all of you who read this book may come to know and believe in the power of enlightenment, and come to recognize the nature of your mind, for to recognize the nature of your mind is to engender in the ground of your being an understanding that will change your entire world view, and help you discover and develop, naturally and spontaneously, a compassionate desire to serve all beings, as well as a direct knowledge of how best you can do so, with whatever skill or ability you have, in whatever circumstances you find yourself. I pray then that you will come to know in the very core of your being the living truth of these words by Nyoshul Khenpo:
An effortless compassion can arise for all beings who have not realized their true nature. So limitless is it that if tears could express it, you would cry without end. Not only compassion, but tremendous skillful means can be born when you realize the nature of mind. Also you are naturally liberated from all suffering and fear, such as the fear of birth, death, and the intermediate state. Then if you were to speak of the joy and bliss that arise from this realization, it is said by the buddhas that if you were to gather all the glory, enjoyment, pleasure, and happiness of the world and put it all together, it would not approach one tiny fraction of the bliss that you experience upon realizing the nature of mind.
To serve the world out of this dynamic union of wisdom and compassion would be to participate most effectively in the preservation of the planet. Masters of all the religious traditions on earth now understand that spiritual training is essential not solely for monks and nuns, but for all people, whatever their faith or way of life. What I have tried to show in this book is the intensely practical, active, and effective nature of spiritual development. As a famous Tibetan teaching says: “When the world is filled with evil, all mishaps should be transformed into the path of enlightenment.” The danger we are all in together makes it essential now that we no longer think of spiritual development as a luxury, but as a necessity for survival.
Let us dare to imagine now what it would be like to live in a world where a significant number of people took the opportunity offered by the teachings, to devote part of their lives to serious spiritual practice, to recognize the nature of their mind, and so to use the opportunity of their deaths to move closer to buddhahood, and to be reborn with one aim, that of serving and benefiting others.
This book is giving you a sacred technology, by which you can transform not only your present life and not only your dying and your death, but also your future lives, and so the future of humanity. What my masters and I are hoping to inspire here is a major leap forward toward the conscious evolution of humanity. To learn how to die is to learn how to live; to learn how to live is to learn how to act not only in this life, but in the lives to come. To transform yourself truly and learn how to be reborn as a transformed being to help others is really to help the world in the most powerful way of all.
The most compassionate insight of my tradition and its noblest contribution to the spiritual wisdom of humanity has been its understanding and repeated enactment of the ideal of the bodhisattva, the being who takes on the suffering of all sentient beings, who undertakes the journey to liberation not for his or her own good alone but to help all others, and who eventually, after attaining liberation, does not dissolve into the absolute or flee the agony of samsara, but chooses to return again and again to devote his or her wisdom and compassion to the service of the whole world. What the world needs more than anything is active servants of peace such as these, “clothed,” as Longchenpa said, “in the armor of perseverance,” dedicated to their bodhisattva vision and to the spreading of wisdom into all reaches of our experience. We need bodhisattva lawyers, bodhisattva artists and politicians, bodhisattva doctors and economists, bodhisattva teachers and scientists, bodhisattva technicians and engineers, bodhisattvas everywhere, working consciously as channels of compassion and wisdom at every level and in every situation of society, working to transform their minds and actions and those of others, working tirelessly in the certain knowledge of the support of the buddhas and enlightened beings, for the preservation of our world, and for a more merciful future. As Teilhard de Chardin said: “Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, . . . we shall harness . . . the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” In the wonderful prayer of Rumi:
O love, O pure deep love, be here, be now
Be all; worlds dissolve into your stainless endless radiance,
Frail living leaves burn with you brighter than cold stars:
Make me your servant, your breath, your core.
One of my deepest hopes for this book is that it could be an unfailing, loyal companion to anyone who makes the choice to become a bodhisattva, a source of guidance and inspiration to those who really face the challenge of this time, and undertake the journey to enlightenment out of compassion for all other beings. May they never grow weary or disappointed or disillusioned; may they never give up hope whatever the terrors and difficulties and obstacles that rise up against them. May those obstacles only inspire them to even deeper determination. May they have faith in the undying love and power of all those enlightened beings that have blessed and still bless the earth with their presence; may they take heart, as I have constantly taken heart, from the living examples of the great masters, men and women like us, who have with infinite courage heeded the Buddha’s deathbed words to strive with their whole being to attain perfection. May the vision that so many mystic masters of all traditions have had, of a future world free of cruelty and horror, where humanity can live in the ultimate happiness of the nature of mind, come, through all our efforts, to be realized. Let us all pray together for that better world, first with Shantideva and then with St. Francis:
For as long as space exists
And sentient beings endure,
May I too remain,
To dispel the misery of the world.
Lord make me an instrument
Of thy peace, where there is hatred,
Let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that
I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we
Are pardoned, and it is in dying
That we are born to eternal life.
Let this book be dedicated to all my masters: for those who have passed away, may their aspirations be fulfilled, and for those who are living, may their lives be long, may their great and sacred work meet with ever more shining success, and may their teachings inspire, encourage, and hearten all beings. I pray with all my heart that the reincarnations of Dudjom Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche grow to be as powerful and fully enlightened as possible, to help us through the dangers of this age.
Let this book be dedicated also to all those whom you have read about in it who have died: Lama Tseten, Lama Chokden, Samten, Ani Pelu, Ani Rilu, and A-pé Dorje. Remember them in your prayers, and remember too those of my students who have died, and those who are dying now, whose devotion and courage have so inspired me.
Let this book be dedicated to all beings, living, dying, or dead. For all those who are at this moment going through the process of dying, may their deaths be peaceful and free of pain or fear. May all those who at this moment are being born, and those who are struggling in this life, be nourished by the blessings of the buddhas, and may they meet the teachings, and follow the path of wisdom. May their lives be happy and fruitful, and free from all sorrow. May whoever reads this book derive rich and unending benefit from it, and may these teachings transform their hearts and minds. This is my prayer.
May every single being, of all the six realms, attain, all together, the ground of primordial perfection!