{"id":5137,"date":"2017-08-30T09:55:26","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T08:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/?p=5137"},"modified":"2017-08-30T09:55:26","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T08:55:26","slug":"living-dying-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/living-dying-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"LIVING AND DYING IN PEACE"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"images\"I think most of the time in the East, like in Tibet or Himalayan region, when you ask somebody: \u201cWhy do you practise Dharma?\u201d They would most probably say: \u201cI am preparing for my death\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m preparing for my next life.\u201d Because for most of the people there they kind of feel that this life is no problem. There will be ups and downs, there will be some problems, there will be some obstacles that anybody who is in samsara or in a samsaric state of mind\u00a0will have\u00a0to face. But that\u2019s nothing really. It\u2019s okay. So what I have to really work on is for the long term perspective, for my death, for my next life and my next life and my\u00a0next life . So therefore, the kind of way of looking at\u00a0 practising Dharma is usually not for this life but for the lives to come. And when I look at the kind of motivation or aspiration of most of the people in the West when they want to practice Dharma, they want to practice it for this life.\u00a0So that\u00a0they can have more peace of mind,\u00a0 more joy, more tension free. That\u00a0they can do something so their\u00a0 life is becoming better now. It doesn\u2019t mean that you don\u2019t care for the future but primarily it\u2019s for now.<\/h3>\n

Sometimes some lama\u2019s think that\u2019s a wrong motivation. It\u2019s even said, in some of the teachings. that if you really practice Dharma and you do it only for this life, it\u2019s wrong. But I think it\u2019s really not contradictory, it really comes together. It\u2019s very important that we work on how to live, how to face life now,\u00a0and\u00a0in these circumstances in a proper way. And if we can do that, if we can find a little more peace, a more genuine way of dealing with the problems and stresses and emotions of this life, that\u2019s exactly in a way working for the benefit of our next lives as well as for the death. So therefore whatever you say, whatever you\u2019re kind of perspective may be, it comes to the same thing.<\/p>\n

So\u00a0therefore sometimes the life and death are very related, very connected. Everybody has to die. And whether we want to accept that or look at that or focus on that or whether we want to acknowledge that or not, that\u2019s a fact. And I think it\u2019s also not useful if you kind of deny this fact that we all have to die. Because we know, everybody knows that everybody has to die. And that just by not talking about it or just by sweeping it under the carpet, the fear of\u00a0 death and death doesn\u2019t go away anyway.<\/h3>\n

This kind of way of denial, when it comes to the experience\u00a0of dying and death people can be\u00a0totally unprepared and can be totally shocked.<\/h3>\n

I think it becomes very important to acknowledge and accept this fact that everybody has to die. And not only that we have to die and we don\u2019t know when we\u00a0will die. There\u2019s no certainty, the uncertainty of life\u00a0can become\u00a0a little bit shocking or a\u00a0little bit depressing if you\u00a0are not prepared.\u00a0There is no guarantee that I would not die tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.\u00a0To really be able to accept this and see this clearly and fully acknowledge this, sometimes is the best preparation for the whole thing.<\/h3>\n

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Ringu Tulku Rinpoche<\/p>\n

Living and Dying in Peace and with\u00a0Dignity<\/p>\n

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