The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying explains everything about Buddhism and what is thought to happen after death. Many people often ponder what happens after death, and are scared of death. Most people have no understanding of what death is. Only two things are certain about death: "It is absolutely certain that we will die," and "It is uncertain when or how we will die." Buddhists view death as a new beginning and believe they will find new meaning in the unknown death. They are not scared of death as they use their lives to prepare for it. This is just a short glimpse of what the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is about, and some of the main points it covers.
The author of this book is Sogyal Rinpoche. He wrote this book in order to explain what Buddhism is and exactly what Tibetans believe. Sogyal Rinpoche does a great job explaining this in great detail. For example, he goes as far as teaching the reader how to meditate and how to bring your mind home. All in all, Sogyal Rinpoche did a fine job accomplishing his purpose.
The Tibetan book of living and dying was written in a quite odd structure. Each Chapter was about something different. For example, the first two chapters are about death and the mysteries behind it; the fifth chapter is about meditation. These are two very different things. Because of this, the begging of each chapter was hard to follow. However, by the end of each chapter, the reader is left with a great understanding of the text. Sogyal Rinpoche writes with great detail, giving the reader a very clear understanding of Buddhism. He uses a wide variety of short and long sentences and contains a large vocabulary. As you can see, Sogyol Rinpoche has a very unique writing style and the book also has a unique structure.
Sogyal Rinpoche was born in kham which is in Eastern Tibet. He is said to be the incarnation of Lerab Lingpa Tertön Sogyal who once was the teacher of the thirteenth Dalai llama. Sogyal was raised by Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lödro who was a very wise and knowledgeable man. This is why Sogyal was blessed with amazing teaching skills. Today Sogyal is traveling through Europe, America, Australia, and Asia teaching people Buddhism. Sogyal has sold two million copies of his book and there are over 100 positive reviews on his book at Amazon alone. According to this information, it is obvious that The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is a credible source.
Most people who read this book may like it, however, for a high school student, I hated the book. There was a lot of interesting information, but it was explained with too much detail. I am also not very interested in religion, so I was not very interested in the book. If I could read a summary of the book, it might be a little easier for me to not fall asleep while reading (which actually happened). I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in religion because Buddhism is very unique and different from all the other religions. I also recommend it to anyone interested in meditation. The Buddha taught 84,000 different ways to tame negative emotions (This was my favorite part of the book). Although the book was boring, I learned a lot about the peacefulness of Tibet and how they live their lives. I also learned how different they are from China. This gives me more reason to believe that Tibet should be an independent country.
1 comment:
How many different negative emotions are there and why are there 84,000 to tame them and what does that even mean?
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