Wisdom Roads

Author(s): Lorrence G Muller
Publisher: Continumm New York

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TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE
That means, what is happening is—it is death. And completely, how do you say, you ...
L.M.: Embrace.
T.W.: Embrace the death.
L.M.: You embrace death, you don't try to push it away.
T.W.: You don't push—because the meaning of it fully is, you have embraced the death. It is not something else; it doesn't mean that it is bad. But if you have a problem with death, it means you have a problem. In the West, what sometimes with these new-age things, people are trying to say is: Oh, death is not death. They make different meanings out of things. That is always, always feeding the fear of the dualistic mind; rather, than making them recognize what it really is, the truth. And then, healing in that way. But these people try to say: Oh, you're not dying.
You are dying. Understand that you are dying. And that dying is not necessarily bad. If you understand that death is fine, natural, then you can heal your death. If you say death is not death-death is another way of life-you are deluding yourself again. In the West, sometimes they feed the fear of death a lot. By putting things at different levels, the way people sell products. They sell at one level; and when it doesn't work, they put a new name on the same product. Still, they are selling the same thing.
L.M.: Is death looked at differently in the East?
T.W.: I mean that, death is death. So, the good death—a part of the good death-will be a good preparation for death. So you know what the process of death is. What each moment is happening to you when you are dying. And what each thing is, that will happen to you after you die. All these things: what it means to you; how you relate to them—how you apply your practice in relation to those intermediate states and visions. That is a good death. A good death is like preparing for the final examination. And then, when you take the examination, it is a good examination because you have prepared well.
L.M.: So while you are living, and not just at the moment of dying, you are doing bardo practices?
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