“Knowledge of inner processes in body and mind is as helpful for one’s own preparation for death as it is for people who care for others who are dying. If one knows what to expect while dying, the conditions can be used and fears specifically removed.”
Fearless Death: Buddhist Wisdom on the Art of Dying (2012)
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Lama Ole Nydahl 20
Danish lama 1941Related quotes
“One who is in a dying condition is regarded as a living person in all respects.”
Biomedical Ethics and Jewish Law http://www.myjewishlearning.com/ideas_belief/bioethics/Bioethics_Euthanasia_TO/Bioethics_EuthanMedi_Rosner.htm, published by KTAV http://www.ktav.com/
Context: One who is in a dying condition is regarded as a living person in all respects. It is not permitted to bind his jaws, to stop up the organs of the lower extremities, or to place metallic or cooling vessels upon his navel in order to prevent swelling. He is not to be rubbed or washed, nor is sand or salt to be put upon him until he expires. He who touches him is guilty of shedding blood. To what may he be compared? To a flickering flame, which is extinguished as soon as one touches it. Whoever closes the eyes of the dying while the soul is about to depart is shedding blood. One should wait a while; perhaps he is only in a swoon.
6th Public Talk, Saanen (28 July 1970) 'The Mechanical Activity of Thought" in The Impossible Question (1972) Part I, Ch. 6
1970s
Context: The whole of Asia believes in reincarnation, in being reborn in another life. When you enquire what it is that is going to be born in the next life, you come up against difficulties. What is it? Yourself? What are you? a lot of words, a lot of opinions, attachments to your possessions, to your furniture, to your conditioning. Is all that, which you call the soul, going to be reborn in the next life? Reincarnation implies that what you are today determines what you will be again in the next life. Therefore behave! — not tomorrow, but today, because what you do today you are going to pay for in the next life. People who believe in reincarnation do not bother about behavior; t all; it is just a matter of belief, which has no value. Incarnate today, afresh not in the next life! Change it now completely, change with great passion, let the mind strip itself of everything, of every conditioning, every knowledge, of everything it thinks is "right" — empty it. Then you will know what dying means; and then you will know what love is. For love is not something of the past, of thought, of culture; it is not pleasure. A mind that has understood the whole movement of thought becomes extraordinarily quiet, absolutely silent. That silence is the beginning of the new.
“Death frees from the fear of dying”
Source: Veronika Decides to Die
“For my part, I regard every death as cruel and premature, that removes one who is preparing some immortal work.”
Mihi autem videtur acerba semper et immatura mors eorum, qui immortale aliquid parant.
Letter 5, 4.
Letters, Book V