Meditations on Living, Dying and Loss: Ancient Knowledge for a Modern World from the Tibetan Book of the Dead

In my own fragile state, having been freshly born into this altered realm of bereavement, every aspect of the text took on an immediacy of meaning.

everything we experience comes through, and is dependent on, our own mind.

approach the moment of death with a mind filled with loving kindness and filled with the wish to abide, without distraction, in the experience of the horizonless radiance which she was about to enter.

Our experience is the product of our own mental constructs, it is we who choose how we interpret our own experience, and we do therefore have an extraordinary freedom and opportunity.

being enveloped by a clear, radiant luminosity, which, following the consciousness leaving the body, fills their field of vision. This stage is often described as being accompanied by a sense of timeless spaciousness, a feeling of completeness, and of being enveloped by a loving presence.

The mind in its ultimate nature is understood to be a combination of awareness and the subtle energies on which awareness rides.

In the Buddhist view, what we perceive as our external reality is definitely not fixed and what we experience in ourselves is not anybody else’s responsibility. By accepting responsibility for our own way of perceiving, we can look into our minds and begin to understand how our own experience comes about — and then we can learn how to transform our

Thus, recognising the role which the ego plays in creating and sustaining this perceptual realm is the key to unlocking our imprisonment created by our past discordant mental habits.

O Lord of Loving Kindness, through the blessing of your compassion, Purify the obscurations generated by my past actions and dissonant mental states, And secure me in the presence of your mother-like loving kindness!