As much as we might try to resist, endings happen in every moment—the end of a breath, the end of a day, the end of a relationship, and ultimately the end of life. And accompanying each ending is a beginning, though it may be unclear what the beginning holds. In How We Live Is How We Die, Pema Chödrön shares her wisdom for working with this flow of life—learning to live with ease, joy, and compassion through uncertainty, embracing new beginnings, and ultimately preparing for death with curiosity and openness rather than fear.
Poignant for readers of all ages, her teachings on the bardos—a Tibetan term referring to a state of transition, including what happens between this life and the next—reveal their power and relevance at each moment of our lives. She also offers practical methods for transforming life’s most challenging emotions about change and uncertainty into a path of awakening and love. As she teaches, the more freedom we can find in our hearts and minds as we live this life, the more fearlessly we’ll be able to confront death and what lies beyond. In all, Pema provides readers with a master course in living life fully and compassionately in the shadow of death and change.
My Notes (EWR)
Her writing seems to reflect a lifetime of dedication to her practice. What comes through is that she took and takes her practice very seriously and wants to share what she has learned with others. There's a certain kind of earnest compassion that comes through. Wholesome is another word that comes to mind.
As I read the descriptions of the various Bárdos I found myself thinking once again of the similarities between Buddhism and Catholicism. In Catholicism it was heaven, hell, purgatory and limbo. In both cases the lessons are how you live your life now will determine what happens in the afterlife.
I was appreciative of the fact that she tackles head on the issue of reincarnation, which is mostly ignored in the Buddhist literature that I am familiar with. It's a challenging concept, full of contradictions, suppositions, what looks like some very active imaginations. She suggests a way to deal with it is to suspend judgment and open yourself up to whatever lessons you might derive. That was a good advice because it allowed me to suspend my skepticism long enough to read through the descriptions, despite the fact that they seem bizarre and otherworldly.
I have a hard time with lists: 4 of this, 5 of that, and I tend to skim over those descriptions without much consideration. Some of that may be that I already have a map in my head of how to categorize my life experiences, and it resists revision and learning a new system.
I was trouble by the amount of attention she spends on Chogyam Trumpga. Perhaps elsewhere in other books she deals with his less wholesome habits, alcohol and womanizing. But it raises for me a core issue: what do you do when you find out the people that you seek to admire and learn from have significant flaws. Call it the Woody Allen syndrome, there's a part of me that never feels quite the same about people after I'm exposed to their shadow side.
A couple of passages I’d like to discuss further:
“Ignorance” as a destructive emotion is a little harder to understand. It’s a dull, indifferent state of mind that actually contains a deep level of pain. It can express itself as being out of touch, being mentally lethargic, not caring what we’re feeling or what others are going through. When this state of mind dominates us, it can turn into depression.”
“The five buddhas and all the other brilliant appearances are not the product of our usual confused, dualistic mind. They come from our true nature, which is ineffable, unprejudiced, and nondual.”
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