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Rating: 
Summary: Practical
Review: His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama has done it again! He has given us a statement of simple spirituality, efficacious for both the practicing Buddhist and the non-Buddhist, alike. Although many of his concepts may seem mysterious, or even ineffable, to the non-Buddhist, his basic advice is sound. His Holiness calls upon all of us to meditate upon our inevitable deaths, and thereby to more fully appreciate this life, and facilitate our passage into the next. That's good counsel no matter what your religion!
Rating:
Summary: Practical
Review: His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama has done it again! He has given us a statement of simple spirituality, efficacious for both the practicing Buddhist and the non-Buddhist, alike. Although many of his concepts may seem mysterious, or even ineffable, to the non-Buddhist, his basic advice is sound. His Holiness calls upon all of us to meditate upon our inevitable deaths, and thereby to more fully appreciate this life, and facilitate our passage into the next. That's good counsel no matter what your religion!
Rating: 
Summary: Much concentrated wisdom here
Review: The Buddhist preoccupation with death almost borders on the morbid. In fact the awareness of your impermanence and the inevitability of your own death is the cornerstone of the whole religion. There is almost no concept of an omipotent, omnipresent God and the focus is really on attaining an ever present, compassionate and wisdom filled state of mind. This is what draws me to Buddhism. This book by Jeffrey Hopkins is a translation of the Dalai Lama's interpretation of a poem by the first Panchen Lama. The poem is quite cryptic by itself but the Dalai Lama's interpretation and Hopkins's skillful translation draw out the many gems of knowledge embedded in its seventeen stanzas. Iam convinced after reading this book that the Tibetans knew more about death and rebirth than anyone else. In an age of self help books to fix every problem of your life in isolation, this book addresses the fundamental source of all our anxieties, fears and unhappiness. The Dalai Lama states boldly and simply that the only good way to live life to its fullest is to meditate on our own impermanence and impending mortality until we can accept it fully and be prepared to utilize our deaths to propel us and other sentient beings in the path of enlightenment. We have no way of verifying the correctness of the descriptions of the several stages of death, the intermediate state and rebirth but this book is filled with so much compassion and wisdom that all that is said there can only be true.
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