Talking on another subject reminded me of the book below which I read.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
translated by Gyurme Dorje
"The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a kind of Baedeker for the afterlife, and like the best guidebooks its reassuring refrain is “Don’t panic!” After death, it says, you will be assailed by thunderous sounds and bewildering apparitions as first the peaceful deities rise before you, then the wrathful ones, who drink blood and eat the entrails of bloated corpses. If you are very unlucky, Yama (representing the forces of impermanence and the laws of cause and effect) will chop off your head, lick out your brains and drink your blood, then eat you. The trick is not to be afraid and to remember that you don’t have a body any more, so he can’t hurt you. These deities are enormous, blotting out the sky, and some have the heads of tigers, vultures, crocodiles, scorpions or bats, but they are also all in our minds. This idea fascinated Jung, who revered The Tibetan Book of the Dead as a great psychological work.
The stakes are high: either we become enlightened and attain buddhahood or we are reborn to experience all over again the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death, stranded in “the swamp of cyclic existence”.
Even the Dalai Lama isn’t confident of success. “Sometimes I do wonder,” he admits, “whether or not I will really be able to fully utilise my own preparatory practices when the actual moment of death comes!”
Why do we have the fear of death? It’s a fear strong enough to compel us to avoid discussion about the subject.
In my culture, (Western), most of us pretend death doesn’t exist, whereas in the East Asian yin and yang philosophy of death, life can’t exist without death, which ironically allows people to use death as a reminder to enjoy life.
“Dying isn’t just part of the human condition, but central to it”. We all know this, but how many acknowledge it.
When we do pause to contemplate, it is then we realise, “everyone dies, and most of us are afraid of it”.
Perhaps not everyone has the fear, there must be some who do not.
A friend of mine, was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he was 43. He threw a big party for all the people he knew and loved before he died. Needless to say there were quite a few who were in tears. I thought he was incredibly brave.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgXfdoE5GTk[/youtube]