One of the greatest paradoxes in the way people behave is their obsessive avoidance of dealing with death.

“Nothing is certain in life but death and taxes” (Benjamin Franklin)

While death is the most certain thing in a person’s life, upon meeting death, whether personally or in the surroundings, most people act surprised.

“Death? What? Me? I thought it wouldn’t happen to me, I haven’t prepared, I haven’t had a chance yet to…, so early?”

The will to live causes us to ignore death, but ironically this avoidance prevents us from living life to its fullest. Instead of understanding that we are only here for a limited time, and that we should use the time that is given to us wisely, we behave obtusely and hardheadedly.

There are those who spend their days in fervent activity in order to accumulate something: power, money, honor, when really at the end of their lives they feel empty when they realize that it was all a means for a cause they had never defined. And then there are those who never even try to find a purpose, living day after day in a routine of work, food, sleep, mortgage, another raise, and their whole life is on hold. For what? For something to happen. And something does happen, they die.

“The The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” exposes the reader to the fascinating world of the Tibetan Buddhism’s approach to life and death, an approach which sees in man or in the nature of man’s consciousness a higher enlightened being. This being is trapped in the cycle of life and death (Samsara) and its objective is to be freed of this cycle and reamain forever in its purest state (Nirvana).

The book is in fact a guide which takes the reader step by step, on the way to true understanding that the ability to become free of the Samsara, to free the mind and achieve enlightenment, is in every person’s reach, and not only for ascetic monks meditating in the caves of the Himalayas.

The book is written in a clear and simple style with stories, and personal events from the life of the author and dozens of quotes from other writings, eastern and western. The book tries, and succeeds in passing on to the reader not only the dry information, but mostly, an experience which is meant to awaken the mind to the existence of a different life, a life without fear, a life of power, life in which everything is possible.

To me the book is not just a reading book, it’s an inspiration, it’s a memo, a memo saying that it has been my privilege to awaken in time, and it is my intention to make use of this wisely. I, dear readers, plan to look in the mirror on the day I die and say to those who stand before me “it is time to go, I have done what I came to do here, I say goodbye to my dear ones in love, and know that I a have given them all I could give, and what I leave behind me is more valuable than any sum of money or possession, I leave behind me a memory and inspiration for others to follow”.

Since I do not know when the day I die will arrive, and since I am not sure that I will have a mirror on that same day, I ask myself every day, what have I done today that has brought me one step further, so that when the day come I will be able to say it?

And what would you tell yourself when the day comes?

I warmly recommend that you read “The Tibetan book of the living and dying”,

With Love,

Avi Bachar