Book Review: Living is Dying.

Although I have read only a couple of Rimpochoe's books, I think it's safe for me to say that this book is different from the style of writing I have come to associate with Rimpochoe. But that is of course to be expected as it says "How to prepare for Death, Dying and Beyond" right on the book cover. We can make out that this is sort of an instructional/ guide book.

It took me 9 weeks to complete first and foremost because it is about death, dying and beyond and how to prepare for all this. I have always struggled with the thought of death, especially about what will happen to us after we die. It's not like I have not accepted the fact that we will all die eventually, it's just the thought of not knowing what will happen to us after we die that scares me the most. And with as many believes, if not more, as there are religions it gets all the more confusing and scary. This was one of the main reasons I couldn't finish this book as quickly as I would have liked. 

The second reason: Lockdown. I started reading this book well before the lockdowns but like I said earlier, it deals with the concept of death so I was not really keen on completing the book as quickly as I would have liked. And to be honest I was kind of glad that there was something else for me to focus on other than death as we continued our duties in containment mode during the lockdown.

But at the same time I also wished I had completed reading the book because I could have been more prepared for what was coming. Then again with what ever I had read I think I can say that I took the death of my paternal uncle, someone very close to me, a lot better than I would have otherwise. I knew what kind of mindset to be in, what kind of aspirations to make, and what kind of prayers to say. It was by no means exactly like what it said in the book but I at least had the idea on how to deal with what was going on around me. 

When I finally managed to complete the book I realized that most of what we do before, during and after the funeral was almost all in the book already and how less confusing of an experience it could have been. 

Some parts of the book are in a question and answer form so for someone like me who already had similar questions in mind, it was really informative and also reassuring at the same time. It made me realize that I was not the only one with such doubts and fears. The book not only managed to clear my doubts but also helped me learn new things like the idea of bardo. To me bardo was just an intermittent state between death and being reborn but as I have come to understand everything is in a state of bardo. Life is the state between birth and death, death between living and being reborn, birth between death and living and so on. Of course this is just my understanding of this concept and even if my understanding of this concept were wrong I somehow feel at ease with the concept of death. I know that change is the ultimate truth and that we keep moving in between these stages of life and death until we ultimately gain enlightenment.