What do you think?
Rate this book
Mind of Clear Light: Advice on Living Well and Dying Consciously
Everyone dies, but no one is dead, goes the Tibetan saying. It is with these words that Advice on Dying takes flight. Using a seventeenth-century poem written by a prominent scholar-practitioner, His Holiness the Dalai Lama draws from a wide range of traditions and beliefs to explore the stages we all go through when we die, which are the very same stages we experience in life when we go to sleep, faint, or reach orgasm (Shakespeare's "little death").
The stages are described so vividly that we can imagine the process of traveling deeper into the mind, on the ultimate journey of transformation. In this way, His Holiness shows us how to prepare for that time and, in doing so, how to enrich our time on earth, die without fear or upset, and influence the stage between this life and the next so that we may gain the best possible incarnation. As always, the ultimate goal is to advance along the path to enlightenment. Advice on Dying is an essential tool for attaining that eternal bliss.
The stages are described so vividly that we can imagine the process of traveling deeper into the mind, on the ultimate journey of transformation. In this way, His Holiness shows us how to prepare for that time and, in doing so, how to enrich our time on earth, die without fear or upset, and influence the stage between this life and the next so that we may gain the best possible incarnation. As always, the ultimate goal is to advance along the path to enlightenment. Advice on Dying is an essential tool for attaining that eternal bliss.
240 pages, Paperback
First published September 14, 2004
17 people are currently reading
167 people want to read
About the author
Dalai Lama XIV
1,552 books6,249 followersJetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (born Lhamo Döndrub), the 14th Dalai Lama, is a practicing member of the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism and is influential as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the world's most famous Buddhist monk, and the leader of the exiled Tibetan government in India.
Tenzin Gyatso was the fifth of sixteen children born to a farming family. He was proclaimed the tulku (an Enlightened lama who has consciously decided to take rebirth) of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of two.
On 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, he was enthroned as Tibet's ruler. Thus he became Tibet's most important political ruler just one month after the People's Republic of China's invasion of Tibet on 7 October 1950. In 1954, he went to Beijing to attempt peace talks with Mao Zedong and other leaders of the PRC. These talks ultimately failed.
After a failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959, the Dalai Lama left for India, where he was active in establishing the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan Government in Exile) and in seeking to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who accompanied him.
Tenzin Gyatso is a charismatic figure and noted public speaker. This Dalai Lama is the first to travel to the West. There, he has helped to spread Buddhism and to promote the concepts of universal responsibility, secular ethics, and religious harmony.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal on 17 October 2007.
Tenzin Gyatso was the fifth of sixteen children born to a farming family. He was proclaimed the tulku (an Enlightened lama who has consciously decided to take rebirth) of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of two.
On 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, he was enthroned as Tibet's ruler. Thus he became Tibet's most important political ruler just one month after the People's Republic of China's invasion of Tibet on 7 October 1950. In 1954, he went to Beijing to attempt peace talks with Mao Zedong and other leaders of the PRC. These talks ultimately failed.
After a failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959, the Dalai Lama left for India, where he was active in establishing the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan Government in Exile) and in seeking to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who accompanied him.
Tenzin Gyatso is a charismatic figure and noted public speaker. This Dalai Lama is the first to travel to the West. There, he has helped to spread Buddhism and to promote the concepts of universal responsibility, secular ethics, and religious harmony.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal on 17 October 2007.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 30, 2021
This was way different than any of the other Dalai Lama books I've read, and I honestly don't think I understand this one. It's about the specifics of death and dying. As a gerontologist, I must admit that what he describes here is nothing I had ever heard before. He prepares us for exactly what to expect as you transition from this life to your next reincarnation. The message is that life is short so do what you can while you can. I guess the final goal is complete service to others.
June 22, 2008
I'm not sure there's any point in rating or even reviewing a book of this kind, but for the record, I think it's pretty good at what it's about. It begins with an overview of who the Dalai Lama is and a bit about China's role in imprisoning the real Panchen Lama and selecting one of their own who is loyal to communism. Then comes commentary on a poem by the first Panchen Lama about death and dying, and how to live well. Each chapter looks at one stanza of the poem, placing it in the larger context of Tibetan Buddhism, and helping the reader to understand the poem and what it says about how to live well and what the process of dying is like. Quite a bit of this book makes sense for anyone, regardless of religion or spirituality: that one never knows when the moment will come but that death is inevitable, so at all times it is best to live as one ultimately wishes and to prepare for this eventuality so that when it comes it is less frightening and you can be ready to die a good & peaceful death.
August 3, 2021
This book gave me a large sense of closure and ideas for what is to come when it’s the end of my life. This book discusses the different stages we go through when we die which are similar to the stages when we go to sleep or faint. The book gives advice and the knowledge to prepare for that time so you are ready to be reborn in the next life successfully.
February 1, 2009
This had some really good practical advice amongst the more esoteric teaching. Very helpful.
February 12, 2022
No better manual for the disasters we have faced and the cataclysms to come.
We humans are included in the 6th mass extinction. Some political actors know this fact which explains their erratic and extreme behavior that far exceeds the norm and ranges deep into the seemingly inexplicable. But there is an explanation for how it seems they have lost their minds. They literally are scared to death about the global upheaval taking place that some of them know will escalate beyond all imagination once we begin to see a blue ocean event in the Arctic.
That singular blue ocean event will occur over years or decades. The Arctic Sea ice cover will cease to freeze. The open sea will absorb more heat which will trigger a new ice age. We will flip in time from being too hot to being too cold. The water already evaporated into the far too saturated atmosphere by the warming phase of climate change will begin to fall as snow in yards not in feet. Glaciers will start to form and very slowly begin gliding south.
In a related event, the magnetic poles are threatening to flip. As water moves from ice to sea and then moves again from rain to snow the continental plates will shift under the strain and begin to crack from the weight imbalance. Crustal displacement not only may bring about more volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis, but liquefaction of large areas of land may even swallow whole communities or cities. The melting ice and opening earth unleashes old and unknown diseases as the health care system collapses.
We’re not there yet but our bodies know and we can see the signs. Already we’ve lost 500,000 to the Covid-19 pandemic. Imagine the plight of 140,000 children who lost a caregiver to Covid. Imagine the long-Covid suffering that tens of thousands are enduring.
The stress is felt everywhere and the 2022 Super Bowl Sunday is a distraction and maybe a sedative that will wear off quickly. We collectively are caught up in the process of dissolution, not just those who are actively dying or getting a divorce. Institutions are breaking down. There’s public talk of civil war as the country itself shows signs of fracturing once again into many smaller autonomous states. Children worldwide are experiencing an epidemic of suicide while homicide becomes humdrum.
That’s why this book is an urgent read. Need I say more? Some might decide to peruse the book and that is better than skipping over it. Others may read it once and lay it down thinking one reading is enough. But it’s not that kind of a book, I assure you. Those who want to live a better life during the time we have left will understand after their first reading of the Dalai Lama’s Mind of Clear Light, that one needs to contemplate its passages deeply and daily.
I see it as a necessity. This is a book I’ll be reading the rest of my life. Had I found it soon after 2009 I’d still be happily married man. Had I found it before then I’d still be a professor enjoying my colleagues and students. But I do not bemoan the past. I assume that I got my hands on the book at precisely the best time for me to contemplate the nature of reality. Therefore I do not wish I had it any earlier. I simply am grateful that a dear friend observed my suffering and encouraged me to read this book now as I encourage you.
We humans are included in the 6th mass extinction. Some political actors know this fact which explains their erratic and extreme behavior that far exceeds the norm and ranges deep into the seemingly inexplicable. But there is an explanation for how it seems they have lost their minds. They literally are scared to death about the global upheaval taking place that some of them know will escalate beyond all imagination once we begin to see a blue ocean event in the Arctic.
That singular blue ocean event will occur over years or decades. The Arctic Sea ice cover will cease to freeze. The open sea will absorb more heat which will trigger a new ice age. We will flip in time from being too hot to being too cold. The water already evaporated into the far too saturated atmosphere by the warming phase of climate change will begin to fall as snow in yards not in feet. Glaciers will start to form and very slowly begin gliding south.
In a related event, the magnetic poles are threatening to flip. As water moves from ice to sea and then moves again from rain to snow the continental plates will shift under the strain and begin to crack from the weight imbalance. Crustal displacement not only may bring about more volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis, but liquefaction of large areas of land may even swallow whole communities or cities. The melting ice and opening earth unleashes old and unknown diseases as the health care system collapses.
We’re not there yet but our bodies know and we can see the signs. Already we’ve lost 500,000 to the Covid-19 pandemic. Imagine the plight of 140,000 children who lost a caregiver to Covid. Imagine the long-Covid suffering that tens of thousands are enduring.
The stress is felt everywhere and the 2022 Super Bowl Sunday is a distraction and maybe a sedative that will wear off quickly. We collectively are caught up in the process of dissolution, not just those who are actively dying or getting a divorce. Institutions are breaking down. There’s public talk of civil war as the country itself shows signs of fracturing once again into many smaller autonomous states. Children worldwide are experiencing an epidemic of suicide while homicide becomes humdrum.
That’s why this book is an urgent read. Need I say more? Some might decide to peruse the book and that is better than skipping over it. Others may read it once and lay it down thinking one reading is enough. But it’s not that kind of a book, I assure you. Those who want to live a better life during the time we have left will understand after their first reading of the Dalai Lama’s Mind of Clear Light, that one needs to contemplate its passages deeply and daily.
I see it as a necessity. This is a book I’ll be reading the rest of my life. Had I found it soon after 2009 I’d still be happily married man. Had I found it before then I’d still be a professor enjoying my colleagues and students. But I do not bemoan the past. I assume that I got my hands on the book at precisely the best time for me to contemplate the nature of reality. Therefore I do not wish I had it any earlier. I simply am grateful that a dear friend observed my suffering and encouraged me to read this book now as I encourage you.
May 7, 2018
A very thought-provoking book, that makes you consider different aspects of life and death as you are reading it, step by step. I kept on thinking that I would understand the depths of the thoughts shared more profoundly if I were more acquainted with the Buddhist traditions, but as a non-Buddhist, it still gave me peace and the sense of infinity in our lives and deaths. I would suggest reading it - for non-Buddhists, if you come across a devastating death, for Buddhists, when you are there in your practices and studies.
February 19, 2023
A presentation of the Tibetan Buddhist understanding of the dying process. A commentary on a text written by the 4th Panchen Lama. A concise and deep presentation. Will continue to return to this book in the future.
July 23, 2023
Одна из самых практичных книг по буддизму, которые я когда-либо читал. His Holiness Dalai Lama at his best!
January 21, 2025
I don't think I fully understood everything. Good book though
April 11, 2012
I found some of the information in the book helpful, but honestly don't find the Tibetan, pre-scientific understanding of the elements of the body and so forth very compelling. I can't help but wonder whether those with a different understanding of our physical selves would have the same experiences during death that those holding the Tibetan view would. For these reasons, the book was just OK for me.
May 3, 2014
I confess I didn't read this whole thing. I skimmed to the parts that interested me. Sorry, but he spends a lot of time talking about death. How it's inevitable so we shouldn't ignore it but we shouldn't worry or dwell on it either. I've got not problem with any of that, really. I did like learning about a lot of the Buddhist mysticism and other practical applications.
Quotes:
"Everyone is dying, but no one is dead."
Quotes:
"Everyone is dying, but no one is dead."
April 26, 2013
Such a healthy perspective that many Westerners will benefit by reading. Everyone will need this book one day. I especially respect the view that those who come to say goodbye ( or see you later) are cautioned not to be negative or distraught.
Read
May 1, 2009Has a "self-helpish" title, but is actually a fairly detailed summary of Kalachakra approaches to death, by way of a commentary on a poem by the First Panchen Lama.
Read
November 5, 201317new
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews