Introduction                    

Welcome to the Heart Advice for Death and Dying. In our busy modern lives, we may not give much thought to death. We fear that thinking about death will take the joy out of living. But in reality, when we actively think about death and prepare for it, we find peace, fulfillment, and happiness in our current lives and our fear of death disappears.

The Tibetan Buddhist master Lama Zopa Rinpoche has given profound and accessible teachings on death and dying for many years. Recently, he asked that these teachings be made available, so that all students – beginner to advanced – have access to this most essential advice for this crucial time of transition from one life to the next.

This  course is designed to provide practical instructions for the time of death to students who are interested in learning about death and dying from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective. This course is appropriate for beginners and does not assume that those who participate in this course know anything at all about Buddhism. However, the materials covered in this course should not be considered the property of beginners alone; the teachings offered here are profound and will be of benefit to even advanced students on the path to enlightenment.

The structure of this course is as follows:

• Death according to Buddhism
• Developing healthy, realistic attitudes about death
• An explanation of samsara, the state of enlightenment, and the need to remember death
• Introduction to the nine-point meditation on death
  • The inevitability of death
  • The uncertainty of the time of death
  • What helps at the time of death
• Methods for dealing with disturbing emotions regarding death
• Things we can do to prepare for death
• The practice of tong-len
• The eight stages of the death process
• Helping others who are dying