Thurman, Essential Tibetan Buddhism Introduction (part) - Tibet House

many former lifetimes of biological experience, of being embeddedas an
individual in a great chain of vastly different life-forms, and of being subject to
moving, after a relatively short instant of life, into other embodiments, other
realms, other life-forms, perhaps divine forms or forms of great suffering. This
sense makes the moments of this life incredibly valuable, as opportunities to
positively affect those future lives. One feels naturally one should invest the
moments of this life in making spiritual efforts, working with one’s subtlest
mind, which is the sole thing that will determine the boundless future, for good
or ill, that it be happy and not miserable.
In this era, the Tibetans attained several qualities that are socilogically
extraordinary, not present in most other Asian nations, and some of them not
that prevalent even today. They gradually lost most interest in their ancestors,
and they did not maintain any ancestral rituals as people did in ancient India
and China. This is the direct result of the sense of karmic evolution, since an
ancestor is more likely to be reborn as another felow being around one alive
today than to be sitting in some imputed ancestral realm waiting for offerings
and pious thoughts. They lost bit by bit their intensity of taste for war, journeys
of conquest, material development, considering the accumulation of even vast
treasures more or less a waste of time. a useless enterprise, since death would
deprive them of the benefit soon enough. Yet they still liked to travel as pilgrims,
do business in a low key way, while in the midst of long pilgrimages to holy
places. They became very conscious of the immediate presence of Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas, as deities and angels and other spiritual agencies that help human
beings and even as other human beings, living persons reincarnated as humans
to teach the way to enlightenment.