The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

368 THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYINGThis book is giving you a sacred technology, by which youcan transform not only your present life and not only yourdying and your death, but also your future lives, and so thefuture of humanity. What my masters and I are hoping toinspire here is a major leap forward toward the conscious evolutionof humanity. To learn how to die is to learn how tolive; to learn how to live is to learn how to act not only inthis life, but in the lives to come. To transform yourself trulyand learn how to be reborn as a transformed being to helpothers is really to help the world in the most powerful wayof all.The most compassionate insight of my tradition and itsnoblest contribution to the spiritual wisdom of humanity hasbeen its understanding and repeated enactment of the ideal ofthe bodhisattva, the being who takes on the suffering of allsentient beings, who undertakes the journey to liberation notfor his or her own good alone but to help all others, and whoeventually, after attaining liberation, does not dissolve into theabsolute or flee the agony of samsara, but chooses to returnagain and again to devote his or her wisdom and compassionto the service of the whole world. What the world needsmore than anything is active servants of peace such as these,"clothed," as Longchenpa said, "in the armor of perseverance,"dedicated to their bodhisattva vision and to the spreading ofwisdom into all reaches of our experience. We need bodhisattvalawyers, bodhisattva artists and politicians, bodhisattvadoctors and economists, bodhisattva teachers and scientists,bodhisattva technicians and engineers, bodhisattvas everywhere,working consciously as channels of compassion andwisdom at every level and in every situation of society, workingto transform their minds and actions and those of others,working tirelessly in the certain knowledge of the support ofthe buddhas and enlightened beings, for the preservation ofour world, and for a more merciful future. As Teilhard deChardin said: "Some day, after we have mastered the winds,the waves, the tides and gravity,... we shall harness ... theenergies of love. Then, for the second time in the history ofthe world, man will have discovered fire." In the wonderfulprayer of Rumi:O love, O pure deep love, be here, be nowBe all; worlds dissolve into your stainless endless radiance,Frail living leaves burn with you brighter than cold stars:Make me your servant, your breath, your core.