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

402 NOTES5. The future Buddha, Maitreya, is in fact portrayed sitting on achair.6. You may not be following this practice now, but keeping theeyes open creates an auspicious condition for your practicing it in thefuture. See Chapter 10, "The Innermost Essence."7. See Appendix 4 for an explanation of this mantra.8. Although I have given here a full instruction on the practice, itshould be borne in mind that meditation cannot truly be learnedfrom a book, but only with the guidance of a qualified teacher.9. Rainer Maria Rilke in Duino Elegies,10. Lewis Thompson, Mirror to the Light (Coventure).6. EVOLUTION, KARMA, AND REBIRTH1. Adapted from the "Middle Length Sayings," quoted in H. W.Schumann, The Historical Buddha (London: Arkana, 1989), 54-55.2. Quoted in Hans TenDam, Exploring Reincarnation (London:Arkana, 1990), 377. Other figures in the West in modern history whohave apparently believed in rebirth have included: Goethe, Schiller,Swedenborg, Tolstoy, Gauguin, Mahler, Arthur Conan Doyle, DavidLloyd George, Kipling, Sibelius, and General Patton.3. Some Buddhist scholars prefer the word rebirth to "reincarnation,"which they feel implies the notion of a "soul" that incarnates,and it is therefore not appropriate to Buddhism. The American statisticsfor belief in reincarnation appear in: George Gallup Jr., withWilliam Proctor, Adventures in Immortality: A Look Beyond the Thresholdof Death (London; Souvenir, 1983). A poll in the London Sunday Telegraph,April 15, 1979, indicated that 28 percent of British peoplebelieved in reincarnation.4. Joan Forman, The Golden Shore (London: Futura, 1989), 159-63.5. Ian Stevenson, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (Charlottesville:Univ. of Virginia Press, 1974); Cases of the ReincarnationType, vols. 1-4 (Charlottesville: Univ. of Virginia Press, 1975-1983);Children Who Remember Previous Lives (Charlottesville: Univ. of VirginiaPress, 1987).6. Kalsang Yeshi, "Kamaljit Kour: Remembering a Past Life," inDreloma, no. 12 (New Delhi, June 1984): 25-31.7. Raymond A. Moody, Jr., Life After Life (New York: Bantam,1986), 94.8. Margot Grey, Return from Death: An Exploration of the Near-DeathExperience (Boston and London: Arkana, 1985), 105.9. Kenneth Ring, Heading Towards Omega: In Search of the Meaningof the Near-Death Experience (New York: Quill, 1985), 156.10. Interestingly Mozart, in a letter to his father, referred to deathas "the true and best friend of humanity ... the key which unlocksthe door to our true state of happiness." "At night," he wrote, "Inever lie down in my bed without thinking that perhaps (young as I