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

THE NATURE OF MIND 53single point: to look into the nature of the mind, and so freeus from the fear of death and help us realize the truth of life.Looking in will require of us great subtlety and greatcourage—nothing less than a complete shift in our attitude tolife and to the mind. We are so addicted to looking outsideourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almostcompletely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culturehas given us no idea of what we will find. We may eventhink that if we do we will be in danger of madness. This isone of the last and most resourceful ploys of ego to prevent usdiscovering our real nature.So we make our lives so hectic that we eliminate the slightestrisk of looking into ourselves. Even the idea of meditationcan scare people. When they hear the words "egoless" or"emptiness," they think experiencing those states will be likebeing thrown out of the door of a spaceship to float forever ina dark, chilling void. Nothing could be further from the truth.But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillnessterrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise andfrantic busyness. Looking into the nature of our mind is thelast thing we would dare to do.Sometimes I think we don't want to ask any real questionsabout who we are, for fear of discovering there is some otherreality than this one. What would this discovery make of howwe have lived? How would our friends and colleagues react towhat we now know? What would we do with the newknowledge? With knowledge comes responsibility. Sometimeseven when the cell door is flung open, the prisoner choosesnot to escape.THE PROMISE OF ENLIGHTENMENTIn the modem world, there are few examples of humanbeings who embody the qualities that come from realizing thenature of mind. So it is hard for us even to imagine enlightenmentor the perception of an enlightened being, and evenharder to begin to think we ourselves could become enlightened.For all its vaunted celebration of the value of human lifeand individual liberty, our society in fact treats us as obsessedonly with power, sex, and money, and needing to be distractedat any moment from any contact with death, or withreal life. If we are told of or begin to suspect our deep potential,we cannot believe it; and if we can conceive of spiritual