Living and Dying with Confidence

May 9, 2016
Tibetan Buddhist master Anyen Rinpoche and his student and translator, Zangmo, offer readers a year-long course in achieving detachment from overwhelming concerns. Organized around a theme for each month, such as impermanence, coping with loss, patience, or daily practice, this guide provides exercises to contemplate. Though brief, they raise serious introspective questions and nicely build upon one another. This seemingly simple and sparse approach allows the daily tasks to be clear while, at times, strenuously demanding. The work suggests undertaking the year along with a community, but it is unclear how the personal reflections and actions are to be shared or discussed with others. The authors’ gentle, deductive approach returns death from the periphery of Western experience to the central question of existence every day. Rather than encouraging a passive consumption of Buddhist thought, the work seeks to cultivate an attitude in readers that will pay large dividends for those who follow the course.