Saturday, December 30, 2006

An Enlightened Vision of Death & Dying

It is crucial now that an enlightened vision of death and dying should be introduced throughout the world at all levels of education. Children should not be “protected” from death, but introduced, while young, to the true nature of death and what they can learn from it.

Why not introduce this vision, in its simplest forms, to all age groups? Knowledge about death, about how to help the dying, and about the spiritual nature of death and dying should be made available to all levels of society; it should be taught, in depth and with real imagination, in schools and colleges and universities of all kinds; and especially and most important, it should be available in teaching hospitals to nurses and doctors who will look after the dying and who have so much responsibility to them.

---Sogyal Rinpoche

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's because we don't handle death very well as a society, but I really disagree. My brother's death in Vietnam when I was 13 was the one single moment when my childhood ended. My young son's watching my mothers death left holes in their hearts, and my illness has indelable marks on my daughter's psyche. I just think that children do not profit from seeing death.