Birth, Life and Death

Translated from Tibetan by Elio Guarisco

Birth, Life and Death meets two needs, often considered separate or mutually contradictory: on the one hand our natural tendency to seek health and well-being in everyday life and, on the other, our ever greater yearning for authentic and unconditioned spiritual knowledge that can give us the means to deal with the problems of birth, life and death in a profound though concrete way.

The book has four major sections. In the first part, “Introduction to Tibetan Medicine", the author enlarges on the fundamental characteristics of the human organism, based on the nature of its various physical components and their interactions. The “Birth" section offers particular knowledge of the Tibetan medical tradition on such topics as the function of the elements in fetal development, the secondary causes that determine the gender of the child, and the seven possible constitutions of the child and what portends for his or her future health needs. In the “"Life" section the Author explains how, by cultivating a profound understanding of the three doors of human existence, each individual can realize physical, mental and spiritual health. The last section, “Death," initially considers the nature of death and our attitudes toward it. What follows is a kind of guide on the passage through the four “intermediate states" we experience after leaving our human body.