‘In Love with the World’ is the journey of a Tibetan Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is an abbot of three Tibetan monasteries. He was born into a Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche family. It made him automatically carry the lineage of the Tibetan Buddhism. He learned Buddhist ideologies and practices from his childhood onwards. Later he became the abbot of the monasteries. One-night Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche left the monastery in India for a wandering retreat. The book is the journey of his wandering retreat through Indian streets and how he used his Buddhist education and all Buddhist practices. During the retreat he came across near death experience that made him to dive deep into the luminous awareness.
The book starts from the night he escaped from the monastery. The taxi he ordered the day before took him to the Gaya railway station. His journey started from there. All meditations, teachings and practices were not enough for him to easily shift from the comfort of the monastery to the busy streets of India. Mingyur Rinpoche found himself struggling to accept the crowded train, filthy streets and untidy conditions. He used his meditation practices throughout this journey to get rid of his judgements and ego. He remembered the lessons learned in his childhood from his father and teachers to be in the present moment. He used his meditation practices to see the oneness among others surrounded him and the happiness they are seeking. He realized how much he is attached to his monk identity and to the robes he was wearing.
Mingyur Rinpoche did his transition from monk identity to beggar identity step by step. He slept in the Varanasi railway station dormitory during the first few days and travelled to Kushinagar where the Buddha died. He slept there in a cheap hotel until he finished the ten thousand rupees he took along with him. By this time, he was ready to give away his robes and wore Sadhu dress and started living in the streets. The summer weather was too hot that the natives used to go out of their houses only in the evening. After few days in streets he became very ill. He realized that his health is deteriorating. He didn't have any energy to move a bit from the place he slept. He knew that its time for him to leave his physical body. He remembered his teachings about the transfer from physical self to the luminous emptiness. He got ready by surrendering all attachments in this physical world and to be one with the infinite awareness. The near-death experience let him to pass through all stages that he learned from Buddhist teachings. Once he became healthy after this near-death experience, he continued his journey for four more years.
The book is full of wisdom. Mingyur Rinpoche takes you through different teachings of Buddhism. He explains the spacious awareness available to everyone. He deciphered the impermanence of life by explaining the temporariness of the air we breathe, the thoughts, dreams, cells of our body. There is dying and regeneration all the time irrespective of you realizing it or not. In order to regenerate, you must die first. When you chose a different path other than the habitual or conditioned practices like changing your daily habits, changing your job, moving to a new location everything occurs with the death of old reality and moving into the new reality. No matter how impermanent this life is, everyone owns the infinite awareness. The meditation practices let you be aware about this infinite awareness. Our liberation comes from the recognition of this awareness.
One of the main lessons which you can take from this book is the idea of bardos. The book's title itself contain 'A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying'. Bardo means the intermediate state between one’s life and the next. For example, the gap between breath is bardo. Mingyur Rinpoche explains six bardos in the book - The bardo of this life, the bardo of meditation, the bardo of sleep and dreams, the bardo of dying, the bardo of dharmata, the bardo of becoming. The bardo of this life is the existence from our birth until the moment of the death of our physical body. One can experience the gap between his breaths, his thoughts, dreams. One can feel the new beginning after each sleep. The sleep meditation allows one to be in awareness throughout his sleep and the dream meditation allows you to be aware that you are in dream and play the dream as you want. All these experiences lead you to the luminous emptiness, the true awareness. Mingyur Rinpoche passed through all these bardos before he reached the bardo of dying. During his near-death experience, he underwent the dissolution of his physical body, breath, thoughts, situations, mental states. Once the bardo of dying happened he entered the bardo of dharmata. It is a stage like our dream. The final stage is the bardo of becoming at which the mind is released from the familiar physical and/or mental environment. The bardo shows us that everything is always in transition.
‘In Love with the World’ is one of the books where you can acquire knowledge about your true nature. The impermanence of this life is so clearly explained throughout this book. You can use the teachings and meditations used by Mingyur Rinpoche throughout your life experiences. He used lot of metaphors to explain the luminous awareness available to everyone. He expressed thoughts and emotions as clouds in the sky. When you are overwhelmed or filled with remorse just remember that these are clouds and it shall too pass. Like your dream, try to pay little attention to your negative thoughts. He explained the process of dying and becoming one with the true awareness as shattering of an empty cup and the emptiness become one with the vast emptiness. He described it as child luminosity becomes one with the mother luminosity. In the last part of the book he compared the liberation of the mind to three stages of moon. First stage is getting the image of moon by someone's description. The second stage is the image of the moon as a reflection on the river. The third stage is direct vision of the moon. The enlightenment occurs in the third stage. During the first stage the mind gets liberated from conceptual filters and we get the perception of the awareness. Then you start to mediate, be still with yourself and you reach the second stage where you meet the emptiness or awareness. And finally, you are one with the luminous emptiness.
I encourage you to read this book to know more about your mind. If you feel stuck in your life or are looking for meaning in your life, I highly recommend this book. This is one of the books that I am going to read again. I encourage you to find some time to be with your mind and watch your thoughts and emotions. Always remember that the life is impermanent. Your world changes with your change. You cannot change the pain directly, but you can change your relationship to it, hence the suffering associated with the pain. Come out of your comfort zone, conceptual thinking and be the change you want to be.
Online sites to buy the books:
Canada : In Love with the world by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche; In Love With the World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
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