Mindfulness is everywhere. But anyone who wants some appreciation of the gulf that separates a 10-minute session with one of the popular meditation apps from a lifetime of dedicated practice will profit from reading Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche's In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying. It is one Buddhist monk's heartfelt account of his engagement, on the verge of death, with the deepest levels of practice.
Nepal native Mingyur Rinpoche (The Joy of Living) entered the monastery as an 11-year-old, and by 2011, then age 36, he found himself the abbot of three Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. Through his organization Tergar International, he was also the leader of a worldwide network of meditation communities. On June 1, 2011, under cover of darkness and without a word to his followers, he traded his privileged heritage and sheltered surroundings in a monastery in India's Bodh Gaya for the harsh existence of a solitary wandering yogi, an "ego-suicide mission" he planned to pursue for at least three years.
In Love with the World focuses on the first few profoundly consequential weeks of Mingyur Rinpoche's itinerant retreat. He vividly describes that new environment, beginning with the sensory shock of encountering life in a packed, foul-smelling coach on the train to the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, sharing his existence in an elemental way with some of the most impoverished members of Indian society.
But the heart of the book is a terrifying account of his near-death experience in Kushinagar, at the Cremation Stupa where relics from the Buddha's funeral pyre are housed. Now penniless and having exchanged his monk's robes for a mendicant's garb, he settles there to meditate for hours each day. One of his more rewarding encounters is with an Asian businessman who's come to deepen his own meditation practice, and who might serve as a proxy for Mingyur Rinpoche's intended audience.
Soon, however, Mingyur Rinpoche is stricken with a catastrophic case of food poisoning, after dining on scraps he begs from a nearby restaurant when he spends his last rupee. As his illness deepens, he drifts in and out of consciousness, and appears headed for an early, tragic death. Throughout these grim few days, he draws upon a lifetime of intensive meditation practice to inhabit his experience, as he navigates the various bardos (transitions) he expects to transport him from life into death and rebirth.
In Love with the World takes the reader inside the mind of a meditation master, with much the same feeling one might have listening to a world-class musician or artist describe the process of executing a complex work. This is a challenging book, but one well worth reading for meditation practitioners who want to explore some of the more intensive, esoteric reaches of the discipline, however unlikely they may be to ever attain them. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: A prominent Buddhist monk describes his intense spiritual experience at the beginning of a lengthy wandering retreat.