Contemplating deeply on the secret message of impermanence - what lies in fact beyond impermanence and death - leads directly to the heart of the ancient and powerful Tibetan teachings: the introduction to the essential "nature of mind". Realization of the nature of mind, which you could call our innermost essence, that truth we all search for, is the key to understanding life and death. For what happens at the moment of death is that the ordinary mind and its delusions die, and in that gap the boundless sky-like nature of our mind is uncovered. This essential nature of mind is the background to the whole of life and death, like the sky, which folds the whole universe in its embrace. – Sogyal Rinpoche, "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying"

I mentioned before I read this book at Borders bookstore in New Jersey, but recently I bought it here in Taiwan, so this is my book with my own "annotations". I don't highlight in books anymore. I used to. But I too often found that when I went back to look at my highlights, I didn't really get why I highlighted certain passages in the first place.

So now I use post-its at the edge of the page where I find passages that are noteworthy. The benefit is that instead of leading me directly to something I might have noted before, I only know the general paragraph that inspired me before, but to get it, I might need to read a bit before or a bit after and look for what I thought was noteworthy.

Anyway, having finished this book, I'm going back to what I post-ited, and having no doubt about why.