[2] In 1983, he met Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Kenneth Ring and other figures in the caring professions and near-death research, and they encouraged him to develop his work in opening up the Tibetan teachings on death and helping the dying.
[3] In 1991, Andrew Harvey and Patrick Gaffney moved into a small house in California, selected for the creative process, and close to Sogyal Rinpoche's residence.
He was testing the key chapters, for example on the Nature of Mind, the practice of meditation, compassion, Guru Yoga and Dzogchen, by teaching them directly, again and again, all over the world in retreats and courses.
"[3]The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying was first launched in the United States in September 1992, where it received high acclaim and spent several weeks at the top of the bestseller lists.
[note 1] The book’s success contributed to an expansion of the work of Rigpa, the network of Buddhist centres and groups set up by Sogyal Rinpoche in the 1970s.
[6] A major conference held at Germering, near Munich in 1996 and involving several leading authorities on care for the dying, had a considerable influence on the emerging hospice movement in Germany.
The perspective is forthrightly and profoundly Tibetan, but it is expounded so clearly that the reader has no trouble discerning on every page its universal import.”[9] The book has also received praise from a number of celebrities and public figures, who have cited it as influential in their lives.
[13] Sogyal Rinpoche said in his introduction to the revised edition: "Nurses, doctors, and those professionally involved with care for the dying have told me how they have integrated these methods in their daily work, and I have heard many accounts of ordinary people using these practices and finding that they transformed the death of a close friend or relative.
They seem to recognize the universality of its message, and understand that it aims not to persuade or convert, but simply to offer the wisdom of the ancient Buddhist teachings in order to bring the maximum possible benefit.