Though the personification of Death is vivid in the Tibetan imagination, we notice at once that it is not Yama [the “Lord of Death”] himself that is so awful, but rather his judgement and the possibly negative fate he metes out. Tibetans have the commonsense view that life is boundless, that we did not come out of nothing and cannot become nothing. We are both beginningless and endless. Since we will always be involved in the relational realm, we must know our inner freedom as well. If we do not, and are forced in our ignorance to experience our invitable involvement as an endless bondage, as a perpetual suffering, our lives will be boundless torment.
from The Tibetan Book of the Dead
translation by Robert A.F. Thurman