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Overview
What can death teach the living? Former monk and hospice worker Rodney Smith teaches us that through intimately considering our own inevitable end we can reawaken to the sublime miracle of life we so often take for granted. A well of stories, personal anecdotes, and direct advice gleaned from years of working with the dying in their final moments, Lessons from the Dying helps us redefine our conception of what it means to truly live. Each chapter contains guided reflections and exercises that allow the reader to integrate the wisdom in its pages more fully into their lives. With a sense of compassion, Lessons from the Dying provides all the tools of mind one needs to rediscover, in this very moment, the mystery and wonder of a lifetime.
From the foreword by Joseph Goldstein: “Lessons from the Dying could also be called “lessons for the living” because of the courageous honesty revealed in so many of the stories told here. These accounts reflect back to us our own attitudes toward death and love, and they prompt us to examine the way we are living our lives right now. In the busyness of our lives we rarely take time to consider our mortality and the implications that it might have for the choices we make. Yet when we do cultivate this awareness it becomes a powerful force for wise discrimination.”
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781614291947 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wisdom Publications MA |
| Publication date: | 01/13/2015 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Foreword Joseph Goldstein xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
My Journey 2
About the Reflections and Exercises 4
1 Delighting in the Mystery 7
The Intuitive Heart 11
Appreciation and Joy 13
Mystery and Joy 16
2 Seeing Things as They Are 19
Reflecting on Death 22
Observing Resistance 29
3 Risking Our Lives 31
The Urgency to Change 33
From Fear to Affection 37
Habits and Change 42
4 Acknowledging the Shadow 45
Separating Life and Death 47
The Meeting of Life and Death 50
The Shadow 54
5 Being Human 57
Dying as a Human Being 60
Addressing Our Fears 63
Forgiveness 66
Bearing Our Humanity 72
6 Learning from Every Experience 75
Using Life for Learning 77
The Known and the Unknown 82
Learning from Death 85
Learning from the Unknown 88
7 Listening from the Heart 91
Projections 93
Listening to the Dying 95
True and Useful 98
Intimacy 100
Listening and Speaking 103
8 Searching for Meaning 107
Hope 110
The Relativity of Meaning 115
Finding Meaning 121
9 Understanding Our Suffering 123
Understanding Suffering 126
In Conflict with Reality 130
Befriending Pain 134
10 Opening Our Hearts 137
Finding Our Affection 139
The Caring Heart 142
Love and the Ego 147
Love, Compassion, and Intimacy 150
11 The Dying Mind 153
Denial 155
The Loss of Control 158
Losing Our Sense of Self 161
Trusting the Process 163
Letting Go of Control 166
12 Understanding Grief 169
How We Grieve 171
Why We Grieve 174
Grief and Change 176
Opening the Heart to Grief 178
13 The Ending of Time 181
Fractured Time 184
Integrating into Time Present 187
Understanding Your Relationship to Time 191
14 The Deathless 193
Living Our Death 195
From Death to the Deathless 197
Further Reading 203
About the Author 207