Lessons from the Dying
Published on 30. January 2012
224 pages
978-0-86171-891-7 (ISBN)
Description
Are a person's perceptions and values altered when facing the end of life?
Are a person's perceptions and values altered when facing the end of life? Do the dying see the world in a way that could help the rest of us learn how to live? This book takes us into the lessons of the dying. Through the words and circumstances of the terminally ill, we become immersed in their wisdom and in our own mortality. The dying speak to us in direct and personal ways, pointing toward a wise and sane way to live.
In everyday language we can all understand, Rodney Smith extends the conversation about death to people of all ages and states of health. Through exercises and guided meditative reflections at the end of each chapter, the lessons of the dying become a blueprint for our own growth.
Are a person's perceptions and values altered when facing the end of life? Do the dying see the world in a way that could help the rest of us learn how to live? This book takes us into the lessons of the dying. Through the words and circumstances of the terminally ill, we become immersed in their wisdom and in our own mortality. The dying speak to us in direct and personal ways, pointing toward a wise and sane way to live.
In everyday language we can all understand, Rodney Smith extends the conversation about death to people of all ages and states of health. Through exercises and guided meditative reflections at the end of each chapter, the lessons of the dying become a blueprint for our own growth.
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Other editions
Additional editions
Rodney Smith
Lessons from the Dying
Book
09/1997
Wisdom Publications,U.S.
€36.08
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Person
Rodney Smith, a guiding teacher for the Insight Meditation Society, has taught insight meditation since 1984. He is a former Buddhist monk and worked in hospice care for seventeen years. The author of Lessons From the Dying and Stepping Out of Self-Deception, he founded and guides the Seattle Insight Meditation Society.
Content
- Front Cover
- CONTENTS
- Foreword by Joseph Goldstein
- Acknowledgments
- INTRODUCTION
- My Journey
- About the Reflections and Exercises
- CHAPTER ONE: DELIGHTING IN THE MYSTERY
- The Intuitive Heart
- Appreciation and Joy
- Mystery and Joy
- CHAPTER TWO: SEEING THINGS AS THEY ARE
- Reflecting on Death
- Observing Resistance
- CHAPTER THREE: RISKING OUR LIVES
- The Urgency to Change
- From Fear to Affection
- Habits and Change
- CHAPTER FOUR: ACKNOWLEDGING THE SHADOW
- Separating Life and Death
- The Meeting of Life and Death
- The Shadow
- CHAPTER FIVE: BEING HUMAN
- Dying as a Human Being
- Addressing Our Fears
- Forgiveness
- Bearing Our Humanity
- CHAPTER SIX: LEARNING FROM EVERY EXPERIENCE
- Using Life for Learning
- The Known and the Unknown
- Learning from Death
- Learning from the Unknown
- CHAPTER SEVEN: LISTENING FROM THE HEART
- Projections
- Listening to the Dying
- True and Useful
- Intimacy
- Listening and Speaking
- CHAPTER EIGHT: SEARCHING FOR MEANING
- Hope
- The Relativity of Meaning
- Finding Meaning
- CHAPTER NINE: UNDERSTANDING OUR SUFFERING
- Understanding Suffering
- In Conflict with Reality
- Befriending Pain
- CHAPTER TEN: OPENING OUR HEARTS
- Finding Our Affection
- The Caring Heart
- Love and the Ego
- Love, Compassion, and Intimacy
- CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE DYING MIND
- Denial
- The Loss of Control
- Losing Our Sense of Self
- Trusting the Process
- Letting Go of Control
- CHAPTER TWELVE: UNDERSTANDING GRIEF
- How We Grieve
- Why We Grieve
- Grief and Change
- Opening the Heart to Grief
- CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE ENDING OF TIME
- Fractured Time
- Integrating into Time Present
- Understanding Your Relationship to Time
- CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE DEATHLESS
- Living Our Death
- From Death to the Deathless
- FURTHER READING
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
