Living in the Light of Death: On the Art of Being Truly Alive

by Larry Rosenberg

Overview

This book presents the Buddhist approach to facing the inevitable facts of growing older, getting sick, and dying. These tough realities are not given much attention by many people until midlife, when they become harder to avoid. Using a Buddhist text known as the Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection, Larry Rosenberg shows how intimacy with the realities of aging can actually be used as a means to liberation. When we become intimate with these inevitable aspects of life, he writes, we also become intimate with ourselves, with others, with the world—indeed with all things.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781570628207
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	09/18/2001
Edition description:	First Paperback
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.53(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Larry Rosenberg is founder and resident teacher of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a guiding teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	A Note on Terminology	xiii
	Introduction: Aging and Death, Our Lifelong Companions	1
	The First Messenger: Aging Is Unavoidable	21
	The Second Messenger: Illness Is Unavoidable	48
	The Third Messenger: Death Is Unavoidable	78
	The Fourth Messenger: Heirs to Our Actions	122
	The Practice: Intimacy with Living and Dying	141
Appendix	Meditation and the Practice of Awareness	165
	Glossary	171
	Bibliography	173
	Resources	175

Editorial Reviews

"Living in the Light of Death is an invaluable primer for virtually anyone who has a body and is old enough to read. Larry Rosenberg dives right to the core of what it takes to be truly alive and, with the lightest and kindest of touches, shows us simple ways to wake up to our lives while we have them to live. A true vehicle for exploring the profound question of whether there is life before death."—Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are

From the Publisher

"Intending to wake us up," Rosenberg, founder of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, contemplates the inevitability of illness, old age, and death, using the Buddhist text "Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection" as his groundwork. His book is a sharp, if salutary, jolt to our usual sense of complacency about life, and his advice about the knowledge of our death is, in a Buddhist sense, to give ourselves to that knowledge completely. For collections where interest in Buddhism or death studies is strong. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

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