Living in the Light of Death

by ROSENBERG, LARRY

• ISBN13: 9781570624254
• ISBN10: 1570624259
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-08-01
• Publisher: Shambhala

Summary

This book presents the Buddhist approach to facing the inevitable facts of growing older, getting sick, and dying. These touch 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.

Author Biography

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	(20)
The First Messenger: Aging Is Unavoidable	21	(27)
The Second Messenger: Illness Is Unavoidable	48	(30)
The Third Messenger: Death Is Unavoidable	78	(44)
The Fourth Messenger: Heirs to Our Actions	122	(19)
The Practice: Intimacy with Living and Dying	141	(24)
Appendix: Meditation and the Practice of Awareness	165	(6)
Glossary	171	(2)
Bibliography	173	(2)
Resources	175