Growing older, getting sick, and dying are tough subjects we usually like to avoid - even if we've admitted to ourselves that they're inevitable. The Buddhist practice of maranasati, or death awareness, helps us to confront these hard realities head-on, as a paticularly powerful means of liberating ourselves from the attachments that cause us to suffer. This book is the fruit of Larry Rosenberg's years of practicing and teaching death awareness. Using a text known as the Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection, he shows how intimacy with aging and mortality can be a means to liberation: when we become profoundly intimate with ourselves, with others, indeed with all things.
Living in the Light of Death, Larry Rosenberg, Shambhala Publications, $22.95
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.
| 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 |
| Meditation and the Practice of Awareness |
165 |
| Glossary |
171 |
| Bibliography |
173 |
| Resources |
175 |
|