Studying Dying

For modern science, the transitional states of consciousness lie at the forefront of research in many fields. For a Buddhist practitioner, these same states present crucial opportunities to explore and transform consciousness itself. This book is the account of a historic dialogue between leading Western scientists and the Dalai Lama of Tibet. Revolving around three key moments of consciousness - sleep, dreams, and death - the conversations recorded here are both engrossing and highly listenable.

A physician reveals how right-wing backlash policies have mortal consequences -- even for the white voters they promise to help Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Esquire and the Boston Globe In the era of Donald Trump, many lower- and middle-class white Americans are drawn to...

Ostensibly about death and its attendant rituals, The Undertaking is in the end about life. In each case, he writes, it is the one that gives meaning to the other. A funeral director in Milford, Michigan, Lynch is that strangest of hyphenates, a poet-undertaker, but according to Lynch, all poets share his occupation, "looking for meaning and voices in life and love and death." Looking for meaning takes him to all sorts of unexpected places, both real and imagined. He embalms the body of his own father, celebrates the rebuilt bridge to his town's old cemetery, and more.

This new South End Press edition makes available the full text of this out-of-print classic - along with a new foreword by Manning Marable, interviews with participants in DRUM, and reflections on political developments over the past three decades by Georgakas and Surkin.

Based partly on the author's experience, partly on her in-depth interviews, and partly on a questionnaire she developed with psychologist Holly Barrett to which almost 600 women responded, Father Loss provides the clearest portrait yet of a very special group of women. As a group, they express their insecurities ("Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to love a man totally...because that would mean I didn't love my father anymore." - Leslie).

Kathleen Dowling Singh illuminates the profound psychological and spiritual transformations experiences by the dying as the natural process of death reconnects them with the source of their being. Examining the end of life in the light of current psychological understanding, religious wisdom, and compassionate medical science, The Grace of Dying offers a fresh, deeply comforting message of hope and courage as we contemplate the meaning of our mortality.

Written after his wife's tragic death as a way of surviving the "mad midnight moments", A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. This work contains his concise, genuine reflections on that period.

A Theology of Dying: Preparing for the Next Life Now is not a book about hospice procedures or end-of-life planning. It is a spiritual exploration of what it means to learn how to die before we die—so that death, when it comes, does not arrive as a stranger. Drawing on Scripture, pastoral ministry, prison outreach, hospice experience, and a lifetime of lived faith, Geoffrey Schmitt invites readers into the quiet, courageous work of surrender that shapes a faithful life. Each chapter explores a different form of “spiritual dying”: the death of ego, the release of control, the letting ...

To many in the age of Obama, America had succeeded in "going beyond race", putting the divisions of the past behind us. And then 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and then Baltimore blew up; and then gunfire shattered a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the entire country awakened to a stark fact: Young Black men are an endangered species.

In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die. She begins the journey in rural India with a reincarnation researcher and ends up in a University of Virginia operating room where cardiologists have installed equipment near the ceiling to study out-of-body near-death experiences.

Why should America try to be more like countries that are worse in nearly every way? Europe has been declining under the weight of its antiquated institutions, economic fatigue, moral anemia and cultural surrender. Yet American politicians, technocrats, academics, and pundits argue, with...

Do you ever feel spiritually dry? Venture into this refreshing Bible Study guide: Secrets of the DRY BONES, reopens what many might deem a daunting cold case, a mystery for the ages. The Case File?: Ezekiel 37: 1-14. No doubt about it, Ezekiel's visionary prophecy was an arresting sight. Imagine: a valley, strewn with the dry bones of God's entire household of faith. Even more intriguing was the query God put to the Prophet, Ezekiel: "Can these bones live?" It's a question that still reverberates today. Verse by verse, you'll explore the Scene of the Crime. Narrow down suspects in Whodunit?...

In science, a law is defined as “a generalized rule to explain a body of observations in the form of a verbal or mathematical statement.” In religion, a law is the concept of a religious system or document being used as a legal resource; it refers to the concept that the word of God is Law and has a permanent, unchanging quality. In the Seven Laws of Dying to Self, the use of the word Law refers to neither a science of physical nature (or matter) or religious law but refers to the intangible, guiding processes the Holy Spirit uses to transform the soul of every disciple of Jesus Christ....

What would you think of one who should build a beautiful house and then destroy it, or paint a lovely picture and then tear it to pieces? Have you never thought that this is the way God is doing? He makes, to destroy. Nothing seems to long remain the same. He clothes the trees with leaves, but within a few months strips them off. He makes the tiny bud and develops it into the beautiful flower, but the flower is no sooner in bloom than it begins to wither and fade. It seems to be so with everything in nature. It starts out, grows in beauty, and then is destroyed. Why should such loveliness ...

Frustrated and disillusioned with his life as a Christian motivational speaker, Michael Yankoski was determined to stop merely talking about living a life of faith and start experiencing it. The result was a year of focused engagement with spiritual practices--both ancient and modern--that...

Changing the Narrative: The Celebration of the Ordinary For nearly a century, stories about disability have followed the same script: a life without hope, a body defined by loss, and a “dignified” ending that too often means disappearance. Changing the Narrative examines how this idea took shape—from early eugenic theories and Nazi propaganda films to modern cinema, literature, and media—and why it continues to shape how disabled lives are valued today. Drawing on historical records, cultural analysis, and contemporary data, R.M. de Loera traces how the focus shifted from collective...

A groundbreaking exploration of grief and racial trauma through the eyes of a Black end-of-life caregiver. Most of us understand grief as sorrow experienced after a loss--the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or a change in life circumstance. Breeshia Wade approaches grief as...

Past and present civilizations failed and fail for many reasons, but the number-one predictor of a civilization’s survival is its sense of religion—or lack thereof. So argues David Goldman in How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam Is Dying Too). The strength of a civilization’s religion affects its purpose, its fertility rate, and ultimately, its fate, says Goldman—who then argues that, contrary to popular belief, Islamic countries are in the last throes of death while Christian America is in a position to flourish.

Cambiemos de narrativa: la celebración de lo ordinario Durante casi un siglo, la discapacidad ha sido narrada desde la lástima, la tragedia o la idea de una «vida sin esperanza». Este ensayo propone detenernos, mirar atrás y cuestionar esa narrativa que se repite en libros, películas y discursos contemporáneos. A través de un recorrido histórico, cultural y mediático, la autora examina cómo se ha construido el imaginario colectivo alrededor de la discapacidad: desde la eugenesia y la propaganda del siglo XX hasta las historias modernas que siguen equiparando dignidad con muerte. ...

As late as the 1960s, the Wari' Indians of the western Amazonian rainforest ate the roasted flesh of their dead as an expression of compassion for the deceased and for his or her close relatives. By removing and transforming the corpse, Wari' death rites helped the bereaved kin accept their loss and go on with their lives. Drawing on the recollections of Wari' elders who participated in consuming the dead, this book presents one of the richest, most authoritative ethnographic accounts of funerary cannibalism ever recorded.