- Paperback: 128 pages
- Publisher: Shambhala Publications Inc (7 April 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1570623325
- ISBN-13: 978-1570623325
- Product Dimensions: 14 x 1.3 x 21.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
-
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
33,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #28 in Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Health Issues > Death & Bereavement
- #29 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Other Religions > Eastern Mystical Philosophy
- #62 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Buddhism > Philosophy
Making Friends with Death
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.50
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.50, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In Making Friends with Death, Buddhist teacher Judith Lief, who's drawn her inspiration from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, shows us that through the powerful combination of contemplation of death and mindfulness practice, we can change how we relate to death, enhance our appreciation of everyday life, and use our developing acceptance of our own vulnerability as a basis for opening to others. She also offers a series of guidelines to help us reconnect with dying persons, whether they are friends or family, clients or patients.
Lief highlights the value of relating to the immediacy of death as an ongoing aspect of everyday life by offering readers a variety of practical methods that they can apply to their lives and work. These methods include:
• Simple mindfulness exercises for deepening awareness of moment-by-moment change
• Practices for cultivating loving-kindness
• Helpful slogans and guidelines for caregivers to use
Making Friends with Death will enlighten anyone interested in coming to terms with their own mortality. More specifically, the contemplative approach presented here offers health professionals, students of death and dying, and people who are helping a dying friend or relative useful guidance and inspiration. It will show them how to ground their actions in awareness and compassion, so that the steps they take in dealing with pain and suffering will be more effective.
Lief highlights the value of relating to the immediacy of death as an ongoing aspect of everyday life by offering readers a variety of practical methods that they can apply to their lives and work. These methods include:
• Simple mindfulness exercises for deepening awareness of moment-by-moment change
• Practices for cultivating loving-kindness
• Helpful slogans and guidelines for caregivers to use
Making Friends with Death will enlighten anyone interested in coming to terms with their own mortality. More specifically, the contemplative approach presented here offers health professionals, students of death and dying, and people who are helping a dying friend or relative useful guidance and inspiration. It will show them how to ground their actions in awareness and compassion, so that the steps they take in dealing with pain and suffering will be more effective.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
LIFE WON'T WAIT. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
LIFE WON'T WAIT. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am usually very cautious of western writers talking about eastern traditions. But this one made an exception: If you feel that contemplating death could bring you help in everyday life, then go for it and read it.
It is a practical and direct book (benefits from a female western writer ?), separated in short chapters with an "exercise" at the end of each. No blablabla about buddhism, but applications in everyday life and presentations of common pitfalls in the practice. This is obviously based on a lot of experience and teaching (and influence from a tibetan master, can't remember his name), as very often I found it touched the right point.
It talks about subjects we usually try to ignore (death, pain, illness...) but unconsciously have great influences in our lives. To be aware of them helps to relieve ourselves, or to know better how to deal with dying relatives.
Should say too that part of the book is dedicated on how to behave with a dying person, but to me the principles can be applied in our daily lives too.
I loved it and bought it.
It is a practical and direct book (benefits from a female western writer ?), separated in short chapters with an "exercise" at the end of each. No blablabla about buddhism, but applications in everyday life and presentations of common pitfalls in the practice. This is obviously based on a lot of experience and teaching (and influence from a tibetan master, can't remember his name), as very often I found it touched the right point.
It talks about subjects we usually try to ignore (death, pain, illness...) but unconsciously have great influences in our lives. To be aware of them helps to relieve ourselves, or to know better how to deal with dying relatives.
Should say too that part of the book is dedicated on how to behave with a dying person, but to me the principles can be applied in our daily lives too.
I loved it and bought it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
60 of 60 people found the following review helpful
It's Not What You Think It Is - Death or Lief's book.
30 Oct 2001
Format:Paperback
I started reading this book shortly after the death of my step-father and my mother's being diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. As I joined my siblings to help our mother deal with the death of her husband, and to help her adjust to the knowledge of her own condition, I used this book to keep me from getting lost in a whirlpool of thoughts and feelings that would have been of no help to anyone.
I would read the book and see exactly where the things Lief discusses in her work could be applied in my own situation. I tested it, on the spot. It works. There's no magic to this book, no secret code to it. Don't be put off by the fact that it's a "Buddhist" guide...you could be Catholic, Hindu, Muslim or Jewish, from any walk of life, any race or creed, on any spiritual path, and still benefit tremendously from this book.
You don't necessarily have to be "dying" or standing next to someone who's dying to benefit from the book as well. It's really a book for people who are living, moment-to-moment, in the vulnerable awareness of death as a fact of life, something not to be avoided, but met, befriended.
Lief has a simple, direct way of speaking about the dying and those who are near to them, caring for them, as they are dying. She has the kind of light touch and sense of humor (at specific points) that indicate the true depth and intensity of her point of view. There is a warmth throughout the work that gives you a sense that she's not in some ivory tower somewhere "thinking" about the best way for people to handle death. Neither is she in a cave in Tibet "having dreams and visions" about it. You get the sense, as you read the work, that she's standing right next to you, helping you to work your way through your own situation. I never felt, as I read the book, that she was an outsider looking in on my situation.
It's a good book for people going through transitions of any sort whatsoever. People aren't the only things that die. Relationships, jobs, dreams, institutions, ideas...all these things die too and in a very subtle way, Lief's book helps us to deal with the death (and birth) of these things too.
Something about this book makes you feel very connected to life.
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Making Friends with Death
29 Mar 2001
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent down to earth guide to the various issues surrounding death. The first section is entitled "Cultivating a personal awareness of death." Many analogies and examples that we can all relate to are given about our views of the subject. Simple excercises at the end of each chapter give the reader a chance to illuminate his or her views. Meditation practice is introduced as a tool to make friends with ourselves and to settle our minds. Then contemplation of death is introduced to help us face death and change with equanimity and to develop a reverence for life. The second section is entitled "Opening our Heart". Here Lief describes how the simplicity of death cuts through our superflouous concerns and opens. The various descriptions of dysfunctional compassion are the best I've seen anywhere and worth it for all of us to check out. The final section is practical advise in the form of "slogans" or reminders to help us when we are actually working with a dying person. This is a book that is useful at any time in one's life so that when one does encounter death, be it one's own or a close frind or relative, one is able to respond with composure and kindness.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
buy this
5 May 2007
Format:Paperback
i bought this when my wife passed , it gave me alot of counsel and solace
buy it and read it, thats it
buy it and read it, thats it
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Health Issues > Death & Bereavement
- Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Psychology & Psychiatry
- Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Self Help
- Books > Religion & Spirituality > Buddhism > Philosophy
- Books > Religion & Spirituality > Other Religions > Eastern Mystical Philosophy
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
