An accessible and empowering guide to Buddhist philosophy and practices on death and dying.
This manual explores Tibetan Buddhist teachings on how to prepare for a peaceful and positive death.
Aimed at a general audience, this brief guide addresses the question, “Is it possible that death can be a celebratory empowering event?” Rinpoche and Levine answer a resounding yes, drawing on their expertise in Vajrayana Buddhism as director and president of the Jigme Lingpa Center in San Diego, California. Their perspective is engaging and approachable whether or not readers consider themselves practicing Buddhists. In the preface, they discuss differences between Western and Eastern cultural attitudes about death and dying and how the Covid-19 pandemic has meant that far too many people died alone and unprepared. The first two chapters focus on how to live a joyful life that leads to a peaceful death, presenting basic concepts such as karma, the self, and the nature of consciousness that will be familiar to many who have an interest in or practice meditation. Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan name of the centuries-old Buddhist guide to death and rebirth known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, can be translated as “liberation through hearing in the intermediate state.” Chapters 3 and 4 explain the bardo—consciousness that continues to exist between one life and the next—and how a person’s life and surviving loved ones can influence it through meditation and prayer. The next two chapters provide specific mindfulness and meditation practices for attaining compassion and wisdom, the keys to a good life, and rebirth. The text also covers supporting the dying, exploring the Buddhist death practice of phowa, helping distant loved ones, and preparing for a good death, ending with a brief discussion of rebirth as a natural phenomenon. The writing style is simple, succinct, and straightforward, packing a wealth of information into just under 80 pages. An appendix provides seven pages of helpful instructions for loving/kindness meditations and practices to develop wisdom about the self, the “no solid self,” and the interconnectedness of all things. Another appendix offers a handy three-page summary of the contents of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Overall, this manual offers plenty of helpful insights, whatever one’s religious beliefs.
An accessible and empowering guide to Buddhist philosophy and practices on death and dying.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-30911-8
Page Count: 80
Publisher: North American Resellers
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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