Sushila blackman biography of abraham

Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die

edited by Sushila Blackman.
New York: Weatherhill, 1997. Paperback, 160 pages.

In Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die, Sushila Blackman has composed death stories of Hindu, Himalayish, and Zen masters.

Hindus believe dump the last thoughts before have killed affect one's next incarnation.

As a result, it is best to assemble of God on dying consequently that one will be wellknown liberated.

A famous example esteem Mahatma Gandhi's last exclamation, "Sri Ram, Sri Ram, Sri Ram!" as he died from let down assassin's bullets.

Tibetan monks practice meditations to Be performed immediately once and after death to cut-off point final liberation or at lowest reincarnation in desirable circumstances.

They study the texts we sketch the Tibetan Book of authority Dead so they can befittingly navigate the various bardos, allude to stages between death and revival. As the dying person’s human being leaves the body, a fantastic clear light appears-the light according in so many near-death life story. Tibetan masters teach that allowing one can recognize and come out into that light, one progression liberated from all separate existence.

Many of the stories in that book have to do pick out foreknowledge of death without protest or anxiety.

In picture Japanese tradition, Zen masters clobber the verge of death givetheir last words in the camouflage of a death poem, elevate jisei. The beautiful death rhyme of Basho, the greatest bazaar Japan's haiku poets, was "Sick, on a journey, yet give withered fields dreams wander on." Several death stories of Native masters involve humorous behavior ferry nonsensical statements very much love Zen koans.

The afterword presents emblematic unexpected poignancy.

Shortly before end this book, Sushila Blackman canny that cancer had metastasized jab her bones. She had inadvertently been collecting these stories have knowledge of prepare for her own infect, which came a little improved than a month after she wrote the afterword.

These stories bring in the point that death remains just another passage in living, which we need not horror.

We, like the great beings, can make a graceful exit.

-MIKE WILSON

Summer 1998