The Sacred Art of Dying: How World Religions Understand Death

Front Cover
Paulist Press, 1988 - Family & Relationships - 226 pages
Examines how each of the major religions looks at death by including stories, teachings, and rituals that present a comparative religious meaning of death and afterlife. Written in textbook style with journal exercises at the end of each chapter. +

From inside the book

Contents

III
11
IV
27
V
43
VI
70
VII
81
VIII
94
IX
110
X
122
XII
157
XIII
169
XIV
178
XV
187
XVI
198
XVII
202
XVIII
207
XIX
223

XI
139

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 148 - I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Page 171 - How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them ? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.
Page 49 - Enough, Ananda! Do not let yourself be troubled ; do not weep! Have I not already, on former occasions, told you that it is in the very nature of all things most near and dear unto us that we must divide ourselves from them, leave them, sever ourselves from them ? How, then...
Page 21 - Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries.
Page 124 - We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Page 179 - Does it not apply rather to the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field...
Page 20 - Then all the dogs came running And dug the dog a tomb And wrote upon the tombstone For the eyes of dogs to come: A dog came in the kitchen And stole a crust of bread.
Page 23 - Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?
Page 81 - There was something formless yet complete, That existed before heaven and earth; Without sound, without substance, Dependent on nothing, unchanging, All pervading, unfailing. One may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven. Its true name we do not know; 'Tao' is the by-name that we give it.
Page 65 - Here, O Sariputra, form is emptiness, and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness.

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