A Year to Live : How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last
Author: Stephen Levine
List Price: $11.00
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ISBN: 0609801945
Publisher: Harmony/Bell Tower (14 April, 1998)
Sales Rank: 20,586
Average Customer Rating: 3.92 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
Death is a good teacher.
250,000 people die each day, like "deciduous leaves piled at the foot of the great tree" (p. 110). This is a wise book about reclaiming "our lives one step at a time" (p. 5) through the practice of dying. "I offer an experiment that amplifies your potential for healing by living the next year as if it were your last" (p. 3), Stephen Levine writes, "a year to live as consciously as possible, a year to finish business, to catch up with our lives, to investigate and deal with our fear of death, to cultivate our true heart and find essential wisdom and joy" (p. 4).Levine knows death. He is a Buddhist meditation teacher who works with terminal patients. He tells us that we should not wait for a terminal diagnosis, though, "before opening to the potential grace and wonder of this living moment" (p. 17). His book offers several guided meditations on embracing the mystery of death, including "soft-belly" (pp. 32-33), fear (pp. 49-50), "life review" (pp. 82-86), forgiveness (pp. 89-92), gratitude (pp. 96-97), body awareness (pp. 104-5) and "original face" (120-21) meditations. "Trust the process" (p. 63), Levine advises us. "No one can afford to put this work off any longer" (p. 17). In the end, as the book's title makes clear, this is not so much a book about death, but a book about conscious living.
G. Merritt
Rating: 5 out of 5
Levine provides solutions for those in search of happiness
Levine is a Buddhist and his book 'A Year To Live' reflects that. It's not a book that will appeal to those who bask smugly in their own self-sufficient world and think not of others. It is a book that can provide deep insight into the true nature of the human condition -- that all life is suffering with occasional happy moments. I'd recommend 'A Year To Live' to anyone suffering from a bereavement, or expecting one; to those struggling with elderly parents or relatives; to those trying to find some meaning in the life process and interested in 'what comes after' and above all, to all who are frightened of death.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Finally a Book On Death that is Experiential
Levines book differs from most books on death by providing some experiential exercises so the individual can gain personal insight rather then be directly fed the pre-digested great wisdom of so-called experts on death.This along with some of Sylvia Brownes books and 18 Mortal Acts could be used to learn more about ones own mortality and put it in a personal journal. In addition, Mr. Levine makes some sharp penetrating insights into how people deal or don't deal with death. The exercises he advocates are interesting and well constructed. A valuable book for those actively and openly exploring their mortality and who want to go beyond conforming to ideas from experts. Similar Products
Who Dies? : An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying
Embracing the Beloved : Relationship as a Path of Awakening
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