Customer Reviews

Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die: Death Stories Of Tibetan, Hindu And Zen Masters

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Koans and stories of the deaths of Masters are scattered throughout the sacred texts of the East. This book is remarkable in that it brings those many stories together in one place. By focusing a book on the theme of "death stories", the stories illumine each other, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The stories reveal a wonderfully refreshing way to think about death (and hence, to think about Life!) Many are solemn, but some are quite humorous. In each, we see the presence of someone who embraces all of human experience, who says "Yes!" to all of Life, including death. Many of the Masters give one final gem of wisdom, summarizing their life's teaching, as their last word. The many photographs of the Masters are heart-warming. For anyone ready to think about death and mortality in terms of their spritual meaning, this book is ideal. Ironically, through looking at how the Masters die, we can implicitly understand their teaching on how to be ever more fully alive.

I read an excerpt of this book in a magazine and had to read the whole thing. The author, for reasons unknown to her, was compelled to collect death stories of Hindu, Buddhist and Zen masters. The stories she reports are awe inspiring. These men and women faced died with poise and courage, inspirations to all who must die. The book has a deeper message: Sushila Blackman was herself dying as she wrote the book. A trip to the emergency room while compiling the stories revealed that she wasn't suffering a mild heart attack as she thought. She was dying from incurable lung cancer. This is the story of a remarkable woman who used the material in this book to guide her own death. It gives me chills.

My favorite story was about the 97-year-old Zen nun Nogami Senryo who wanted to, and did, die standing up. What a great story! There are many little gems throughout the book, though it is kind of morbid and I could only read a page or so at a time. The stories from India are pretty fantastical and hard to believe, though. I found the afterward to be stunning, how Ms. Blackman discovered she had advanced lung cancer and was going to die. It was the captstone of the whole volume. This book makes sobering but good reading for anyone, even those who are in the bloom of health and are young.

For years I have been interested in conscious death, or as it is also known, maha samadhi. It is mentioned in many biographies and books about spiritual masters, but here it is treated in great detail from the perspective of many spiritual traditions. It makes it possible to get beyond dogma and learn that like all things spiritual, there is more than one way to make maha samadhi. This book answered many long held questions, and I recommend to anyone who is interested in learning about dying consciously.

How we face death is at least as important as how we face life. This book is a beautiful example of the deep, esoteric meaning of that phrase. We can't explore the notion of up, without talking about down, hot with out mentioning cold, how can we possibly understand life without talking about death (even if it is imaginary)? This book is quite remarkable and should be a staple among hospice workers, and anyone seeking a higher understanding. I wish I could give it six stars.

"Graceful Exits" by the late Sushila Blackman was an interesting collection of ..."Spiritual Obituaries" for lack of a better term. Ironically, there were 108 of these "Graceful Exits" listed and, in the art of numerology, that number (108) adds up to a "9". The number "9" translates to "a completion" and it was after all, snippets of life's completion...including that of the author who died shortly after the book was published.

Many of these death endings of the Great masters and sages were interesting and some even comical. Dying is perhaps the most personal event of our lives (or rather the ending of our lives), and the ability to deal with that event in a graceful manner takes a special individual, no doubt!

I realize that the author was paving the road of acceptance for her own death and these stories were a means of allowing her to gracefully exit her own life. I truly applaud her writing and ability to put such a collection together for herself and others who follow.
However, after reading these stories one after another, the uniqueness seemed to loose some of it's potency and had a tendency to become lost in the overall mixture.

Perhaps, fewer stories and more concentration on "how they lived" would have illuminated and enhanced the power of "how they died."

None the less, this is an interesting little book and should be part of everyone's library that has any feeling or interests in humanity and its greatest mystery...death.

We are all here for only a limited time . . . during which we live our lives, and if we are lucky, do not have to spend too much thought on our inevitable demise. Regardless of your situation or reason for considering this book, it is a must read. A positive approach to the end of life is the best present we can give ourselves and those close to us.

Sushila Blackman was the perfect person to author this book. She was present at the death of her teacher, Swami Muktananda, and also made her own graceful exit a month and a half after completing the book. She presents the accounts of how great beings die in a very straight forward manner. She did a wonderful job of doing that. The exits themselves were a bit repetitive and not particularly fascinating. Maybe my expectations were too high. There were too many overly dramatic exits, to the point where it seemed there was conformity at work. A number of these great beings died during meditation. Although there was little death bed wisdom, I found the book interesting and commend Ms. Blackman for this unique collection of exits, graceful or otherwise.

This powerful book tells the death stories of 108 Eastern spiritual masters. Eastern religions believe one's state of being at the time of death influences or determines one's progress after death. Sushila Blackman began to compile these stories without really knowing why. A trip to the hospital for chest pain revealed she had terminal lung cancer: the book was in fact part of her preparation for her own conscious death. A magnificent book compiled by a magnificent person.

Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die (Death stories of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, and Zen masters) by Sushila Blackman is based on the interesting premise that we can learn from the deaths of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, and Zen Buddhist masters.

The book has 108 short summaries of these deaths covering 2500 years. Unfortunately it appears that no effort was made to verify accounts, particularly for deaths in the 19th and 20th centuries, and many of the claims made seem to be more hagiography than biography.

It's also difficult to discern any organizing principle behind these accounts. They aren't given chronologically, alphabetically, thematically, or even grouped by religious tradition.