Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality [Paperback]

Judith L. Lief (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 13, 2001

In Making Friends with Death, Buddhist teacher Judith Lief, who's drawn her inspiration from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, shows us that through the powerful combination of contemplation of death and mindfulness practice, we can change how we relate to death, enhance our appreciation of everyday life, and use our developing acceptance of our own vulnerability as a basis for opening to others. She also offers a series of guidelines to help us reconnect with dying persons, whether they are friends or family, clients or patients.

Lief highlights the value of relating to the immediacy of death as an ongoing aspect of everyday life by offering readers a variety of practical methods that they can apply to their lives and work. These methods include:

   •  Simple mindfulness exercises for deepening awareness of moment-by-moment change
   •  Practices for cultivating loving-kindness
   •  Helpful slogans and guidelines for caregivers to use




Making Friends with Death will enlighten anyone interested in coming to terms with their own mortality. More specifically, the contemplative approach presented here offers health professionals, students of death and dying, and people who are helping a dying friend or relative useful guidance and inspiration. It will show them how to ground their actions in awareness and compassion, so that the steps they take in dealing with pain and suffering will be more effective.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One of the best ways to live a vibrant life is to stay closely connected to death, according to Buddhist teacher Judith Lief in Making Friends with Death. Drawing heavily from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Lief specializes in interpreting the paradoxical Buddhist teachings surrounding death, making them understandable to Western sensibility. In fact, she modeled her cleanly written book after her highly popular course "The Psychology of Birth and Death" at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, starting with theory, then meditation practice, then practical application.

In the opening section, Lief's insights are plentiful, showing readers how we all experience daily reminders of birth and death in the form of routine transitions, or helping readers examine the ways they hold death at a distance either though false reverence or media-driven numbness. At the end of every chapter, she offers contemplative exercises, such as pondering the mystery of birth and death or paying attention to one's breath and noticing the turning point between inhale and exhale. When she moves into the middle section on "Mindfulness Meditation," her teaching experience shines through as she explains how to understand and then meditate upon the Buddhist virtues of simplicity, acceptance, kindness, and compassion. In the final chapters, she shows how the theory and meditation can be applied toward taking care of someone who is dying. But don't be misled--this is really a book for everyone who wants to be more fully immersed in living, not just those who are tending the terminally ill. As Lief points out, "cultivating an awareness of death is at the same time cultivating an awareness of life. We are reconnecting with the spirit of actually living a life." --Gail Hudson

Review

"Peppered with useful and startling meditations as well as wise reminders, this is a thoughtful approach to a difficult aspect of living."— NAPRA Review



"Filled with meaningful examples of real people facing real problems. It provides us with the essential guideposts for embarking on the journey of life and the journey beyond."— Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing



"A manual on how to die, how to relate to dying and death, how to open up to the stages beyond death. Lief's book is also a weave of stories, insights, advice, Buddhism and humor."— Shambhala Sun

"Whether you will die tomorrow or fifty years from now, you need to read this book."—Bernie Glassman



"A seasoned caregiver who walks the neophyte through the extending of one's self to another, Lief presents the issues and common difficulties at hand. She emphasizes the importance of attention to details, but centers on knowing what each patient wants for her or his situation. This defines effective compassion."—Florence Wald, M.N., FA.A.N., a founder of the first hospice in the United States



"Lief conveys the profound core of the teachings of Buddhism so that anyone can hear and understand. She shows us that in the end, it is kindness, compassion, and mindful attention that matter, and teaches us the simple skill of just being—in all its rawness, love, and pain—with those who are dying."—Marilyn Webb, author of The Good Death: The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala (February 13, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570623325
• ISBN-13: 978-1570623325
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #346,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Not What You Think It Is - Death or Lief's book., October 29, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality (Paperback)

I started reading this book shortly after the death of my step-father and my mother's being diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. As I joined my siblings to help our mother deal with the death of her husband, and to help her adjust to the knowledge of her own condition, I used this book to keep me from getting lost in a whirlpool of thoughts and feelings that would have been of no help to anyone.

I would read the book and see exactly where the things Lief discusses in her work could be applied in my own situation. I tested it, on the spot. It works. There's no magic to this book, no secret code to it. Don't be put off by the fact that it's a "Buddhist" guide...you could be Catholic, Hindu, Muslim or Jewish, from any walk of life, any race or creed, on any spiritual path, and still benefit tremendously from this book.

You don't necessarily have to be "dying" or standing next to someone who's dying to benefit from the book as well. It's really a book for people who are living, moment-to-moment, in the vulnerable awareness of death as a fact of life, something not to be avoided, but met, befriended.

Lief has a simple, direct way of speaking about the dying and those who are near to them, caring for them, as they are dying. She has the kind of light touch and sense of humor (at specific points) that indicate the true depth and intensity of her point of view. There is a warmth throughout the work that gives you a sense that she's not in some ivory tower somewhere "thinking" about the best way for people to handle death. Neither is she in a cave in Tibet "having dreams and visions" about it. You get the sense, as you read the work, that she's standing right next to you, helping you to work your way through your own situation. I never felt, as I read the book, that she was an outsider looking in on my situation.

It's a good book for people going through transitions of any sort whatsoever. People aren't the only things that die. Relationships, jobs, dreams, institutions, ideas...all these things die too and in a very subtle way, Lief's book helps us to deal with the death (and birth) of these things too.

Something about this book makes you feel very connected to life.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Making Friends with Death, March 28, 2001

By 

Nealy Zimmermann (New Haven, CT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality (Paperback)

This is an excellent down to earth guide to the various issues surrounding death. The first section is entitled "Cultivating a personal awareness of death." Many analogies and examples that we can all relate to are given about our views of the subject. Simple excercises at the end of each chapter give the reader a chance to illuminate his or her views. Meditation practice is introduced as a tool to make friends with ourselves and to settle our minds. Then contemplation of death is introduced to help us face death and change with equanimity and to develop a reverence for life. The second section is entitled "Opening our Heart". Here Lief describes how the simplicity of death cuts through our superflouous concerns and opens. The various descriptions of dysfunctional compassion are the best I've seen anywhere and worth it for all of us to check out. The final section is practical advise in the form of "slogans" or reminders to help us when we are actually working with a dying person. This is a book that is useful at any time in one's life so that when one does encounter death, be it one's own or a close frind or relative, one is able to respond with composure and kindness.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars buy this, May 4, 2007

By 

mark groleau "martail artist" (wyandotte mi) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality (Paperback)

i bought this when my wife passed , it gave me alot of counsel and solace
buy it and read it, thats it