The cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project and pioneer behind the compassionate care movement shares an inspiring exploration of the lessons dying has to offer about living a fulfilling life. Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most. Life and death are a package deal. They cannot be pulled apart and we cannot truly live unless we are aware of death. The Five Invitations is an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves. As a renowned teacher of compassionate caregiving and the cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. In The Five Invitations, he distills the lessons gleaned over the course of his career, offering an evocative and stirring guide that points to a radical path to transformation. The Five Invitations: -Don’t Wait -Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing -Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience -Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things -Cultivate Don’t Know Mind These Five Invitations show us how to wake up fully to our lives. They can be understood as best practices for anyone coping with loss or navigating any sort of transition or crisis; they guide us toward appreciating life’s preciousness. Awareness of death can be a valuable companion on the road to living well, forging a rich and meaningful life, and letting go of regret. The Five Invitations is a powerful and inspiring exploration of the essential wisdom dying has to impart to all of us.

For readers of Being Mortal and When Breath Becomes Air, the acclaimed founder of Death over Dinner offers a practical, inspiring guide to life's most difficult yet important conversation. Of the many critical conversations we will all have throughout our lifetime, few are as important as the ones discussing death—and not just the practical considerations, such as DNRs and wills, but what we fear, what we hope, and how we want to be remembered. Yet few of these conversations are actually happening. Inspired by his experience with his own father and countless stories from others who regret not having these conversations, Michael Hebb cofounded Death Over Dinner—an organization that encourages people to pull up a chair, break bread, and really talk about the one thing we all have in common. Death Over Dinner has been one of the most effective end-of-life awareness campaigns to date; in just three years, it has provided the framework and inspiration for more than a hundred thousand dinners focused on having these end-of-life conversations. As Arianna Huffington said, "We are such a fast-food culture, I love the idea of making the dinner last for hours. These are the conversations that will help us to evolve." Let's Talk About Death (over Dinner) offers keen practical advice on how to have these same conversations—not just at the dinner table, but anywhere. There's no one right way to talk about death, but Hebb shares time—and dinner—tested prompts to use as conversation starters, ranging from the spiritual to the practical, from analytical to downright funny and surprising. By transforming the most difficult conversations into an opportunity, they become celebratory and meaningful—ways that not only can change the way we die, but the way we live.

When author Peddar Panga was young, his parents and grandparents shared animal stories with him. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, these entertaining fables always came with lessons illustrating the universal truths of life. Tales of the Mirrors gathers fifty such tales, rewritten with a modern audience in mind. Discover the dangers of living solely for your career in "The Royal Hyena Guard," where a hyena becomes so concerned with defending his pack's territory that he hurts those closest to him. Meet a raccoon carpenter on a campaign to cure work accidents-and a charismatic crab who fools a colony of ants. Similar in tone to Aesop's fables and the stories of Jean de La Fontaine, Panga's stories explore personal discipline, security, the pursuit of happiness, mastery of fear, and healing. Most of all, they celebrate the enduring power of love. Let Panga's tales sweep you away to a world where animals talk, feel, and act like humans. In doing so, they mirror the best and worst in ourselves, offering a chance to learn more about who we are and how we should act.

For Mongols, sharing food is more than just eating meals. Through a process of “opening” and “closing”, on a daily basis or at events, in the family circle or with visitors, sharing food guarantees the proper order of social relations. It also ensures the course of the seasons and the cycle of human life. Through food sharing, humans thus invite happiness to their families and herds. Sandrine Ruhlmann has lived long months, since 2000, in the Mongolian steppe and in the city. She describes and analyzes in detail the contemporary food system and recognizes intertwined ideas and values inherited from shamanism, Buddhism and communist ideology. Through meat-on-the-bone, creamy milk skin, dumplings or sole-shaped cakes, she highlights a whole way of thinking and living.

Pursuing Death widens the canvas of enquiry on the Jaina practices of voluntary termination of life, identified with terms such as Santāra, Sallekhanā, Samādhi, Sanyasana, Arādhanā, Bhaktapratyakhyana, Pañchapada, Prāyopagamana, Ingiņī, etc. This volume undertakes an in-depth study of both the philosophy and the practice of death, as revealed in a wide variety of texts written in Prakrit, Sanskrit, Kannada as well as a vast body of historical records, dated between the third century BCE and nineteenth century CE. The citation for the National Award of the Indian History Congress, conferred on this volume at the Fifty-fourth Annual Session (1993), states, 'Pursuing Death by Professor S. Settar presents the theory and practice of voluntary termination of life in historical perspective, it illumines the problems with the help of Jaina philosophical writings, historical archaeology, art history and socioeconomic history. The methodology is new and a whole new area has been opened up in Indian historical studies.'

Few issues apply universally to people as poignantly as death and dying. All religions address concerns with death from the handling of human remains, to defining death, to suggesting what happens after life. The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying provides readers with an overview of the study of death and dying. Questions of death, mortality, and more recently of end-of-life care, have long been important ones and scholars from a range of fields have approached the topic in a number of ways. Comprising over fifty-two chapters from a team of international contributors, the companion covers: funerary and mourning practices; concepts of the afterlife; psychical issues associated with death and dying; clinical and ethical issues; philosophical issues; death and dying as represented in popular culture. This comprehensive collection of essays will bring together perspectives from fields as diverse as history, philosophy, literature, psychology, archaeology and religious studies, while including various religious traditions, including established religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as well as new or less widely known traditions such as the Spiritualist Movement, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and Raëlianism. The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, philosophy and literature.

A powerful, step-by-step manual for living joyfully with the help of the angels and Archangels • Offers simple and practical exercises to connect with 15 Archangels, access angelic help and healing, and manage your energy levels and higher vibration in a chaotic and demanding world • Explains when each Archangel becomes active, notes their color and associated crystal, and offers a visualization to connect with each angel • Shows how to safely open the channel to communicate with the angelic realm and how to co-create with the angels Angels come to us in many ways: through the lyrics of a song we hear, a timely hand on the shoulder, or a book we happen upon. Angels come to our aid to help us feel safe and help our hearts open wide, so our light and our love shine through. After a powerful visit from an angel helped her transform her fast-paced, chaotic, and addiction-filled Manhattan banker lifestyle, author Kathryn Hudson decided to pay it forward and help others discover that each of us is surrounded by angels to help us. In this book, she shows how to safely open the channel to communicate with the angelic realm in order to access the help the angels are so willing to provide. She offers simple and practical exercises for connecting with 15 Archangels and shows how each of these Archangels brings specific Divine qualities to assist and support you. She explains when each Archangel becomes active, notes a color and a crystal associated with them, and offers a unique visualization exercise to connect with the essence of the individual angel, inviting this quality into your life. Each angel also provides a powerful message about this turning point in human evolution. Exploring inner child work, chakra practices, and exercises for purification and harmonization of relationships, Kathryn reveals the importance of releasing the weight of the past in order to open up to angelic guidance about the future. Working with angelic healing, she shows how to handle our energy levels in a chaotic and draining world and maintain a higher vibration. Taking you from simple questions and requests to direct experience and actual co-creation with the angelic realm, this guide reveals how to team up with our friends in high places to open your heart and live out your highest and best version of yourself in this life.

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER A WATERSTONES POLITICS PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR, 2018 The Strange Death of Europe is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Declining birth-rates, mass immigration and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive change as a society. This book is not only an analysis of demographic and political realities, but also an eyewitness account of a continent in self-destruct mode. It includes reporting from across the entire continent, from the places where migrants land to the places they end up, from the people who appear to welcome them in to the places which cannot accept them. Told from this first-hand perspective, and backed with impressive research and evidence, the book addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel's U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, Lampedusa and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away. In each chapter he also takes a step back to look at the bigger issues which lie behind a continent's death-wish, answering the question of why anyone, let alone an entire civilisation, would do this to themselves? He ends with two visions of Europe – one hopeful, one pessimistic – which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next.

Presents articles on the horror and fantasy genres of fiction, including authors, themes, significant works, and awards.