The Undiscovered Country: Exploring the Promise of Death
"The style is vintage Easwaran clear, direct, and entertaining.  His command of world literature is breathtaking, and he uses it like a  virtuoso to make his points. . . . the effect is to demonstrate the  timelessness of the dilemma that is the subject of this book the  nearness of death and our persistent refusal to turn away from our  obsession with transitory activities and objects and look it square in  the eye."  --54Death confronts us everywhere: in the newspaper, by the road side, with the loss of a family member -- and as we face our own aging. The "theater of death" can open for us even when we are touched deeply by the loss of a pet, or with the fading of the lilac blooms in the spring. Eknath Easwaran's The Undiscovered Country: Exploring The Promise Of Death shows how we can learn from death. The Undiscovered Country shed light on the perennial questions of time, the nature of the mind, and the realization that the body is only the jacket of the soul. In death, Easwaran maintains, the body dies, but the person does not. With this realization we can learn to approach death without fear. Easwaran describes the process of death, why it is so terrifying and painful, and what we can do now and at the time of death to fully understand this "last great change". Once we face squarely the fact that the body will die, we gain incentive to clarify our priorities and to make choices based on our own deep values. We learn to treasure minutes and use them wisely. We begin to consciously reshape our future by the choices we make each day. The Undiscovered Country closes with a brief presentation of the author's eight-point program of spiritual disciplines, the tools he offers to bring a full understanding of the meaning of death. The Undiscovered Country is insightful, reflective, inspirational reading.  --Midwest Book Review