With the right perspective, our anxiety around sickness, old age, and death can be a "wholesome fear"--a fear with a positive quality that ultimately enriches and nourishes our lives. Lama Zopa Rinpoche shows us how we can use our anxiety as a high-octane fuel to really live what's most important. Alongside Rinpoche's teachings, Kathleen McDonald presents meditations that lead to peace, compassion, and joy for ourselves and others. Approaching our physical realities in this way will help us to live well and, when the time comes as it inevitably will, to die well too. It's never too early to start making this most important of efforts--and, fortunately, it is never too late. An essential guide for anyone confronting the challenges of death and dying, Wholesome Fear serves as a reminder of the gift and truth of impermanence.

The subject of death makes a lot of people uneasy. Most of us just don't know much about death -- especially how to handle it and how to prepare for it -- and we may feel anxious and afraid whenever we start to contemplate either the death of a loved one or our own death. But as Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the founder and spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, tells us in this powerful and moving little book, our anxiety can be a "wholesome fear" -- one that ultimately enriches and nourishes our life by leaving us no choice to but to face difficult truths and live more authentically because of them. Truly, we can use the challenges that surround death and dying as spurs to take up the practices right now that will lead to peace and compassion and joy -- ultimately, to a good life, and, when the time inevitably comes, a good death.

"Wholesome Fear should not sit on a bookshelf: it should be referenced regularly by anyone willing to face their own mortality and interested in making the most of the time given."