Buddha in Hell and Other Alarms (ePub)

"The Buddha in hell! What kind of sense is that?" With this book, veteran near-death experience (NDE) researcher Nancy Evans Bush explores questions raised by some of the most troubling spiritual encounters. Not a collection of NDE accounts, the book brings a wealth of straight talk and insightful commentary about finding meaning in a difficult subject.

It is now clear, though not frequently said out loud, that a significant minority of near-death experiences (NDEs) are harrowing--frightening, alienating, guilt-producing, and/or hellish. Their images are often bizarre, as old as myths and as recent as the nearest emergency room. The way we interpret them shapes religions and philosophies, New Testament doctrines and New Age ideas, computer games and movies, and goes with us into our dying.

Such NDEs and their spiritual cousins have been seen in Western thought as punishment, proof of the hell described by medieval Christianity. After seventeen hundred years, Is that still all we have as explanation?

Over more than three decades, Nancy Evans Bush, MA, has emerged as a leading voice in the search for answers to that question. Her first book, Dancing Past the Dark, remains a key research-based exploration of distressing near-death experiences. Now she draws on questions from her blog readers, conference audiences, and correspondence with experiencers over the years, framing a more personal discussion of perspectives not often seen in the literature. She reminds readers of actual data on near-death experience and follows it with an overview of the development of hell as a concept (eye-opening!), with varying inter-cultural perspectives. The book concludes with religious issues and profound psychological insights, alternative ways of approaching the questions. Longtime readers know Evans Bush's writing as intelligent, engaging, and readable; she is unafraid to tackle the hard questions.