This is the second of a series of three books I happened to check out at the same time.  Together they make a trilogy. (The Undertaking – Life Studies From the Dismal Trade, Graceful Exits – How Great beings Die, and Living Buddha, Living Christ)
"Graceful Exits – How Great beings Die"  Death Stories of Tibetan, Hindu and Zen Masters - Compiled by Sushila Blackman

      The author set about collecting these stories upon being notified of her own terminal condition.  She was able to complete this volume two months prior to her death.  She was seeking some role models and thought others might too.

      The spiritual core uniting the various masters is a belief in reincarnation.  She argues that the idea is not foreign to Christianity, or even to Jesus.  The idea is that the soul's life is endless.  “The pinnacle of a human life is to die and not to be reborn.”  The goal is to achieve “self-realization,” something to sought in life before death. The masters were people who attained self-realization in life, therefore able to move through the death of the spiritual body with tranquility. Death is not end, but liberation.

      The author reports a number of deaths of various masters, along with some of their final words. For them, death and dying are not events of significance.
There are lessons to be learned here about life and death and true spiritual centeredness.

 “Before we know it our life is finished and it is time to die.  If we lack the foundations of a stable practice, we go to death helplessly, in fear and anquish.” (Kalu Rinpoche p. 41)
      As a Christian, I think of the “death march” of Jesus toward Jerusalem, his sense of inevitability, his acceptance of death, his refusal of drugs in dying, his last words of forgiveness and promise.  And the simple, “It is finished.”  The attention of friends and disciples in caring for his body, the spiritualization of his life from the physical, the living on in his disciples’ memories…all are echoed in these “Graceful Exits.”