FOCUS | From the Editor

WE HAVE EACH WONDERED, “What will happen when I die? Will something of me survive?”

In this Summer 2010 issue of PARABOLA, we explore that vital question through the wisdom of the world’s spiritual teachings. Nearly all the sacred traditions teach that death is not the end of everything—but what lies beyond is very much in question. Heaven, hell, purgatory; reincarnation, recurrence, nirvana; and the Abyss—all appear in the pages of this issue, as do Chinese ancestor worship, Jewish mysticism, Buddhist breathing practice, the Perennial Wisdom, oracles, other- worldly schools, the Christian promise of eternal life, and more.

As we journey through these teachings and practices, one great lesson arises: that what happens when I die depends somehow on what happens when I live.

Bestselling author John Robbins (DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA) understood that lesson from early on, giving up vast inherited wealth to pursue a more grounded, personally responsible existence. As he describes in his gripping new memoir, A NEW GOOD LIFE, a portion of which is excerpted here, those choices brought him abundant inner and outer rewards; but then through a twist of fate came financial ruin. Yet as he makes clear, it is possible to find a new good life in the midst of ashes.

And not only possible, but perhaps necessary: “Die to the known, die to what has been,” J. Krishnamurti often said, echoing the words of teachers from every tradition (“You must be born again,” admonished Jesus). There is more than one kind of death, and it may be that the only proper preparation for the physical death that we naturally fear is to die in the present, moment by moment, to the known, learning to embrace the Unknown. And that kind of dying, the “letting go of all attachments” as Frank Sinclair puts it in an interview here, may in turn bring a new life, the life the great teachers say we were born for.

JEFF ZALESKI