Name: Safiya 's review of How to Die by Seneca
Item: How to Die
Rating: 3
Author: Safiya

Seneca

Timeless wisdom on death and dying from the celebrated Stoic philosopher Seneca "It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die," wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC–65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always," and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker and dazzling writer who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out. Seneca believed that life is only a journey toward death and that one must rehearse for death throughout life. Here, he tells us how to practice for death, how to die well, and how to understand the role of a good death in a good life. He stresses the universality of death, its importance as life's final rite of passage, and its ability to liberate us from pain, slavery, or political oppression. Featuring beautifully rendered new translations, How to Die also includes an enlightening introduction, notes, the original Latin texts, and an epilogue presenting Tacitus's description of Seneca's grim suicide.

An Ancient Guide to the End of Life

How to Die

Mara

Safiya 

It was not that bad. Some of Seneca s words didn't make sense to me at all. Agreed that life isn't everything about this human existence, but so isn't death. Some passages were okay, and it comes close to some sufi teachings, but still falls nearest to the extremes.
Rehearsing death and practising it is a good start, but not to be haunted by the idea, and admire suicide. Towards the end of the book, there was a sort of "ressaisissement" of the author, that taking one's life regardless of the other spirits that depend on him is a haggard way out of life. I couldn't agree more, and thus it untied to a small extent the estime it holds death in.
A recurrent theme at the beginning of the book was to die before death and be prepared for it, such as those who learnt how to die have unlearned how to be enslaved. Just a Greek version of the Japanese hara-kiri... 
The brightest it can come close to as a doctrine is to Al Fanaa' الفناء.

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