www.nalandastore.com

Take a trip through the realms of hell with a man whose temporary
visitor’s pass gave him a horrifying—and enlightening—preview of its
torments.

This true account of Sam Bercholz’s near-death experience has more in common with Dante’s Inferno than
it does with any of the popular feel-good stories of what happens when
we die. In the aftermath of heart surgery, Sam, a longtime Buddhist
practitioner and teacher, is surprised to find himself in the lowest
realms of karmic rebirth, where he is sent to gain insight into human
suffering. Under the guidance of a luminous being, Sam’s encounters with
a series of hell-beings trapped in repetitious rounds of misery and
delusion reveal to him how an individual’s own habits of fiery hatred
and icy disdain, of grasping desire and nihilistic ennui, are the source
of horrific agonies that pound consciousness for seemingly endless
cycles of time. Comforted by the compassion of a winged goddess and
sustained by the kindness of his Buddhist teachers, Sam eventually
emerges from his ordeal with renewed faith that even the worst hell
contains the seed of wakefulness. His story is offered, along with the
modernist illustrations of a master of Tibetan sacred arts, in order to
share what can be learned about awakening from our own self-created
hells and helping others to find relief and liberation from theirs.