“We can harness the awareness of death to appreciate the fact that we are alive, to encourage self-exploration, to clarify our values, to find meaning, and to generate positive action. It is the impermanence of life that gives us perspective. As we come in contact with life’s precarious nature, we also come to appreciate its preciousness. Then we don’t want to waste a minute. We want to enter our lives fully and use them in a responsible way. Death is a good companion on the road to living well and dying without regret.”
“Welcoming what is, as it is, we move toward reality. We may not like or agree with all that we encounter. However, when we argue with reality, we lose every time. We waste our energy and exhaust ourselves with the insistence that life be otherwise.”
“Compassion requires that we get in touch with what hurts. It’s the pain, the suffering itself, that invites compassion to manifest. The intelligence of compassion brings forward a kindness that is not trying to get rid of suffering. This goes counter to the ego’s wishes. Ego only wants to be protected from pain. Compassion opens to pain.”
“We come home as we sense the breath’s texture, rhythm, and pace, the differing length to align with the breath and move with it, to allow the breath its own natural depth and flow. Every breath takes us to where we belong. As we relinquish command of it, we gradually feel the breath breathing us.”
Book: The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully
Author: Frank Ostaseski
Published: Flatiron Books (2017)
My Review: This is a beautiful book about something important and inevitable, but that we’ve been socialized to dread, avoid, and flat out reject. To surrender to it is often seen as weak or selfish; to be around it in any of its forms makes many uncomfortable and distressed; even to talk about it is largely taboo from a societal standpoint. This book is about death. And, more than that, what death can teach us about life itself.
I first heard about this book on Sam Harris’s ‘Waking Up’ podcast (for those not already listening, I suggest you do-- he has some absolutely brilliant conversations with some absolutely brilliant people), and I knew immediately that I needed to read this book.
Frank Ostaseski is a Buddhist teacher and co-founder of the first Buddhist hospice in the country, The Zen Hospice Project. Based on decades of mindful, compassionate interactions with folks from all walks of life facing their last chapter, Ostaseski walks us through a few of the powerful, poetic, and painfully beautiful things we can learn from death and dying if we’re willing to open ourselves to reality and the inevitable impermanence of all things.
I highly recommend this book to literally everyone. We will all-- every one of us-- arrive at death’s doorstep one day, as will our family, neighbors, friends, and enemies. Breaking the taboo of speaking death’s name allows us to make space for questions, emotions, resolutions, grace, connection, and the ultimate surrender. These are lessons that can help us cultivate healthy, full lives and approach impermanence with presence, an open heart, and unwavering compassion.
