[MUSIC PLAYING]
FRANK OSTASESKI:
Some of you know
that I helped to start a
program called the Zen Hospice
Project in San Francisco
many years ago now.
And we didn't have
much of a plan for it.
We just thought there
was a natural match
between people who were
cultivating what we might call
the listening mind through
meditation practice,
or the listening
heart, and people
who needed to be heard at
least once in their life, folks
who were dying.
And we worked mostly with people
living on the streets of San
Francisco.
And I'll tell you more
about that as we go.
But I retired from that
some years ago now,
and started another organization
called the Metta Institute.
"Metta" is an old Buddhist word.
It means loving-kindness
or friendliness.
And because I couldn't
think of a quality
which was more necessary
at the time of dying--
for the person in
the bed or the person
making the bed than
loving-kindness, than love.
So that's the sort of
background I come to you from.
But what I want to start
by saying is, don't wait.
Don't wait.
Waiting is full of expectation.
Waiting for the next moment
to come, we miss this one.
I can't tell you
how many times I've
been with folks, family
members, people who are dying,
who have said to me
in one way or another,
when is Mom going to die?
In waiting for that moment,
they missed all the moments
in between.
So don't wait.
That's my first counsel.
I was at the bedside of one of
our patients at the hospice.
I turned him on his side,
and I was washing his back.
And as I was washing his back,
he turned to me and he said,
I never thought it
would be like this.
And I said, what?
And he said, dying.
And I said, well, what did
you think it would be like?
And he said, I never
thought about it.
And you see, in that
moment, that realization
was a cause of greater
suffering for him
than his terminal lung cancer.
He'd been caught by
surprise by death, really.
Death is the elephant
in the room, right?
It's the thing we
all agree exists,
but refuse to talk about.
We project our
worst fears onto it.
We do our best to use
euphemisms around it,
or we try to avoid the
subject all together.
Well, we can run,
but we cannot hide.
There's a beautiful, old
story, an old Babylonian myth--
some of you may know it--
about this merchant
who sends his servant
to the marketplace to get
the supplies for the house.
And while the servant
is in the marketplace,
he's moving through the crowds
and a woman bumps into him.
And he turns.
And he recognizes
that she's death.
And so he gets really terrified.
And he runs back home.
And he tells the merchant.
He said, I was in
the marketplace.
This thing happened.
I bumped into this woman.
I recognized her as death.
And she gave me this terrifying
look, this really threatening
look.
And he said, so please,
lend me your horse,
so I can ride away from here
today and escape my fate.
I will ride to Samarra.
And there, death
will not find me.
So the merchant says,
sure, of course.
Take my horse.
And the guy rides off in a fury.
Then later, the merchant
himself, he goes to the market.
There, he runs into death.
And he says, hey, how come you
scared my servant like that?
That was a terrible thing to do.
Why did you do that?
Death says, oh, that wasn't
a threatening gesture.
That was just a
look of surprise.
I was astonished to
see him here in Baghdad
when I knew that tonight, I
had an appointment with him
in Samarra.
[LAUGHTER]
We can run, but we cannot hide.
So over the past 30
years or so, I've
spent a lot of time
sitting bedside with people
who are dying, probably a couple
of thousand of them, actually.
And some of them died
full of disappointment.
They turned toward the wall
in withdrawal and depression,
and they never came back again.
And some of them blossomed
and found kindness,
and forgiveness, and
love that they had been
looking for their whole lives.
Both of them were my teachers.
Yeah.
Both of them were my teachers.
And what seemed to really
make the difference
was the willingness to live
into what it means to be human,
into the deeper dimensions
of what it means to be human.
So today, I don't have a
PowerPoint presentation.
I don't have the seven
steps to an easy death.
But what I'd like to
do is kind of invite
us to sit down with death, and
have a cup of tea with her,
and get to know her
really well, and see
how she might help
us understand how
to live a more
meaningful, purposeful,
perhaps loving and wise life.
I think we can learn
a lot of things
about living fully from
getting comfortable with death.
Now, for me, death is the
kind of secret teacher
hiding in plain sight.
You know, we think
about death as something
that will happen at
the end of a long road.
You know?
But death is with
us all the time,
in the marrow of every passing
moment, in this moment.
And as a secret teacher,
she can show us,
in a way, what matters most.
And the good news
is we don't have
to wait until the time
of our dying to find out.
Now, some of the
folks I work with,
they lived on the
edges of society.
They lived on the
margins of society.
And they didn't trust much.
And if I was going to
be of any value to them,
I had to be real.
And that meant that I
had to do my homework.
If you say to someone who tells
you that they're afraid and you
say, I understand, and you
haven't done your homework--
you don't know what happens
to you when you're afraid--
then they will yell bullshit.
And they will know that
you're just guessing.
And they will sniff
out your sentimentality
and your insincerity.
So some of the
folks I worked with,
they came from cultures
that I didn't know,
speaking languages that
I couldn't understand.
There was this wonderful
man, I remember,
[VIETNAMESE] a Vietnamese man.
And he was really
scared of ghosts.
He was so terrified of ghosts.
And his roommate-- his
roommate's name was Isaiah.
Isaiah was an
African-American man.
And he was very comforted
by nightly visits
from his dead mother.
Yeah?
And these guys were roommates.
There was folks I worked
with in their 20s who barely
had started their
lives, and Elizabeth,
who at 93 said to me, why has
death come for me so soon?
There was a man I worked with.
He was a hemophiliac.
And he worked in a
foundry in East Bay.
And a tough guy, you know,
a real hard-nosed guy.
And he contracted the HIV
virus from a blood transfusion.
But what was really unusual
about his situation was
that six months before, when
his son called him to tell him
that he was gay and that he
was now infected with HIV,
the father hung up the phone.
He wouldn't talk to him.
And now, father and son
were in the same room
in twin beds being
cared for by Agnes,
the son's mother and
the father's wife.
There was a guy,
Alex, that I worked
with who got confused
with some dementia,
and he climbed out
onto his fire escape,
and he froze to death one night.
All these folks were
my teachers, yeah.
Now in Zen, we have
this expression
that when your teacher's in
the room, it keeps you honest.
And so I brought my
teachers with me.
And so what I'd like
to do in just a moment
is I'm going to ask Van to
put up some photos of them
on the screens.
And these are ordinary
folks, folks like you
and I, who have all died
now, people I looked after
and cared for.
These are my teachers.
And so if they're here in the
room, they really help me.
They really support me a lot.
And I think they might
be of value to you.
Now, as you watch
these photos, I'd
like to suggest that you watch
them in a particular way.
This is not my deck.
This is not a video
that we watch passively.
These are real people
who have something
useful to share with you.
And so in order to
really benefit from that,
I think what would be
helpful is if you don't look
at them in an ordinary
way, that you don't
look at them in the way you
normally look at a screen,
but instead, you turn
inward a little bit more
and settle into your
body, heart, and mind,
and see, as you look
at the slides, what's
happening in your body.
What are the real sensations
that are going on there?
And what are the honest
feelings in your heart
if you don't turn
away from anything?
And what goes on in your mind?
If you walked into your mind and
looked at the activity there,
what's happening in your mind as
you're looking at these slides?
And then, two questions.
What attracts you?
And what causes
you to pull away?
What attracts you and what
causes you to pull away?
That's the two most important
questions to answer.
And that's about you.
It's not about them.
VAN: You want it now?
FRANK OSTASESKI: Just a minute.
So yeah, let's put
them up now, Van.
Let's put those slides up now.
And we're just going to
leave them up on a loop
so that they just will move
as I'm speaking to you.
And so they're going to teach,
and I'm going to translate, OK?
That's how it's going to work.
So look and see.
What attracts you or
causes you to pull away?
You know, the
habits of our life,
they have a very
strong momentum.
And that momentum
carries through right
into the time of our dying.
So the question that
arises, of course,
is, well, what habits
do we want to create?
I worked with a lot of people
near the end of their life,
and many of them died
full of fear and distress.
And I think we can do
something about that.
And I think the
way we do something
about that is by really
looking at what's
inviting in the wisdom of
death to help us understand
how to live this life with
some degree of integrity.
I mean, suppose we stopped
compartmentalizing death,
cutting it off from life.
I mean, imagine if
we regarded death
as the final stage
of growth instead
of a wasting-away experience.
I mean, could we then
turn toward death
and say, how then shall I live?
I think without a
reminder of death,
we tend to take
life for granted.
We get caught up in our
everyday preoccupations.
But when we keep death
really close at hand
at our fingertips, I think
we don't hold on so tightly.
I think we let go a
little bit more easily.
I think we don't take ourselves
or our ideas so seriously.
And I think this engenders
a certain kind of kindness
for each other when we recognize
that we're all on the boat
together.
But in this culture, we tend
to treat death predominantly
as a medical event, and we
turn it over to medicine.
And I want good medicine.
You know?
I want great pain control
and symptom management
when I'm dying.
But dying is too big for
the medical model alone.
We need to bring the best of
what medicine has to offer,
but I'm not sure we should
let it drive the bus.
I think the experience
of dying is so much more
profound that it dwarfs
all models, including
most religious models.
Dying is inevitable
and intimate.
Now, I said this.
I was at a dinner party with a
bunch of Silicon Valley folks
a little while ago.
And I said that, dying is
inevitable and intimate.
And a guy raised his
hand immediately.
And he said, well, I don't
know about inevitable.
He said, we're working on that.
And I said, great.
Fantastic.
Thank you.
But you know, let's
take death out
of the sentence for a minute.
Let's just talk about endings.
How do you mean endings?
Like the endings in your
life, the end of a sentence,
the end of a meal, the
end of a relationship,
the end of your day.
How do you meet endings?
And I don't have some kind of
moral standard about how you're
supposed to do
that, but I do know
that the way in which we
meet endings to a large part
shapes the way the
next thing begins.
And so by looking at the way
we meet endings, not only
do we understand something
about our day-to-day life,
but I think it becomes the
best preparation for dying.
Regularly, I saw in the people
that I was working with--
and I changed diapers on park
benches behind City Hall.
These folks who had supposedly
no inner life, you know?
They regularly
met the experience
of dying, which they felt was
unbearable and unimaginable
to them--
they regularly met it
in extraordinary ways.
Now, sometimes
those turns happened
in the final month of
life, or weeks of life,
or sometimes even in the
final moments of life.
Now, we might say too late.
And I would agree,
it's too late, too
late to do that work at
the end of your life.
But here's the thing.
If that opportunity is
available to us then,
it's available to us now.
And we don't need to
wait until that time.
In fact, to imagine that
at the time of our death,
we will have the
physical strength,
the emotional stability,
the mental clarity, to do
the work of a lifetime, is
a kind of ridiculous gamble,
actually.
It's not one I would advise.
Rather, I think we can
harness an awareness of death
to help us appreciate the
fact that we're alive,
to encourage self-exploration,
to help us clarify our values,
to find meaning to generate
positive action in the world.
What becomes really
undeniable when
you sit with people
who are dying
is that fragility
and impermanence
are woven into the very
fabric of our existence.
It's always coming together
and falling apart, and not
just at the time of our death.
And it's possible to hold it
all with love and compassion.
In my experience,
life's uncertainty
actually gives me perspective.
As we come into contact with the
precariousness of this life--
it's absolutely precarious.
Then, we also come into
contact with its preciousness.
And then, we don't
want to waste a moment.
Then, we want to jump into
our life with both feet.
We want to tell the people
we love that we love them.
We want to use our life
in a responsible way.
So don't wait is a
pathway, I think,
to fulfillment and an
antidote to regret.
And embracing the truth that
things inevitably will end
encourages us not to wait
in order to begin living.
And instead of pinning our
hopes on some future outcome,
we focus more on the present
and being fully engaged
in our lives just as they are.
Mostly, we imagine
death will come later.
Right?
Like, when I'm old.
Well, I'm old.
This idea of "later" gives
us this really comfortable,
little illusion.
Yeah.
Death will come later.
It's not going to come now.
But change, constant
change is not later.
Constant change is now.
It's happening right now.
Impermanence is the
essential truth woven
in every aspect of our life.
Where is this
morning's breakfast?
Where is last
night's lovemaking?
Could someone please tell me,
where has my blond hair gone?
[LAUGHTER]
We know.
Everybody knows.
You know that one day, your
mother's treasured vase
is going to fall off
the shelf and break.
It's going to happen.
That your car's
going to break down.
That someone we love will die.
I think the challenge or
the encouragement that I'm
trying to offer is to move that
understanding from our heads
into our hearts.
Impermanence isn't the
cause of suffering.
We actually rely on change.
We count on it.
I mean, that cold you have
today, it won't last forever.
That really boring
dinner party that you're
going to go to on Saturday
night, it will come to an end.
Evil dictatorships will fall.
Great trees will fall
and burn in our woods
to make room for new ones.
Presidential terms
will come to an end.
Without impermanence, we
couldn't lead our lives.
Our son couldn't
take his first steps.
Our daughter couldn't
grow up to be a scientist.
You know, what's
kind of funny to me?
We pretty much all agree that
everything changes, right?
Seasons come and go.
Relationships come and go.
We all agree, constant change.
Everything is changing,
we think, except me.
I'm the one thing, solid thing,
going through a changing world.
Right?
I mean, I have friends that
come up to me and say, Frank,
I haven't seen you in 20 years.
You haven't changed a bit.
And I'm really
insulted, you know?
Things are changing
all the time.
We tend to think of
ourself as some fixed
object going through life.
But actually, we
are that change.
We are like everything else,
at once here and disappearing.
I was just in Japan for some
work and teaching there.
And I happened to be there at
the height of cherry blossoms,
the beautiful cherry blossoms
blooming everywhere, sakura.
They're just gorgeous.
And I'm going tomorrow
to Idaho, where
I teach in northern
Idaho, where there's
these little, tiny
blue flax flowers that
last for a single day.
Tell me, what's so beautiful?
Why are those flowers, those
fragile cherry blossoms
and those so delicate
blue flax flowers,
why are they so much more
beautiful than plastic flowers?
I mean, isn't it their brevity
that is part of their beauty?
I mean, isn't the fact that we
know that they'll come and go,
doesn't that invite us into
wonder and to gratitude?
Death is not a stranger.
It's always with us.
This moment you're living
now, it will never come again.
Never.
And no matter how
much you accomplish
or how many times
you do something,
there will come a time when
you do it for the last time.
You have this one
opportunity to really fall
in love with existence.
Why not really enjoy it?
I had a heart attack
a few years ago.
I was teaching a retreat
for doctors and nurses
on compassion.
And in the course of that
retreat, I had a heart attack.
Actually, I didn't
have a heart attack.
I had heart pain, which I
denied three times, actually.
The first time, I thought
I had indigestion.
I got some Tums.
This is very common for people
who have a heart attack.
The second time, I was
leading a guided meditation
on sensing the body.
[LAUGHTER]
And all these strong sensations
were moving through the body.
And I thought, sensing, sensing.
And the third time, I was in a
video conference with Ram Dass,
a friend of mine.
He's an old, great
old spiritual teacher.
And I love him.
He's a very dear friend of mine.
I was just with him last week.
And I was getting a
little irritable with him,
emotionally irritable.
And it reminded me
of my wife when she
was giving birth to our son.
She got a little
emotionally irritable
when I started
suggesting things to her.
And it was that
emotional irritability
that really got
my attention more
than the physical sensations.
And I said to Ram
Dass, I'm sorry.
I have to go now.
You keep going.
And they took me
to the hospital.
And I had a heart
attack in the ER.
I used to think I knew
something about dying,
and then I had a heart attack.
And I realized I didn't
know very much at all.
And that was a good thing.
So now, I know a lot less,
and that's much more helpful.
When I was recovering
from the surgery--
and it took a long
time for me to recover,
about six months, because
they cut my phrenic nerve
by mistake, which meant
my diaphragm didn't work
and my lung didn't work.
And so I was recovering at home.
And a very famous Tibetan
teacher called me up, and--
I won't say who, but
this particular teacher
had trouble with his own heart.
And so I thought, oh, good.
He's going to know
what to do, right?
So I got him on the--
he called me up,
and I was on the phone with him.
And I thought, he's going to
give me some esoteric practice
or something.
It's going to be good, right?
And I said, how did
you deal with it?
Like, all the depression which
is part of the experience,
and the feeling of helplessness,
and the sense of identity
just being wiped out.
Like, how did you
deal with this?
And there was this long pause
on the other end of the phone.
And then he said, well, I think
it's good to have a heart.
And then he said,
if you have a heart,
you should expect it
will have problems.
And then he told me to
rest more and he hung up.
That was it.
[LAUGHTER]
I thought, no esoteric practice?
What?
But afterwards, I thought,
he's really right.
If you have a heart, if
you have a human body,
you should expect it
will have problems.
I mean, who said it
should be otherwise?
If you have a heart, if you
have a human incarnation,
a human life, you should
expect it will have problems.
You know, there's
this phenomenon
that happens with
people who are diagnosed
with long-term
illnesses like cancer.
A friend of mine calls
it a secret gratitude.
It's really an interesting
phenomenon that happens.
People with cancer
talk to each other
and they talk to me
about it, but they
don't publicize it so much.
And what they're
really talking about is
after the initial shock of
the diagnosis sort of settles,
there is this feeling of
quiet relief, actually.
And the feeling is that they
gain a kind of perspective.
And they say things
like, now, I can say no.
I can say no to that dinner
party I don't want to go to.
I can say no going to work.
I don't want to go
to work anymore.
Whereas before, I
always felt like I
had to say yes to everything.
They say, now I
can finally rest.
There was a woman that we
looked after in our hospice.
Her name was Adele.
And she was this very fierce
86-year-old Russian-Jewish
lady, like as
tough as they come.
Really tough as nails, you know?
My kind of gal.
And the night she was
dying, they called me up.
And so I went in.
I always went in when people
were dying to be with them.
And I walked in the room.
And Adele was sitting
on the edge of her bed,
sort of with her
feet dangling off
the edge of the bed
in her bed clothes.
And I went and
sat in the corner.
That's my way.
I sit in the corner and see,
is anything really needed
before I jump in to help?
And there was a really nice,
well-meaning attendant,
nurse's assistant
sitting next to her.
And this attendant
turned to Adele,
and she said, Adele, honey,
you don't have to be scared.
We're all right here with you.
And Adele turned to
her and she said,
honey, if this was happening
to you, you'd be scared.
Like that.
[LAUGHTER]
So I stayed in the corner.
And then, a little while
later, this very well-meaning
attendant said to her,
you look a little cold.
Would you like a shawl or a
blanket around your shoulders?
And Adele said, of
course, I'm cold.
I'm almost dead.
Wow.
I hope I have half of her
tenacity when I'm dying.
But sitting there in the
corner, I noticed a few things.
One was that Adele
wanted no nonsense.
She didn't want to talk
about tunnels of light,
or bardos, or any
of these things.
She just wanted real,
authentic relationship.
And the second thing was
that there was suffering.
There was struggle.
There's a struggle in
dying, just like there's
a struggle of getting born.
In her case, it was
manifest in the breath,
every in-breath struggle,
every out-breath struggle.
And this despite
the fact we made
all the right interventions of
oxygen and morphine, et cetera.
There's still a struggle.
There's a labor to dying.
So I pulled my chair
up really close to her.
And I looked her directly in
the eye and I said, Adele,
would you like to
suffer a little less?
Would you like to
struggle a little less?
And she said, yes.
And I said, OK.
I noticed something.
I noticed that right there at
the end of your exhale, just
before the next inhale,
there's this little gap,
this little pause.
And I wondered what
it would be like
if you could put your attention
there just for a moment.
I'll do it with you.
Now, this is a Russian
Jewish lady, 86 years old.
She doesn't care beans about
meditation, or Buddhism,
or mindfulness, or
any of these things.
But she's highly
motivated in this moment
to be free of suffering.
So she said, OK.
And I said, all right.
I'll do it with you.
So she would breathe
in, I would breathe in.
As she would breathe
out, I would breathe out.
Just that simple.
No special guidance.
No California woo-woo energy
work, or anything like this.
You know, just real.
Just real.
And I noticed that as we
were doing this together
that she found
that sort of pause,
that gap between the
exhale and the next inhale.
That's a really
interesting place for us.
That's a place of fear or faith.
Do you really trust the
next breath will come?
And I noticed that as
she found this place,
the fear on her face,
it just drained away.
And she had this kind of
look of relaxation about her.
And she said, I think I want
to lie back on my pillow now.
I said, great idea.
Go ahead.
You do that.
And a little while later,
she died very peacefully.
Do we have to die before
we can rest in peace?
I think when we
embrace impermanence,
when we embrace constant
change, a certain grace
enters our life that allows us
to treasure our experiences,
to feel deeply, to do
it all without clinging.
And we're free to savor
this life, the beauty
and the horror of it, actually.
Everything can impress itself on
our soul, on our consciousness.
And I think we can become
more appreciative about life.
Abe Maslow, the great
humanist psychologist,
he had a heart attack, too.
When I had a heart
attack, by the way,
I studied all the
famous people that
had heart attacks to see
if I could learn something.
But Abe Maslow had
the best thing.
He said, "Death and its
ever present possibility
makes love, passionate
love, more possible."
I thought that was beautiful.
You know the two most important
questions that people ask me
before they die?
It's not when am I
going to die, or what's
going to happen after I die.
The two most important questions
that people ask me are,
am I loved and did I love well?
Am I loved and did I love well?
Everything else is extra.
And if those are the most
important questions then,
why weren't they the most
important questions now?
All of our relationships
will end in separation.
The people we love will die.
The question becomes, how do
I want to care for them now?
Don't wait.
Don't wait.
To be human, for me at least,
is much more than getting born,
and getting a good
education, and getting
a great job at Google, or
a house on a nice street
so that we can go to bed and
sleep, wake up in the morning,
and do it all over again.
I think it's an invitation
to feel everything.
I think it's to come
into direct contact
with this strange, beautiful,
and sometimes perfectly
ordinary thing
that we call life.
And I think it's an opportunity
to be conscious of the fact
that some of us will make
love while others make war,
to recognize the truth
that there are babies,
like my granddaughter last
night, who was in our house
making a tent out of bed
sheets and couch pillows.
And there are kids that are
screaming in Syrian refugee
camps.
There are kids getting
shot in our schools.
And there are others that
are speaking truth to power.
There's devastation
and hopelessness.
And there is the passion and
the holy commitment of creating
a better future for everyone.
It is me speaking
and you listening,
and the sense of separation
that might exist.
And then, there's
the unity that starts
to emerge as soon as we
realize, or as soon as we
start talking about love.
Don't wait.
Dying folks taught me that.
Don't wait.
So I thought what
we might do here
is just maybe engage together
in a bit of a dialog.
Maybe there's something
about what I've said
that you want to chat about.
Or maybe you don't
agree with any of it.
That's OK.
But I thought, let's
talk about this.
And let's just
talk in a real way
about what actually matters.
And so it's up for grabs.
All questions or
comments are welcome.
And you know, I'll vamp a
little bit here and maybe share
some more stories.
We'll see what happens.
So let me ask you a question.
When you were looking at the
photos, what attracted you?
And what caused
you to pull away?
Anybody willing to say?
What attracted you and what
caused you to pull away?
AUDIENCE: Just the
smiles attracted.
FRANK OSTASESKI: The
smiles attracted you.
What caused you to pull away?
Even if only
slightly, what was--
what maybe scared you,
or made you nervous,
or you didn't like?
AUDIENCE: I didn't have any.
FRANK OSTASESKI: You didn't
have anything like that?
Yeah.
OK.
All right, good.
Let's hear from
some other people.
I just really am curious to
know, what happened there?
You're wanting to say something.
We'll get you a mic.
AUDIENCE: I pulled away
from the cigarette.
FRANK OSTASESKI:
From the cigarette.
You saw people smoking.
Did that happen for
anybody else in the room?
Yeah, you had the
same experience?
Several people did.
Yeah.
You know, we had a hospice
at Laguna Honda Hospital,
which is the nation's largest
long-term care facility.
We started there.
We were given the basement
and back of a hospital
to start the hospice in.
And in the old days, people
could smoke in their beds
in the hospital.
But then, that kind
of got prohibited.
And so we had to
create a smoker's room.
So we put up pictures of famous
dead smokers in the smoker's
room, of Humphrey Bogart,
and Marlene Dietrich,
and all kinds of movie stars.
And all the Buddhists who
were kind of closet smokers,
they finally coped to it and
they would hang out there
with the patients.
Yeah.
Well, maybe if we've had someone
in our family who got sick or--
my mother died of emphysema,
so I have some reactivity
to cigarettes.
Yeah.
Let's go back to
this young woman.
AUDIENCE: I didn't have any
problem with the cigarettes.
It seemed to me like they
were enjoying themselves.
FRANK OSTASESKI: Yeah.
Yeah.
So not everybody does,
but some people do.
For some people, it's like,
might as well enjoy it, right?
But for others, if
we've had something
like that in our
families or our friends,
it can cause some
reactivity for us.
So that's one of the
challenges of being
with people who are dying.
How do we see ourself in them?
Like when you looked
at these photos,
like I know these people.
I could tell you all
their back story.
I worked with all of them.
But you don't know them, right?
So what do you see?
I mean, you know tarot cards?
You know how tarot cards-- you
don't have to believe in tarot.
But what tarot cards are
are archetypal images that
are represented on the cards.
And what these photos are
are kind of like tarot cards.
The whole human
condition is here--
depression, happiness,
fatigue, fear.
It's all here in these slides.
Look at her.
So when you look
at them, I think
what we're seeing is ourself.
I think that we're seeing
our own hopes and fears.
Now, if we understand
that, then it
takes the conversational
a little deeper.
So what'd you see?
What'd you see?
AUDIENCE: I don't know
which one is going to be me.
FRANK OSTASESKI: I don't know
which one is going to be me.
Yeah.
Well, what did you see that
attracted you or caused
you to pull away?
AUDIENCE: It feels
like you keep trying
to give us things other
than the grief that I always
see in the ending.
It's like, no matter
what else we get out
of it, whatever
positives we find here,
whatever chance there is
to not have a cold anymore,
it's still a horrendous loss.
FRANK OSTASESKI: Yes.
AUDIENCE: I don't want
to sugarcoat that at all.
FRANK OSTASESKI: Absolutely.
And I don't want to
sugarcoat it either.
I have no interest in that.
My interest is in being
deeply real with people.
And there's no
question that when
we experience the loss
of someone we love,
we're going to feel grief.
And that grief is going to
show up in all kinds of ways.
It's going to feel like sadness.
And it's also going to show
up as anger and as fear
and sometimes like
numbness, or like you're
walking through molasses
and you can't find your way.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I think the numb is
more what led me away.
It's like, there's
a lot to take in.
There's an
approach/retreat thing
I just have to do with it.
FRANK OSTASESKI: Yeah.
So what are the
experiences of grief?
You know, first of all,
there's a whole lot
of nonsense out there about
models of grief and timelines
for how people should
move through it.
And it's just nonsense.
Grief is a totally
uncontrollable experience.
And we usually enter
that experience feeling
very fragmented.
But if we stay attentive
to that experience,
one of the things we start
to see is, oh, my god.
That's the underground
river that's
moving through all our
lives that we rarely
talk about with each other.
And so we begin to feel--
this fragmentation begins
to become something
more like connectedness
actually, more like wholeness.
It doesn't start out that
way, but it frequently
develops into that
kind of understanding.
AUDIENCE: Say just
a couple more words.
What's the fragmentation that
develops in the wholeness?
How do things connect
or [INAUDIBLE]..
FRANK OSTASESKI:
In the beginning,
we feel fragmented because
we feel like our life has
been shattered.
All the ways that we
counted on it being
have been upset in
one way or another.
Mom's going to be here.
The people I love
are going to be here.
Even if we know otherwise, we
believe that to be true often.
And so part of what
happens in grief
is not just the
loss of that person,
but the loss of that particular
dream or of that belief.
And when we can then
turn toward that
experience as opposed
to turning away from it.
Always when we turn
toward suffering,
there we find the healing.
The healing is always found in
the middle of the suffering.
Let me give you an example.
I was sitting in my office
one day when the phone rang.
And it was a dad.
And the dad said, we understand
that you could help keep
our son at home after he dies.
And I said, yeah,
I could do that.
They wanted to stay with their
son for a few days at home.
And I said, yeah,
I could do that.
I said, you just call
me when the time comes.
He said, no, you
don't understand.
It's just happened.
And I said, OK,
I'll be right over.
And I drove to their
house up in Sonoma County.
I walked in the house.
I didn't know this family.
I never met them before.
But I walked into the room.
There was mom and dad, and a few
of the neighbors and friends.
And there was this
seven-year-old boy in his bed,
dead.
And I went over to this
little boy following
my intuition, which I trust.
And I leaned over, and I kissed
him on the forehead, just
as a way of greeting him.
And when I did this, the
whole room broke into tears.
Because while they had cared
for him with great love,
nobody had touched
him since he died.
That's the extent of
our fear around dying.
So his mom and his
dad and I talked
about this process
of bathing the body
that's been done
in every culture,
every religious
tradition for millennium.
And we talked about how they
might do it differently.
And they were great gardeners,
so we went out to the garden,
and we got lemon geraniums,
and sage, and rosemary,
and rose petals.
You know, we made a basin of
water of all these sweet herbs
and flowers.
Then, we got
washcloths and towels.
And then this mom and this
dad started this process
of bathing their son.
I remember they started
at the top of his head
and they bathed down his back.
And as they bathed
down his back,
his mom would stop at these
little nicks and scratches
and take care of them
with so much love.
And sometimes, they would
have to stop and tell me
a story about him
as a way of getting
current with the truth of
what was in front of them.
Sometimes, it was
too hard for the dad.
And he had to go
stand by the window
and look out to the garden.
He couldn't do it.
And this mom, I remember
she got to his toes
and she counted his toes.
She said she had done
that when he was born.
Are any of you
parents in the room?
Yeah, OK.
I mean, it's impossible.
It's an impossible situation.
And there are no words that can
touch this kind of suffering.
What you can do is bear
witness to the suffering
and stay in the room when
the going gets rough.
So I said to her,
just keep going.
And she looked at me with
these beseeching eyes like,
am I going to survive this?
Can any mother survive this?
And my job was to hand
her another washcloth
and orient her back
to the suffering.
She kept bathing this boy.
And by the time she
got to his face,
it was so intimate
between this mom
and this seven-year-old boy.
Really intimate.
And she had burned
through a kind of grief.
I don't mean her grief was
over, not by the long shot.
It was just beginning.
But the feeling of
separation, which
is part of the experience
of grief, at that moment
had melted.
And this mom and this
boy were like one thing.
Maybe like the moment in which--
the women in this
room can tell you
what it's like when
you birth a child
and you feel like
you're one being.
No separation.
Or when you're
breastfeeding and you
feel yourself to be one being.
And the child knows
himself to be that, too.
I remember that we dressed him
in his Mickey Mouse pajamas.
And we invited his brothers
and sisters in the room.
And I asked him what he
liked to do the most,
and he liked to make
model airplanes.
So we got those model
airplanes, and we
made a mobile out of them
so the brothers and sisters
could be part of this.
And we hung the
mobile over his bed.
I hung out with his younger
brothers and sisters.
I came home that night.
And my own son was seven
years old at the time.
And I can tell you, I
held him really close.
So no, I'm not
interested in Pollyanna.
I'm not interested in
skipping over anything.
But I am interested in changing
the dialog that we have
around death only being failure,
and only being a wasting away
experience.
It's not my experience.
It's my experience
that people frequently,
in the middle of
that, find resources
that they never knew
they had and discover
unbelievable capacity, actually.
It doesn't happen every time.
But most of the stories we
tell ourself about dying
are scary stories.
And I think that
that doesn't help us
and that we need to see.
Some of us have been in the
room with people who have died,
and it's been hard.
And others have
been in the room,
and it's been
unbelievably beautiful.
Both are true.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
From the pictures, I
see mostly dying folks
that were fearful and painful.
But I do see a few happy faces.
FRANK OSTASESKI: [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: And I think
dying, if viewed
from an eternal
point of view, can
be viewed as a happy occasion.
Because I remember
there's a song.
The basis is-- I
forgot the title.
It's through an open door, all
the burdens are laid aside.
All the work done.
My mother is there
waiting for me.
My father is there, too.
Lots of friends
are waiting for me.
Very happy.
Happy [INAUDIBLE] right?
I think if we have faith
that we-- in heaven,
we have eternal life.
Then, our earthly
lives is very short.
It could be 70
years or 80 years.
As Moses said 3,000 years ago,
the length of life 70 years
is only a very short.
The span of our life is
so quick, we'll fly away,
and we are gone.
FRANK OSTASESKI: Yes.
AUDIENCE: We'll fly away.
And our life is
like a flower field.
The wind blows over
it, then it's gone.
Even its place
remembers it no more.
But for those people
who have faith,
I think the creator's
eternal love is on those.
Their righteousness is on
their children's children.
I found this kind of hope
and the eternal faith
gives a lot of comfort.
FRANK OSTASESKI: So that's
something you have confidence
in and you have real faith in.
Beautiful.
Beautiful for you.
AUDIENCE: I lost two sisters
when I was a little kid.
It was a very
traumatic experience.
But then, I came--
my mom is 85 years old, and
she's really on that stage.
But now, I have a lot
of peace because this is
going to happen to everybody.
FRANK OSTASESKI: Yes.
It is.
And so awareness in a way--
because some of you are
mindfulness students.
We could say awareness
is totally undivided.
And yet, it can
include division.
It can include paradox.
So I think that one
of the things that's
often true about
the dying process
is that it's hard, that it's
maybe the toughest work we'll
ever do in our lives.
And being with someone we
love, also really difficult.
But it isn't all that it is.
It isn't all that it is.
Yeah.
And if we don't start
including some other elements
of that conversation,
we will lean
into-- our default position
will always be it's miserable
and it's failure.
And that's what we've been
taught for generations now.
And I want to shift that dialog.
Now for some people
like yourself,
who are people of great faith,
they have a sense of eternity
and that there is
a life after death.
Others don't have that
belief, and they still
have graceful deaths.
It's not a prerequisite
for a fearless death.
In fact, I often ask
people when they're dying,
what do you think is going
to happen after you die?
It's a really good
question to ask all of us.
And you know, I
don't know, actually.
I don't really know.
I mean, when I find
out, I'll write.
[LAUGHTER]
But what you think
about it matters.
So for example, there was a
woman we were working with.
She was a Christian Scientist.
And she had deep faith, maybe
like yourself, deep faith.
And she said to me, I
just want to put my head
in the lap of Jesus.
And I said, OK, sounds good.
And then, her daughter
came, granddaughter
rather, came to visit her.
And her granddaughter said,
Grandma, I was reading a book.
And in this book, it
says that after you die,
everybody who's died before
you will be there to meet you,
so you don't have to be worried
about anything, Grandma.
And Grandma became terrified.
Yeah.
You know why?
She confided in me that
Edgar, her husband,
had been beating her
most of her life.
And the idea of spending
eternity with Edgar
was terrifying to her.
So I don't impose my idea.
Even those that I have faith in,
I don't impose those on others.
But rather, I try and discover
from the other person,
what is it that really
is truthful to you?
So there was a guy, Jackie, in
the hospice, African-American
man, 30-year heroin user.
He's at the Zen Hospice Project.
And I said, Jackie, here
you are at the Zen Hospice.
You think you're going
to get born again?
He said, yep.
I said, well, what are
you going to come back as?
He said, Jackie.
I said, what you want
to be Jackie for?
You could be a king, or a
queen, or the head of Google.
And I said, in some
cultures, you could be a cow
and that would be very sacred.
And he said, I'm not coming
back as no goddamn cow.
And I said, well, why
you want to be Jackie?
He said, because next time,
I'm going to get it right.
And you see, we're in a really
different conversation now.
We're really in a conversation
about his current life.
So I don't impose
my ideas on anybody.
I'm really curious.
I like to discover with people.
I walk in the room
with a sense of wonder.
There was a guy who was the
head of the California Atheist
Association who came to
die with us at Zen Hospice.
I was very proud
of that, that he
didn't feel like anybody was
going to push any dogma on him.
And so I sat down with
him and we talked a lot
about this question.
And I said, what's going
to happen after you die?
He said, nothing.
I said, what do
you mean, nothing?
He said, nothing.
I said, will you smell things?
Will you hear things?
No, you don't smell things.
You don't have a nose.
You don't hear things.
You don't have ears.
I said, well, what's it like?
There's nothing.
Is it like a dial tone?
And he said, no.
He said, it's just
you become molecules.
And those molecules mix
with all the other molecules
in the universe.
And you just become one with
all the other molecules.
I said, oh.
Oh, that kind of nothing.
Oh, OK.
So I don't have some idea
about how it's supposed to go.
But I do think that the way
in which we think about what
happens after we die matters.
It shapes the way
in which we die.
And to some extent, the way
in which we live our lives,
I think.
So I think that your
comments are good ones.
We'll find out, right?
We'll find out.
What else is on your
hearts and minds?
Anything else?
Yeah, please.
Over there.
AUDIENCE: I really enjoyed
your podcast with Sam Harris,
by the way.
FRANK OSTASESKI: Oh, yeah.
Yeah, he's a great guy.
You know, he's a bit of a
provocateur, Sam, you know?
And he was going to nail me
on my Buddhist stuff, I think.
But I didn't bite.
He's a really good guy.
And he told me that it's one of
the most popular podcasts he's
ever had.
AUDIENCE: So I had a question
about Eastern philosophy.
So one of the pillars,
the foundation of Eastern
philosophy is the
sense of self that we
have is an illusion and
one of the foundations
of all suffering.
So I kind of wanted
to ask you how
we can bring awareness
of death in trying
to understand that illusion?
FRANK OSTASESKI:
Yeah, beautiful.
So first of all, we've got to
distinguish between Eastern
philosophy, because it's too
big a generalization, right?
Because what a Hindu belief is
and what a Buddhist belief is
can be quite different.
And also, within
Buddhist schools,
there are many, many
distinctions and differences.
Some Buddhist schools
don't ascribe to any notion
of rebirth, for example.
So one way, in Buddhist
schools, at least
in the early
Theravadan schools, is
they think of us as what are
called a heap, or the five
heaps.
We're a collection of things,
of seeing, of tasting,
of touching, of
smelling, these senses,
and the sixth being
consciousness,
the ability to know
the experience.
And in fact, in that
system, that's what we are.
We are this collection
of things which
is constantly appearing and
disappearing, constantly
changing.
So when I said earlier,
we think of ourselves
as a solid thing going
through a changing world,
this is a kind of an illusion.
And yet, there's also some
imprint, we could say,
that seems to continue and has
some kind of momentum to it.
This is also true.
In different cultures, in
some of the Vedanta cultures,
we would call that
Atman, the sense of soul.
In the Buddhist cultures, we
speak about a consciousness
that can continue actually
and has a momentum to it that
inclines it toward rebirth.
I think that really we don't
have to believe any of that.
All we have to do
is look and see.
This moment?
It just changed.
It was here a moment
ago, wasn't it?
And now, it's not.
And that's the truth
of our existence.
Everything is coming
and going all the time.
I used to live in a
farmhouse in the countryside.
And it was a
120-year-old farmhouse.
And the windows
in the farmhouse,
if you looked at them
really carefully,
they were thicker at the bottom
than they were at the top.
Because the glass,
although it seemed solid,
was actually a moving thing.
Glass is liquid.
It's always moving.
And so it settles down to
the bottom of the window.
We're a bit like that.
We're a moving thing that
looks kind of solid actually,
but we're not nearly so fixed
as we imagine ourselves to be.
So suppose we embrace that.
Suppose not just believed
it, but actually looked at it
and knew it intimately
and really, embodied it.
Well, then.
I think we would maybe not
be so afraid of change.
And maybe our fear of death,
which is a pretty big change,
would just seem like yet another
part of that continuous flow
of impermanence.
I think that's one of
things we could do.
If you want to
find out about me,
you can go to
fiveinvitations.com.
And there, there's
a series of events.
And you can find out where
else I'm teaching and stuff.
You can also, obviously,
find the book there.
And then I run an organization
called the Metta Institute,
M-E-T-T-A. And there also, you
can find out about the programs
and things that we're doing.
So come play with us.
This is too big a question to
be left until the final days
of your life.
Let's explore it now.
So thank you very much.
Thank you, everybody,
for inviting me.
Thank you for those
folks that are here
in the room and those that
have been watching the stream.
Thank you, Karen, for
your kind introduction
and to Van and the whole
crew for everything
you did to make it
possible for me to be here.
You're saying thank
you very much?
And Ben, thank you very much.
Yeah.
OK.
Let's stop there.
[APPLAUSE]
