Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death

by Joan Halifax, Ira Byock MD (Foreword by), Frank Ostaseski (Foreword by), Frank Ostaseski (Afterword)

Overview

In this classic book of inspiring and practical teachings, Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax offers the fruits of her many years of work with dying people. Inspired by traditional Buddhist teachings, her work is a source of wisdom for all those who are charged with a dying person’s care, who are facing their own death, or who are wishing to explore and contemplate the transformative power of the dying process.

Halifax offers lessons from dying people and caregivers, as well as guided meditations to help readers contemplate death without fear, develop a commitment to helping others, and transform suffering and resistance into courage. She says, “Why wait until we are actually dying to explore what it may mean to die with awareness?”

A world-renowned pioneer in care of the dying, Joan Halifax founded the Project on Being with Dying, which helps dying people to face death with courage and trains professional and family caregivers in compassionate and ethical end-of-life care.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781645472872
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	07/09/2024
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Joan Halifax, PhD, is a Zen priest and anthropologist who has served on the faculty of Columbia University and the University of Miami School of Medicine. For the past thirty years she has worked with dying people and has lectured on the subject of death and dying at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Medical School, Georgetown Medical School, and many other academic institutions. In 1990, she founded Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist study and social action center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1994, she founded the Project on Being with Dying, which has trained hundreds of healthcare professionals in the contemplative care of dying people.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Introduction: Healing the Divide xv

Part 1 Uncharted Territory 1

1 A Path of Discovery: The Lucky Dark 3

Meditation: How Do You Want to Die? 6

2 The Heart of Meditation: Language and Silence 9

Meditation: Strong Back, Soft Front 14

3 Overcoming the Porcupine Effect: Moving Past Fear into Tenderness 17

Meditation: Mercy-Exchanging Self with Other 23

4 The Wooden Puppet and Iron Man: Selfless Compassion, Radical Optimism 25

Meditation: Contemplating Our Priorities 33

5 At Home in the Infinite: Dwelling in the Boundless Abodes 37

Meditation: Boundless Abodes for Living and Dying 45

6 You Are Already Dying: Realizing Impermanence, Selflessness, and Freedom 47

Meditation: The Nine Contemplations 54

Part 2 Giving No Fear 61

7 Fictions that Hinder and Heal: Facing Truth and Finding Meaning 63

Meditation: Bearing Witness to Two Truths 67

8 The Two Arrows: I Am in Pain and I Am Not Suffering 71

Meditation: Encountering Pain 78

9 Giving No Fear: Transforming Poison into Medicine 81

Meditation: Giving and Receiving through Tonglen 88

10 Take Care of Your Life, Take Care of the "World: Seeing My Own Limits with Compassion 93

Meditation: Boundless Caring 99

11 The Jeweled Net: Communities of Care 101

Meditation: The Circle of Truth 107

12 Wounded Healers: The Shadow Side of Caregiving 113

Meditation: Four Profound Reminders 122

Part 3 Making a Whole Cloth 125

13 Doorways to Truth: From Fear to Liberation 127

Meditation: Walking Meditation 133

14 Embracing the Road: How We Remember, Assess, Express, and Find Meaning137

Meditation: Letting Go through the Breath 142

15 Between Life, Between People: How We Forgive, Reconcile, Express Gratitude, and Love 145

Meditation: Boundless Abodes for Transforming Relationships 149

16 The Great Matter: There is Mo One Right Way 151

Meditation: Encountering Death 159

17 The Broken Pine Branch: Deaths of Acceptance and Liberation 163

Meditation: Dissolution of the Elements after Death 172

18 Gratitude for the Vessel: Care of the Body after Death 179

Meditation: Charnel Ground Meditation 185

19 River of Loss: The Plunge of Sorrow 189

Meditation: Encountering Grief 195

Afterword: Being One with Dying 197

Acknowledgments 203

Editorial Reviews

A moving meditation on palliative care. . . . A supremely readable book [that] will attract readers of all faiths who will appreciate her clarity and compassion and the poignancy of these stories of ordinary people facing their final hours with quiet courage.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This book is a gift of wisdom and practical guidance for living.”
—Ira Byock, MD, author of  Dying Well and The Four Things That Matter Most

“Joan Halifax has a knack for straight talk and sublime insight—a no-holds-barred approach to life's greatest challenge, dying well. This book beckons to those who dare, and those who care; it's a profound and practical guidebook to the inevitable final dance.”
—Daniel Goleman, author of  Emotional Intelligence

“Joan Halifax has taken the great matter of death and dying and woven a tapestry of stories, wisdom, and practical advice for care of the dying—all against a background of compassion.”
—Charles R. Lewis, MD, Medical Director, Inpatient Care Center, San Diego Hospice and Palliative Care

“This book picks up where many books about palliative care end, by giving us a sense of the possibilities offered by an encounter with a dying person. Joan Halifax gives us a map of territory not usually mentioned in medical discussions about dying. Her book deserves to be read by clinicians who take care of people with life-threatening illnesses, from the beginning of their journey through the last moments of life and beyond.”
—Anthony Back, MD, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance

“Joan Halifax guides us in receiving the grace and healing of abiding in the present moment as the balm for our fears, anger, grief, and sadness. She is a masterful teacher, wise sage, and mentor for dying people, their families, and professional caregivers.”
—Cynda Hylton Rushton, PhD, RN, John Hopkins University and Children's Center

“This beautiful book is both a gentle comfort and a fierce guide to the experience of living, of which death is simply a part. Joan Halifax poignantly and generously offers the wisdom and practices she embodies. A gift beyond measure.”
—Margaret J. Wheatley, PhD, author of Leadership and the New Science

“Through the lens of Halifax’s discussion of death, even the most devoted yogis will be able to deepen their experience of presence in everyday life.”
—Eric Larson, Whole Life Times

“This compelling, brave, and wise book draws from a lifetime of remarkable work with people at the end of life.”
—Andrew Weil, MD

From the Publisher

In this moving meditation on palliative care, Halifax tells a story about a dying Zen teacher who confesses to his students: "Maybe I will die in fear or pain. Remember there is no right way." This sentiment forms the core of a book that provides practical and philosophical guidance to caregivers. Drawing on her 30 years of experience in the "contemplative care of the dying," Halifax honestly enumerates the challenges of being with the dying while exalting it as "a school for unlearning the patterns of resistance... [it] enjoins us to be still, let go, listen, and be open to the unknown." According to Halifax, "bearing witness to dying" can teach innumerable lessons to the living—assuming "we give up our tight control strategies, our ideas of what it means to die well." Halifax is a Zen priest, and while many of her teachings derive from Buddhism, her supremely readable book will attract readers of all faiths who will appreciate her clarity and compassion and the poignancy of these stories of ordinary people facing their final hours with quiet courage. (June)

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Publishers Weekly