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

by Joan Halifax, Ira Byock (Foreword by)

Overview

The Buddhist approach to death can be of great benefit to people of all backgrounds—as has been demonstrated time and again in Joan Halifax’s decades of work with the dying and their caregivers. Inspired by traditional Buddhist teachings, her work is a source of wisdom for all those who are charged with a dying person’s care, facing their own death, or wishing to explore and contemplate the transformative power of the dying process. Her teachings affirm that we can open and contact our inner strength, and that we can help others who are suffering to do the same.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590307182
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	11/17/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	152,942
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.57(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 compelling, brave, and wise book draws from a lifetime of remarkable work with people at the end of life.”—Andrew Weil, MD

“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

“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

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