Facing death is considered fundamental in the Buddhist tradition. Death is seen as a final stage of growth. Our daily practices of mindfulness and compassion cultivate the wholesome mental, emotional, and physical qualities that prepare us to meet the inevitable. [...]
I think death is completely unmanageable. Medicine puts a lot of effort into trying to manage this experience, which is too big in a way, too profound for medicine. I think what we do is we help people do the normal things that any other hospice would do. That is, make sure that their pain is well managed, that their symptoms are under control, that they’re not suffering. [...]
The second is that I think that when we begin to keep death close at hand, we understand just how precarious this life actually is. And when we see that ... then we come to see just how precious it is, and then we don’t want to waste a moment. Then we want to jump into our life. We want to tell the people we love that we love them. We want to live our life in a way that's responsible, meaningful, purposeful. [...]
Death is a mystery, and people who are dying are turning toward mystery, and mystery is this unknowable territory, the land of unanswerable questions. To be a good companion, I have to be comfortable in that territory of mystery as well, and that doesn’t mean that I have all the answers. It means that I’m willing to stay in the room when the going gets tough. That I don’t turn away from the unknown, that I enter with a quality of curiosity and wonder.
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