Frank Ostaseski is an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and visionary co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project, and founder of the Metta Institute. He has lectured at Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, Wisdom.2.0 and teaches at major spiritual centers around the globe. Frank is the 2018 recipient of the prestigious Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
Frank has dedicated his life to service. It has been fusion of spiritual insight and practical social action. It manifests in caring for the homeless, serving on the early front lines AIDS epidemic, lobbying congress, teaching meditation and most daunting raising four teenagers at the same time.
His groundbreaking work has been featured on the Bill Moyers PBS series On Our Own Terms, highlighted on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and honored by H.H. the Dalai Lama. He is the author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully.
Deep Transformations Podcast
I had the honor and pleasure to participate in a mind and heart-opening conversation with Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy on their remarkable podcast: Deep Transformation: Self-Society-Spirit.
Dr. Roger Walsh is a renowned thought leader in the fields of essential spirituality, wisdom, integral theory, and deep contemplative practice, a scholar, professor, prolific author, and practitioner, and John Dupuy, award-winning author of Integral Recovery, is best known for his outspoken passion for the transformational power of Integral Practice. He is also the CEO of iAwake Technologies and spent many years as a wilderness and vision quest guide.
Some of the topics we covered in the 2 part program include:
- Imagining death as an unprecedented opportunity for transformation
- Acceptance, letting go, and the deeper dimension of surrender
- Who are we after we are stripped of our identities?
- Meeting death with don’t-know mind
- Creating our own rituals around dying
- Bringing death & dying out of the closet
Deep Transformation’s description of our conversation:
Frank Ostaseski, Zen hospice pioneer, founder of the Metta Institute, and author of The Five Invitations, speaks with us about the profound wisdom and potential for transformation that is unleashed in the process of dying. “Suppose we imagine death as an unprecedented opportunity for transformation, he says, adding, “so why wait until we are dying?” In attending over a thousand people in hospice, Frank has often seen them experience a real sense of discovery in the dying process; there is a time of acceptance, a time of letting go, and then a deeper state of surrendering to something larger. The walls that prop up the self start tumbling down, Frankexplains, and a larger connection emerges that is always there.
Frank would like to see the process of dying brought out of the closet — shared about, learned from, and not reduced to a medical event. It’s important to meet death with don’t-know mind and trust the dying process to teach each of us what we need to know, he explains. And some of what we can do right now to open ourselves to the wisdom of death is pay attention to how we end things, and to how we love. This far reaching discussion delves gently into the divine mystery of death and dying, touching on radical acceptance, transcending self, don’t-know mind, everyday compassion and boundless compassion, grief as an expression of love, and creating rituals to mark this passage and all passages. We are left feeling unexpectedly comforted and liberated at the same time.
Recorded December 5, 2024.
Part 1 Episode Page
https://deeptransformation.io/
Part 2 Episode Page
https://deeptransformation.io/
The Five Invitations:
Don’t Wait
Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing
Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience
Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things
Cultivate Don’t Know Mind
The Five Invitations are mutually supportive principles, permeated with love that are reliable guides for being with dying. And, as it turns out, they have a relevance for all of us in living a life of integrity, meaning and purpose. They can be understood as best practices for anyone navigating a life transition, coping with loss or serious illness or a personal crisis. They guide us toward appreciating life’s preciousness. The Five Invitations is a powerful and inspiring exploration of the essential wisdom dying has to show about waking up fully to our lives.
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