The Doctor's Art Life Lessons from Death | Frank Ostaseski
"Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most."
So writes Frank Ostaseski, an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and pioneer in end-of-life care. Frank is the founder of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, the first Buddhist hospice in America. Over the course of his career, Frank has accompanied over 1000 people through the dying process; these experiences have taught him lessons on how maintaining an ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our most authentic selves. He describes these lessons in his bestselling 2017 book, The Five Invitations. In this episode, Frank joins us to share hard-earned wisdom from his unique life journey. Over the course of our deeply reflective and even meditative conversation, we discuss matters ranging from Japanese death poems, to Buddhist mindfulness practices, to what courage looks like in the face of death.
In this episode, you will hear about:
- How the AIDS crisis led to the founding of the Zen Hospice Project - 2:16
- What Frank’s work looks like on a daily basis - 3:52
- Frank’s role as an ‘interpreter’ between patients and doctors - 5:57
- How clinicians can develop their own rituals in the process of healing patients - 9:09
- How Frank makes sense of the grief and suffering he witnesses and, despite it all, keep his spirit balanced - 13:40
- How the tenets of Buddhism influenced care at the Zen Hospice Project - 25:58
- How progresses in modern medicine sometimes hinders us in our acceptance of the impermanence and inevitability of death - 33:56
- Lessons on love, mindfulness, and finding meaning from Frank’s stories of patients at the end of life - 38:20
- The Five Invitations and what they look like in practice - 45:20
Frank Ostaseski is the author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully.
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