In this book, Sallie Tisdale provides a frank, direct, and compassionate meditation on death and dying. Drawing from her experience as a nurse, particularly in palliative care, Tisdale offers a balanced view of the end of life. The book includes detailed descriptions of the physical process of dying, practical advice for caregivers, and philosophical reflections on the nature of death. It also explores various cultural and literary perspectives on death, making it a comprehensive guide for planning the end of life and living with the awareness of mortality[1][3][4].
In 'A Year to Live,' Stephen Levine presents a year-long program to help readers live each moment, hour, and day mindfully, as if it were their last. The book is based on Levine's own experiment of living for a year as if it were his final year, inspired by the Dalai Lama's approach to preparing for death. Levine provides intensely practical strategies and powerful guided meditations to help readers deal with unfinished business, cultivate qualities such as mindfulness, detachment, gratitude, forgiveness, and compassion, and enter into a new and vibrant relationship with life. The book emphasizes the importance of preparing for death as a way to live more fully and meaningfully, and includes practices like life reviews, meditating on fear, and imagining one's own death to foster a deeper appreciation for life[2][3][5].
Contemplating your own death can feel like a massive bummer at first, but there’s good news: how you react to that inescapable fact really matters.
Vinny Ferraro has practiced insight meditation (vipassanā) since the mid-90s. He’s the Guiding Teacher of the Big Heart City Sangha in San Francisco and has led a weekly sitting group for almost two decades.
As a fully empowered Dharma Teacher thru Spirit Rock/IMS, he has taught residential retreats at Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society, and the Esalen Institute. Currently, he leads Spirit Rock's Year to Live course and teaches retreats and daylongs through Big Heart City and meditation centers across the country.
He is a respected leader in developing and implementing interventions for at-risk populations. leading groups in schools, juvenile halls and prisons since 1987. He has led emotional intelligence workshops for over 100,000 youth on four continents.
In this episode we talk about:
- Why it’s important to think about your own death even if you’re not expecting it anytime soon
- The distinction between the actual conditions of your life and how much you suffer
- A practice called the five Daily Remembrances, which Dan started doing himself right after we recorded this — and which has made a real difference for him
- And some of other practices they do in the class, including the “life review” and “housekeeping”
Related Episodes:
Three Buddhist Practices For Getting Your Sh*t Together | Vinny Ferraro
How Thinking About Death Can Improve Your Life | Alua Arthur
Join the waiting list for A Year To Live at Spirit Rock.
Find out more about the Young Adult Retreat at Spirit Rock (taught by Vinny Ferraro, Matthew Brensilver, Cara Lai, and Hakim Tafari).
Use code TENPERCENT for 10% off these two courses at Spirit Rock:
Anxiety as Teacher: A Dharma and Yoga Daylong
Cultivating the Beautiful Factors of Mind
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Full Shownotes: www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/vinny-ferraro-a-year-to-live
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