Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality

Earlier in life, I spent a couple of years in CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education), training to be a hospital chaplain. I served in a major hospital where I was called on to minister to dozens of people who were dying either in the ER or the wards. I learned a lot. But if Judith Lief's extraordinarily good book had been available to me, I'd have learned even more. Loyal to her Buddhist orientation, Lief wisely argues that death-fear is both rampant and unnecessary. We fear death because we fear suffering, and we associate suffering with impermanency. But everything is transient in human experience, and to cling to the past or present out of fear of an uncertain future isn't so much a bulwark against suffering as a needless exacerbator of it. What we need to do is accept the fact that a certain amount of suffering in life is necessary and unavoidable. We can't change that. What we can do, however, is lessen the amount and intensity of suffering by adopting the proper attitude to it--and, ultimately, to our own mortality. Mindfulness about our transient nature, contemplation of our own mortality (i.e., an honest confrontation with it), and practiced resolve to embrace rather than resist impermanence helps us to distinguish between what's genuine in our lives and what are mere artificialities which deceive us and contribute to our suffering. Mindfulness encourages simplicity, which in turn nurtures kindness and compassion. When we let go of our ignorance and fear, our self-absorption and ego-centeredness--all of which feed our death-fear--we not only alleviate our own suffering. We also make ourselves more available to care for our fellow humans who are in the process of dying. Obviously there's an element of "physician, heal thyself" in Lief's analysis: we can only begin to feel genuine compassion for others when we do something about our own ill-being. And of course life isn't this clean-cut. We work on ourselves even as we try to help others; helping others aids us in our self-work. But Lief's book, part reflection, part manual, is a tremendously valuable resource for the journey, messy as it can get.

Even if you are not a Buddhist practitioner, you will find this book very helpful with helping individuals who are terminally ill. This should be required reading for hospice workers, volunteers, and anyone working with individuals who are dealing with life threatening illness. At the end of each chapter the author give good exercises to help you contemplate how you interact with those who are facing death and how you face your own mortality.

i bought this when my wife passed , it gave me alot of counsel and solace buy it and read it, thats it

I started reading this book shortly after the death of my step-father and my mother's being diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. As I joined my siblings to help our mother deal with the death of her husband, and to help her adjust to the knowledge of her own condition, I used this book to keep me from getting lost in a whirlpool of thoughts and feelings that would have been of no help to anyone. I would read the book and see exactly where the things Lief discusses in her work could be applied in my own situation. I tested it, on the spot. It works. There's no magic to this book, no secret code to it. Don't be put off by the fact that it's a "Buddhist" guide...you could be Catholic, Hindu, Muslim or Jewish, from any walk of life, any race or creed, on any spiritual path, and still benefit tremendously from this book. You don't necessarily have to be "dying" or standing next to someone who's dying to benefit from the book as well. It's really a book for people who are living, moment-to-moment, in the vulnerable awareness of death as a fact of life, something not to be avoided, but met, befriended. Lief has a simple, direct way of speaking about the dying and those who are near to them, caring for them, as they are dying. She has the kind of light touch and sense of humor (at specific points) that indicate the true depth and intensity of her point of view. There is a warmth throughout the work that gives you a sense that she's not in some ivory tower somewhere "thinking" about the best way for people to handle death. Neither is she in a cave in Tibet "having dreams and visions" about it. You get the sense, as you read the work, that she's standing right next to you, helping you to work your way through your own situation. I never felt, as I read the book, that she was an outsider looking in on my situation. It's a good book for people going through transitions of any sort whatsoever. People aren't the only things that die. Relationships, jobs, dreams, institutions, ideas...all these things die too and in a very subtle way, Lief's book helps us to deal with the death (and birth) of these things too.Something about this book makes you feel very connected to life.

This is an excellent down to earth guide to the various issues surrounding death. The first section is entitled "Cultivating a personal awareness of death." Many analogies and examples that we can all relate to are given about our views of the subject. Simple excercises at the end of each chapter give the reader a chance to illuminate his or her views. Meditation practice is introduced as a tool to make friends with ourselves and to settle our minds. Then contemplation of death is introduced to help us face death and change with equanimity and to develop a reverence for life. The second section is entitled "Opening our Heart". Here Lief describes how the simplicity of death cuts through our superflouous concerns and opens. The various descriptions of dysfunctional compassion are the best I've seen anywhere and worth it for all of us to check out. The final section is practical advise in the form of "slogans" or reminders to help us when we are actually working with a dying person. This is a book that is useful at any time in one's life so that when one does encounter death, be it one's own or a close frind or relative, one is able to respond with composure and kindness.