The Five Invitations

I've spent the past several weeks enjoying a beautiful book by Frank Ostaseski, co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco. The Five Invitations: Discovering what death can teach us about living fully reads like a dharma talk, fluidly integrating Buddhist teachings with story telling and gentle reminders to come back to the richness of the present moment, no matter what is happening. He doesn't sugar coat death, promise that everything will be ok, or placate our fears that it won't. He simply reminds us, lovingly and persistently, to use our experiences with death to make the time we are living more rich and meaningful. 

From the introduction:
"Life and death are a package deal. You cannot pull them apart.

In Japanese Zen, the term shoji translates as "birth-death." There is no separation between life and death other than a small hyphen, a thin line that connects the two.

We cannot be truly alive without maintaining an awareness of death. 

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. She helps us to discover what matters most. And the good news is we don't have to wait until the end of our lives to realize the wisdom that death has to offer...

---

Read More