The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

by Frank Ostaseski

Often it transforms into what I have come to call mature hope, a hope that takes us inside ourselves and toward finding the good in the experience. Mature hope requires both a clear intention and a simultaneous letting go. This hope is not dependent upon outcome. In fact, hope is tied to uncertainty because we never know what is going to happen next. The hope is in the potential for our awakened response, not in things turning out a particular way. It is an orientation of the heart, grounded in value and trust in our basic human goodness, not in what we might achieve. That fundamental trust guides our actions and allows us to cooperate with others and to persevere, without attachment to a specific result. In illness, mature hope helps us come to a place of wholeness, even if a cure is unavailable. When we relax our single-minded vision of the future—the idea that “this is the only way for things to happen”—we are no longer trapped by our conventional view of hope. We leave room for surprise.

I once met a man who planted ten thousand oak trees. He was at that time seventy years old. He didn’t know how many had grown to be adult trees, and he certainly would never see any of them in their full maturity. He said hope was a shared promise between him, the trees, and the children who would one day climb the oaks’ magnificent branches.

I agreed to help, provided we would make every attempt to learn what the teacher actually needed. I asked her to look and listen carefully to what the teacher was telling her. “Oh, but I can’t,” Crystal replied. “She’s in a partial coma. She can’t talk.” “Look more closely. Is she perspiring?” I asked. “Yes,” Crystal said. “Then go get a cool washcloth and place it gently on her head. She’s telling you that she has a fever.” “Okay,” she said. I asked, “Is she grimacing with any obvious signs of pain?” “No,” Crystal replied. “Wonderful. Then let’s try the next step,” I advised. “How is her breathing?” “It’s very fast, somewhat erratic,” she said. “Sit quietly beside her, following the rhythm of her breath. Breathe in as she breathes in; breathe out as she breathes out. There is no need to guide her. Just accompany her. In this way, you can provide a kind and loving presence, patiently attending to the moment-to-moment changes in her experience.”

So I said, “Just keep listening like this. Keep watching the tone of her skin. Listen to her breathing. See what happens when her eyes flutter. Watch her carefully. See everything as a communication with you. Let her show you the way. She’ll guide you through. She knows how to do this. We’ve been dying for hundreds of thousands of years.”

The “good death” is a myth. Dying is messy.

In my experience, the romantic expectation of a good death places an immense and unnecessary burden on the dying. We may view it as a failure when people don’t go calmly into the night. “Oh, my mother didn’t see tunnels of light. She died terrified. It was an awful death,” I once heard a man complain. Many people feel like failures simply for dying in the first place because our culture is so steeped in the language of “fighting until the end.” Why should we further weigh the dying person down by judging how they go? As Crystal discovered, allowing our loved ones to have the experiences they need as they die is tremendously freeing for them and for us. When I sit at the bedsides of people who are dying, my primary goal is to keep my heart open. I feel that I have a responsibility to support them wherever they are in their journey.

I’ve stopped judging. One person’s “good death” is another’s worst nightmare. Some want death to come suddenly, while others hope they will die slowly. Some people hope to be surrounded by loving family members, while some fear the interference of well-meaning others.

It was critical in healing the wounds and reconciling herself to her long-troubled relationship with her daughter that she not hope for a different past.

In death and in life, should we “hope for the best” or “expect the worst”? What if instead, we cultivated a non-judgmental attention and commitment to being with the truth of whatever is present? Suppose rather than choosing sides, we developed the mental clarity, emotional stability, and embodied presence to not be swept away by the cycle of ups and downs, of hopes and fears? Balanced equanimity gives rise to a resilience that is fluid and not fixed, trusting, adaptable, and responsive. Perhaps we might accept our past, ourselves, others, and the continually changing conditions of our lives “as is”—neither good nor bad, but workable. It’s helpful here to take refuge in impermanence. Not in the expectation that things will turn out as we hope or fear, but in the fact that things will change whether we want them to or not.

Don’t wait is an encouragement to step fully into life. Don’t miss this moment waiting for the next one to arrive. Don’t wait to act on what is most important. Don’t get stuck in the hope for a better past or future; be present.

see now how the constant desire to have things be other than what they were was blinding me to the positive aspects of my Parkinson’s experience. Now I focus on my gratitude for those who care for me. I trust in my capacity to meet whatever challenges come my way.” David said, “In my ordinary mind, I have a hope that I am going to change my illness. It is the object of my fear, and I want to control that fear. But I am only setting myself up for disappointment. I get lost. When I emerge into a more peaceful state, the object comes to me, and I see it for what it is: a ‘scary thought.’ Then I realize, if I am aware of the thought and the accompanying fear, then the fear is not all that is present. Awareness is also present. And with that recognition, I can choose to function from the fear or from the awareness.”

What David was describing so eloquently is a subtler dimension to the idea of don’t wait, which I call non-waiting. It is the antidote to the trap of expectation—an open, receptive quality of mind. In non-waiting, we allow objects, experiences, states of mind, and hearts to unfold, to show themselves to us without our interference. The difference between don’t wait and non-waiting is like the difference between detachment and non-attachment. Detachment implies distancing ourselves from a particular object or experience. It can feel cool, like we are withdrawing or pulling away. Non-attachment simply means not holding on to, not grasping, not getting entangled. There is no need for distancing oneself. Similarly, non-waiting is relaxed and spacious, a way of allowing experience to come toward us without the need to reach out and grab it.

In living, as in dying, when we hold hope apart from expectation, independent of attachment to outcome, we develop a wise connection with reality. We show up and participate directly in life’s unfolding. We engage in the journey instead of waiting to arrive at our destination.

Sharing our stories helps us to heal. Intuitively, I sensed that the greatest gift I could offer Travis in that moment was my undivided attention. Listening without judgment is probably the simplest, most profound way to connect. It is an act of love.

Love is selfless; attachment is self-centered. Love is freeing; attachment is possessive. When we love, we relax, we don’t hold on so tightly, and we naturally let go more easily.

another’s ugliness. The beauty of forgiveness is how the investigation

“When you go into the gym, don’t pick up the five-hundred-pound weight. Start with the twenty-pound weight.” I practiced forgiving the smallest slights: A driver cutting me off on the freeway. A colleague who used sharp words to disagree with a point I made. I developed the muscle of forgiveness by working through everyday grievances.

But forgiveness does not release others from responsibility for their actions, nor does it necessarily change their behavior. It is a tool for removing the roadblocks to our hearts and liberating us from the destructive hold on our past pain. Forgiveness is for the forgiver.

Gradually, we shift away from being someone who is only afraid of pain to becoming one who is capable of embracing it.

In welcoming everything, we don’t have to like what is arising. It’s actually not our job to approve or disapprove. The word welcome confronts us; it asks us to temporarily suspend our usual rush to judgment and to simply be open to what is happening. Our task is to give our careful attention to what is showing up at our front door. To receive it in the spirit of hospitality.

“I’m sorry. I have trouble remembering faces these days. But I do know that our home always has been a place where guests are welcome. If you are here on my doorstep, then it is my job to welcome you. Please come in.”

When faced with the uncertain, our first reaction is often resistance. We attempt to evict these difficult parts of our lives as if they were unwanted houseguests.

With welcoming comes an ability to meet and work with both pleasant and unpleasant circumstances. Gradually, with practice, we discover that our well-being is not solely dependent on what’s happening in our external reality; it comes from within.

Welcome everything, push away nothing cannot be done solely as an act of will. To welcome everything is an act of love.

Welcome everything, push away nothing is first and foremost an invitation to openness. In the Buddhist way of thinking, openness is one of the key characteristics of an awake and curious mind. It does not determine reality, it discovers it.

and sacred space after death can aid family and friends in the grieving process.

We build resilience by allowing ourselves to experience what we are feeling in any given situation, whether it’s good or bad.

When we believe that suffering is a mistake, it’s no wonder we do everything in our power to steer clear of it. Our avoidance instinct is also due to the fact that our culture has decided that suffering has no value. “Why suffer?” we have been trained to say to ourselves. “You’re better off escaping this pain by any means possible!” As a result, we have become masters of distraction. To a great extent, this is our primary human practice.

The secret of healing lies in exploring our wounds in order to discover what is really there. When we allow the experience—creating space and acceptance for it—we find that our suffering is not a static, monolithic thing, but rather it is composed of many elements, including our attitudes toward it.

Suffering will only be removed by wisdom, not by drenching it in sunshine or attempting to bury it in a dark basement.

We imagine that if we are good and careful, stay positive, play by the rules, and ignore what’s on the news every night, then it won’t happen to us. We think suffering is somewhere else. But suffering is everywhere.

A critical point here is that acceptance doesn’t require agreement.

Suffering generally occurs as a chain reaction: stimulus-thought-reaction. Many times, we have no control over the stimulus that causes us pain. But we can shift our relationship to the thoughts about and emotional reactions to the pain, which frequently intensify our suffering.

“Well, I thought to myself, it’s good to have a heart. And if we have one, then we should expect it will have problems!”

We can shift our relationship to pain by the way we give our attention to it—by turning toward it rather than trying to bury it or run in the opposite direction. One teacher of mine suggested that we begin by “putting out the welcome mat.” We invite in what hurts; we sit down with it and get to know it really well. In

When we welcome our suffering, it shakes us out of our complacency. It can bring clarity and help us find meaning, without which the pain might be too much to bear. It tenderizes and opens us to vulnerability that gives us the capacity to sense, make contact with, and experience more of life. We access our courage to be with what otherwise would be intolerable.

Stephen Levine, a pioneer in the field of conscious dying.

The childlike belief in a personalized God and a church that would protect me no longer served me. I found a deeper faith in an essential love that manifests through our fellow human beings, through our own bodies, hearts, and minds—in our human ability to embrace what seems impossible to embrace.

I had imagined that I would be saved by love coming toward me. Just the opposite. I was rescued when love came through me. I discovered love through acts of kindness … not offered to me, but coming from me. I think of the words of the late John O’Donohue, who wrote, “We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.”

The ground of love is limitless. We don’t have to be stingy about it. We get caught up in scarcity about it, but it’s not a commodity to be traded. There is an endless supply of love, and so we can endlessly give it away. One way to tap into this bountiful harvest of expressive love is through the Buddhist practice of metta. Metta is a practice in which we consciously evoke a boundless warmhearted feeling. Through the recitation of phrases such as “May all beings everywhere be happy and free,” we gradually establish benevolence, friendliness, and love in our own hearts, and then we extend the wish for well-being and happiness to all beings in every direction. Metta expresses the strong desire for peacefulness and the welfare of others.

Love is focused on generosity; attachment is obsessed with getting needs met.

As people come closer to death, I have found that only two questions really matter to them: “Am I loved?” and “Did I love well?”

When people are sick or wounded, just love them. Love them until they can love themselves again. This has worked for me. It makes me wonder if maybe love really is the best medicine.

It is not our expertise, but rather the wisdom gained from our own suffering, vulnerability, and healing that enables us to be of real assistance to others.

especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Developmentally our roles change as we move through life. Until mid-life, we generally focus on accomplishment, creating our identities, rebelling, developing a career, building a family, and forging the structures we need to thrive in the world. When we find the courage to change in the second half of life, we often turn inward. The skills we developed to address first-half-of-life tasks are not sufficient or appropriate to support us on this next stage of our journey. In this period, we usually orient toward exploring the meaning of life, embracing mystery, cultivating wisdom, and relaxing a certain striving. It’s age-appropriate behavior.

Roles are a choice. When we choose to be in one role, we also choose not to be in another.

We are first and foremost human beings, with all of the complexity, fragility, and wonder that life encompasses. When we only look through the lens of a role, it narrows our vision of the world. We don’t see things and people as they actually are, but rather project our story onto them. This frequently causes us to attribute a particular significance to an experience and miss the true meaning that is trying to emerge.

I am speaking about the way that we try to set ourselves apart from other people’s suffering. We do this with our pity, our fear, our professional warmth, and even our charitable acts. It alters the way we make decisions.

Helping can be egotistically or altruistically motivated. The social psychologist Dr. Daniel Batson identified two distinct emotions that motivate people to help others. The first is what he called “empathetic concern,” which he proposed could be considered altruistic in that it focuses on the other person. It is the tenderness and care that are evoked in us when we see another person suffering. He called the second motivation “personal distress” and posited that this could be considered egoistic in that it is self-focused. Here, the motivation to help comes from the desire for personal gain, like improved self-esteem, or because we are trying to avoid the pain of guilt, self-criticism, or other unpleasant feelings.

We like our opinions. There is nothing wrong with having a point of view. What’s problematic is imposing it on others. Giving people advice that they can’t use and don’t want won’t make you feel less helpless. If you feel helpless, you might try acknowledging your helplessness first, at least to yourself, before you speak out or take any action. If you haven’t been specifically asked for suggestions, chances are they’re neither wanted nor appreciated. I always find it best to inquire before offering guidance. Respect a “No, thanks,” and move on.