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

by Frank Ostaseski

In his brilliant book Small Is Beautiful, E. F. Schumacher suggests that we can see only what we have grown an eye to see.

Ultimately, death is a close and personal encounter with the unknown. Many of those who have died and been revived by the skills of science tell us that the experience has revealed to them the purpose of life. This is not to become wealthy or famous or powerful. The purpose of every life is to grow in wisdom and learn to love better.

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.

“You have to open yourself up and let the pain move through you,” Elisabeth said. “It’s not yours to hold.” Without this lesson, I don’t think I could have stayed present, in a healthy way, with the suffering I would witness in the decades to come.

Stephen showed me that it was possible to gather up the suffering in my life, use it as grist for the mill, and alchemically change it into the fuel for selfless service—all without making a big deal about it.

We become aware of the fundamental truth that everything comes and goes: every thought, every lovemaking, every life. We see that dying is in the life of everything. Resisting this truth leads to pain.

While seven out of ten Americans say they would prefer to die at home, 70 percent of Americans die in a hospital, nursing home, or long-term-care facility.

Lessons from death are available to all those who choose to move toward it. I have witnessed a heart-opening occurring in not only people near death, but also their caregivers. They found a depth of love within themselves that they didn’t know they had access to. They discovered a profound trust in the universe and the reliable goodness of humanity that never abandoned them, regardless of the suffering they encountered.

These aspects of our essential nature are as inseparable from Being as wetness is from water. Said another way, we already have everything we need for this journey. It all exists within us. We don’t need to be someone special to access our innate qualities and utilize them in the service of greater freedom and transformation.

I was traveling to join other critical thinkers on the campus of Princeton University to contribute to a six-hour documentary about dying in America called On Our Own Terms.

1. Don’t wait. 2. Welcome everything, push away nothing. 3. Bring your whole self to the experience. 4. Find a place of rest in the middle of things. 5. Cultivate don’t know mind.

“The problem with the word patience,” said Zen master Suzuki Roshi, “is that it implies we are waiting for something to get better, we are waiting for something good that will come. A more accurate word for this quality is constancy, a capacity to be with what is true moment after moment.” Embracing the truth that all things inevitably must end encourages us not to wait in order to begin living each moment in a manner that is deeply engaged. We stop wasting our lives on meaningless activities. We learn to not hold our opinions, our desires, and even our own identities so tightly. Instead of pinning our hopes on a better future, we focus on the present and being grateful for what we have in front of us right now. We say “I love you” more often because we realize the importance of human connection. We become kinder, more compassionate, and more forgiving. Don’t wait is a pathway to fulfillment and an antidote to regret.

While we mostly associate impermanence with sadness and endings, it is not all about loss. In Buddhism, impermanence is often referred to as the “Law of Change and Becoming.” These two correlated principles provide balance and harmony. Just as there is constant “dissolving,” there is also constant “becoming.”

In an everyday sense, we have the same experience the monks did in making their mandala when we cook. I love baking bread—the measuring, the mixing, the juggling of pans, the kneading, the rising of the dough, the bread browning in the oven, the cutting of the loaf, and the buttering of it. Then the bread is gone. We partake in a mini-celebration of impermanence with every well-prepared meal consumed with enjoyment.

We fool ourselves because sometimes we can manipulate the conditions of our lives to bring us temporary happiness. It feels good in the moment, but as soon as the moment passes, we are looking for the next satisfying experience or taste. We become like “hungry ghosts,” those mythical characters with bulging stomachs, long, thin necks, and tiny mouths who can never be satisfied.

That naming of what is going on in our present moment is so powerful. Instead of clinging to the past, we come into alignment with the truth of our present circumstances, and then we can let go of the fight. Why wait until we are dying to be free of struggle?

We know that the end of all accumulation is dispersion. Reflecting on this might help us to practice simplicity and discover what has real value. We know that all relationships will end in separation. Reflecting on this might keep us from being overwhelmed by grief and inspire us to distinguish love from attachment.

Apprentice yourself to the curve of your own disappearance. —DAVID WHYTE

Jeff’s body had become very still. This happens as the earth element fades. In the early stages of dying, people might complain that their legs or feet have gone numb. They might become difficult to arouse, unresponsive.

As the earth element—form—dissolves, it gives way to water. The person who is dying may then experience an inability to swallow fluids, urinary or bowel incontinence, and the slowing of blood circulation.

Now the water element was dissolving, giving way to fire. When this happens, the body’s temperature fluctuates. Infections may give rise to fever or a slowing metabolism may cause the skin to become cool and moist.

The fire element was dissolving, giving way to air. At this final stage of physical death, people frequently exhibit dramatic changes in breathing patterns—slow and fast breathing with long gaps between exhales and inhales. Sometimes the only thing left in the room is breath. Death is much like birth in that way, with everyone’s attention naturally focused on the simplicity of breath.

A stillness and ease embraced us. I felt it as warmth and sensed a luminosity, a sort of brilliance. After some time, Samantha spoke out loud, as if talking to the space more than to me. “I thought I was losing him, but he is everywhere.” Earth dissolves into water. Water dissolves into fire. Fire dissolves into air. Air dissolves into space. Space dissolves into consciousness.

But we are mistaken. We are not only the small solid selves we have taken ourselves to be. We are not the accountant. Not the schoolteacher. Not the barista. Not the software engineer. Not the writer, nor the reader of this book. At least not exactly as we imagined. Not separate and apart. We are in flux. We are made up of dancing elements. We are, like everything else, at once here and disappearing.

Sometimes what we repress is not our raw sexual energy, our shame, or something we feel guilty about, but rather our innate goodness.

This is what the Zen master Suzuki Roshi was pointing to when he said, “What we call I is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.”

When our sense of ourselves shifts toward Being, we move beyond our reactivity to impermanence. Not only that, but just as I did after my heart attack, we become aware of something beyond impermanence: the permanent source from which life springs.

Embracing our own impermanence is a journey, taking us deeper and deeper into contact with the true nature of things. First we accept that things around us change. Then we realize that we, ourselves, are ever changing: our thoughts and feelings, our attitudes and beliefs, even our identities. The beauty is that our impermanence binds us to every other human being. Empathy arises through an appreciation of our transience and an understanding of our interconnectedness. We are not separate, as we once thought we were. We are, in fact, deeply connected to everyone and everything.

In the ever-changing landscape of our lives, attachment to outcome posing as hope only generates anxiety and interferes with our ability to be present to our experience of life as it is unfolding in this very moment. My friend the late anthropologist Angeles Arrien advised that we be “open to outcome, not attached to outcome.” She wrote, “Openness and non-attachment help us recover the human resources of wisdom and objectivity.”

I have found that with compassionate support, this hope can shift. It stops being about managing the symptoms we did not choose and cannot avoid, and instead turns toward discovering the value in living fully given our current conditions. 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.

When we release our clinging to what used to be and our craving for what we think should be, we are free to embrace the truth of what is in this moment.

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 point to their internal resources. I try to illuminate capacities that they already have but may not recognize. Sometimes, people are able to see kindness in my eyes. This reflects back to them their own kindness, and suddenly, they are able to see themselves in a new 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.

Non-waiting is not patience. Patience implies expectation, waiting for the next moment, just doing it in a calmer way. The experience of non-waiting is more like continuous contact with reality. We are alert, awake, and fully alive. Whatever the experience—whether “good” or “bad,” whether we like or dislike it—we give our full attention to it, to what is happening right now.

But I remembered once meeting the great humanistic psychotherapist Carl Rogers, who was the grandfather of a good friend. Later, I studied films of him working with patients. I noticed that he rarely spoke, but that his listening was so devout it drew out the truth from his clients like a healing salve. Something he had written had always stayed with me: Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with him, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough. Whatever his story, he no longer needs to be alone with it. This is what will allow his healing to begin.

Loving and letting go are inseparable. You can’t love and cling at the same time. Too often we mistake attachment for love.

Attachment masquerades as love. It looks and smells like love, but it’s a cheap imitation. You can feel how attachment grasps and is driven by need and fear. 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.

Resisting forgiveness is like grasping a hot coal and saying, “I’m not going to let go until you apologize and pay for what you’ve done to me.” In our effort to punish, we are the ones who get burned.

Forgiveness has the power to overcome what divides us. It can melt the armor of fear and resentment around our hearts that keeps us separate from others, from ourselves, and from life itself. I once asked a young woman with cancer who had been abandoned by her family and had to live on the streets if she thought forgiveness took courage. “Yes,” she said, “but for me it was a way to find out if I was capable of loving again.” Forgiveness releases our hearts from the rubble of anger and other negative feelings, and clears the way to love.

my favorite quote from the Buddha: “Hatred can never cease by hatred in this world; by love alone does hatred cease. This is an ancient and eternal law.”

Forgiveness does not ask us to welcome people back into our lives. We can still say to our abuser, “No, I don’t ever want to see you again.” But forgiveness empowers us to let ourselves off the hook: “I don’t need to continue to carry all this tightness, rage, anger, and pain within me.”

All forgiveness is self-forgiveness. It is a remarkable form of self-acceptance that allows us to release unbelievable pain.

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. —CARL ROGERS

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. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the charismatic Tibetan Buddhist teacher, spoke of the heart of Buddhist practice as that of “complete openness.” He described this openness as “a willingness to look into whatever arises, to work with it, and to relate to it as part of the overall process … It is a larger way of thinking, a greater way of viewing things, as opposed to being petty, finicky.”

Awareness offers a completely different vantage point that doesn’t need to push anything away. It isn’t separate from anything else. It is, by definition, open, receptive, and responsive. When we engage that aspect of our being, an open and unbiased awareness allows us to see through the obstacles that are clouding our view. Awareness gives us the possibility to know and understand, and this means we have the possibility to find happiness and freedom.

The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realized. —HENRI NOUWEN

When confronted by harsh realities in life, or even some small discomfort or inconvenience, our instinctive reaction is to run in the opposite direction. But we can’t escape suffering. It’ll just take us by surprise and whack us in the back of the head. The wiser response is to move toward what hurts, to put our hands and attention gently and mercifully on what we might otherwise want to avoid.

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.

Suffering is exacerbated by avoidance. The body carries with it any undigested pain.