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

by Frank Ostaseski

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 great Korean Zen master Seung Sahn was famous for saying, “Soon dead.” A wry wake-up call.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut: And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.

The Persian poet Ghalib wrote, “For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river.”

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. Suzuki Roshi wrote, “To live . . . means to die as a small being moment after moment.” What he meant is the self is not a separate static thing but a process, or actually a network of interconnected processes. When we realize this, we see that there is always an opportunity to respond to a situation creatively. Nothing is holding us back from change and transformation—and nothing ever was. 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 every thing.

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. As Fred found, with flexibility and kindness, we can re-imagine hope even in a situation that appears hopeless. The energizing quality of mature hope helps us to remain open to the possibility that while life may not turn out the way we first thought, opportunities we never imagined may also arise.

Mature hope embraces the truth that no matter what we do or don’t do, things will change. Change is constant and inevitable. Hope for an unchanging world quickly becomes discouragement. Instead, we need to trust in ourselves and each other, in right action and perseverance without despair.

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.

This is where the energy of hope has a place—not as a wish to be fulfilled or a plan to be formulated and executed, but in how we meet the ever-changing moment. The present moment includes all time; it is the all-inclusive now. The present moment could best be described as the flow of life. We are continually being shaped by it, and we are shaping it through the way we meet and respond to it. 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.

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.

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.

“Hatred can never cease by hatred in this world; by love alone does hatred cease. This is an ancient and eternal law.”

All forgiveness is self-forgiveness. It is a remarkable form of self-acceptance that allows us to release unbelievable pain. It’s about realizing that as long as you hold on to the hot coal of your anger, resentment, and sense of having been wronged, you are only hurting yourself. Unless you release that burden, you will carry it with you for the rest of your life. You will never be free. Don’t wait. Don’t wait until you find yourself on your deathbed to begin the process of forgiving those who have hurt you or those you have wronged. Allow the fragile nature of life to show you what’s most important . . . then take action. It hurts too much to keep others or ourselves out of our hearts.

We like the familiar; we like certainty. We love to have our preferences met. In fact, most of us have been taught that getting what we want and avoiding what we don’t is the way to assure our happiness. Inevitably, though, there are unexpected experiences in our lives—an unanticipated move, a job loss, a family member’s illness, the death of a beloved pet—that we want to push away with all our might. 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. In such moments, welcoming seems impossible or even unwise. When I say that we should be receptive to whatever presents itself to us, do I mean that we should let life walk all over us? Not at all. When we are open and receptive, we have options. We are free to discover, to investigate, and to learn how to respond skillfully to anything we encounter. We can’t be free if we are rejecting any part of our lives. 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. In order to experience true freedom, we need to be able to welcome everything just as it is. At the deepest level, this invitation, like life itself, asks us to cultivate a kind of fearless receptivity. Welcome everything, push away nothing cannot be done solely as an...

Accepting life as is means that we make peace with things as they are rather than trying to force them to be the way we want them to be (and getting frustrated that we can’t). Instead of spinning a story that we then try to live into, we open to a way things are and accept that we are completely human.

To be human is much more than being born, getting an education, finding the right partner, and getting a pretty house on a nice street, just so that you can sleep, wake, work, go to bed, and do it all over again. It is an invitation to feel everything, to come into direct contact with the strange, beautiful, horrible, and often perfectly ordinary thing we call life. It is an opportunity to be conscious of the fact that some of us will make love while others make war. To recognize the truth that there are babies like my granddaughter born into loving arms and caressed by a mother who kisses her bright future into her child’s cheeks, and there are babies like Carolyn, a woman I knew whose parents left her in a Dumpster. To embrace the night screams in refugee camps and the giggling of children in living rooms under tents made of couch pillows and bedsheets. There is devastation and hopelessness, and there is passion and holy commitment to creating a better future for everyone. There is me writing and you reading and the separation between us, and there is the unity we feel almost immediately when we are reminded that there is love.

mistake. I had a boss years ago who, when something didn’t work out, demanded, “Whose fault is this? Who is to blame?” When I would explain that sometimes things just don’t go according to plan, he would yell, “Don’t be ridiculous! This is somebody’s fault.” 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. A large portion of our day is consumed with activities that are attempts to protect ourselves from discomfort: surfing the Internet, watching TV, working long hours, drinking, eating. Our approach naturally leads to epidemics of alcoholism and drug abuse; compulsive overeating, gambling, and shopping; and an insecure attachment to our technological devices. We have become a society riddled with unhealthy addictions. Do any of these strategies really work? Sure, we get some temporary relief by ignoring problems or substituting a more pleasant experience for an unpleasant one. But when I look closely at my life, I see that such benefits are short-lived. What sticks around for the long run is the habit of self-deception and its negative consequences.

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. Understanding this, we can work skillfully to alleviate the underlying reactions that exacerbate our problems so that we might ease our suffering. Suffering will only be removed by wisdom, not by drenching it in sunshine or attempting to bury it in a dark basement.

We think suffering is somewhere else. But suffering is everywhere. This is one of the most difficult truths of existence. Suffering is falling in love and then becoming complacent. Suffering is not being able to connect with our children. It’s our anxiety about what will happen at work tomorrow. Suffering is knowing your roof will leak in the next rainstorm. It’s finally buying that shiny new smartphone, then seeing an advertisement for an even newer device with incremental improvements. Hoping your company will get rid of your grumpy boss who still has a year to go before his retirement. Thinking that life is moving by too fast or too slow. Not getting what you want, getting what you don’t want, or getting what you want but fearing you will lose it—all of this is suffering. Sickness is suffering, old age is suffering, and so is dying.

In Buddhism, the old Pali word for suffering is dukkha, which is sometimes translated as “anguish” or more simply as “unsatisfactoriness” or even “stress.” Dukkha arises from ignorance, from not understanding that everything is impermanent, unreliable, and ungraspable—and wanting it to be otherwise. We wish to claim our possessions, our relationships, and even our identities as unchanging, but we can’t. All are constantly transforming and slipping right through our fingers.

Let’s say you get fired from your job. That is undoubtedly a stressful event. But the suffering is greatly exaggerated if you refuse to accept what has happened as the current reality. Under such difficult circumstances, we tend to say things to ourselves like, “This isn’t fair. This can’t be true. This isn’t the way it should be,” which only causes us to suffer more. A critical point here is that acceptance doesn’t require agreement. We may still want to work to change our life circumstances. But you can’t make a change until you first accept the truth of what is right in front of you, eyes wide open.

“Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” That about sums it up. If you are alive, you will experience pain. Everyone has a different pain threshold, and yet we all experience it throughout our lives. Physical pain is the nervous system’s internal alarm, your body reacting to a potentially damaging stimulus. It creates an unpleasant sensory experience, such as hunger, exhaustion, an upset tummy, a pounding headache, or the aches of arthritis. Pain also can take emotional form, such as the crush of heartbreak or the sadness of loss. So there is pain, from which there is no escaping. And then there is suffering, which we can do something about. 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. Suffering is about perception and interpretation. It is our mental and emotional relationship to what is first perceived as an unpleasant or undesirable experience. Our stories and beliefs about what is happening or did happen shape our interpretation of it. When things don’t go according to plan, some people believe that they are helpless victims or that they “got what they deserved.” This leads to resignation and apathy. When we get caught in anxiety and worry about what might happen in the future, it can quickly proliferate into a web of fear that is not...

Opening to pain in the present moment, we may be able to do something to improve the situation, maybe not, but we can certainly notice how our attitudes toward the experience are impacting what is happening. My reaction to pain, even to the thought of pain, changes everything. It can increase or decrease my suffering.

If we attempt to push away our pain, whether it is physical or emotional, we almost always find ourselves suffering even more. When we open to suffering, inquiring into it instead of trying to deny it, we see how we might make use of it in our lives.

We sometimes fail to remember that pain has an essential role in our lives. If we didn’t feel the discomfort from the heat of a fire, we would burn our fingers. The painful emotions of shame, loneliness, and guilt highlight deeper troubles in our relationships. Pain can motivate us to take action, to identify and address its causes, and even to seek happiness.

The Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah once motioned to a glass at his side. “Do you see this glass?” he asked. “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”

Love is what helps us to accept ourselves, our lives, and other people as is. When something unwanted—such as death, illness, loss of a job or relationship—approaches, it is natural for fear to arise. In such moments, we need to find some part of us that is not afraid.

If love is bountiful and endless, why then do we get caught up in scarcity, feeling that we must hold on to our beloveds so tightly? In part, it is because we confuse love and attachment. Attachment likes to impersonate love. It says, “I will love you if you give me what I need.” Love is focused on generosity; attachment is obsessed with getting needs met. Love is an expression of our most essential nature; attachment is an expression of the personality. Love engenders faithfulness, aligning with our values, moving with purpose; attachment clings in fear and grasps tightly to a particular end result. Love is selfless and encourages freedom; attachment is self-centered and engenders possessiveness. Attachment leaves scars. Love inclines us to gratefulness. Consider the experience of unhealthy attachment: It is tight, irritated, closed, fixed, and often compulsive. It creates an unwholesome dependency. We come to believe that our ability to feel pleasure and happiness, to have our needs met, is dependent on the words and actions of something or someone outside of ourselves. But love encompasses everything. We can love someone even if we don’t agree with them and even if we don’t like all their habits. My wife loves me, but she still gets annoyed with me when I forget to close the kitchen cabinets. Love is not blind to our day-to-day human challenges, yet it is not limited by them. Healthy attachment is essential in forming and sustaining human relationships, as in the attach...

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?”

Yet more than once I have found an “undesirable” aspect of myself, one about which I previously had felt ashamed and kept tucked away, to be the very quality that allowed me to meet another person’s suffering with compassion instead of fear or pity.

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.

To be whole, we need to include, accept, and connect all parts of ourselves. We need acceptance of our conflicting qualities and the seeming incongruity of our inner and outer worlds. Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means no part left out.

Roles are a choice. When we choose to be in one role, we also choose not to be in another. If, as a young girl, I commit to the one-pointed, rigorous life of becoming a professional ballet dancer, I may choose to give up a traditional education or certain aspects of my social life. If in my role as a lawyer, I think it’s important to project the image of a strong, knowledgeable male, that I am cool in a crisis, I may find it difficult to disclose my weaknesses or embrace my more nurturing qualities. When we disown parts of ourselves, we tend to judge others who display those same qualities. We lay claim to moral superiority. Thus holding too tightly to a role can create a chasm between people that is difficult to cross.

When we over-identify with a role, it defines us, confines us, and reduces our capacity for conscious choice. It sets up an expectation about how life is supposed to proceed. That means more fragmentation, more fixed positions and entrenched beliefs, and less access to our innate wisdom. Often—especially in our public, professional roles—we don’t allow our whole self to show up.

“Don’t be a role; be a soul.”

Too often in caregiving and other helping careers, we find ourselves not so much looking to see what serves others, but to confirm our socially approved identity. We want to be somebody who helps. We say, for example, “I work with the dying,” with the emphasis on I. And so we invest in the role instead of the function. I call this “helper’s disease,” and in my view, it is a more rampant epidemic than cancer and Alzheimer’s put together. 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. Once there was a woman in our hospice who was just a few days from death. As she looked back on her life, she felt regret about many of her choices. As a result, she was quite sad—a little depressed, but not clinically. This seemed natural to me. A visiting nurse pulled me aside after meeting with the patient and suggested that we start her on an antidepressant medication. This particular medication takes four to six weeks before its mood-altering benefits take effect. “Why do you want to prescribe this medication?” I asked. The nurse responded, “Well, she’s so uncomfortable, and it’s hard to see her this uncomfortable.” I said, tongue in cheek, “Maybe you should take the medication.”

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. It is the opposite of empathy in that instead of fostering connection, it can lead to self-protection, withdrawal, or doing more, whether or not the extra interventions are wanted or have any real value. It’s not uncommon in health care for physicians to fend off their own feelings of fear, futility, or helplessness by prescribing a treatment program, drug, or procedure that is unnecessary, ineffective, or unwanted.

The physician clearly was upset when she saw the dramatic change in Jackson’s condition—his gaunt body, protruding eyes, and the changes in mood caused by his glioblastoma. Yet she barely made eye contact with him during the entire fifteen-minute visit. She kept her fear well concealed behind her white coat. Speaking abruptly, she suggested a new course of intensive radiation to shrink the brain tumor. Jackson responded by saying that he was nauseous and tired and wanted to rest. The oncologist scribbled a prescription for an anti-nausea medication and scheduled the radiation treatment for the following day. I took Jackson back to the hospice, where he died later that night. It was difficult to watch the doctor’s cool, indifferent, almost robotic interaction with Jackson. She might have paused, taken a beat, listened when he said, “I’m tired. I need to rest.” But she railroaded right over him. She couldn’t let the pain in. And in so doing, she missed a healing opportunity—not only for Jackson, but also for herself. Glued to the safety and privilege of her medical role, she sacrificed a bit of her humanity that day.

Nurses and doctors, people with good hearts, also frequently become closed to their own pain. Driven ruthlessly by the unrealistic expectations of the systems in which they work, trained to use coping strategies that have them ignoring what hurts most, they lose touch with their compassionate hearts. Often, they meet their own discomfort and alienation with rejection instead of love. Like the oncologist treating Jackson, when they are overworked, they become shut down; molded by their training, they see only symptoms and not the person in front of them. All they have left to offer is their expertise.

Most of us are naturally inclined to help people; we want to try to reduce others’ suffering. Yet some of us reach too quickly for our version of a prescription pad, doling out unsolicited advice. Usually, our first instinct upon hearing of someone’s difficulties is to try to fix them. While our intentions may be genuine, we can be blissfully insensitive to the way we impact others. We’ve all been there. You meet a friend at Starbucks and mention in passing that you didn’t sleep well the night before. Your helpful, well-meaning friend launches into a discourse on the health risks of drinking coffee, maybe some diet tips, and the importance of an exercise regime.

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 wante...

This was so clear to me when I was in the hospital recovering from my heart attack and surgery. People would come in to be with me—doctors, nurses, aides—and oftentimes, they were so busy doing whatever task they had to accomplish that they wouldn’t see me. I was touched all the time, but rarely did that touch feel healing. Mostly I was “monitored.” I’m sad to say that my health care providers often had more of a relationship with the devices and machines they were using than they did with me. The staff tried to manage their anxiety through well-constructed professional scripts and coping strategies that were meant to create a buffer, keeping my suffering at arm’s length. It rarely worked. Their anxiety simply got passed on to me. No one really asked me how I felt, only, where was my pain on a scale of one to ten? Did I have a bowel movement yet? Was I doing my breathing exercises? I was information to be charted.

Hospitals have a “fix it” mentality. They are environments of expectation. There is a protocol for everything and a plan to move you through the anticipated process. Some of this is necessary and helpful to recovery. I would not be alive today if it were not for the brilliance of medical procedures. However, the emphasis is completely future-oriented.

Too often, caregivers tend to amplify the patient’s fear or exacerbate the condition of confusion by focusing exclusively on problem solving. In so doing, they may intensify the contraction. Soon, just as I had, the patient loses contact with their innate resourcefulness.

In the chaos of illness, one calm person in the room can make all the difference.

My friend Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., says this better than anyone I know when she writes, “Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.”

Fixing and helping are draining. Over time, we may burn out. But service is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will renew us. In helping, we may find a sense of satisfaction, but in serving we find a sense of gratitude.

Authenticity requires trust in a deep inner wisdom and the willingness to bring that wisdom into conscious action. Wisdom is not about age or expertise, tools or roles. I have a lot of tools that I have collected over the years, but in serving, I don’t lead with my tools. I find that if I start pulling those tools out and setting them down between myself and my client, then one of us is sure to trip over them. So instead I lead with my humanity.

Your thoughts and emotions are not who you are. They pass through you, but they are not you.”