Thank you so much, Hitendra. I'm very grateful to be here and also to meet you.

Wonderful! A really important landscape for us to be comfortable with, to understand or to explore.

I think one of the most powerful perspectives on being with dying, comes out of the Buddhist tradition where, at the moment of death, that moment or that experience or that process is considered to be the ultimate moment of liberation. When we say the word liberation, we mean not just the body dropping off, but the substrate consciousness or the experience of the mind being completely free. It's very interesting to look at my own experience with dying people from this view. A person who has this view, the view that the moment of death is the most precious and powerful moment of liberation, then your whole life, everything about it, how you treat others, how you serve the world, how you cultivate and train the mind, heart and body is, in a way, in anticipation of this moment, of this extraordinary possibility. I reflect in my book, 'Being with Dying' an encounter I had with an old Tibetan lama who said to me he was really looking forward to death because of this view. The view that the moment of death provides this opportunity for being free. I was very moved by his view because, what it meant to me was, not putting aside the present moment, but to actually be in the present moment in such a way as the liberation was already there. I was very struck by his joy, but also that deep wisdom that he carried, not about getting something at the end of his life, but how he actually related to the present moment.

I think it really depends on the School of Buddhism. It's interesting. For example, in the Theravada school or in the Vajrayana school, or in the Tibetan school, there is a deep emphasis on the presence or the possibility that we will find ourselves in certain circumstances in a future life. The notion of reincarnation comes very much out of the Hindu context and of course, it was incorporated into the Buddhist context. I'm a Zen person. Though I've also done practice within the Theravada context and also the Vajrayana context, I tend to have a more investigative or pragmatic view, which is perhaps that is the case.

For example, when people who are dying ask me, "Where will I go after death or will I be reincarnated after death?" I have to honestly say I don't know. I say it with a lot of humility, because the truth is, I don't know. I have to live that truth and be in my integrity when I'm interacting with others. But I live with that possibility. It could be that this is the case. Then, from the perspective of being pragmatic and direct would choose, for example, to live a life as if that were a possibility or that were, in fact, true. And so, it's kind of interesting.

In a more folkloric perspective, it's a wonderful incentive to think that if you do a lot of good deeds and you're a wonderful person in this life, you'll have an auspicious rebirth in the next. That's very incentivizing. I like that kind of ethical incentive, if you will. It's kind of inspiring. But at the level of science and actuality, I think we have to be open. At the same time that we're open to live an ethical life, a life of great heart and kindness, on the other side of the equation, there have been some interesting studies like Ian Stevenson on 20 cases of reincarnation. This was done decades ago where he was basically doing research on people who remembered past lives that had very specific detail. So, I don't know. And I live that I don't know, honestly. But I also live with that possibility.

Well, I want to say, when someone who's dying asks me that question, what I do is, I turn the question to them because actually, their view, their experience, I'm there to support and validate, not to lay on them some story for or against an Eastern view. I'm not there to offer false reassurance, but I'm there to actually come alongside a dying person in such a way that is respectful and acknowledging of their insights, their perspective, their views. So, I'll say, "You know, I'm not quite sure, but what do you think? Share with me what your sense of this is."

I can't say for sure, but I don't take them anywhere. They take themselves, if you will. I think that part of working with dying people for so many decades and I began this work really in 1970, it was one of these very formative experiences in my life that brought me out of the world of expertise into a kind of curiosity, maybe a little bit of humbleness or humility. You see so much in working with dying people. You are kind of brought to your knees in every encounter. As such, I don't feel comfortable ever at this point in my life. I'm entering my 80th year in a few months, and I'm at that time of my life where I really sit with not knowing. I sit with this kind of openness. I feel like I'm learning more as I age and as I let go of my expertise.

This is a teaching that I received from my last Zen teacher, Roshi Bernie Glassman, and his wife Roshi Jishu Angyo Holmes. I had spent many years working with dying people. I also worked in the prison system on death row and maximum security. These are, in a way, the world of lost causes when you work with dying people, there's a 100% attrition rate and death row people might not be put to death, but their lives in a way have ended. But in another way, they haven't. When I began to work with Bernie and Jishu, they offered what they called the three tenets.

The first one is not knowing. By not knowing, it is really being in this kind of beginner's mind or the kind of this openness toward things as they are. It's not about being stupid or being ignorant in the sort of gross sense of the word, but it's really having curiosity, being engaged, being willing to be surprised. This kind of okayness with being in a groundless situation moment by moment, the energy to investigate, to inquire deeply. That sensibility, I think, proved to be very important for me working with dying people and also in the prison system. I realized so wildly when I went with Bernie to Auschwitz in a bearing witness retreat where 120, 130 people from various parts of the world, including offspring of Nazis, camp survivors and gypsies, were all gathered together for 5 days in Auschwitz, really living the three tenets.

It's a tough assignment. I'm thinking about Ukraine right now. Of course, I'm an anti-war person, as you can imagine. How do I bring not knowing into my own sentiments as someone who feels deeply about the great harm caused by the violence in war? So, sitting with that kind of openness without opinions, obfuscating one's view, even one's experience. So, that first tenet is a really tough one particularly for Western individuals whose identities are so tied up in being knowing entities. The more stuff we know, the bigger our ego gets and the more power we have in the world, supposedly. It's one of those situations that's so against the stream of the Western psyche where knowledge becomes who we are. So, not knowing is radical.

From the space of not knowing, the second tenet is of bearing witness. Both have come alongside but not separate from whatever is arising in the present moment. This includes not only phenomena external to us, like we're interacting with a man on death row who has killed his parents or he has raped and murdered a little girl. So, how do you come alongside that kind of person? Well, one of the ways is you recognize by the experience, through the experience of bearing witness. For example, the states of mind that conduce to violence, to harm, to war, to rape, to environmental destruction, those states of mind you discover by bearing witness are also inside of you in a certain way. But they're states characterized by profound suffering, and it changes how you perceive the world. Instead, what we're seeing in Ukraine is, the positions are now hardened. It's going to be very difficult to dial down this war through peaceful negotiations. Now, we see people have opinions. They are exercising those opinions through the medium of violence, offensive and defensive, etc. So, bearing witness is a really powerful process where you do not separate from things as they are. You can only really do that through the experience of not knowing this kind of radical openness and to understand that your own subjectivity, your own sense of who you are, is not bound in the ego or your roles in the world. But it's an intersubjective experience where you see that you're not separate from any being or thing, including the most hardened criminal or politician or a child who's suffering in a basement in Donbass. It's that of level bearing witness, not only to the suffering in the world, bearing witness also involves bearing witness to whatever's arising, including joy. It's not just the heaviest things in life. It's bearing witness to the whole thing.

Then, from that arises, compassionate action. When these three tenets were shared with me many years ago, I'd already been a long time Buddhist practitioner and would take that on for years. Then I wanted to practice with somebody who's a little bit more in the trenches, so to speak, and at the age of 22-30 Roshi Glassman was that, an old tough Jewish guy but also tender and brilliant. I learned so much in the several decades of practicing with him. I saw immediately how this would change my relationship to the world of suffering that I had been serving and still endeavoring to serve.

Of course. You got it right away. Exactly. It's withholding judgment, but also seeing one's own judgments arise. It's not like I'm withholding judgment. Our biases, our judgments, our opinions are constantly percolating through the landscape of our mental continuum. It's not to separate from the truth of our own struggles and stupidities. It's also to approach them from not knowing and bearing witness, to be aware of what's happening that actually distorts our perception of reality.

In our tradition, we have what are called the four bodhisattva vows. The way we actually translate the first vow is that, "Creations are numberless. I vow to free them." When we say creations are numberless, it's not only all those beings and things and those who are in prison and dying and those who are in refugee camps and fleeing, the climate catastrophe, but it's also the creations of our own mind. If you get what I'm saying. We're really trying to free ourselves from the distorted views that make it impossible for us to actually perceive reality in an undiluted way.

Well. I'm just thinking about a death that actually I did not observe, but a close friend of mine did. It was the death of an older woman and her children were by her bedside in the final moments of her life. It's kind of the death I would want myself. In her last moments, she uttered the words, "Beautiful." When her daughter told me that, I realized it was a kind of transitional experience. Her daughter felt liberated or somehow blessed or was given the deepest benediction by her mother. That benediction had changed her daughter's view of what it meant to die. Now, I asked her about her mother. Her mother was not that educated at all, there was nothing exceptional from her daughter's point of view about her mother, except that she had been, in the course of her life, a genuinely kind person. That really moved me.

We can say death is the great equalizer, but I've seen a lot of deaths that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. A person I know through Zoom, a very renowned researcher who is dying and his sister is an acquaintance of mine. In interacting with him just a few days ago, I felt that same sensibility, the sense of bringing the blessing of his life into this moment because he realizes at the preconscious level. We didn't talk about this, but this is what I sense that how he meets dying is going to actually affect his sister, his wife, his children and so forth. He wants to bring his best to this final journey, and he's doing that in a very intentional way. Now, we cannot say what will happen at the moment of his death because he's still alive, but in my interaction with him, I was so incredibly moved by his commitment to integrity. He even talked about when he went through a very difficult series of chemos in the hospital, that he had made a commitment to encounter each person with kindness. I have to say, making that sort of vow to yourself really has an impact on this journey that we call living and dying.

The other thing I want to say is, Hitendra, that so many people will get their catastrophic diagnosis and then want to hurry up and get spiritual fast. But it's really our whole life. It's a little tough to undo the knots while you're also your own medical manager and dealing with the whole psychophysical aspects of dying and also trying mindfulness practice. I really encourage people to begin practice now. It affects living and dying. Don't wait.

That's beautiful!

Well, I think this is important. I think another thing that's important is one's motivation. In other words, you're not asking for a karmic kickback from being a nice person. That is genuine. I think integrity is very essential here. For many of us who, particularly, were brought up in a Western context where our egos have been strengthened through the views and values of our society, we enter practice in order to untie those knots. As I said, it's sometimes a little difficult to do in the final time around the race track, so to speak. I think developing, nourishing, and being around people who have this sensibility of compassion is very important. For example, we know that in terms of spheres of influence in the work of Christakis, one kind person will in fact spread positivity to others in their first sphere of influence. Then out of that sphere, there's the second sphere and the third sphere.

One of the things about compassion and altruism that's very interesting is that it's contagious, it's viral. The same is true for violence, for cruelty, for meanness. So, there has to be some kind of sense of conscience, like, when I do something that harms others, it's not just harming one other person, there is the sphere of influence that multiplies in relation to an action or a word that you've engaged in that causes harm to another.

This notion was awakened in me through a wonderful lama Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, who's no longer with us in this form, in any case. It was when I was practicing with him, he said something that really struck me that "We have all been each other's mother in a previous lifetime." And it was like, oh, and when you think of what a mother does in terms of just giving birth and that experience, nourishing the newborn us, protecting us. He used to say protecting the baby from wild animals. Even if our mothers have been messed up, we're alive. We're here. Even if they've given us away, then the person who adopted us and raised us. So it's the sensibility of every person that you encounter that has been your mother in a previous lifetime.

Now, as again, going back to the first part of our conversation, where we were talking about reincarnation, that view comes out of the ethos of reincarnation. So, we've all been each other's mother in a previous lifetime. If you kill a bug or eat a shrimp, that's been your mother in a previous lifetime. But I have to tell you, when you have even a drop of that view inside of you, it still makes you hesitant to harm beings. As such, you realize it's not only not harming beings, but it's also this sensibility of repaying the kindness of mothers. It's an ethos that is within the context of Tibetan Buddhism that I was so fortunate to encounter decades ago. That ethos deeply influenced my own experience of working with dying people, not just myself being a motherly being, but also to realize that I'm in an experience of deep mutuality with the person who I'm endeavoring to serve. This person also is looking from within their own eyes, own heart, own deeper history of being a motherly being. It's a very powerful ethos. But it's unusual.

What you said before, I think is very important. It was in reflection to me talking about one's intentions. It is not just a matter of getting a bodhisattva, but being recognized as a great person. I don't think Malala ever thought about, "I'm doing this so I would be famous," before she became a Nobel laureate, even before she was shot. She endeavored to serve young women in a culture where women are deeply marginalized and serve them through insisting on education for young women. She didn't see herself on the track that she ended up on. She just did what her conscience, her heart drove her to do and in a certain way, she's the most incredible motherly being. But she also sees the motherly beings of young girls in her world.

So I think that, that sensibility of intention, which does not have a gaining idea, an idea that, "I'm going to be well regarded. I'll be a Nobel laureate; I'll be looked on as a wonderful person." But, it's because it's kind of imperative. It's like you just realize this is the only way. This is a calling. This is what needs to be done. And it's at that level of heart imperative that the sensibility of all motherly beings is instantiated within those who practice in the Tibetan context. But I feel that sensibility is shared in many other traditions as well.

It's a beautiful perspective and having it explained in mathematical terms is sort of edifying. Thank you very much.

Well, now I'm a little bit stumped. Which questions are you talking about?

That is actually an exercise, a practice that we do with clinicians who work with dying people. It's a really fascinating, really powerful exercise. The first part of the exercise, we ask health care workers who serve dying people, "What is your worst case scenario and how you might die?" We ask them to write for 5 minutes about that and to be very specific. Then I ask them to actually attend to what their experience is physically by reflecting on what they've written, what feelings are present and also what thoughts are passing through their mind. Because, often clinicians are just jumping into their external experience of diagnosing and attending and so forth. But actually, part of the training that we do with health care workers are, to allow health care workers to attune to their own subjective experience. Then I ask our practitioners through writing practice to explore what is the best case scenario of how you will die? And so they write about this and again, asking them to reflect. It's quite fascinating because, in terms of worst case and best case, we can't ever know really what is going to happen. But when we unpack that as a community, as a group, we have learned so much.

Some people are very clear they want to die alone. Others, it's their worst nightmare. And yet, we know from working in the field and actually health care workers know this, often the family walks out of the room and the person dies. The question that I ask that really is, "How many of you want to die in a hospital setting?" And you won't in general see a hand raised in the whole group. "How many of you want to die in a nursing home?" No. That says a lot about the culture of medicine and also what clinicians experience working in institutions that are responsible for care of the dying.

Part of our own work, for those of us associated with end of life care, but also as so called laypeople, since all of us are going to die, is how do we actually engage in transforming the culture of medicine so that when we enter these institutions that are involved with care, those institutions are places where we will be okay dying in. Now, I hope those were the questions that you were asking. I'm not sure.

It's a beautiful question. Just as I've suggested in relation to the experience of dying, for those who are on that part of their life journey, how important it is to familiarize oneself with one's mental continuum, with coming into a perspective on the truth of impermanence, on the truth of our mortality, on the possibility that our own journey of dying is one that will influence others. Doing this deep work that is both psychological and spiritual and as well relational, that is to say, coming into this sensibility of, "How do I make peace with those around me? How do I forgive? How do I express love? How do I share my profound appreciation for the lessons of my life?" These kinds of psycho existential questions that are important for us on an ongoing basis to address in our own lived experience. That's our personal work, whether you're in the end of life care field or just the rest of us who are not going to be involved directly in some kind of professional role or volunteer role in care of the dying. Most of us will come in relation to a dying person, a very undefended relationship and you'll not want to bring your fear of death or your aversion toward pain and suffering into the field. So, working those questions personally and also interpersonally within your own family system and friend system is really important.

The second thing is that volunteering within one's community, whether it's hospice or a program like no one dies alone or doing a chaplaincy training so that you're working in a cancer center or so on, having a direct experience of being with dying so that it's not so far from what you know, in terms of your own lived experience. I think it's incredibly helpful. You begin to work the edges that you have around your fear of death when you're attending the dying.

I started this work for myself in 1970. This was when I was a medical anthropologist at the University of Miami School of Medicine. It was in the context of being in that medical school that I realized that the most marginalized group of individuals in that medical school, in fact, were dying people, because basically death and dying at this time was something that was very feared or denied in our culture. I felt the benefit of that work and also the deep spiritual experience of being in connection at the level of mutuality with someone who's dying as they're moving through this experience of letting go. That's the second thing.

The third is to take time away from the rat race of our Western lives and let yourself drop into the awakening of your own natural compassion. I feel that we're so driven. Take a backwards step, the exhale, the opportunity to allow yourself to go deeper into who you really are, something that I encourage all of us to do.

Thank you for sharing that story. It's very powerful and I think it illustrates how important it is that we bring death closer into our lives.

I'm not sure which story, but one just came to mind. I don't know if it's the one that you're suggesting. Maybe you felt about your father like I felt about mine. I really loved my father and I think I loved him because he accepted me very completely. I chose quite an eccentric path in my life. Most parents would be disappointed in the choices that I made, but my father was always supportive in a very unconditional way. At least he made me feel as if he were completely supportive. You never really know what's going on. But then, his life was coming to an end and we brought him home. My sister's children, my sister and I and his wife, were all sitting with him. Then he began to flail. It was pretty disturbing. He was quite an old person and the skin on his arms were very fragile and began to bleed as he was flailing his arms around. Just seeing him that way was so disturbing. Then I realized that it wasn't a matter of holding him down or talking him down. I actually sat behind his head. He was in a hospital bed in our living room. I sat behind his bed and I put my hands on either side of his head and I said, which was un-prescribed. I didn't get this in a book. It just came out of my heart. I said to him repeatedly, "Thank you, Daddy. Thank you, Daddy." After a while, the flailing diminished, and he relaxed. Then he moved into a state of long exhales, which went through the night into the dawn. I still sat behind his head saying those words as if they were a mantra. Just the incredible gratitude I felt toward my father for all he had given me.

Before he got quite ill, he said, "You're traveling all over the world and you're doing all this, you're living the life that I wish I could have lived." And I said to him, "Actually, you gave me that life." So, 'Thank you, Daddy' was an expression of that natural gratitude that arose in this moment where I couldn't control anything but I could feel. Those were the words that carried him into peace. Then, as the morning unfolded I remember sitting, watching and sensing into these long, long exhales. At a certain point, there was no inhale. The chest rose, as if to invite the breath in, but nothing entered. I think my experience was very similar to yours. It was a mixture of grief, but there was also joy. There was also incredible love. I felt such gratitude not only for his life, but those final hours of his life were ones of great peace, where he had received the gratitude of his children and his grandchildren. And so it's this deep sense of fulfillment. I realized at that moment how we were with him. He became an ancestor, whatever that means. I'm so pragmatic, I don't want to make things romantic or anything, but it was more that he was alive in a different way. And this is decades later since his death, I know my niece and nephew and my sister, we all feel the same that he is a living presence between us and within us.

He said, "Everything."

He was a genuinely kind person. It wasn't kindness to win social approval. It was simply how he was. He cared about the well-being of others. He didn't think about himself so much. As such, I think that's the sensibility that allowed him to feel everything because he, at some preconscious level knew he was not separate from anything.

I was very fortunate to be quite close with Joe Campbell in the 1970s. I worked on his historical Atlas of World Mythology, but he also was my stand in father during my one and only marriage. I got married again with my biological father. But in any case, Joe and I, we had a lot of love for each other. He was a kind of prophet. I think the thing that Joe carried was his own sensibility of the human potential to awaken, but also to seek connections, to see things as influencing each other. He was a bard, a prophet, someone who used myth as a vehicle for bringing the best of the human heart forward in the world through his work. Of course, we all learned so much from his book, 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces,' which was of course influenced by the work of Mircea Eliade, which is influenced by the work of the Dutch ethnologist Arnold Van Gennep. He saw the value of rites of passage, of us going through suffering and then finding what would give our lives meaning and purpose.

I met Thich Nhat Hanh in the mid-sixties, when he was in New York and then became his student 20 years later and practiced with him for quite a few years. His own vision of seeing the Buddha as the Sangha, his emphasis on community, on inter-being, the realization that we're not separate from the very atmosphere that we're breathing. We're not separate from each other; we're not separate from the blossoms of spring or the wind of spring. That sensibility of being at peace of inter-being and of interconnectedness is something that he conveyed through his personality and also through the kind of practice that he introduced the West to. As we know, he left us in January in the body. But I think his influence, as well as Joe's influence, will continue to have a profound impact on global society. And we need it right now. We really need their view, their vision and their values.

Well, that's a very fun and difficult question to ask. I feel like I was born for this time. This is not an easy time to be alive. But I feel that, whatever I have been given in this life, I feel I can turn toward the well-being of not only others like myself as a human, but really toward the fate of the Earth. So, my own aspirations are; I hope I can stay healthy so I can continue to serve.

It's been an honor to meet you and to receive your questions. I'm grateful we had this time together. I look forward to meeting you again. Thank you so much.