JOAN HALIFAX
Being with Dying
Course ID: | TTT-05 |
Original Dates: | 2/8, 2/15, 2/22, 3/1 (2006) |
Archived Content: | MP3 (digital audio file) recordings / PDF transcripts | Price: | $60.00 |
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Course Description:
Exploring how we can help make the experience of dying be more gentle, peaceful, and conscious can have far-reaching consequences on how we live and our fundamental values and world view. This course is an endeavor to inspire a gentle revolution in our relationship to dying and living, a means for people to explore the meaning of death in the experience of their own lives and through the experience of each other, and to develop an approach to death that is kind, open and dignified. In being with dying, it is possible that we can see death and know life in terms of compassion and awakening. In gently caring for the dying, we can more peacefully and wisely care for the living and for life itself.
This course offers a unique opportunity to learn and practice contemplative perspectives and practices on death and dying, relationship centered care, cultural perspectives on death and grief, and work with psychological and spiritual issues related to death and dying. Contemplative practices are found in many spiritual traditions; those that we will be working with are inspired by the long and rich tradition of Buddhism. These practices have been adapted to Western culture and are explored in relation to our contemporary situation. The course includes didactic teachings as well as contemplative practices.
Course Overview:
Session One: Three components of compassionate care of the dying: Spiritual, relationship-centered care, self care; Spiritual aspects of compassionate care of the dying, including motivation, practice, application of spiritual perspectives for the professional and family caregiver. Practices: Mindfulness Practices; the Nine Contemplations of Atisha.
Session Two: Relationship-centered care and community development, including views of pain and suffering, care based ethics. Practices: Seeing Purely, Bearing Witness; Tonglen.
Session Three: Care of the Caregiver, including trouble spots, self care, and creating a self care plan; Practices: The Four Boundless Abodes for Caregivers; the Practice of Presence.
Download supplementary material for Session Three
Session Four: Dying, death, after death, including exploration of active dying and the deathpoint, care of the body after death, working with grief; Practices: Dissolution of the Elements in the Experience of Dying; The Four Boundless Abodes for Dying and Grieving.
Download supplementary material for Session Four
Recommended Readings:
Download TTT-05 Bibliography
Halifax, Joan & Barbara Dossey. Compassionate Care of the Dying: Manual and Standards for Practice. Prajna Mountain Publications, 2005.
To order, please contact: upaya@upaya.org; or call: 505-986-8518 (all major credit cards accepted)
Teacher Bio:
Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has worked in the area of death and dying for over thirty years and is Director of the Project on Being with Dying. She is Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work. She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focussed on engaged Buddhism.
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