When Zen teacher Joan Halifax first started working with the dying, it didn't come easily or naturally for her. "Working so closely with death often scared me," she reports. "I was afraid I might get what the dying person had. When I recognized, however, that I already have what dying people have mortality I stopped being afraid of catching it." This insight has been foundational in her nearly forty years of working with people facing the dying process. Understanding that the category of "the dying" ultimately includes all of us, Joan makes no distinction in her teaching, whether it's addressed to those who happen to be dying right now or to those who happen to be their caregivers. Bringing mindfulness to the process is the key in either situation. The Buddhist wisdom she presents for approaching the end of life has proven beneficial for people of all religious backgrounds, as is demonstrated in the often deeply moving stories she recounts of people she has worked with. She also provides a wealth of practical advice for care giving, and guided meditations aimed at helping readers to face death without fear, to develop a commitment to helping others, and to transform suffering and resistance into courage.

Zen teacher Joan Halifax's Project on Being with Dying has been helping both the dying and their caregivers to face death with courage and compassion since 1994, but her work with the contemplative approach to the dying process goes back much further than that. Here, Joan offers the fruits...

	Foreword		xi
	Introduction: Healing the Divide		xv
Part 1	Uncharted Territory		1
	1.	A Path of Discovery: The Lucky Dark	3
	Meditation: How Do You Want to Die?		6
	2.	The Heart of Meditation: Language and Silence	9
	Meditation: Strong Back, Soft Front		14
	3.	Overcoming the Porcupine Effect: Moving Past Fear into Tenderness	17
	Meditation: Mercy-Exchanging Self with Other		23
	4.	The Wooden Puppet and Iron Man: Selfless Compassion, Radical Optimism	25
	Meditation: Contemplating Our Priorities		33
	5.	At Home in the Infinite: Dwelling in the Boundless Abodes	37
	Meditation: Boundless Abodes for Living and Dying		45
	6.	You Are Already Dying: Realizing Impermanence, Selflessness, and Freedom	47
	Meditation: The Nine Contemplations		54
Part 2	Giving No Fear		61
	7.	Fictions that Hinder and Heal: Facing Truth and Finding Meaning	63
	Meditation: Bearing Witness to Two Truths		67
	8.	The Two Arrows: I Am in Pain and I Am Not Suffering	71
	Meditation: Encountering Pain		78
	9.	Giving No Fear: Transforming Poison into Medicine	81
	Meditation: Giving and Receiving through Tonglen		88
	10.	Take Care of Your Life, Take Care of the "World: Seeing My Own Limits with Compassion	93
	Meditation: Boundless Caring		99
	11.	The Jeweled Net: Communities of Care	101
	Meditation: The Circle of Truth		107
	12.	Wounded Healers: The Shadow Side of Caregiving	113
	Meditation: Four Profound Reminders		122
Part 3	Making a Whole Cloth		125
	13.	Doorways to Truth: From Fear to Liberation	127
	Meditation: Walking Meditation		133
	14.	Embracing the Road: How We Remember, Assess, Express, and Find Meaning	137
	Meditation: Letting Go through the Breath		142
	15.	Between Life, Between People: How We Forgive, Reconcile, Express Gratitude, and Love	145
	Meditation: Boundless Abodes for Transforming Relationships		149
	16.	The Great Matter: There is Mo One Right Way	151
	Meditation: Encountering Death		159
	17.	The Broken Pine Branch: Deaths of Acceptance and Liberation	163
	Meditation: Dissolution of the Elements after Death		172
	18.	Gratitude for the Vessel: Care of the Body after Death	179
	Meditation: Charnel Ground Meditation		185
	19.	River of Loss: The Plunge of Sorrow	189
	Meditation: Encountering Grief		195
	Afterword: Being One with Dying		197
	Acknowledgments		203