Welcome to another episode of the secular Buddhism podcast. This is episode number 62. I am your host Noah Rochetta and today I'm sharing the audio of a discussion I had with Frank Ostasezki on the topic of death.

Death is perhaps our greatest teacher. It's awareness of death that can be said to be the secret to life, the secret to live in life fully.

Frank is an expert on the topic. He's a Buddhist teacher, an international lecturer, and a leading voice in end of life care. He co-founded the Zen hospice project, which was the first Buddhist hospice in America.

He created the Meta Institute to provide innovative educational programs and professional trainings that foster compassionate mindfulness-based care.

He's the author of a book called The Five Invitations, discovering what death can teach us about fully living.

I've been excited to interview him because the topic of death is perhaps, as I mentioned before, one of the most powerful topics that we can approach when it comes to trying to live more mindfully.

I don't know of a single thing that can trigger a more profound shift of perspective than having a close encounter with death, whether that be on a personal note, a close encounter with death, or encountering a loved one, finding out a loved one has cancer, or finding out that a loved one just doesn't have a good chance of living.

A loved one just lost someone that they care about. Anytime we encounter death, it seems to be the most impactful and profound change that we experience.

In those moments that we are keenly aware of just how fragile life is, that we become very mindful about what really matters.

And oftentimes we find in those moments that the things that we thought that really mattered don't. And the things that we kind of discard and don't think they really matter, we find out those are the things that really do matter.

And it has a tendency to flip things upside down almost. And I've been wanting to have a discussion on this topic because I think it is a profound topic.

And unfortunately, death is something that we don't think about or talk about very often in our society. And I understand why I think it makes us sad.

And at the core of everything that Buddhism teaches is this premise that where there is discomfort, we run from it.

We don't want to talk about it. We don't want to think about it because it's not comfortable.

And I love how the Buddhist approach is saying the opposite. It's saying, well, wait a second. This is perhaps the only certain thing that we have in life. Why not look towards it?

Why not use death as an ongoing way of living fully, of living more mindfully?

And I several years ago I tried this experiment myself to think about death often, not just my own death, but the death of the people closest to me, the people that I love and care about.

And it is uncomfortable, but over time it's settled into this sense of reality. I know that I'm going to lose everyone that I care about.

I know when I interact with people out on the street that they're not going to live forever, I'm not going to live forever.

And it has the ability to change the way that we interact with people. It has the ability to help us to not get so bent out of shape over things, because we start to see the impermanent nature of life and the impermanent nature of every single moment.

This moment passes away so that a new moment arises. And it's life changing to think this way. And that's why I wanted to share this topic. And Frank is the best person to have this discussion with.

He talks about five specific invitations that you can apply to your life to start to see death differently.

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