Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

The intention behind these podcast episodes, my books, monthly emails and online posts posts is to offer some food for thought so we can contemplate certain topics more deeply and perhaps discuss more openly when social etiquette

considers them uncomfortable or even taboo.

This year alone we've tackled insecurities, judgment, identity, and forgiveness among many other subjects,

and now, as the year is coming to an end I figured we can talk about the end

Regardless of race gender religion age political affiliation or even species classification.

What we all have in common is the very thing we've been raised to never discuss or even think about.

Death.

Any mention of it is often considered morbid, defined by the dictionary as an abnormal and unhealthy interest in disturbing and unpleasant subjects.

Isn't that exactly what the Buddha's father tried to do, shelter his young son from any mention of old age, sickness, and death?

Our culture celebrates youth and vitality by efficiently filing the elderly and less able into retirement communities

practically out of sight.

How are we supposed to develop a healthy relationship with these facts of life and death

if we don't even see or talk about them on a regular

basis. In what used to be minority circles, interracial couples for example, the rule of thumb

has always been visibility leads to acceptance. The more often we encounter

something, the more comfortable we become with its existence, be it women in power, same-gender

couples, or blue hair. So the opposite must also be true. The less often we see

something, the less prepared we are to deal with it. Even if you are one of the few people

who've seen a corpse, It was probably in a coffin wearing makeup and dressed in fine apparel.

This gives a whole new meeting to out of sight out of mind. If we don't see it, we don't have to deal with it, which is wrong in this case because we do and will have to deal with it.

But if we're ill-prepared for death when it comes in whatever form it chooses, either for someone else or for ourselves, then the experience can

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