In one sense, this book took me by surprise. Though I knew in advance that its focus was death (thus the subheading “Discovering What Death Can Teach In one sense, this book took me by surprise. Though I knew in advance that its focus was death (thus the subheading “Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully”), I didn’t realize that Buddhism would play such a large role.
OK, I told myself. I can deal with that. I’ve read my share of Buddhist texts by now and know enough to be dangerous. Still, against all odds, this turned out to be one of my favorite Buddhist books.
The reason why is pretty simple. The best side of Buddhism tenets appears when you look at it through the lens of death. Not death as the source of fear or mystery. Not death as the opening play of a big religious promise on the other side. Just death for what it is, the companion piece to birth, the natural and necessary destination inexorably linked to its departure (all aboard, screaming babies!).
Author Frank Ostaseski is cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project and is a Buddhist teacher. Many stories and profiles of dying patients come from this background. They are the solid brick of this text. The Buddhism serves as mortar holding the wall of his arguments together.
What’s good is no type of conversion or ostensible Buddhist ritual goes down at this hospice. The goal is to help people with each of their unique passages. Sometimes Ostaseski has answers, sometimes not. The main point is to get away from the clinical, results-oriented and impersonable deaths found in hospitals. God (or Buddha) save us all. We'd all rather die as humans instead of statistics.
While all this normalization of death stuff is going on in this book, Ostaseski also offers advice on life. Makes sense, once we see the thin line between birth and death, that we’d see how death (and its whims) should and must inform life. Most of us spend our lives avoiding thoughts of death. We admit in the abstract that someday it will come for us, but pretty much feel like a WHOLE LOTTA other people are going down before we do. Even many who are younger than us.
Here we’re told to embrace the thought of death. It would spare us a lot of unnecessary suffering.
Suffering? Buddhism refers to “the three poisons,” but Ostaseski mentions how Martin Aylward, the resident Buddhist teacher at Moulin de Chaves retreat center in France, rebrands the poisons as demand, defense, and distract. Ostaseski riffs on them here:
“Craving, the first poison, is a demand,/i> that the objects of our desire provide us with lasting satisfaction so that we feel fulfilled, whole, and complete. It is the tendency to cling to someone, something, some idea, and become rigidly attached to it. Greed creates an inner hunger, which has us always striving for an unattainable goal: a new job, a new partner or child, a new car or home, a new body, a new attitude. We mistakenly believe our happiness is dependent upon reaching our goal, getting what we want. But the problem is that even if we do attain it, we find that we can get no lasting satisfaction from our accomplishment or possession because everything in life is subject to the law of impermanence. Circumstances will change, or we’ll become accustomed to the new role or thing or person in our lives, and our pleasure inevitably will fade.
“Tragically, inherent in demand is the notion that what is here now, what we have now, isn’t good enough. We can sense this drive for more in our bodies as an energetic pull, the desperate wanting for something to fill up our underlying sense of deficiency.
“The second poison, the defense of aversion, can show up as anger, hatred, bullying, loneliness, intolerance, or fear. We habitually resist, deny, and avoid unpleasant feelings, circumstances, and people—whatever we do not like or want. Defense traps us in a vicious cycle of finding conflict and enemies everywhere. It reinforces our mistaken perceptions that we are separate from everything and everyone. Energetically, we know this drive in our bodies as the opposite of pull. It is a pushing away. The irony is that whatever we push away usually pushes back even harder.
“The ignorance of distraction is the third poison. It blinds us to the way reality works, giving rise to the tendency to pull (demand) and push (defend) against life. We misperceive the nature of things, which is that they are both interdependent and impermanent. Instead, we get lost in a loop of distractions as a way of disconnecting from our pain. Alcohol, shopping, eating, gambling, sex, social media and video games, even meditation—all can serve as habits and strategies for distracting ourselves, all can go unquestioned. We lose ourselves, get confused and hold unhelpful views. We go about our lives in a kind of fog, unable to see clearly that there is a way through our pain, which requires us to turn toward it. By trying to ignore it, we continually trip and fall further into our suffering. Energetically, we feel spaced out, dull, or vaguely unconscious.”
Sound familiar? Did to me. Dealing with pain and acknowledging death and having a more healthy relationship with each other and our mutual weaknesses is a start. We’re unique, yeah, but all too much alike, too.
This book, despite some moments of repetitiveness and the occasional anecdote that might come across as pat, sheds light on these contrasts. I enjoyed reading it and even admit to feeling a little bit better about this upcoming death thing. Enough to try and live a little differently before I meet it.
If you've got serious health issues, breathing exercises may help in a small way, but they're not about to cure you. But what if you have nagging healIf you've got serious health issues, breathing exercises may help in a small way, but they're not about to cure you. But what if you have nagging health issues, the kind allopathic medicine can't really cure and really doesn't have time to dig into? In that case, breathing exercises might offer surprising relief.
Credit India, China, and Nepal of long ago. Hindus and Buddhists, chiefly. You know. The guys who practically stop their lungs from breathing or their hearts from beating or their skin from freezing even though they're "OM-ing" in the great outdoors, mid-winter.
But what about your lay-breather? You, me, the mail carrier? In that case, maybe slowing, speeding, holding (to the point of discomfort), or expanding your lung capacity might bring results. All it takes is... practice.
James Nestor has done a lot of practicing. For this book, he offered himself up for most every modern-day doctor, guru, and holy man alive -- all folks building on ancient knowledge and, in many cases, finding modern clues as to why the breathing techniques work. This, then, is the story of his journey.
Could it be your journey? And which breathing technique suits your problem best? I wasn't always clear on that, and descriptions of breathing techniques are no replacement for videos (better) and actual coaching with an expert (best).
Safe to say, though, that we all generally suck (see what I did there?) at the autonomic process of breathing. We should shut our mouths for starters. Always. Even exercising. And, if we don't have sleep apnea but do snore (check with your loved one or your dog), you might keep your unconscious self honest by trying "sleep tape" (it's on Amazon) over your mouth each night.
You see, the evolution of our heads has worked for us and against us. On the plus side, our skulls have made more room for our brains, even though you wouldn't know it reading exploits of your fellow men in the newspaper (many in positions of power). It's also evolved to make more room for the tongue and talking eloquently.
Big tongues don't help your breathing though. Nor does the continually shrinking mouth space overall. We overbreathe like we overeat. Sucking wind on the rapid, shallow breaths we've gotten used to. Often, unbeknownst to ourselves, sporadically holding our breaths.
Ideally, you see, your inhales should be 5.5 seconds followed by exhales of 5.5 seconds (5 or 6 are both acceptable). Try it, though, and you may find yourself breathless in quick order, like you need to "catch up" on your oxygen (pant, pant, shirt, shirt).
Speaking of big-letter O, did you know that CO2 is equally important to your well-being? (So if you feel like a plant sometimes, there's a scientific reason.) Sucking oxygen on the sidelines isn't really doing much for athletes, but hey, if THEY think so, let 'em mask up and gulp their wonder drug....
Ultimately, if you're too busy to think about your breathing, don't bother reading this. But if you're not too busy to think about it for, say, 10-20 minutes a day (practice!), give it a gander.
Or, as a shortcut because you care not about the details, you can take a tour of some of the breathing videos and excellent Q&A video interviews with pulmonary experts on Nestor's website by simply going to
The opening chapters give you a historical perspective on pain and how it was approached by the ancients, both Western (Aristotle, etc.) and Eastern (The opening chapters give you a historical perspective on pain and how it was approached by the ancients, both Western (Aristotle, etc.) and Eastern (Chinese and Indian medicine), all interesting stuff.
Lalkhen moves chronologically to the present, where there's a discussion of morphine and opiates and all manner of addictions vs. treatments vs. good for the patient and bad. The line is drawn between "chronic pain" as suffered by cancer patients and "chronic pain" for another reason. Oh. And for no reason. That medicine cannot figure out with all its much-vaunted blood tests and scans, I mean.
Supposedly 5 to 8% of the world's population suffers from chronic pain. Lalkhen has come to believe that pain needs to be approached from multiple angles, including psychological and physiological ones. He also has come to believe that doctors and patients alike have to admit that sometimes there's no way pain will ever end, so it's just a case of mitigating it by learning to live with it.
He's not a big fan of drugs, many of which have such a poor track record that he's astounded they're even prescribed. Among these are older anti-depressants and anti-epileptic medications, which are prescribed in the hopes that they will quell the brain's ability to signal pain wherever it may be experienced (brains being the symphony conductors of misery when it comes to pain). These drugs are effective in only 1 in 7 people, cause harm to 1 in 14, and provide only about 30 to 50 percent pain relief to the small percentage of people they actually "work" for.
Lalkhen turns a jaundiced eye even on NSAIDs and ibuprofen which, over the long haul, can pose real dangers to the body when that body's owner keeps popping them in an effort to blunt chronic pain.
Overall, quite informative. Some of the case studies wandered a bit, but in the long run the book proves just how little modern medicine can do if their present tests come up with "nothing" even though a patient is suffering from "something."...more
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