Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 17: Chodo and Koshin

Episode Date: May 25, 2016

Thinking about death can be supremely difficult. Many of us try not to think about it at all – until we have no choice. But two Zen Buddhist monks are using meditation, and a generous dose of humor, to show people that the dying process does not have to be scary, and can even be uplifting. Sensei Robert Chodo Campbell and Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison are the co-founders of the New York Center for Contemplative Care, and have trained doctors, nurses, hospice care workers, and social workers to incorporate meditation and caring into their bedside manner with patients, and in their relationships with loved ones. The duo also teaches people to embrace death’s inevitability as push to live a fulfilling life – Zen Buddhist practice forces followers to look at this reality repeatedly – and how to treat a dying loved one with compassion instead of fear. Chodo and Kosin are the authors of the new book, "Awake at the Bedside: Teachings on Palliative & End of Life Care." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Today we're talking about everybody's favorite subject. Death.

I don't know why this... Well, I know why, but it's odd if you think about it, why this subject freaks everybody out because it's coming for all of us and everybody we know. And yet, and I don't put... This is true for me too. It's very difficult to think about death, especially your own. It's a little bit like trying to get a cat to look in the mirror

or hold two magnets together. It's just like there's a lot of resistance. People don't want to think about it. And we sort of quarantine our older people into nursing homes and we paint people up when they're in open caskets. And we just don't want to think about this fundamental reality. One of the things that I love about Buddhism, and as an aside here, when I talk about Buddhism, I don't think of it as something to believe in, but rather something to do.

So what I like about the practice of Buddhism, not the faith of it, is that it forces you, just like after your dog poops on the rug, it forces you to look at this reality in a rigorous, repetitive way. It forces you to look at the hard fact of impermanence and to consider that it applies to you. And my two guests today have radically reoriented their entire lives to confront this fact. And they they are and they have long titles here but don't be fooled they're pretty down to earth and not withstanding these long titles. Sensei Robert Chodokamble and Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison. They are from the New York Zen Center for Contemporary of

Care. Gentlemen, thanks for being on. Nice to see you. It's good to see you. Okay, so let's just, I have a million questions. Just, but so they're whole, these guys, there, there's end priests, notwithstanding the fact that they wear black robes. They are anything but funereal. And that's despite the fact that their whole job right now is to do hospice care.

So I have a million questions for both of you. But I want to start with you, Cotion, because I want to talk about your respective back stories, how you got to where you are now. You were born under with what name? Daniel. Daniel, Daniel, Paley, Ellison. So now it's Sensei Cotion, Paley, Ellison. How did we get from Daniel to a four name title? And you've got a bunch of like little like acronyms after your name too, because you've got it so some degrees. Some degrees.

Yeah. How do we get there? Well, that's a good question. That's what people always say when they don't want to answer the question. That's a good question. I think one of the ways that we got here is that my... Keep it in the eye.

Talk about you. I should say these two are not only... Not only did they run the New York Zen Center for example to care together. They do stand up comedy. They do stand up comedy. They live together and you've been together for how long as romantic partner. So you're going to, you're going to, that'll come through. So anyway, yes, keep it in the eye, even though we're Buddhist here, keep it in the eye.

Well, I think of my great-grandfather was a rabbi and had come over here from escaping escaping pogroms, and he was so dedicated to service. And he was the kind of the only, as far as I know, religious or spiritual-based person in our family. And he was so dedicated to housing people coming over from Russia and from Poland and during the war. And I think that some ways I always had such an affinity to him. And his son, my grandfather, was also totally dedicated to service. And to his life was about service and care for other people. And he was my inspiration as a young person. And the story goes that my mom said that when I was eight, she said, so when you want to grow up, but to be when you're an adult, and I said, a Zen Buddhist monk.

Really? Yeah. Even before my Burmetsua. Wow. Yeah. Where did you even get that idea from? Well, my grandfather, the same grandfather had shown me, he used to save all the national geographics for me and look through them with me and say, you know, like you

could explore all of these places. And one of them was worn about Tokyo, you know, every once in a while they'd have like the lost native tribe of some place and then they'd have some city. And Tokyo and they had this picture where everyone was blurred and they were in suits and kind of out of focus, in a movement, and in the middle of the photo there was this guy with a hat and with a little smile and you couldn't see his eyes and he was wearing robes and I said wow, he was so still. And it said below is Ed and Buddhist monk and Tokyo. And I said, wow, I'd like to be like that. Well, we were very different eight year olds because I was into like destroying things, bullying

people and trying to kill the squirrels in my backyard. So that would not have appealed. Yeah, I was a terrible person. I remain a terrible person. But that's why I'm attracted to you guys because you could teach me something anyway. So eight to eight years old You were attracted to Zen Buddhism There was an early propensity. Okay, but you you're you're you're a nice Jewish boy growing up here in the New York City area If I were call correctly upstate upstate New York. Okay, and you went off to college and all that and you're in and was your goal As a young man still to be a Zen Buddhist or had you moved on to something a little bit more worldly. I've played with the idea of being a psychologist and then but I met my first Zen teacher. John Dito-Lori when I was 17 and I'd gone out to a Naropa University at that time was Naropa Institute to meet and study with Alan Ginsburg.

So this is Naropa in Boulder, Colorado, yep. And when I went out there to study with Alan, that I saw Dito walking down the street and he was just like some guy in these robes and so approachable and so warm and he, I just, I felt like I'd seen, it was like a deja vu of that picture when I was eight years old. And I just thought like, but it was like an American guy, something like a Italian-American guy.

And he was the first one who really taught me how to sit and it was so kind and so generous and... To sit meaning to meditate. Yeah. Yeah. And you took to the practice right away as a young guy. And so how did you get to the point where you ordained as a priest and started a hospice care?

Well, that was really through my care of my grandmother. And as I got more and more into my practice, it just became so clear of what the meditation practice. That was the most central thing in my life. So, ordaining and maintaining the forms seemed like an obvious maintaining the forms. Yeah, like learning how to like teach people meditation and how to hold a memorial service, how to, you know, how to take care of people through this Zen form, right? And so that felt really central to me. And so that became just kind of an obvious thing. And I felt like that I burned through like my first 10 years of practice, I hated meditating.

You know, it was really difficult for me. Like every time I couldn't wait for them to ring the bell. Like they would ring the bell at the beginning and I would sit there and say, please ring the bell, please ring the bell, please. I had that experience many times. And then, but I realized I just kept going back to it and I think that There was just something about seeing I Saw something that I didn't even know what I was seeing But there was something that was so powerful about sitting and meditating that I felt that I kept coming back

even though it seemed like every time I hated it and then suddenly at one retreat it kind of dropped away and And then suddenly at one retreat it kind of dropped away and the resistance to it. And I saw how much I had been kind of not liking my situations one after the other. And I saw through like all those years of meditating and not liking meditating about how I've done that like in so many areas of my life. And it stopped, and it was stopping me from actually fully participating in a way that felt free. And so, like, suddenly, I had this tiny experience there. Wow, that's what all these teachings are talking about.

And how we get in our own way, but absolutely. And it was during that whole time that was my grandmother was from Brooklyn and Mimi. And she got to a certain point in her life where her kids, who loved her so much, her my dad and his sister wanted her to move to an assisted living by them, and she didn't want to do that, and we made a pact together to take care of each other. And so I was living in Brooklyn at the time, and so I would do shopping with her, and taking care of her, and eventually doing doctor's visits and ambulance rides and hospitalizations that moving in with her

into the hospice, you know. And she always had a lot of difficulty with my zen thing, I should call it. And, you know, as kind of a family, coming from a family of Holocaust survivors, it was really difficult for her, just culturally. I felt like I had a betrayal. And a betrayal. Yeah, for her.

But it was amazing, but the people who ended up starting to show up around her as she needed more and more care were people from ours and center. And nobody was talking to her about Zen or meditating with her, but they were just, you know, giving her manicures and pedicures and singing with her or sitting and just, you know, chatting about whatever. And she was extremely interested in using that time to reflect and engage and You know one of the most important moments of my life was when night when she woke me up and the hospice and

Was apologizing. She was tears streaming down her face. She said that I'm so sorry that I didn't love you fully and I didn't love you fully because there was a part of you that whole Zen thing really scared me. And but now I see it's so important to you. And actually, all of your friends and Chodo are actually, it's what helps you be with me in a way that nobody else can be with me. Everyone else is so scared. And I'm so sorry. And I realized that now she's like, I can't believe it took me 87 years to really understand

what it means to love someone, and which means to love all of them, not just the parts you want or like. And then, you know, it was amazing. You know, the next day, she actually said, you know, you and Jodo should start an organization. She's like, you know, train people how to care for people and combining it with that zen thing.

She's like, I never thought I'd say that. And teaching them how to meditate. She's like, those three things. You should start an organization. And so what's so incredible is that it was such a great idea. And so the real founder in a way of the New York Zen Center for Condomative Care is Mimi Ellison, this little Hungarian Jewish lady.

It was her idea. Great. It's so great. And now for something completely different. We're gonna talk about Show Doe's life experience, which is correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm just gonna throw this word out, kind of wild, kind of wild.

So, to your birth name was Robert Campbell. Robert Brian Campbell. Robert Brian Campbell. So, how did you become Sensei Robert Chodo Campbell? While you were talking to a coach in a while, a coach was talking Being an eight-year-old looking at this picture of National Geographic. My mind went to me being an eight-year-old Taking care of my 25-year-old mother who was a single parent and an alcoholic and so taking care of her would be and an alcoholic. And so taking care of her would be bathing her black eyes or making sure there was food on the table

when the whichever stepfather we happened to be living with at that time for a few months. And this is where? In Birmingham, England. It was a series of geographics. We would be living with someone for three or four months, and then the usual fights would ensue, and then we'd be off to other far distant places like Manchester or Halifax or Scotland until either Mom got fed up of the boyfriend or the boyfriend got up fed

up of Mom and this kid in tow. This is like eight-year-old kid. So I was passed out between mom and her sister and her great aunt. My mom who was on many levels, actually an incredible caregiver in her later in her lady years. She worked for a number of years in those days. They were called mental institutions with Down syndrome adults and then she took care of seniors. So it was in the genes. And so was alcoholism. We were both cursed with the Irish curse. Um, and Mom would disappear. She would take me to her sister's house, my aunt and say,

um, all right, Dory, and I'm up to work. I'll see you tonight and then maybe six weeks later, she'd come back. And so my aunt had ten kids. And so it was growing up in that environment. There were two really polar opposite environments. There was the one that was filled with uncertainty of my mother, was she ever going to come back or when was she going to come back and what condition would she be in.

And then there was the environment growing up with my aunt who had eventually ten kids that she stayed home, she was knitting, she was making clothes, she was cooking, her husband didn't drink. He was fairly abusive in other ways, but he didn't drink and there was always someone home and there was always food on the table and I wasn't cooking it. So, and then when I was 12, my mom had another kid, another my younger brother, and I remember the day she came home from the hospital and my younger brother, the baby was crying and she said, you know, I can't shut him up. I don't know what's wrong with him. I said, well, you have to change his nappy, his diaper. And she said, I don't shut him up. I don't know what's wrong with him. I said, well, you have to change his nappy, his diaper.

And she said, I don't know how to do that. Well, what had she done with you when you were a baby? She hadn't. There was an aunt or a sister. She was kind of like a handing. Yeah. So I showed I showed her how to change the diaper. And I showed her how to make the formula.

In the hospital, she had, you know, they made the formula for her. And so when she came home with it, you know, in the hospital in those days when you came home with a baby, they gave you a packet of diapers and a tin of formula and little instructions. And so I had to go through all that with my mom and show her I had a dip your elbow in the water make sure the bath water is not too hard so I had a babe my little brother and that put me immediately into the new position of not only caretaker for her, but babysitter, living babysitter.

So that was pretty intense, and then two years later she had another baby. And she was good at having babies, but she wasn't very good at keeping men or getting married. Or apparently maybe taking care of the babies, yes, yeah. You know, as she got older, I guess, by the time she was 30, 32, she was becoming a little more responsible, basically, because my aunts said you've got to take some responsibility in your life. So she eventually settled down with one man and it wasn't easy, you know, because now she had me and the one man that she settled down with was the father of my

two brothers. And I was the interloper. So it was a very difficult transition from a 13-year-old to a 16-year-old before, after one of many fights with him, was already a violent encounter one evening, and one of us would have ended up dead. And I put down the weapon and walked away and never went back. What weapon? It was a broken bottle from the doorstep. So you ran away from home at 16. Yeah.

And you mentioned the alcoholism. Was there alcohol involved in that fight and in your life generally at age 16? Sure. My mother of course, she had a predilection for stocky box of type men that were heavy drinkers. He said it was one of those, and she was too. But she could hold her own in a fight. You're a stocky boxer type dude.

I got into a lot of fights as a youngster. I wouldn't want to fight you now, just for the record. So yeah, I left home at 16 and embarked on a career of disco dancing, drugs and fedamins, cocaine and alcohol, working in bars and just a series of geographics, as I mentioned earlier, I ended up in Spain as a DJ, I ended up living in Amsterdam for a year. Israel for a year. Israel. Yeah, a hitchhike from London to Greece, from Greece to Turkey, from Turkey to Amsterdam.

And it was all about, you know, of course, in hindsight, I realized it was all about just running, running, running, running. And I remember the reason I thought I would go to Israel, and live on the kid boots, I'd heard about this kid boots. I thought, if I go to, I was 23, and I'd already started having bleeding stomach, throwing up each morning. From what? I went to my doctor and he said, you are in really serious health condition. You're drinking too much, which is causing this bleeding, also basically. You need to quit. And I was 23.

And so I thought, you know, me being the smart person that I am, I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll go and live on a kibbutz where there's no alcohol. So I got on a plane and ended up in Tel Aviv from Tel... When I got to Tel Aviv, they said, where would you like to go? I said, I'd like to be as far away from basically any cities as I can get and they said we have just the place for you and it was a little kibbutz all the way down south in Elat which is about five miles out of Elat and at that time there was one hotel or two hotels and this

kibbutz and of course oh there were two hotels and one bar in a lat. So after being on the kibbutz for about six months and making a little trip into a lat every day to Henry's bar. I kept drinking. And then I left the kid woods and started working in a hotel in a lot as a chamber maid. That was all the other job I could get was cleaning rooms and getting it to trouble in cleaning rooms, stealing booze and yeah. How did you go from this extremely reckless lifestyle to where you are now? I came back to England after spending a year in Israel and at some point during my teens, well, wasn't it at some point when I was 19, I got engaged to a lady with whom we had a relationship. There was very much like the relationship between my mother and her boyfriend.

It was a lot of drinking. It was like the calm, the comic wheel. It was just this is how I was brought up. This is what relationships look like. This is how I should be in relationship. So it was a lot of drinking, a lot of really good times, and all of really bad times. Anyway, that relationship didn't last much longer than a couple of years, I think. But when I came back from Israel, I got in touch and she said, well, why don't you come and live with me, and London, till you saw yourself out. And so that's what I did. And the craziness continued.

But I met this really, really interesting man who was Jewish. And he had a company, a printing company that worked predominantly with fashion models and photographers. And he was looking for a frontman because he was kind of, not the kind of person he'd want sitting in your office for many reasons. And he was looking for a frontman to meet clients and get new clients and meet the models

and meet the agents and the whole thing to get the business. And he loved the fact that I had been this kind of wild guy and lived in Israel. And he said, would you like to job a sit-shirt? I give it a shot. I knew nothing about graphic design or fashion, although being a disco dance, I knew quite a bit about bell buttons and platform shoes. So I fell into this job like a duck toward her. It was amazing. It was fashion, it was glamour, it was more drugs, more alcohol, it was a really great, great timing London. I bought an apartment, I was driving around this fancy car, and after about five years I got the itch. It was too much like settling down. And so I said to my boss, I want to leave. I need to do something else. And he said, well,

what do you want to do? And I said, I think I'd like to go to the States, maybe New York, all Los Angeles. And he said, well, why don't you go to New York, open an office for us there. And I'll pay all your expenses and go figure it out. Which is what I did. I came to New York. And for three years, I was on this roller coaster. I mean, coming to New York for me was like a kid in a candy shop.

There were all the clubs. This is 1983. So it's 1983 in New York. The club scene, the disco scene, the drug scene. And for three years, I really took that on 100%. Then one morning, after a series of really crazy, what I was doing was pushing the envelope more and more and more, how dangerous could I really make this life of mine?

B. I had witnessed two murders before 25 in New York in England in England and My mother at one point stabbed my stepfather. I mean, so so violence was not new to me and it was there So there was always I I needed the edge. I needed more and more and more and more. So I was not always. I started putting myself in really violent situations

or crazy situations here in New York. And at the very end of my drinking days, I actually was at a client dinner, fundraising party, and I think it was Raijins. And I was behaving really inappropriately with the money person. And so I was taken out of the club, put in a limousine, sent home, and I actually woke up in the gutter where I was living at the time on Bleecker and Houston Street. And it was this very, very clear moment.

I think the second act of divine intervention, if I put this belief in God, I mean, the first act of divine intervention was when I put that broken bottle down. This I thought would be the second one, was when this voice very clearly said the gig is up. You've got to stop. I was in therapy luckily for about a year at that time and my therapist gave me the number of a friend of hers who was in Alcoholics Anonymous AA and said, here's her number, get to a meeting, and if you don't get to meeting our relationship is ended. I'm dropping you as a patient.

And I went to a meeting that night, and that was 28 years ago. So I've been clean and sober for 28 years. Five years into my sobriety, I had sold my flat in London, I finished this career in fashion and glamour, I moved out to Sag Harbor, rented a house for a year and during which time I found out I was HIV positive and so that was really the reason which time I found out I was HIV positive. And so that was really the reason for selling my house. I figured, well, at that time they said, you know, you have 24 months to live.

Well, because I wouldn't take AZT. I wouldn't do the drugs that they were giving every one at the time. I just saw so many friends of mine dying. And they were all doing this drug AZT. And I said, I'm not doing that. Maybe that was the third divine intervention. And my doctor said, well, if you don't start this regime,

you'll be dead in 24 months. And I said, well, you know what? I don't think that's true. There was a piece of me that said, I've come so far. I'm not gonna get, that's not gonna take me out. And sorry, I sold my apartment. I thought, well, if it is true, I'm not going to get, that's not going to take me out. And sorry, I sold my apartment. I thought, well, if it is true, I'm going to go live in Sag Harbor, then I'll travel

to LA and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, do some more geographic stuff. I ended up living in Sag Harbor. It was a beautiful, beautiful time for me for six years. And whilst I was living in Sac Harbor, I started training at a psychoanalytic institute. I thought maybe what I need to do is really look at my, the only thing I could really do now five years sober, the only thing that I thought

I would really be interested in was taking care of other people, taking care of other, maybe addicts or adults from abusive homes, children, and none of this was really very clear. It was just all in the back of my mind. So basically I was living my own experience. And every week leaving my supervisor at the institute, I would see this woman come walking towards us and she was this little lady

no hair bright blue eyes and I said to my supervisor one day. Who's that lady that we see every week, when I'm leaving, she said, well, why do you ask? I said, I'm just entranced by her. She's, she just, there's something about her, they really, I don't know, connect to on some level. And she said, well, why don't you introduce yourself to her? And I said, I feel really awkward, you know,

she has cancer and she's kind of old. And my supervisor said, well, why do you think she has cancer? I said, well, she's bald. And she said, that's because she's a Buddhist monk. So the next week I saw her and I introduced myself to her. I said, hello, I lay,, I lay a sed I should introduce myself to you, my name is Robert and I don't know why I wanted to talk to you but you know basically I'm an alcoholic and I come from this really abusive childhood and I was incested and my mother this and my boyfriend's this and then this violence and that violence and this drug abuse and that drug abuse and now clean and sober and I don't believe in God and I don't know where to go and you know and I'm

in this relationship and I hate it and my dream has come true and we have a pool and dogs and cars and this beautiful home and I just don't hate I mean I don't want to do it with my life and she said Robert do you know what you need to do and And I said, no, she said, you need to shut up. I say, excuse me, she said, you need to shut up. And listen to these stories that you're living in. That's all in the past. Where are you in this moment? And I said, I'm talking to you right now, she said exactly.

This moment is what's important. Yes, all the rest informed your life. All the rest got you here today talking to me, but you've got to let it go. And I said, I don't know how to do that. I've been in therapy, you know, that I got to be in the very therapy for 20 years, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, I just said, why don't you try meditating? Come to the zando and I'll show you how to do that. Zando is the Zen Center. Yeah. And how did it go when you started meditating?

The first time I sat on the cushion, it was this feels right. But my mind was so crazy. I thought I would crawl out of my skin because she said sit on that cushion and don't move for 30 minutes. Now I was an amphetamine addict until I was 22 sitting still. No. Running around London and nightclubs and running around New York sitting still know. And I thought I would actually die from sitting still and listening to my mind. And over time my mind started to quiet down. It's still crazy, but it's quieter. And I moved back into the city, into New York, and I'd been sitting now for about two years

practicing meditation, and I realized that I needed to do something else than just sitting on the cushion. I wanted to be of service, and that's when I started volunteering at hospice. And that's when I met Mimi and Koshim and helped take care of her. Yeah. It was circle. It was circle. Well done.

It was great. Hey there listeners. While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Koto Paxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time,

like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. So, so then you, on Mimi's insistence, you started the New York's End Center for Contemplative Care, give me a brief

sense of what it is you do. So the End Center does three main things. It's all about actually basically about living and engaged life. And we do that through our study programs, through our direct care programs and meditation training. So you teach people how to meditate, you do courses in Zen subjects generally, and then you teach people how to practice hospice care. Yeah, and what we also teach, we teach in two medical centers, we're in faculty of two medical schools, teaching doctors about how to incorporate meditation practice and ethics

into how they are with their patients. And then we also have these national training programs where we're teaching anybody who would like to integrate a meditation practice and how they care in their relationships. That's a nine-month training that we do. And then we do direct care. We have really an incredible team of people who go to people's bedside and both here in the New York Metro area and we've trained people now in 32 states. So we have a network so some oftentimes people will call us

inside. Do you know someone in Atlanta and we do? And we have people available to care for people. And you're not only training people in how to be at the bedside, but you're actually doing this work yourself. Absolutely. So I'm we've discussed me signing up and taking it's's a nine-month course in learning how to be at the bedside, which is, you know, counter to all of my instincts, as a monumentally selfish person who happens to be married to a monumentally compassionate woman who is at the bedside as a physician. And I'm so intrigued by what she does and have yet, because

squeamage never gone to work with her. But I am seriously considering taking your course and doing this work, so tell me what would I be getting myself into? Yes, self. Really? You would be getting yourself into, Dan would be getting himself into Dan. You know, we have so many people that take the course, you would be getting yourself into, Dan would be getting himself into Dan. You know, we have so many people that take the course, you usually we take about 35 students a year and probably maybe 70% of those students with, for very a number of reasons, do not go on to continuing hospice or hospital they say things like I never want to sit foot in another hospital again until

it's my turn. Wow that's a pretty high attrition rate. Well they go on to they go on in their own lives completely transformed. How? Why don't they want to sit in the hospital? Because it's maybe that piece of it doesn't fit into their life. Yeah. Or is it just so hard? It could be that it's difficult, but none of no one has ever not completed the course. They've gone back.

I mean, this is the important piece. We're looking at how do you face your fears around death and dying? How do you face the fears of walking into a hospital room and seeing a patient that maybe has just, it's coming through an amputation or is hooked up to a machine in the ICU? How do you sit with that? How do you sit with it? Well, the question is going to tell you because it's like nudging me. you say with it. Well, Cotion's going to tell you this is like nudging me. Let me just stop for a second because I'm not trying to stop the fighting between you and that I want to continue. But because you guys are smiling and laughing and but here we are talking about death, you guys are marinating in this subject 24, 7, and yet,

and I don't know if people will get this through watching or listening to you. There's a real lightness to both of you. And you have a real sense of humor I had lunch with you guys recently, we were laughing the whole time. Why is that? And do you think there's a causal relationship? In that, okay, why?

Well, to me, the greatest fear, the greatest fear that I think all of us have are meeting the realities of our aging, our illness and death. Which is why you married an older man. So he could face his fears of aging. He's giving you a look of it's my turn to talk now. He's giving you a look of it's my turn to talk now. Yeah. Taking a moment to enjoy silence. For those listening to this, the facial interplay here is priceless. But anyway, carry out a coaching. But I think for me, that actually sitting with people and actually realizing that this is it

and realizing that every day we're moving closer to our depth and to me is actually the great news. And many people say, oh, I can't believe. It's so depressing that you, you guys spend all your time with dying people. Do you spend most of your time with dying people? They say, and I say, well, we spend some of our time with people who know that they're dying, and the rest of the time we're spending time with people who don't know that they're dying. The reality of it, to me, makes life so vivid and beautiful.

I mean, there was a reason why these teachings for 2600 years have been around because it was actually about meeting, like, sitting with a dead body. Yeah, so in the Buddhist time, they would meditate in the charnel grounds, they would sit and watch a decomposing body. Exactly.

So the reality of it, now we say, like, oh, let's put on some headphones and imagine that. But actually, the reality of being with dying people and sick people is so extraordinary, because there's something that strips away, that the veneer that we put on it in society, as you talked about in the beginning, about how we put the old people in the nursing home,

we put the sick people in the hospital, we put the dying people in the hospice, but learning how to enter those spaces and with an intimacy, and to realize, I am also that, I am also that. I'm also you person in the bed. Kilda's raised his hand. Yes.

This is one of the secrets of our relationship. When we have conflict, it's rock paper scissors. Or raising our hands as one interrupt. Mm-hmm. Cotion mentioned something that is really important for once. The intimacy, the peace that's missing taking when we're putting our aging in nursing homes, we're sick, we're people who are dying or in intensive care units hooked up to machines, to ventilators, people who are suffering, you know, they're in the hospitals.

And when they're dying, they actually end up in hospice. 50 years ago, this wasn't the case. People were dying at home. We knew how to take care of people who were dying. We knew how to take care of grandma. We knew what to do. We knew that this was the end of her life. In England, we have here in the States,

we have something called a DNR, do not resuscitate, in England, they have something called an A&D, which is a lower natural death. We were doing that 50 years ago all across the Western world, allowing for grandma, or whoever it was, it was dying of cancer, or whatever it was, to simply be home.

And we would take care of them. But because we've changed, in some, anyways, in terrific areas, technology, women not having to stay home and be housewives and, you know, the little beddy at home cooking, but how's been when he comes home? Everybody out of work, having to earn a living, there's no one to take care of grandma if she gets sick So it's like what do we do now? And so it's such a it's really such a

Mark on society how how far we've come and how far back We're falling this area of caregiving and you know that but that's what's so amazing about, you know, the center and this training also is about that there are the first year we thought, like maybe there would be a few people who would be interested in the training, we thought, like, we'd be really great to have like five people who would want to do this training. And we had like 75 applications the first year. And, you know, people from all over the country right come in once a month

to train with us and each year it's so invigorating to see that people are turning towards what is scary Turning towards our fears and because in some ways you're asking like what are you gonna experience? Well you experience like all the different things that stop you from being in relationship. Where you turn away where you you know favor your distractions as opposed to pull out your your iPhone exactly exactly. Tell me more about what it does for you guys. I'm asking obviously from a very selfish standpoint. I would imagine you use the term before stripping away.

When you confront the fact that we are in these fragile bodies and that are made up of bones and flesh and skin and you know, thunderously obvious things that we just don't pay attention to. When you confront that in the way that you do, does it sort of sand the edges off of our perennial egocentric fixations and looping fizzing stories, we're telling ourselves all the time, is that what it does for you? Robert's raising his hand. If nobody calls him, we'll just have to stay there.

Okay, good luck with that, coach, and go ahead. So anyway. To not look at this thing called death and dying is a deprivation, This thing called death and dying is a deprivation, right? Because we're not living fully and not fully engaged in our life. If we're not looking at the fact that ultimately this life as we know it is going to end. So when we're sitting with patients who are in the hospital, getting a hip replacement, we're facing sickness, aging. When we're sitting in hospice,

we're in someone's home with a person that is dying. It's right there, right in there in front of you. And how can you not look at the fact, the reality that this life of ours is short. This life is not infinite. You know, we're going to, at some point, this is going to be me in that bed. So do I want to spend the rest of my life fearing that or embracing the life that I have. And that might mean having a lot of fun. That might mean...

Not missing an opportunity to actually love and to appreciate. So to me, it's like what Trata saying is so important because I feel that... So you're glad he raised his hand? Oh, it's so important. But I think that... Most of what I say is very important.

I can't breath. And enjoy. We're not like this at the bedside, by the way. I hope you are. So I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, if you're at my bedside and be like this,

I think this would be. But I think to, for me, it's really about how do you want to live your life? How do you want to live this day? And to me, it brings this kind of awareness, brings the day into kind of technical, or you can say, right? It's just about, wow, I'm going to be leaving this room right now in a certain time. So how do I want to be in here?

And how do I want to experiment with being more available? And because I don't actually, the reality is we assume that our life will go on a long time. But we know in my experience of working in a emergency room is that it's a learning that you never know that. That all kinds of things happen. You know, my meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein likes to say anything can happen at any time. And it does. And it's not an idea. You know, like to me, it was exactly.

And when I finally, when I was working in a emergency room, I realized like, oh, that's actually true. So are you guys no longer afraid of death? What do you mean? Are you no longer afraid of death after all of this work that you've done? I don't find death scary, but I don't know what it'll be like when I'm dying. When I'm actively dying, I don't know what it'll be like when I'm dying. When I'm actively dying, I don't know what that'll be like. Maybe I'll be very at peace with it.

Maybe I won't. Because one of the things that I've also learned is when you spend time with dying people is that people do it very differently. Some people are like fighting it to the very end. And like the one person that we were with, and you know, they right before they died, they stood up and we're like, no!

And then they died. Wow. You know, and other people use it to really contemplate what their life has been. And other people, you know, just fade away. So to me is about being open to what that moment will be. I have no idea. But the idea of it is not scary to me.

I'm actually quite curious and quite like I am about this moment. It doesn't feel different that different to me than this moment with you. So being with me is a little bit like dying. Yeah. I've heard that many times, but you're the first person who's saying it in a non-judgmental way. No, but you know that. No, I do know what you're saying. Absolutely. But have you have you found that? No, I do know what you're saying. Absolutely. But have you found that I'm giving you permission to speak to a with without Cotions permission, I am giving you permission. Have you found that your fear of death, the fear of death that we all I think have? Has it gone down for you doing this work? No, no. I do, I'm concerned about certain aspects of the dying process.

Pain. Not so much the pain. Pain can be managed. But the, the process, the helplessness that can come with a lingering death. So someone taking care of my bodily functions, taking me to the bathroom, changing diapers, feeding me, that's not what I want. So I'm afraid of that. The fear of anyone just touching me is probably historical reasons, that's not what I want. He may not have a choice

That's a much deeper question. I think I will have a choice really how Do you want to get into this conversation? Yeah, I Would much rather go down the avenue of avenue of assisted dying than to, first of all, to prolong the inevitable for a number of reasons, first of all, the personal reasons of being finding the idea of being in diapers and being taken care of, finding that absolutely apparent to me. Why do you find that so? Something I haven't come to terms with. I can do it for, I took care of a friend who was for the last five years of his life and

the first time, he was my sponsor actually, so I'd known him for 25 years. And we knew pretty much everything about each other. And so in the last year of his life when he was on 24th, 7th care, there was a day when his aid had, I sent her a full lunch, you know. And I changed his diaper. And it was really, really difficult for me. The smell, the function of made, actually doing it, I managed to do it because I loved him so much. And when I had finished, when I cleaned him up,

you know, showered him off and the whole thing, he said, you know, darling, thank you for doing that. And I said, not a problem, you know, I love you so much and he said no that was really awful for you. And thank you. The thought of having caution being responsible for taking care of me in that way or binding 24-7 care and this is where in In a system where we don't have the money to do that.

You know, so there are a number of reasons why I don't want my death to be prolonged. What's the Buddhist view on assisted suicide? It's not that. It's not my view. To take a life is not correct view. So this is a heretical position you're taking. Yes, but then I'm a kind of heretical kind of Buddhist. Yeah. I get that. Yeah. What do you think of? Well, first of all, it's not legal in New York. And yet, right, at this moment. And I think it's also a lot of, I understand the fear of it. I understand the fear of lack of control. And it's incredibly, I mean. It's like the most vulnerable it will ever be. It's like kind of we come into the world, you know, as a baby where we need, we require total care. I mean,

I have one at home and I'm becoming familiar with it. And then actually to me, the life cycle is then we go into a stage, we go back to that stage where we need total care. And to me, it's quite fascinating, you know, and I don't know what it'll be like. I'm sure it'll be like a lot of things. But for him, I think that total care is not something that he's really experienced before. Right. And so he didn't really have that. So it's, and I had that. And so I don't imagine it would be scary. And kind of like no, because it's just completely unknown.

It's alien, you know, me coming into the world as a baby was not one that was Nurtured and swaddled and you know, loved unconditionally. It was this inconvenience for the 17 year old girl I was like, what am I supposed to do this thing? Yeah, but you in your work now You are you see people who are in total care in hospice and yet you you can't you wouldn't be able to relax into it and trust it Even though it's your environment, it's pretty much daily now. When I'm taking care of someone else, I am so totally 100% with that person. And it's a though, well, it's not as though my hysterical history or whatever it is. My

life experience is, although it's informed who I am and how I take care of people, it's outside the door. I'm there 100% with you. And this is what needs to be taken care of step by step by step. And if you vomit and if you push yourself, whatever it is, I'm going to take care of that for you. But for me, I don't need anybody doing that. I don't want that. It's such an athema to me for someone to take care of me because I've always taken care of myself until I met this one. And even in our relationship, it's very difficult for to accept him taking care of me. It's very difficult for to accept him taking care of me. You know, if I get sick, if I get bronchitis, which happens once a year, it's like leave me alone. You know, I'll get through this.

Not a great patient. I've gotten through so much worse that I can get through this. So, if or when I sign up for this, am I going to be having to change grown-up diapers and things like that? Or what is my role? No. Okay, so, but it's more about just being there at the bedside, being willing to chat with people. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I think it's, you know, it's totally sorry, I'm not that not everyone will want to continue to do that, but I think what you will learn how to do is actually, as one person said, you've ruined me. Now, I'm actually so curious about everything that's kind of going on.

And so, you're going to be learning how to walk into a room and actually taking in the whole room and taking in, but not the idea of the room, but that particular room. And also, your internal state and the state of the room and actually learning how to have a deeper relationship. It's kind of actually like, to me, it's like engaged practice. Well, that's what I was going to say. To me, it seems that why I'm attracted to this is it takes the Buddhist practice way out of the theoretical input right into the super practical, because I'm aware as we discussed earlier that the original Buddhists were doing things like looking at bodies decomposing. Why not because they were morbid or into the macabre because they were putting them in touch with what is going

to happen to all of us, right? Your body, you're going to die and your body's going to fall apart. And so it's not cool to say that in most circles in our society right now, but it's the truth nonetheless. And so to me, that's what I'm interested in getting in touch with. I don't know if I can handle it, but I'm interested in trying. One thing you will get in touch with beyond the course, beyond the hospitals, beyond wherever you would be placed is your relationship to your own life and to your own family.

You probably, I would say, we could place a bed on it right now that if you took the training at the end of that training, you would be seeing your wife and your baby in a very, very different way, because you would be seeing them through different eyes. But what puts me down the bone there wouldn't it's how would I be seeing them through different eyes as as impermanent beings. Yes. As impermanent beings and as experiencing them moment by moment by moment.

In times, I mean, we can't live moment by moment by moment, by moment by experiencing, like consciously, but to walk into the room, to walk into your home after a hard day's work, and this beautiful young son comes running towards your daddy, there might be a whole different experience of what that connection is like after you've spent a day in the hospital or a hospice with someone who's suffering. You know, even walking into Starbucks, the same Starbucks that you go into every morning and seeing, you know, Gina behind the counter has a name tag and you've probably never even

noticed it and just say, good morning, Gina, could I get a double espresso and see her face? Wow. It's I think in some way is the interpersonal relationship is like what's fading in this culture. And I think that how to actually be engaged in a sustained way in relationship and have intimacy with everyone that you have you're encountering is the potential and the possibility.

You know, it just, they can't underestimate the power of it, about actually really learning how to sit with someone who actually knows that this is it, that they actually know that the days of their life are limited. And just sitting and going from room to room with people who know that their days of life are limited. Even if you allow that in for like one moment, in nine months, we'll change you. Chodo has his hand up and he's just itching to talk. So yes, sir. The whole thing about how we are associable beings these days.

You know, we're a children with devices. Devices and we're running the cell phones and the iPads, you know, there's no, there seems to be less and less communication between adults with their children, children to their parents. I think I told you this story down one of our students who died recently two years ago actually. She was walking down the street one day, Dan second avenue, and there was a young woman with her baby in the stroller, and she was clearly distressed. She was crying, and she was messing with the stroller, looking through the blankets, and just really agitated. And Judith said to honey, what's wrong? And she said, I can't believe it, I've lost my damn cell phone.

And Judy said, honey, I've just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. You have, look at this beautiful child in the stroller. Where are your priorities? And this woman actually stopped and reached for Judy. And Judy said, I don't need a hug. Your child does. And that was that. But the picture of this womb being so distressed

by her cell phone and shuffling the blankets and moving the baby in case the cell phone had gone down the back of the straw. It was like the baby jumped in. And it's like craziness. So it seems to me and I want to set you free soon, but that it seems to me that there's a kind of an interesting interplay for for somebody in your position. And my position as an aspiring as aspiring to kind of get into your position.

Um, is there's an interesting interplay here between service and self interest? Because you're serving other people, but it is also in your interest because it helps your practice. And it's like inextricably intertwined in some way. Okay, you're questioning that. Where am I off? Well, I don't know if you're off, but it's not how I understand it. Because I think to me, it's, I understand it as the practice. So to me it's about how do we enter the practice more? And I think that it gets tricky when we think about it as my practice, because to me about if I can become more awake and then I'm in the river of practice more and more available.

I don't know if that makes sense. You know, it makes complete sense, but I feel like we're saying the same thing in different ways. Okay. Although I wanna be clear that my capacity for misunderstanding and failure to comprehend and delusion is vast, but it seems to me that if you care about your practice,

you want to be more awake or to use your expression to be sort of be in the river of the practice in a more fulsome way. And if that means serving other people, then there we get to this intersection of your self interest for lack of a better term and service. Right. I have a different view of course.

Of course, surprisingly. I mean, I think absolutely that for me anyway, there's an element of self-interest because for so many years, the interest was not on preserving this life of mine. It was about destroying it, whether drugs or alcohol or whatever, it was about destroying it, with the drugs and alcohol or whatever else it was. So this life of service that I've entered into keeps me, I think on many levels keeps me sober, keeps me present to the fact that, you know, I'm really lucky. This is such an honor, such a privilege to take care of people in this way, and it fills me with such a sense of, on some level, such a sense of pride. You know, God forbid we should have

pride, but you know but we're not Catholics, I hope we're just... I think I'm allowed a little bit of that. It is for me on some level self-serving, because it keeps me in the world in a safe way. Yeah, maybe we could call it enlightened self-interest. I would hate to use enlightenment. Yeah, well, it says a loaded term to be sure. So before we close, I would be remiss if I didn't mention you have a book coming out soon, Awake at the Bedside. Tell me a little bit about it. And it's published by Wisdom Publications. Yeah. So it's called Awake at the Bedside Contemplative Teachings on Palette of End of Life Care. And it's a really, it's a book that our students have been asking for.

And that's the doctors and nurses and just folks who are taking care of people. So it's a compendium of essays and poems by leading physicians and Buddhist teachers who are really reflecting on their own personal experience with death and dying and suffering. So it's, and they're, most of the essays are incredibly personal and really sharing both practices and when it goes well and when it doesn't go well. And I feel like it's an incredible companion for people who are themselves facing illness and those of us who take care of those who are facing these challenges.

I look forward to reading it. And this is just, if assuming I keep my promise and go through with the training, this is just the beginning of our relationship. And what I propose is that we reconvene in front of these microphones after I've gone through the training and we can discuss it again. How does that sound? I'm about to be getting in the middle of the train. I'm open to that as well.

Gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you. Such a pleasure. Thanks as always to the producers of the show, Lauren, F.R. and Josh Cohan, Sarah Amos, and Dan Silver. You can hit me on Twitter at DanB Harris anytime you like. If you liked the episode today and you want to hear more like it, you can subscribe to the podcast, rate it, and leave a review.

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