Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death

Joan Halifax

Shambhala Publications, Jul 9, 2024 - Self-Help - 232 pages

In this classic book of inspiring and practical teachings, Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax offers the fruits of her many years of work with dying people. Inspired by traditional Buddhist teachings, her work is a source of wisdom for all those who are charged with a dying person’s care, who are facing their own death, or who are wishing to explore and contemplate the transformative power of the dying process.

Halifax offers lessons from dying people and caregivers, as well as guided meditations to help readers contemplate death without fear, develop a commitment to helping others, and transform suffering and resistance into courage. She says, “Why wait until we are actually dying to explore what it may mean to die with awareness?”

A world-renowned pioneer in care of the dying, Joan Halifax founded the Project on Being with Dying, which helps dying people to face death with courage and trains professional and family caregivers in compassionate and ethical end-of-life care.

About the author

Joan Halifax, PhD, is a Zen priest and anthropologist who has served on the faculty of Columbia University and the University of Miami School of Medicine. For the past thirty years she has worked with dying people and has lectured on the subject of death and dying at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Medical School, Georgetown Medical School, and many other academic institutions. In 1990, she founded Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist study and social action center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1994, she founded the Project on Being with Dying, which has trained hundreds of healthcare professionals in the contemplative care of dying people.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death
• Author: Joan Halifax
• Contributors: Ira Byock, MD, Frank Ostaseski
• Publisher: Shambhala Publications, 2024
• ISBN: 1645472876, 9781645472872
• Length: 232 pages
• Subjects: Family & Relationships / Death, Grief, Bereavement; Religion / Buddhism / Zen; Self-Help / Death, Grief, Bereavement