Introduction: Healing the Divide
Part One
Uncharted Territory
1 A Path of Discovery: The Lucky Dark 3
Meditation: How Do You Want to Die?
2 The Heart of Meditation: Language and Silence 9
Meditation: Strong Back, Soft Front
3 Overcoming the Porcupine Effect:Moving Past Fear into Tenderness 17
Meditation: Mercy—Exchanging Self with Other
4 The Wooden Puppet and Iron Man: Selfless Compassion, Radical Optimism 25
Meditation: Contemplating Our Priorities
5 At Home in the Infinite: Dwelling in the Boundless Abodes 37
Meditation: Boundless Abodes for Living and Dying
6 You Are Already Dying: Realizing Impermanence, Selflessness, and Freedom 47
Meditation: The Nine Contemplations
Part Two
Giving No Fear
7 Fictions that Hinder and Heal: Facing Truth and Finding Meaning 63
Meditation: Bearing Witness to Two Truths
8 The Two Arrows: I Am in Pain and I Am Not Suffering 71
Meditation: Encountering Pain
9 Giving No Fear: Transforming Poison into Medicine 81
Meditation: Giving and Receiving through Tonglen
10 Take Care of Your Life, Take Care of the World: Seeing My Own Limits with Compassion 93
Meditation: Boundless Caring
11 The Jeweled Net: Communities of Care 101
Meditation: The Circle of Truth
12 Wounded Healers: Th e Shadow Side of Caregiving 113
Meditation: Four Profound Reminders
Part Three
Making a Whole Cloth
13 Doorways to Truth: From Fear to Liberation 127
Meditation: Walking Meditation
14 Embracing the Road: How We Remember, Assess, Express, and Find Meaning 137
Meditation: Letting Go through the Breath
15 Between Life, Between People: How We Forgive, Reconcile, Express Gratitude, and Love 145
Meditation: Boundless Abodes for Transforming Relationships
16. The Great Matter: There is No One Right Way 151
Meditation: Encountering Death
17 The Broken Pine Branch: Deaths of Acceptance and Liberation 163
Meditation: Dissolution of the Elements after Death
18 Gratitude for the Vessel: Care of the Body after Death 179
Meditation: Charnel Ground Meditation
19 River of Loss: Th e Plunge of Sorrow 189
Meditation: Encountering Grief
Afterword
Being One with Dying 197
