## Metadata - Author: [[Frank Ostaseski]] - Full Title: The Five Invitations - Category: #books ## Highlights - In Japanese Zen, the term shoji translates as “birth-death.” There is no separation between life and death other than a small hyphen, a thin line that connects the two. ([Location 78](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=78)) - The word wholeness is related to “holy” and “health,” but it is not a vague, homogenous oneness. It is better expressed as interconnectedness. ([Location 89](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=89)) - We will never know who we are and why we are here if we do not ask the uncomfortable questions. ([Location 99](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=99)) - Facing death is considered fundamental in the Buddhist tradition. ([Location 156](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=156)) - Death is seen as a final stage of growth. ([Location 157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=157)) - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, ([Location 161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=161)) - “You have to open yourself up and let the pain move through you,” Elisabeth said. “It’s not yours to hold.” ([Location 171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=171)) - Stephen Levine, a poet and Buddhist teacher, ([Location 173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=173)) - However, the predominant view is still that dying is a medical event and that the most we can hope for is to make the best of a bad situation. ([Location 220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=220)) - While seven out of ten Americans say they would prefer to die at home, 70 percent of Americans die in a hospital, nursing home, or long-term-care facility. ([Location 225](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=225)) - Death opens us to the deepest dimensions of our humanity. Death awakens presence, an intimacy with ourselves and all that is alive. ([Location 246](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=246)) - The great spiritual and religious traditions have any number of names for the unnamable: the Absolute, God, Buddha Nature, True Self. All these names are too small. In fact, all names are too small. They are fingers pointing at the moon. I invite you to translate the terms I use in whatever way helps you connect with what you know and trust most in your heart of hearts. ([Location 248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=248)) - will use the simple term Being to point at that which is deeper and more expansive than our personalities. At the heart of all spiritual teachings is the understanding that this Being is our most fundamental and benevolent nature. Our normal sense of self, our usual way of experiencing life, is learned. The conditioning that occurs as we grow and develop can obscure our innate goodness. Being has certain attributes or essential qualities that live as potentials within each of us. ([Location 250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=250)) - a six-hour documentary about dying in America called On Our Own Terms. ([Location 265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=265)) - 1. Don’t wait. 2. Welcome everything, push away nothing. 3. Bring your whole self to the experience. 4. Find a place of rest in the middle of things. 5. Cultivate don’t know mind. ([Location 269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=269)) - They have little value as theories. To be understood, they have to be lived into and realized through action. ([Location 276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=276)) - It is almost banal to say so, yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis. —HENRY MILLER ([Location 304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=304)) - There is an old Babylonian myth, “Appointment in Samarra,” ([Location 314](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=314)) - Death only sneaks up on us because we haven’t noticed the clues she has hidden in plain sight. ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=324)) - We rely on impermanence. The cold you have today won’t last forever. This boring dinner party will come to an end. Evil dictatorships crumble, replaced by thriving democracies. Even ancient trees burn down so that new ones can be born. Without impermanence, life simply could not be. Without impermanence, your son couldn’t take his first steps. Your daughter couldn’t grow up and go to the prom. ([Location 357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=357)) - In Japan, people celebrate the brief but abundant blooming of the cherry blossoms each spring. In Idaho, outside the cabin where I teach, blue flax flowers live for a single day. Why do such flowers appear so much more magnificent than plastic ones? The fragility, the brevity, and the uncertainty of their lives captivate us, invite us into beauty, wonder, and gratitude. ([Location 365](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=365)) - impermanence and non-attachment. ([Location 381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=381)) - This is similar to what happens naturally in the dying process. The ways we have defined our “self,” the identities we have carried for so long—of mother or father, provider or caregiver, loner or people person, rich or poor, success or failure—all these descriptions gradually are stripped away by illness and old age, or they are gracefully surrendered. Then we discover something more elemental and connective, a fundamental truth of human nature. ([Location 466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=466)) - The Persian poet Ghalib wrote, “For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river.” ([Location 512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01KTBCZD4&location=512))