Ep. 257 – Perspectives on Death

How can we learn to live by changing our relationship to death? Ram Dass addresses the staff at a hospital and shares his vast perspectives on death, not getting caught in the drama of dying, and dealing with burnout.

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Today’s episode is from a lecture Ram Dass gave to the staff of Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, New York, on November 26, 1986.

• Ram Dass begins by exploring different perspectives on death. He talks about how the Western perspective on dying can often frame death as the enemy, then shares how the Eastern perspective contains a lot more lightness about death.
• Ram Dass touches on the hospice movement and then discusses his work with the Living Dying Center. He talks about how death is often the biggest drama in town, but the process of dying can be used to awaken rather than keep people identified with their separateness.
• Finally, Ram Dass addresses the issue of burnout in the medical community. How can one function in the role of being a healer without emotionally being attached to whether or not the patient lives or dies? But we can approach pain and suffering in a way where we don’t get lost in it.

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“I must just encourage you to explore the possibility that you use the adventure of service as a vehicle for opening up the exploration of who you are in relation to what you’re doing. Because I think if you were less a nurse and less a doctor, and more an awareness who was being a nurse and doctor, your payoff would be improved considerably, and death would become an interesting part of nature rather than an error or a failure. And you could still do your work, in fact, perhaps even more impeccably.” – Ram Dass

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