Why did you write this book?
I wrote this book based on my partner Brent’s illness and subsequent death, and the beautiful way he embraced his cancer as an “adventure.”

Throughout his 18-month journey, I kept a diary with the idea that perhaps  others could benefit from his fearless approach to life — and to his impending death after his cancer diagnosis. My Buddhist studies and practice taught me the philosophy of living a fearless life and why having a good death is important. Brent’s illness and death gave me to opportunity to put those teachings into practice. It became obvious to me that we, in the Western culture, do not know how to die — which means that we do not know how to live either. Fear of death inhibits our ability to live life to the fullest. Brent lived his life to the fullest even after his esophageal cancer diagnosis because he wasn’t afraid to die. I wanted to share that story.

You talk a lot about fear in the book. Why is overcoming fear important to living and to having a good death?

Fear, I believe, is one of the three poisons – even though in most Buddhist texts it uses the term anger, which tends to be fear-based. All fear is based in the fear of loss. The fear of the loss of our bodies is perhaps the greatest fear we have because we identify so strongly with our bodies. Overcoming fear is truly exercise in mindfulness and a practice in controlling our emotions that involves embracing all as our path.

Generally, we base our activities on the risk these activities pose to our bodies; the greater the risk we assess (rationally or irrationally) for a given activity, the greater we fear participating in the activity. Some people have a fear of flying that prevents them from ever getting on an airplane for fear of dying in a crash. Yet, while the actual risk for dying in a vehicle wreck is much greater, few people refuse to get into a vehicle for fear of dying. We can be cautious in choosing our actions in life, but too often fear of death keeps us paralyzed in ways that prevent us from actually enjoying life. 

You use the term “good death.” What does a good death look like and how do you prepare? 

A good death is really about living in such a way that we don’t cling so tightly to life with fear that we resist the events that confront us. We allow life to flow through us knowing that ultimately our death will be just another event on the path. A good death is one that is peaceful, without fear, without clinging to this body that no longer serves us on the physical plane. A good death is an “easy” death (though it might not be one without pain, it can be one without suffering, i.e. without fear, regrets or wishing things were different). When Brent, my partner, was near death he said to me, “Dying is easy. I thought it would be harder than this but it’s so easy.” That is what it is like to have a good death.

Buddhist philosophy seems to have had a large influence on your ability to handle Brent’s illness and death. How does Buddhism help us prepare for death? 

Buddhism was the first spiritual philosophy in which I encountered a true exploration of death and dying: what death is, why we die, and how we die. How we die is less important than how we live but still, being prepared for death and learning how to die contributes much to being able to live a happy, fearless life. There is a meditation practice called “meditating on our own death” in which we move through the process of leaving our physical bodies, how that feels to leave one’s body, what it looks like. It is to help us understand that death is just another phase of life and that is part of the impermanence of all phenomena. Buddhism also focuses on consciousness and what it is and how all phenomena are created in the mind, by the mind; nothing has any inherent reality from its own side. (That’s an idea that I’m sure Kant would take issue with!)  

You mention consciousness and quantum physics as relative to Buddhist philosophy. Explain that relationship.

My affiliation with the Theosophical Society in America gave me a glimpse of the relationship of quantum science to spiritual traditions, which led me to begin investigating that idea. I came upon various books written by scientists who connected Buddhist philosophy with quantum science, particularly with respect to how consciousness/mind creates matter. It fit well with the Buddhist law of dependent origination or co-arising that says nothing exists apart from or independent of the observer. Quantum physicists call this the “observer effect.” Delving deeper into the quantum sciences – using books written by scientists who also began using Buddhist philosophy, which is also a science, helped me grasp the way in which each of us create our world and all phenomena. Consciousness is the final frontier.