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February 12, 2008
The Rinzai Zen Mission near Baldwin Beach Park will be hosting a series of events featuring two legendary visionaries – Joan Halifax Roshi and Ram Dass. They’ll be talking about living and dying, focusing on the spiritual aspects of both.
Two local organizations that deal with these subjects every day, Hospice Maui and Ipuka I Ke Ao, or Doorway into Light, are co-sponsoring this event, making it possible for you to come, listen and learn “…techniques and practices for compassionate end of life care giving, as well as the integration of the spiritual dimensions in living and dying,” according to a brochure announcing the event.
Ipuka I Ke Ao is a not-for-profit, community-based all-faith spiritual organization based in Ha‘iku, founded on the principal that, according to their website, “the death of our bodies is a sacred and spiritual passage… our bodies die, the soul continues its journey.” Their goals are “To provide training for Spiritual Midwives to assist dying people, their families and community; to foster education and awareness of death as a natural and sacred, family centered and community centered experience; to support, assist and advocate Open Cremation as an option; to establish a non-profit mortuary and Sacred Ceremony Hall; to establish a non-profit Green Cemetery/Sanctuary/Native Forest Preserve, and to establish a Dying Center to provide residential, assisted dying.”
Hospice Maui, the only hospice on the island, by the way, has been helping people here for 26 years now. I recently spoke with Greg LaGoy, Executive Director of Hospice Maui for the last 18 years. He said, “Our mission is to provide comfort and dignity for good care at the end of life. There are many misconceptions and fears around death, and these commonly become barriers preventing people from getting care that maximizes comfort and dignity and honors their beliefs and values. At Hospice Maui, we see ourselves as stewards of an essential truth that is both disquieting and little-known; that death has the power to enrich our lives and our communities more profoundly than any other single experience. We see it as incumbent upon us in our leadership role to re-educate our community about this. To help us do that, we have defined the difference between our work and our deeper purpose. Our work is: providing physical comfort and emotional and spiritual support for people who are terminally ill, and assisting their families before the death and while they are grieving. Our deeper purpose is to enrich our community by helping people discover the gifts that preparing for the death of a loved one can bring – compassion, insight, courage, humility, inspiration, confidence and growth.” He also emphasized that Hospice Maui is separate from the funeral business, and said “We are the experts on pain and symptom control and can help people understand what’s next… We don’t want people to have regrets about what they wish they would have done or known; we want them to be informed and to participate.” He also told me, “One of the most important things people can do is to start having conversations about what they want at the end of life.” Regarding the upcoming event in Paia, he said, “Joan is one of the national icons in this field; to have her here speaking about her perspective on the end of life is a wonderful gift to the community.”
Joan Halifax Roshi will be coming to Maui from New Mexico. “She is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist and author. She is Founder, Abbot and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has worked in the area of death and dying for over thirty years and is Director of the Project on Being With Dying. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work. She is also Founder of the Ojai Foundation and of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners, was an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University, and has taught at many universities, monasteries and medical centers around the world,” according to the brochure.
She is also a dear friend of Maui resident Ram Dass, another national icon, “one of our culture’s most important voices in the last forty years,” the brochure says. He’s also an author, a former psychologist, Harvard professor and a very popular lecturer and spiritual teacher. I spoke with him recently about this upcoming event. “I’m on the board of Doorway (Ipuka I Ke Ao). We’re trying to make dying a spiritual ceremony; I have been doing this to give dying good press,” he told me with a smile.
He spoke of his interactions with dying people “during the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco,” of writing books on the subject and of the history of Hospice. He said, “The reason I got so involved in dying was because I had gone to India, and they treat dying with spiritual respect, and I think that our culture doesn’t treat it in that way. In our culture, it’s a mistake; we say, ‘Oh, it’s too bad.’ It’s not too bad. I believe in reincarnation; so did Christ. I’m in good company,” he laughed. “And that makes it easier to look at. Bodhi and Leilah Be and I wanted to do a Green Cemetery; we’d have an open fire and watch bodies being burned like they do in India. We’d have a place where a dying person can have any ceremony they like. We’re planning that and want an educational wing… I envision that if you are dying and you want to do a ceremony in your own way, you will come to Maui… dying is an important, profound ceremony in everybody’s life. “
There will be a public evening event on Thursday, February 21 at 7 p.m. ($20), and a two-day workshop on Friday and Saturday, February 22 and 23, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ($225), at the Rinzai Zen Mission by Baldwin Beach Park in Pa‘ia.
For registration. please contact Bodhi@ipuka.org or at 808-283-5950. You can also contact Heather Parsons, 808-280-2833 or www.fengshuimaui.net, or call 808-572-4120 or email neeraja@earthlink.net.
Contact Hospice Maui at www.hospicemaui.org or by calling 808-244-5555; Ipuka I Ke Ao contact is info@ipuka.org.
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Jan Welda
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