2018
Filmed and edited in intimate vérité style, this movie follows visionary medical practitioners who are working on the cutting edge of life and death and are dedicated to changing our thinking about both.
40 min
CLEAR ALL
The fear of death and dying is quite common, and most people fear death to varying degrees. To what extent that fear occurs and what it pertains to specifically varies from one person to another.
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.
Buddhist roshi Joan Halifax works with people at the last stage of life (in hospice and on death row). She shares what she's learned about compassion in the face of death and dying, and a deep insight into the nature of empathy.
According to the dictionary, to forgive is to stop feeling angry or resentful toward yourself or others for some perceived offense, flaw, or mistake. Keeping that definition in mind, forgiveness becomes a form of compassion.
A calm mind and even temper can help make peace with life’s difficulties.
1
Palliative care specialist BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger explain how to bring more meaning and less suffering to the end of life.
From the session: "Dark Nights of the Soul" | 2018 Festival of Faiths Camille Helminski is codirector, with her husband, Kabir Helminski, of the Threshold Society of Santa Cruz, California.
At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? For many, it’s simply comfort, respect, love. BJ Miller is a palliative care physician who thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients.
Compassion research is at a tipping point: Overwhelming evidence suggests compassion is good for our health and good for the world.
2
The Buddhist practice of mindfulness first caught on in the West when we began to understand its many practical benefits. Now Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., introduces a practice with even greater life-changing power: compassion.