Learn how a former Buddhist nun brought her gentle, compassionate approach to hospice chaplaincy.
ANNOUNCEMENT: The Laughter Yoga Webinar mentioned in this episode has been rescheduled for March 10th due to severe weather-related power outages experienced by the presenter. You can still register using the link below.
My guest Tenzin Kiyosaki has been a certified interfaith hospice chaplain for the past 13 years. She also practiced as a Buddhist nun for 27 years after being ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and brings an Eastern perspective to her hospice work. She is the author of the book The Three Regrets: Inspirational Stories of Love and Forgiveness at Life’s End and shares the spiritual wisdom she gathered from her work with dying patients.
This episode includes:
- How Tenzin was inspired to become a hospice chaplain
- What Tenzin learned from her Buddhist studies about the end of life
- What hospice work is always an ongoing learning experience
- How Western culture avoids the subject of death while Eastern cultures embrace it
- The failure of Western medicine to accept impermanence
- What led Tenzin to return her vows and become a lay person once again
- The role of a chaplain in hospice to find the “heart” of each patient
- Do chaplains and hospice need different titles to overcome bias in our society?
- How to help patients who regret a lack of accomplishment in life
- Helping patients who have not shared enough love during their lives
- Why regret at the end of life is actually a good sign
- A Buddhist perspective on medical aid in dying
Links included in this episode:
- Register here for Laughter Yoga Webinar (and get the replay if you can’t attend live)
- Sign up for the 2021 online reading group A Year of Reading Dangerously at this link
- Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
- Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
- Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
- Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and get access to the EOLU mug: “Mind if we talk about death?” (only Patrons can purchase it). PLUS get our new bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!
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