Aging for Beginners

Monthly Discussion Group

• Monthly on Sundays

• Returns on January 7, 2024, and meets on

  Feb. 4, March 3, April 7, May 5 & June 2

• 3:30 to 4:45 PM ET

• Meets on Zoom, access links below

• Led by Andrea Sherman and Kevin Gormley 

Please join us as we explore the journey of growing older from a Buddhist perspective. In this session, we will continue our reading of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, by renowned Zen Buddhist teacher and cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project Frank Ostaseski.

Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than 1000 people. The Five Invitations that we will explore are: 1) Don't Wait, 2) Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing, 3) Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience, 4) Find a Place to Rest in the MIddle of Things, and 5) Cultivate Don't Know Mind.

Join us as we learn to wake up fully to our lives, cope with loss, and recognize our precious human life. Learn to cultivate an awareness of death and dying and the wisdom that death can teach us about living and appreciate our lives.

“We can harness the awareness of death to appreciate the fact that we are alive, to encourage self-exploration, to clarify our values, to find meaning, and to generate positive action. It is the impermanence of life that gives us perspective. As we come in contact with life’s precarious nature, we also come to appreciate its preciousness. Then we don’t want to waste a minute. We want to enter our lives fully and use them in a responsible way. Death is a good companion on the road to living well and dying without regret.”

― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully