Host

Gretchen Steidle is the director of Garrison Institute’s Spirituality and Social Change initiative.

Guest

Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD, is a Buddhist teacher, social activist, author, and pioneer in end-of-life care. She is the founder and head teacher of Upaya Zen Center and founder of the Project on Being with Dying. Her work integrates contemplative practice, compassionate action, and service in communities around the world.

Read and download the full transcript. 

Show Notes

• [03:23] Roshi Joan begins with a brief practice of presence, inviting listeners to notice their surroundings, their breath, and the space between the exhale and the next inhale.
• [07:20] Her first encounter with Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh during the Vietnam War, and the realization that she could be both a social activist and a contemplative.
• [10:17] Why contemplative practice is not about self-improvement, but about encountering reality directly and living by vow in service to others.
• [12:34] Roshi Joan traces her path into end-of-life care through childhood experiences of loss, her grandmother’s example, and her early work in medical anthropology.
• [15:10] Witnessing how poorly prepared healthcare professionals were to care for dying patients—and how this shaped her lifelong commitment to training caregivers.
• [20:31] Why transforming end-of-life care requires more than changing medicine: it requires changing our cultural relationship to mortality, grief, and impermanence.
• [24:43] Discussion of how our desire for knowledge and control can make it difficult to face what we cannot know, including death and impermanence.
• [27:53] How meditation helps us encounter uncertainty, release the illusion of a separate self, and recognize the constant arising and passing away of life.
• [34:03] Creating conditions in which caregivers and practitioners can discover their own capacity to meet suffering with honesty, openness, and courage.
• [38:22] Why Zen practice is not primarily about relaxation or stress reduction, but about sitting with reality without trying to manipulate, reject, or possess it.
• [42:08] “Stop thinking like an individual”: Roshi Joan on interdependence, community, mutuality, and the relationship between contemplative practice and social change.
• [47:20] Roshi Joan reflects on undergoing two open-heart surgeries, approaching the threshold of death, and discovering a sense of peace and fearlessness.
• [50:57] What it means to cultivate a courageous heart—and why compassion has no rules.
• [52:20] Roshi Joan closes with the question that guides her practice and life: “What will serve this moment?”

This summary was created with the help of AI.