The Five Invitations ─ Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most in life.

So begins Frank Ostaseski’s stirring book, The Five Invitations, an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present awareness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves. In his thirty-plus years as a companion to the dying, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. A renowned teacher of compassionate caregiving and the co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project, Ostaseski has distilled the lessons gleaned over the course of his career into The Five Invitations: a powerful and inspiring exploration of the essential wisdom dying has to impart to all of us about how to forge rich and meaningful lives. The Five Invitations—Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing; Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience; Don’t Wait; Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things; and Cultivate a Don’t Know Mind—show how death can be the guide we need to wake up fully to our lives. This stunning, unforgettable book offers a radical path to transformation.