Working With the Dying: Compassion, Shame, and the Illusion of Loss

A study of ten volunteers working with the Zen Hospice Project. The author leads us to an understanding of the practice of compassion by examining evolutionary psychology, developmental neuropsychology, the psychoanalytic theories of Melanie Klein, and finally the perspective of Zen Buddhism in the writings of Dogen and Shunryu Suzuki. He then presents interviews with the volunteers that are richly informed by the theories, and which reveal what extraordinary compassion looks like when practiced by ordinary people in difficult situations.