 They all have very impressive resumes, but I'm not going to read their bios. I'm going to just introduce them and allow their bios to come out in their presentations to you. Beginning here we have Reverend Ron Kabada, who is the senior minister of the Buddhist Church of San Francisco. Next we have Rabbi Eric Weiss, who is the president and CEO of the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center. Next Rabbi Weiss is Sister Sukanya Balsare, a meditation teacher of the Brahma Kumaris Meditation Center. And then we have our dear friend Fran Johns, who is a prolific writer and a congregant at Calvary Presbyterian Church. And next to Fran is Father Pablo Iwashevich. Did I get that right? Okay, from Argentina, who is a chaplain at St. Mary's Hospital. And then our dear friend and one of the co-founders, if you will, of the Interfaith Council with Rita Iftikar High, who is a hospital chaplain, as well as one of the founding members of United Muslims of America Interfaith Alliance. For the first portion of this program, we're going to have three rounds of questions that I'm going to put to the panelists. And I'll ask them to take just a couple of minutes to answer each of them. Something might be said by one of your colleagues that needs further clarification or just sparks something. I would like you to feel comfortable without taking time away from others if you want to do a follow-up question or this is supposed to be a conversation, yes? Yes. So feel free to do that. The second portion is yours, and it will be devoted to questions from the floor. And because you can see we've had to bring chairs in, what we've done is we have provided you with question cards, okay? This gives you, this keeps you from the temptation from making a speech or a sermon. And it allows you to focus your questions and think about them. And if you would write very clearly, speaking of one who has difficult penmanship, I will appreciate if you write very clearly and identify either the person you are addressing this to or the entire panel. And so without further ado, are we ready to begin? Ladies and gentlemen, okay. So the first question we'd like to ask is how does your faith view death and what happens after death? What customs or rituals are observed? Why are they important and how do they affect your faith's belief in what happens after death? Is there an afterlife? Reincarnation? Or is this the final act in a person's life? Ron, would you lead us off? Thank you for this wonderful... You have to stand closer. I mean, sit closer. Okay. I get closer to the mic and I feel like I'm getting closer to death. All right. So if we could join together, I'd like to begin with this opening meditation. Our religious life should not take pride in philosophy or dogma alone. It should reach into our daily lives to transforming our seemingly independent, isolated, unchanging existence and make it one in the Buddha's great light and compassion. Realizing the truth of interdependency, thereby promoting peace, giving comfort, living responsibly to be able to give thanks for the blessings of being born into human life. This is our true religious life. Namu Amida Butsu. Namu Amida Butsu. Namu Amida Butsu. I take refuge in the spirit of boundless wisdom and compassion. Have any of you ever heard the joke? Why did the Buddhist medical examiner get fired? Anyone? I'm trying to find out who came up with this joke because I think it's such a unique joke. But why did the Buddhist medical examiner get fired? Because he or she kept writing on the death certificate, cause of death birth. So from the moment we were born, we are beginning this process towards what we call of dying, which will culminate in this experience we referred to as death. That's just how it is for everyone. All existence is finite. But it is because we sense the finite nature of our existence, we are somehow inspired, compelled to generate a response of infinite concern about the meaning of this moment in eternity we call an experience that's our human life. So in a way, death is what gives meaning to life because we have to acknowledge we don't exist forever. Again, it inspires, encourages us, compels us to seek that so-called meaning of this brief moment in eternity. We are living as mortal beings. So that to me is how religion began, from that sense of understanding, realizing the truth of the meaning of having been born into human life. And the various religious traditions, as I've appreciated them, have been responses to that concern. They've been expressed in different ways, but the essential concern is universal. So I've been telling this story, and that's what I see as what we try to do at our churches, our synagogues, our mosques, and so forth, temples, to tell stories, share stories. So that's why I refer to, as an alternate to sermons, sob stories, SOB stories, that give us a sense of being, stories that give us a sense of being alive. Okay, so this is my story for to begin this evening's discussion. I heard this when I was in Hawaii. I was in Hawaii for 24 years at our sister temples in the islands, once I heard from this local guy, this here from his friend, where there was this local guy waiting at the inner island terminal in Honolulu to catch a flight back to Maui. And he's sitting in the lounge there, and he overhears this conversation where one person turns to the next saying, I came to Hawaii to die. Local guy kind of got shook up, and so he leaned over to listen to find out what was happening. And then as he listened, he realized that he'd overheard a comment from a person that had just arrived from Australia. So coming from Australia, he was speaking with what we call an Australian accent. In other words, what he was saying in our pronunciation, I came to Hawaii today. The local guy heard what he heard, and the visitor said what he said, but this was not in the case of mistranslation, it was misperception. And that's an important thing to consider, how we hear, how we perceive, how we interpret, and recognizing that we are all somewhat conditioned by our cultures, our unique situations, experiences in life that create those filters through which we perceive things, not necessarily as they are, but as we perceive them. So how we hear death, definitely to me, has a different kind of nuance, a different kind of interpretation based upon, again, our unique circumstances, experiences of life. And so how I hear and understand this idea, this term we call death, from a so-called Buddhist perspective. By the way, I always like to offer disclaimer when I'm ever invited to participate on a panel. I'm here to represent everyone that agrees with me. Beyond that, whatever school of Buddhism, whatever religion, whatever tradition you might identify with, and the philosophies and teachings accordingly, that's up to you. But whether I'm presenting a correct, orthodox, true Buddhist explanation of anything, well, again, that's kind of left to your own judgment from based on your own understanding and appreciation of what you appreciate as the teachings of the Buddha, which are the basis of what we call this religion of Buddhism. But beginning there, Buddhism is a religion of awakening, because that's what the term Buddha means. It's a title, awakened one. And historically, we have the history that we're taught about this young man in India or Northern India some 2,500 years ago who had this religious awakening such that he impressed people so that began to address him as Buddha, awakened one. And then he was a prince of the Shaka clan, and so there was the other title, Shaka Munibuddha, the sage of the Shaka clan. And from what he shared from that awakening became the basis of what gradually developed throughout Asia as the religion of Buddhism. And it passed through Northern Asia, through Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, and Southern Asia with the spice root that went through Southeast Asian countries. And Buddhism continued to spread in about 100 or so years ago. Buddhist traditions began to be introduced here in North America, and I'm part of a tradition that's been in San Francisco since 1899, and it came with the Japanese migration. And so that's my background as Michael was trying to suggest we try to intersect or incorporate into our comments. But anyway, getting back to that story, in a sense, religiously, we were born to die. The idea of awakening is basically a rebirth, an awareness of immeasurable life that we're all part of. So the basic insight of the Buddha, or the real awakening of the Buddha, basically was to what we consider the Dharma, the truth of life. And basically for me, it boils down to two things. We don't exist forever in permanence. But most importantly, we don't exist alone, interdependence. So the truth that Buddhism focuses on is basically impermanence and interdependence. And so the analogy or metaphor that I appreciate on that basis is to see ourselves as like waves that appear on the surface of an ocean. And the wave appears due to causes and conditions and takes on a form, so to speak. But that form is not static, not stagnant, it's constantly moving, it's flowing, and eventually, again, to causes and conditions, it disappears from the surface. But the source, the essence of the wave is the ocean. And in our tradition, we call that ocean Amida, Buddha, the Buddha of immeasurable light in life. Thank you for kick-starting us. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be here on this panel and so grateful to Michael and the library for convening this conversation. So in Jewish life, death and dying have everything to do with life itself. So I want to tell you a story, and it's a story out of Jewish tradition. And some of you in the group may have heard this story before. So it's a story about a guy whose name is Zousia. That's his name, Zousia. And he's a famous teacher. And he's on his deathbed, dying. And his students surrounding his deathbed become so agitated that to soothe him, they say to him, Zousia, please don't be afraid of dying, because when you die, surely you will be welcomed by God into heaven, just like Moses. And Zousia is so agitated by this effort to comfort him that he comes out of his death rattle and he sits up in the bed and he says to his students, when I die, God is not going to say to me, how come I was not more like Moses? God is going to say to me, how come I was not more like Zousia? So like all theologies, story contains lots and lots of things that you can conjugate out. So by this particular story about somebody dying on their deathbed is really a kind of a story about how to live life. So from a Jewish perspective, every single person is created uniquely in the divine image. This is kind of where sort of a theology out there and then a personal reflection kind of intersects. So for myself, out of that understanding, I think that it is our diversity that is a testament to God's unfathomable creativity. And so by theological construct, we actually are not all the same. We are different by divine intent. And so from a Jewish perspective, everybody really is to live most fully into who they actually really are and that that is how we die. From a Jewish perspective, when somebody dies, in a general way, it's considered that your body actually isn't yours, that it was given to you and so a body is prepared in a particular way for a funeral. There is some variation depending on whether someone chooses cremation or burial, but in a general way, a body is bathed by the community itself in a particular way. A body is clothed in a particular way because one is simply one's self no matter who one was in life. And then in many ways, at a certain point, a funeral, a memorial service, a celebration of life is actually for the mourners. It's actually dictated by grief, not by death. In Jewish tradition, there is a notion of reincarnation and of an afterlife. The theological presumption is that one goes to heaven. Judaism has a very underdeveloped light reference to what other faith traditions would call hell or something other than heaven. And so in Jewish life, in a theological framework, it's presumed everybody goes to heaven. It's presumed that there is afterlife and there's a mystical theological thread of reincarnation. Similar to what Ron said earlier, that doesn't mean that every single Jew believes all of it on any level. So some of you who are Jewish or are maybe Jewish affectionate and know this, there's a tremendous diversity theologically and structurally in Jewish life. And one is not required to believe any of these things theologically to yet have the right to be a Jew. In Jewish life, one is a Jew by virtue of two things. One, you convert or you are traditionally born from a Jewish mother. There are other threads in Jewish life that say if you have patrilineal descent and other ways of expressing Jewish life then you are in fact Jewish. But in a technical way, one is Jewish by declaration of what you might think of as citizenship, not a doxological declaration of faith. You do not have to be a Jew who believes in God or even expresses anything religiously to yet claim your Judaism. So I'm a rabbi, I am a man of faith, I do believe in God and the secular agnostic Jewish person next to me is co-equally Jewish. So with that, I will pass the mic back. Thank you again Janet, Michael and all the co-members on this panel and all of you wonderful souls I see in front of me. It's so overwhelming to see the room full of people for this very, very interesting, intriguing and heartfelt topic. So today I am representing the Hindu religion. I am born into that religion until I adopted or started to practice the Brahma Kumaris teaching. Brahma Kumaris is a worldwide spiritual organization which invites all the religions, all the people of the world as part of the same tree of humanity. Speaking of, now I switch back to my Hindu roots. Hinduism accepts all beings of nature, the whole creation, all people, every aspect of nature as part of God. The one Brahma, the supreme one, the absolute one, the all-pervasive one, the almighty one, formless Brahma. And that's where the notion of Namaste comes from, that I bow down in respect to the divine in you, to the godliness in you. Hinduism is a collection of so many traditions, so many beliefs, so many rituals which form the religion. So there is not one standard practice, one standard notion as such, although there are some similarities in all those rituals and understandings being followed. Hinduism understands that the body is the dwelling and the soul is the dweller. Body made of the five elements of nature, these five elements get together and give this body to us as a gift. And it stays as property of nature all the time, just lend it to us for a brief period of time. And the soul, the life energy, the spiritual force, the light dwells in this body, in this particular form, physical form, for a matter of some time. The soul is immortal, the soul lives on, the body gets formed and so it changes its form, it perishes at some point. And the soul continues with its journey further, takes next birth. As the soul goes on with life, it performs actions and the actions are performed using this body, so it is the soul that is performing karma actions all the time. And the effect of the actions performed, stay with the soul, shape the soul, shape the personality of the soul. The soul is the thinker, the soul is the creator of thoughts, the soul is the decision maker and the soul is the one who is carrying out actions. And so the effect of actions go with the soul, from life to life. And the soul, this energy with its own choice can change the effect of actions with, there are various ways to carry out more uplifting actions, elevated actions, prayer, devotion, gaining wisdom, opening up one's thoughts, one's heart to the universality of things. And that is how the soul ascends in one's life. The customs and rituals are all based on the divinity present in everything and also coming close to the divinity. Everything is considered to be form of God. Even this building, for example, when a building is constructed, a house is constructed, any dwelling, physical dwelling is constructed. Before the family moves in, before the office begins in that dwelling, the God of housing is invoked in that space and asked to reside in that space until the building holds on. The deity God is called Vastu Purush, just to give you an idea. Then the fire god Agni is invoked for purification, for helping the devilish, negative atmosphere, spirits to go away from this environment. Then there is water god Varun. So this is just to give you an example that everything has a god deity associated with it, divinity associated with it. And there is also God of death Yama. Now Yama has a personal assistant with him. And his name is Chitra Gupta. Chitra means image and Gupta means secretly. So he is secretly writing down or creating, painting the image of our karma, of our actions that we are carrying out. And when the time comes close, the assistant Chitra Gupta shows our painting, our painting of karma that he has painted over time to God Yama. And that is how the further journey of the soul, further birth of the soul is finalized or is carved. When the person passes away, it is considered that the soul has left the body, just as the birth was the soul entering the body. The soul has left the body, the soul is still around, the soul is living. It is just the body has shut down as the master has left the house. And so this sacred property of nature, the body has to be given back to nature equally, respectfully, equally in a dignified way, the way it was received. And so the body is bathed, usually the cremation rites are carried out within a day, within 24 hours. The body is bathed in front of the house, clothed in a new drapery, very respectfully chanting, prayer, goes on all the time as all the rites are carried out. As the body is carried to the crematorium, as if the whole village, the whole town kind of joins the procession because it is considered that one of our family members has passed away. So it is the whole town comes together as a family. Usually the body is cremated, some choose to bury the body but mostly cremation takes place and the body is again worshipped, given all the floral offerings, all the divine offerings and then the pyre is lit. And once the pyre is lit, again chanting, prayer, mantras are going on to help the soul transcend to the new world, to the new life. And once everyone stays on the cremation ground all this time and seeing or witnessing the burning pyre helps everyone to process their emotions to come to a closure and to take on realizing their own responsibility now, from now on in the family, towards the family, towards the community. When the body is completely burned, completely cremated, the family members, neighbors, friends, whoever are there around the pyre, they leave the crematorium without looking back. That it is all over and we take back the essence of the good qualities this person had with us and to grow them. Once they get back home, the whole house is cleaned, purified, everyone takes a bath and then the food is cooked in the house. For 13 days the prayers go on. On the 13th day it is considered, it is a belief that the soul still is connected to the family because of spending this whole lifetime with the family, with that clan. It is not so easy for that soul to leave that family right away in most of the cases. So on the 13th day a very special prayer is organized, everyone is invited, close family members, distant contacts, everyone is invited. A simple meal is prepared and a final goodbye is given to the soul, very happily, very happily. And then all of the household members realize that they have to take on their new duties, their new life, even their new life begins as well at that point in time. And so that is how the sacredness of the entire ritual, of the entire process of the soul, the departed soul and the family members still living on. The sacredness of everyone is very much preserved, very much intact. And life goes on in a way that is very much connected to the divine as an offering to the divine. Fran, of all of the panelists here, in particular you've written books about this topic and I also would like just out of respect because you are in a season of grief yourself to acknowledge that and to offer our love. I was going to start by explaining that the theological intellectual level of this panel is about to come way down. But Michael has already said, I'm here because I'm a writer, I have written a lot about death and dying and this is how not to get invited back to cocktail parties. But I wrote a book that came out in 1999 that grew out of my work as a hospice volunteer and with an age support group in the 90s and then as a compassion and choices volunteer. So I have spent a lot of time being around people who were dying and I got into it because I had done mostly volunteer work with arts and historical organizations and one day I thought, man, I could never be around somebody who was dying so I think I'll try. And that was when I went to work with hospice, which was the most rewarding thing I have ever done. So Janet asked me to be on this panel. I didn't know what it was, just say yes because I say yes to things that somebody like Janet asked me to do. And then I found out who else was on the panel and I thought, what in the world am I doing here? So I did speak with my pastor because I am a member in more or less good standing of Calvary Presbyterian Church, some days better standing than others. And he said, well, you just tell them what you know and you probably know as much as the next person. And I said, okay, what I know is there are lines in our, there is one line in a creed that I have said since the time I was tiny that says that I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Well, I don't know about that because I'm going to be cremated. I don't see my physical body being resurrected anywhere. But I think what my good minister, Victor Floyd, if you want to know stuff, go talk to Victor Floyd. And I think what he was saying was that the beauty of most, or at least Calvary Presbyterian Church is we are still asking the questions. We don't have a lot of the answers, but we are still asking the questions. I have a niece who goes to a Presbyterian church in Atlanta who is very conservative. She will stand you down on the belief that she and my wonderful sister, who has been dead for some years now, will be physically reunited in a heaven that to her is sort of a place that she can visualize. So as far as what Christians believe, well, Pablo is going to tell you more about what Christians believe. I think it's a matter of look for, we believe in the answers that are in the Bible, but we believe they were written by fallible people. And we believe we should, I at least, I better quit saying we and say I feel that I need just to keep right on asking questions. So Michael mentioned my good husband of 26 years died just about six weeks ago. It was, and I'll just tell the story because it sort of says how what I believe my husband was the son of Methodist preachers, a Methodist preacher. And he was sort of a classic example of the intelligentsia who in the 60s decided that the church was irrelevant and just kind of gave up on that. And unfortunately, the church has done an awful lot to prove them right. Since then, my husband was a newspaper man and and so he would say that he believed in the God of his father, his he and his father were quite close. And he went to church religiously on Christmas Eve every year. He went, he was married to a Jewish artist for 19 years. And until she died, they went to Christmas Eve services at Calvary Presbyterian Church every year because they loved the music. And I say, okay, whatever goes. So when he died, it was he had congestive heart failure. I had been around people who died of congestive heart failure. I knew almost the day it went into end stage. And so I did not know that he would be gone in a couple of days. I figured it might take a week or so. So it was very, very fast. I had to fight with the paramedics who wanted to take him to the emergency room and things like that. But I won. I eventually won by saying, okay, you call your head person at San Francisco General. And I got friends at San Francisco General. I was ready to go over this guy's head. But you tell him, you've got this little old lady standing here with her husband's DNR and his pulse form and his DPOA. And she says, we may not take him out of the apartment. And so they did. And this guy to his eternal credit said, fine, get him in bed and leave him there. So the night he died, which was a couple of nights later, it was really quite fast. And he never had pain. He never had real discomfort. I was telling Pablo, thank you for that first name thing that we had a friend who we had very close friends who just had their first baby. And the baby was born eight weeks premature. But it has grown now from two pounds to about I think it was about six or eight by then they brought the baby over, flunked him on my husband's chest. And my husband was by now totally nonverbal, but still sort of responsive. And so he reaches up and makes these this sort of patting the baby gesture. It was so dear. And then they left and I climbed in the hospital bed and hugged him into the hereafter. And we should all go this way. So my looking back at that. The questions about how my faith impacts my own feelings. I feel and I think my husband felt comfortable that he was more comfortable with the. I believe the fact that he had led a good life. The man was the most honest and ethical person I have ever known in my life. And I think he, you know, he knew he had lived his life doing right. I often tell people I was telling Sister Sukkanya that I could be a Brahma Kumari because Brahma Kumaris believe and she told me I was right on this. That all religions are valid, that we are branches of the same tree. So I'm not sure how Cheetah Goop would be painting my picture. I got to talk to you about that. But I am perfectly comfortable with the belief that when my soul leaves this body, I hope it's not tomorrow. But if it's tomorrow, it'd be okay because I am perfectly comfortable with the belief that I will be a part of God's universe somehow. My husband was cremated. I'm going to be cremated. Half of his ashes go, I have to go to St. Helena and scribble them on his first wife's grave, which I think is kind of nice. I mean, they had apparently a really good marriage. And then the other half is going to be mixed in with my ashes, hopefully not tomorrow. And those are going into half into the Chesapeake Bay where I grew up and half into the San Francisco Bay. And don't tell the authorities, but I have to have a handful in Mountain Lake because I love Mountain Lake Park. So this to me is a comfortable feeling. And I think it is probably not very theologically profound as far as Christianity goes, but it works for me. And I think that's what's mostly important about looking at your own death and dying. Thank you Fran. And thank you for representing a part of Christianity which is not small. Okay, Father Pablo, how do you follow that? I would like to say the first thing is very, actually it's a privilege to be almost the last one and not to have your duty to start. And as a privilege because perhaps many of the things I could say will be redundant because somebody else already mentioned that. So you will see that about death and dying and life, there are many communalities, many things that we have in common. And we don't realize that. Now, when we talk about death, what type of death are we talking about? Most of the times we are talking about the physical death, you know, and we are afraid of that. I'm afraid of that. You know, thinking about physical death, suffering, all of that. I'm a chaplain besides being a priest. So on average, I perhaps can say that at the hospital I see three to four people dying a week. So I was sharing with my riders, you know, with, I'm sorry your name, I always, with sister. I was going to say sister, but just in case, you know, because, and then, and my driver, Janet, over there. I was sharing with them, you know, most of the times I'm exposed to that and that influenced me a lot. And I need to find a spiritual practice or something to perhaps decompress, rest. Because that leaves a big mark on your soul. Now, talking about that, we were created to lie eternal. I'm talking as a Christian, as Ron said the first one, I'm talking about my own beliefs. I'm not imposing on you. And I also have a dichotomy to deal with here because I'm also a chaplain. So let's clarify that part. As a chaplain, when I walk into a room, I can walk into sister's room, Rabbi's wife's room, your room, my friend here's room, and Ron's room. And I am not there to proselytize or impose my own beliefs. I am there to walk alongside that person's suffering or existence or beliefs. Now, I will share with that person what my beliefs are. I will inform that person who I am when I walk into a room, especially if they are dying or asking some questions, because they have to know who they are dealing with, but I'm not there to convince them of anything. So sometimes people understand what chaplains do, and this is the same thing they do in the armed forces and anywhere else. Chaplains are not allowed to proselytize. Now, if somebody asks you to be baptized or to know more about your face or would like to become Jewish, then, okay, let's talk, you share with them. Okay, but we are there to walk along. Some things they will use in some... So, con-suffering love, walking along somebody's compassion, but I like to say con-suffering love for whatever reason, because it's more for me. So you walk along somebody else's suffering or path in life. So let's go back. God did not create death. We were created one more time talking as a Christian. We are created to life eternal. When we're talking about death, we are talking about the death of the body. Death is a result of rebellion against God for not listening, obedience perhaps. We were allowed to use and touch any tree in paradise, but we were taught you can eat any apple, any apple. Just don't touch the ones from that tree. And we decided to do it. By the way, to make you laugh a little bit, somebody asked me with the church on divorce, and he said at first divorce and separation took place in paradise, and we blame God for it and say, why? Well, because he answered to God. He said, what you did? Why you did this? The woman that you gave me, she made me do that. I didn't say that's the first one. Anyway, so that's where it comes from. We were created to live eternally and our bodies die. Our bodies supposed to go back to earth from where we came. At the moment of death, the separation between the body and soul takes place, which we have many rituals for that, commendation. We even have a ritual, a special ritual for people who have difficulties dying to help them pass. And what happened with the body? Well, the body goes back to the earth, it decomposes, and it waits for the last judgment. Most people would like to call it on call, you know, the second coming of Christ. And at that moment will be called back, no matter if you were cremated or not cremated. You know, answer a little bit to your question. She somehow miraculously will be transformed, become a new body, and reunited with that immortal soul. What happens with that soul in between the moment of death and the resurrection or the transfiguration on transformation? Well, that's the big question. What happened is, I guess if we hear on this earth, we choose perhaps not to be a good person or to be evil, and that's also another type of discussion, what means to be evil or not to be a good person. But what we generally understand, perhaps we will be closer or farther away from God, until that moment takes place. I think one of the problems we as Christians have, that we think that we can manipulate God, sometimes throughout our rituals, and I ask anybody to correct me later or hear sitting with me. So we say, well, if I give you this, you give me that, come on. Can you do that to God? Come on. And then another thing that people don't understand, I think, you know, when we think about God's mercy and God's inhumane love for all of us, which some of my fellow panellists have mentioned that before, God's mercies, Alpha and Omega, doesn't have a beginning and an end. Our sins in front of that mercy, I don't know how to measure them. So, if we, you know, offer repentance, change to God, it's said that there is only one sin that cannot be forgiven. And that sin is that we make, when we make our own persons, our egos, our biggers than God's mercy. You know, we have to think about a merciful God and when people talk about the fear of God, you know, we don't have to be afraid of God because he will be coming behind us with a big stick, you know, and make us read the 100 Our Fathers and 55,000 Hail Mary's. God doesn't do that. We men do that, you know, we make them do that. We make people do that. We have to be afraid of harming God because he's a loving God. He loves us. We should give him love back. And if we are going to do evil and be wrongdoers, we have to be afraid of harming him. That's the fear of God. Being afraid of harming somebody that, you know, we love. We have, I don't know if I answered some of the questions, but many things were answered by my co-panelists here. Another thing, I am against it a lot. People try to avoid bringing children to funerals. I think that's one of the greatest mistakes that we, because death is part of life. Look at the flower. If a flower doesn't die or a tree doesn't die or the apple from Adam and Eve's tree doesn't die, then we will not have a new apple tree. Genentech or not genentech involved. You know, we need something to die, you know, or Monsanto. You know, it has to die. It has to die in order to be recreated. And if children are not exposed to that, then we have a problem. I as a chaplain have a problem. I don't know if you guys experienced some of you here, that I don't know you have physicians in this, and you don't have to raise your hands if you are physicians. But physicians have a problem with death, because they are fixers. And they have to fix the issue. And sometimes they will call the chaplain or somebody else, or perhaps, because by law has to be done by a physician, they will call a resident to call the family and let them know that X and X is about or will die. Or they will ask the chaplain to do it, because it's very difficult to communicate that. We approach, and this is very important why we are here today, we approach the topic of death very late in life, many times. We approach the topic of palliative care or hospice very late, when it should be approached earlier in life. And we have rituals, we have many rituals. We prepare the person for death through the prayers. Certainly we have the funerals, we have memorials, we have memorial meals. But the most important part, I think, as Christians, is that we have to try not to be afraid of death. Death is part of life. And to a person very, very recently, my mother passed. On February 6th, February 4th was her birthday. So my brother calls me and I had to take a plane and fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I flew, I after service on Sunday, I got there on Monday morning straight from the airport. We went to the hospital, the bedside. Mom said that she didn't want any kind of, she called in pipes, anything, she had some oxygen and a little bit of morphine because they supposed she was in pain. That's another interesting question. And then, so she was calm, very, very calm. I spent around eight hours with her and with my brother, but he understand my needs, being far away. And then the next day, we sing with her and then we went back home. We had, we bought a bottle of Hefebo Champagne and we learned it was quite expensive. And then we enjoyed with my brother singing songs that she would like. And then the next day, we went to the hospital a little later. On the third day, when she passed, she passed on the 6th, she was 89. We were about to go, we get a phone call, the phone call man pass. On the fifth, we were able, together, we gave her the sacrament of the sick, the anointing of the sick, preparing her for death. That's another question. We had to look at that, that's not the extreme function. It's not something that you do because sometimes somebody sees clergy, not only a priest, walking into a room and they say, Did the doctor forgot to say something? No. Mainly, we tried to bring you life. But that's what we did and then she passed. You know, my friends, it's interesting, a lot of people came to us and they wanted us to have this tragic, depressed, dramatic attitude towards what happened. We did not. We were very calm. We were laughing and not making fun of the situation. One thing, we took my mom together with us in a car, a big van, so we were driving. I didn't know I could have that here, some pictures. But you could see the coffin on our side here. We drove 1,250 plus kilometers up northeast from Buenos Aires near to, maybe you have been at this wonderful place, the Iguazu Falls, up northeast in the border with Brazil, where she wanted to be buried. Was not scary at all. Was calm, was pleasant. Actually, it was our last trip with mom. And we buried her. So we tried not to be afraid of that, you know? And we can talk more a little later. Thank you. Thank you very much, father. Before we get to Iftikar, who's going to always get the last word, if you have questions, can you just raise them in your, if you have the cards, and Janet, would you send somebody around or perhaps you can help us collect these cards. Thank you. Iftikar, when I get calls at the Interfaith Council, when we need a chaplain, a Muslim family, is in need of a chaplain because of an end-of-life issue, I call my friend Iftikar. I call him not only because he understands the Muslim faith, but because of the many people I've met in this life, he brings his faith and his compassion to others. And so Iftikar, if you can take just a few moments to talk to us about this perspective that you've heard down the table from the Muslim faith's perspective. Thank you very much. Well, I'm glad I'm last. Because Islam came last. Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, right? They all preceded Islam. So Islam is just 1,435 years ago. So it is the youngest religion. And what happened is that we Muslims, we copy from whatever preceded before. Why? Because the Quran says, there's a book, the Quran, right? That to every people, God sends messengers in their own language, in their own country to clarify. So when that message came to me, I was never raised in a religious tradition. But I mean, I have passed this thing on to everybody on their seat if you have this. So I mean, if you can take a look at that, and especially on the second page, I mean, that's why, I mean, we've learned a lot from the tradition of the Jewish people. You know, the belief in one God. And then not eating pork. And circumcision, we learned this thing from the Jewish tradition. Because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are Arabian religions. They started from the Middle East. And I happened to be born in India out of Hindu Muslim parents. So I mean, I cannot ignore, I cannot forget my Hindu roots also. Because if I have accepted religion of Islam, that doesn't mean that I didn't have Hindu roots to precede me. And so I'm trying to be inclusive of all religions in order to learn the best from all faiths, really. And because it's a blessing for me not to have been trained traditionally or conservatively in Islamic faith from any religious scholar, I can pick up the Bible and read myself. I can read from the Jewish tradition and from the Hindu and also from the Koran. This is what I've been doing all my 50 years of living in this country. I mean, in this country, 50 years now. Yes. So, you know, I'm not going to talk much about it because I'd like to open up a question and answer. But I mean, these are the two pages that I left, right? So if you can have this and take home and if you want to ask any question, I'll be happy to answer it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Iftikar. Economy of words. I just want to let you know, I must be a weak moderator because I did not have the heart to cut anybody off. We had other questions to ask, but I realized as we were about halfway through that we were addressing just what the topic asked us, how do different faiths traditions view death? And you were very successful in each one of your responses. I do want to thank the person who asked this question in particular because it was one of the questions we were going to ask anyway. And it is addressed to all of the panelists. And so we can get... I know we're not going to get to all of these questions. We might not get to many of these questions, but this is an important one. Can all the panelists address what faith feels or permits people to use the End of Life Option Act? Physician assisted suicide. Who would like to start? Fran. Because I invested about 10 years of my life in getting that act passed. And as far as my understanding of Christianity, I don't find anywhere in the Bible that says you really have to suffer. And the End of Life Option Act, which has really more protections than I wanted in it, all it does is say to a terminally ill, mentally competent adult, you don't have to suffer. And if I... I'm not worried at all about death, but as I think it was Pablo said, I don't do pain well at all. So if I am terminally ill and mentally competent, there's always a question. I am very, very grateful that I will have the right to ask my physician to give me life-ending medication. Thank you. And not everybody has to answer it, but those who would like to step forward, because we do have some other questions here, but if there's others that would like to address this. No, no, no. But I'll just add this way that each case is a particular case. I have seen some Muslims say, do not put me on life support at all. So we follow their will. And in some cases, in case of an accident, there was an Afghani man. He has so many tubes over there. His wife kept on saying that, no, keep him alive, you know? So there are cases of both kinds. Thank you. Rabbi. I care a lot about this issue from a perspective that might be a little different. So I just want to add to this. When we come to die, for lots of reasons, I'll just say if somebody comes to you and says how are you feeling, they know you're sick. How are you doing? Typically, and I'm kind of being reductionist just to make the point, typically the response has a lot to do with the medical narrative. I went to the doctor. My tests are X or Y or Z. My treatment options are X or Y or Z. I had a really bad time with the chemotherapy on and on and on. Or the answer might be in the legal narrative. I went to my attorney. I needed to do an advanced care health directive, et cetera, et cetera. So both of those things are really important. We know that. But the undercurrent of all of that is really the spiritual narrative. And really, what is it about wanting to come to a point at which you might think this is going to be my last breath? Or this is where I'm tired of X? Or this is where my line in the sand is? So my deepest hope actually is actually now that we have this law and all this effort was put into lobbying and crafting the law and all the different ways in which civically this law exists which I think personally is fine, actually. And at the Berea Jewish Healing Center, we work with people who are ill dying and bereaved. That's our entire structural service. We provide Jewish spiritual care to people who are ill dying and bereaved. And people in our world have utilized this act. But this is my greatest hope is that we don't stay on just wondering whether or not it's okay theologically. But really now take the opportunity to go just deeper into the humanity of it into the self-reflection of it whether you want to call yourself theological, religious, or spiritual every single one of us wonders if or what is beyond me. What if anything might be after my last breath? So to me that this law exists really invites us, I hope really civically to get into the depth of that conversation because I think that's the conversation that matters. Well priest so we have a little problem with the question. The word in also in the law is talking about suicide because and at the beginning when I started he said remember seen repentance well somebody said you know suicide is a perfect crime because you cannot catch and put whoever killed whoever in jail or punished or whatever you know and there is no way that I understand okay you know of repentance say okay will this happen how you say you know how exonerate. Now the thing that I wanted to say first when I was listening is that of course we talk about it first of all you know in Catholic hospitals or others or hospital of religious background or founded by religious this is by the hospital by laws not allowed but respected like somebody will come and ask in the you are for an abortion so we will organize everything and find somebody and transfer that person to another place and actually will be paid by us the transfer all of that but under the roof of a Catholic institution or a Christian hospital cannot take place now as Samaritans have been around 17 plus years or something like that I don't know I have to say to you I don't know if you talk with doctors about it many doctors will say most of the doctors that I spoke to and they are not Catholic doctors they are Jewish doctors others they have a problem with that when it came that was you know our discussions were about it because they say I'm here to do completely the opposite so we will go back and say well you are fulfilling the wishes of the person you have to prescribe that and they have to do it and and they have the problem being a doctor to heal and then to do this in order to allow somebody to die and it has to do also with what we were saying before they have a problem with that because they are fixers now is the person doing it is not the doctor doing it the person has to be able to do it and it's very very complicated to get it because the person has to be they screen that person they will take you to a doctor to a psychiatrist I mean you have to pass a whole bunch of evaluations to be able to do it so it's not that simple I want a pill you know it's not just like that it's a very complicated issue but in my experience most doctors that I spoke with from different religious background they have a problem grasping that idea and that's part of what we say is something new I mean it's something completely new you know that's if I can just put one PS on this is a reason not to go to the hospital to die and unfortunately we don't all have a low lady like me standing there saying do not take him out of this house but we do have the right to set up DNRs and pulse other forms and my personal advance directive includes a clause that says if I am unable to feed myself I demand not to be fed so if I get really bad dementia I'm not going to be around that long because as soon as I can't feed myself I will begin to die which is what we all do I just needed to put that PS on anybody who has not spoken and would like to and then we'll come back to your father father but I do I am also the notary for St. Mary's so I do advance directives in an average of five a day and that's the way around it it's true the hospital is very interesting because there is a contradiction in this law you bring this law but it's in the hospital so we cannot do it what do you do with it but some people don't understand they take an advance directive and the physicians have to abide according to that legal document and that's it you know and very few people have the advance directive I want to share with you I tell you ask you please do it now as soon as possible that doesn't mean that you are going to die as you were saying tomorrow I have a question for you who is going to take the ashes from here to there but you have to prepare the advance directive now as soon as possible don't wait and assign your agent and keep that communication with your agent alive the person who is going to answer for you because most of the times do you know even to the panelist this question when do they call me to prepare an advance directive or five minutes before they go into the OR how do you want me to do son I have a colleague father Michael Greenwell this is a sacred document I mean you have to think about it you cannot do it just five minutes before so do it as soon as possible and then we have to respect your wishes thank you did you want to say who is going to spread your ashes well yeah my children I left the money to have a party thank you to the person who asked this question I was about to ask because it was yet another one of the questions that we wanted to ask previously you all are invited into hospital rooms not because you have theological degrees or theologians but because you offer spiritual care and you are invited into these most sacred moments that said the question here is how do you guide people to a sense of closure and reconciliation before people pass an easy question I just climbed in the hospital bed and hugged him I don't think you have to do anything else Rabbi they haven't spoken yet sorry I don't mean to be controversial in this way but you know it's not possible in a lot of ways people well have a journey and we all come to a point at which we have closure enough or we all come to a point where we have reconciliation enough I think now it's not to say that some of us don't get to die with complete and total reconciliation to our entire lives and it doesn't mean that some people don't get to have complete and total closure for their entire lives if you do I mean none of us have died yet so we don't know but if you do you're really, really lucky because most of us do die with kind of an if only or I wish now it could be big or it could be small so I think I don't mean any disrespect to the question because it's a typical question and part of this challenge is that we don't have great vocabulary as we do with other things in the world on this topic that gives us nuance and understanding that's just true so far so I would just say it's not to be polyannish about it we really do die until we do live until we die and when we die we die at the point at which we've lived life and of course a ton of stuff has been reconciled of course a ton of stuff is closed so you've turned a page and of course at the same time it hasn't so that just really is the core human nature of a last breath so I think if we don't go in intending to make sure that somebody gets to die with closure with reconciliation we actually are more successful in helping them to die and to die more easily Ron? We tend to separate mentally, intellectually beginning, end and make these distinctions and so there's this notion that death is an end it's a change and so as I'm reflecting on this question the process in my sense of it is we talk about we entrust ourselves to what we call amida buddha that spirit of boundless wisdom and compassion who calls to us and say come just as you are with your baggage, with your regrets and we're reborn so to speak in the pure land that's the theology the philosophy where the conditions are such that all of that stuff will be resolved but then we don't stay there because in the moment of our so called spiritual liberation awakening becoming buddhas we are naturally drawn back to this realm to guide others so that's my response is how you die at the moment of your physical death due to your own unique circumstances but that's the spirit or that's the situation for which the spirit of love compassion embraces us just as we are and thereby transforms us into the oneness of boundless wisdom and compassion and that is how I appreciate this sense of death is not an end it's a change and life is change that's the second law of thermodynamics enthalpy everything changed as folks whether you accept it or not that's just how it is for all of us but so the question is not how and what happens after we die it's to focus on how we are living how we are receiving this moment in eternity as an opportunity for awakening to the truth of our oneness and from there realize the gratitude and joy of being each of us just as we are I want to thank you both for these responses because I'm reminded of that book it was by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross where she talked about the stages of death and I think where there are seven of them I don't remember but she said they don't come in any particular order and they might not get to all of them and death is as messy as life and so thank you for giving clarity did anybody else want to take up that question yes sister we have we condition our minds to see birth as one event and to see death as another event but if we look at life we are in each moment we are dying to this moment and taking rebirth in the next moment and so not to wait for that event death that we picturize in our minds to for a few moments before that to reconcile to talk about stuff to bring some things to a closure but to use the opportunity of each moment to just clarify things just clarify misunderstandings and I remember that doing with my mother and my father last year I was with them I remember my mother just had her hip replaced and I had I was working at that time and I had to report back to the office to my office in two days within two days and I even now it the picture comes to my mind my mother was lying there in the bed immobile the help wasn't there in place as of now and I said mother I am leaving and I could not come to terms with it for so many years that I just left my mother lying there in the bed in pain just two days after her surgery no help there and it just bothered me and on and finally last year after I think how many years 10-15 years I said to I clarified this with her that mom I really feel so bad I wish I should be dead now as I am speaking to you this and she said she was very happy I opened up and she said it was okay it was perfect we call it the story that is going on we are all living right now she said it was perfect in the story and it all happened it was it is past now and so move on and so that was very healing for the soul very healing for the soul and with my father who is now going through last stages of Parkinsonism he can hardly communicate and I have things to talk to him too but there is no communication now that can happen and so I see him as a living being as a living soul and I just talk to him thought to thought and I am sure the soul gets it the soul is listening to it and I am getting freer and freer each time I have that conversation and so not to wait for that event called death or when we see that event coming closer but to use each moment and live a life of freedom of liberation and give that gift to everyone and to yourself thank you thank you we have time for just a couple more questions and there is one in particular only because you all somehow in your responses about especially when it came to the rituals the reverence for the body and how it is treated after death occurs this person asks an interesting question how do the various traditions view the practice of donating the body to science after death in light of everything you have just said an easy question if the car you know scholars in United States they differ from scholars back home in United States the scholars who came from all over the Muslim world they say it's okay to donate your body parts so that other people can live so there is no I mean back home it is a different interpretation but in United States this is the interpretation I think it's okay the driver's license says whatever you can use use so but as far as leaving your body to science bless the people who already have where would science be so if anything in Christianity has a problem with that I'm going to have to go talk to and thank you because that's the first time I've heard the division of motor vehicles get a compliment hahahaha now it's very simple I think what is the highest form of love if you go to St. John the Apostle he says to give your life for your neighbor you know so I guess that's my answer giving your life for your neighbor I don't see a problem many people will have problems some that's the same that when we are walking into somebody else room rabbi you said it that is nine we have to be careful not to project our own hopes on that person's beliefs because we may practice Judaism in one way or Hinduism in one way on this way and they may not we expect we want them to repent for this and that and they don't need to do that so we have to be careful what we are doing it is a personal choice and that choice would depend on how you have cultivated your relationship with your body if you see your body as the gift of God you want to pass on this gift to others do that some people have the belief that no this entire body should go back to God, to the divine as it came and so they do not choose to go that way but it is entirely personal and how do you weave your body as from a Jewish perspective both donating your body to science and organ donation are fine for similar theological reasons as far as I know Buddhism doesn't have any particular positions on this issue because 2600 years ago it was an option so that's for me what I take from the previous discussion about the end of life option act it's an option because medical science has developed the means to do these things and so as far as I understand it's not a so-called Buddhist perspective because generally there is a cremation is a general approach and that's culturally influenced it's not a so-called religious determination so these are the things that are always changing everything is always changing our perspectives change our values change so to speak and then this option of donor organ donations I have it on my license plate but that's my option it's not the church's position to tell anybody what their options should be because their options not obligations thank you we're going to close with this question and again I thank every person who's asked a question so I'm going to thank this person for bringing us to a close and it's a deeply personal question for each of you are you afraid of dying why or why not and how does your faith inform this by all means well I mean you know when I pass this on it is the first thing that I said over there he says death is end of physical life on earth but also the beginning of new life under God matter dies but the soul lives personally I do not fear death the only thing I fear is the physical pain that is associated with death in this world thank you I have cried too many of these top things he said am I afraid of dying when once I was very sick I was in South America a doctor came to me and said Pablo you had to take it down if not the next time I come to you it will be at your funeral yeah that he said that to me literally so I start taking care of myself and I start preparing more spiritually to meet with my maker so I guess my answer to that me will be to try to make my relationship with you be divine develop it more with God become closer and when we become closer to God then we stop being afraid of that transition into new life of being dead because it's like they said in the Old Testament he or that person he didn't die he kept walking and kept walking together with the Lord into paradise it was not painful nothing difficult so that's my answer am I afraid I don't think I'm ready yet but he knows better I think I've already said I'm not afraid of death I am afraid of pain and I do have a theological reason I think for and it is because I hear from my pastors and I read in the Bible that God loves me anyway it's that I am okay I am loved by God not for anything I have done but because God loves me that makes me feel like she is going to just welcome me into the hereafter okay am I afraid of dying I think I am ready it can come I will welcome it any moment even if it is the next one I whenever this question comes to me I am a firm believer in my own actions and I believe that whatever I have put out is what I will experience and so I ask myself have you given sorrow to anyone have you given pain to anyone no and so it will not come to you have you not ill about anyone no so no one is going to harm you and so I am I feel very very free very very ready and just anytime ever ready but very much observant of my own actions each moment thank you um so personally I am not afraid of death although similar to what people have said at least for me more recently I have been finding myself just naturally thinking more deeply and a new about this notion about being ready for death so this notion of readiness is just kind of something I am returning to because to me it has become more vague than I used to feel sure of but I am not in and of itself afraid of death I don't want it to happen tonight but um but I do hope that I do hope if I have any level of control or whatever happens that I just die in my sleep that is kind of what I hope for I think most of us do and from a faith perspective I guess I guess in that way the core of what sustains me is I just believe that I am not alone in the world so that that sort of buoys me I don't think the fear of death is as much of a concern for me it's rather fearing life so to not fear coming alive and for me alive and people from our temple get tired but I use all these acronyms but alive aware loving inspired, valued, engaged so our religious life is to come alive and fearing death is not such a not right now an issue for me because it's not something I necessarily have to do it's done for me so I just entrust myself to life and to and thank you all for sharing this moment thank you to the panel I've been asking all of the questions tonight this last question if you'll permit me I'd like to answer I've been in an interesting situation where just November my mother passed two years ago on Christmas Eve my dad passed and in each of these cases I was with my brother at their bedside in the case of my father he was on the east coast and I was on the west coast so I didn't see him a lot but I was called back he called me back because he wanted to be removed from a lot of tubes that he could not live with out and I found myself at his bedside on Christmas Eve saying things that I never anticipated saying the I love yous the I'm sorrys the I'll take care of mom the things that I needed so in death he taught me how to live and gave me some closure and reconciliation and I also was inspired by his own faith a faith that that he took with him into the next life and I think as I I'm getting a little bit older I'm figuring some of this stuff out and the fear is less because I'm starting to live a little more and so with that I just want to say a very special thank you to each one of our panelists you created a mosaic tonight that I'm sure left impressions upon those in the audience I want to thank the audience for your questions and I apologize if we didn't get to all of them because in about one minute we're going to be asked to bring things to a close so that they can turn the lights out here a different kind of closure but before we do that I really would like to say thank you to the San Francisco Public Library and in particular to Janet Tom for this invitation and Janet asked me to remind you all since you got a little taste of it tonight that the third in the series program 3 will take place on May 7th and it's all about the gift of life option act so if you got a taste of it tonight you'll hear it ad nauseam on May 7th. Thank you all very much