The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

UNFINISHED BUSINESS
HEART ADVICE ON HELPING THE DYING 185
Another anxiety of the dying is often that of leaving unfinished
business. The masters tell us that we should die peacefully,
"without grasping, yearning, and attachment." This
cannot fully happen if the unfinished business of a lifetime, as
far as possible, is not cleared. Sometimes you will find that
people hold onto life and are afraid to let go and die, because
they have not come to terms with what they have been and
done. And when a person dies harboring guilt or bad feelings
toward others, those who survive him suffer even more
deeply in their grief.
Sometimes people ask me: "Isn't it too late to heal the pain
of the past? Hasn't there been too much suffering between me
and my dying friend or relative for healing to be possible?" It
is my belief, and has been my experience, that it is never too
late; even after enormous pain and abuse, people can find a
way to forgive each other. The moment of death has a
grandeur, solemnity, and finality that can make people reexamine
all their attitudes, and be more open and ready to forgive,
when before they could not bear to. Even at the very end of a
life, the mistakes of a life can be undone.
There is a method for helping to complete unfinished business
that I and my students who work with the dying find
very helpful. It was formulated from the Buddhist practice of
equalizing and exchanging the self with others, and from the
Gestalt technique, by Christine Longaker, one of my earliest
students, who came to the field of death and dying after the
death of her husband from leukemia. 5 Usually unfinished business
is the result of blocked communication; when we have
been wounded, we often become very defensive, always arguing
from a position of being in the right and blindly refusing
to see the other person's point of view. This is not only
unhelpful, it freezes any possibility of real exchange. So when
you do this exercise, begin it with the strong motivation that
you are bringing up all your negative thoughts and feelings to
try and understand them, to work with them and resolve
them, and finally now to let go of them.
Then visualize in front of you the person with whom you
have the problem. See this person in your mind's eye, exactly
as he or she has always looked to you.
Consider now that a real change takes place, so the person
is far more open and receptive to listen to what you have to
say, more willing than ever before to share honestly, and