As the hospice movement continues to grow, caregivers are increasingly required to interact with dying patients for longer periods, in more intimate ways, and in more meaningful ways. Practical models of competent and compassionate communication and understanding need to be developed to accommodate the changing environment of the patient and caregiver and their relationship. The present study, therefore: (1) examines the current death education trends in hospice care and education; (2) describes the need for a more expansive and transpersonal view, and ways of fulfilling that need; and (3) draws upon the Tibetan Buddhist psychology of death and dying as one practical example of a more expansive and transpersonal view applicable to hospice care and education.
Tibetan Buddhism is particularly relevant to the transpersonal study of death and dying in the West because it teaches and encourages the recognition of: (1) the inevitability of impermanence and change (a natural antidote to the Western addiction to security and the illusion of permanence); (2) the power of the human mind and ways in which to train and harness this power (similar to events recently being studied in the West such as psychoneuroimmunology and the mind-body connection); (3) the concept of the mind-continuum as a beginningless and continuous thread that carries through from lifetime to lifetime, and between lifetimes in the after-death state (a view that provides a different definition of death and dying, and offers a sense of hope rather than failure in the face of death); and (4) the stages of dying and the dissolution of the elements which chart the internal and external signs of approaching death (providing patients and caregivers with an enriched perspective about what to expect and prepare for during the dying trajectory).
