For Dominie Anne Cappadonna Ph.D.  CT, death has had an immediacy since birth. Born in the “womb of war” as Pearl Harbor raged, Cappadonna has been repeatedly “informed” by global dying. She grew up in a medical family in a Children’s Hospital, co-created the first holistic medical team in the world in refugee medicine and worked in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and recently she both suffered and embraced the loss of both her parents, her husband, and many friends within a few years.

“Given multiple deaths in a short period of time, I knew that my work as a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, Chaplain, and mentor needed to more fully engage our important teacher, Death itself,” she explained. So, Cappadonna trained and became internationally certified as a Thanatologist: a death, dying, and bereavement educator.

“The subject matter of death and dying concerns us within the Bardo of life itself and appears inescapably intertwined, coemergent with LifeDeathLife,” said Cappadonna. “So I feel our conception and birth to be our invitation to engage consciously with this natural moment to moment occurrence. With each breath, as they say, we experience a life enhancing inhale, a quiet pause of abiding and a ceasing of the breath of life as we exhale. So intrinsic. At one point we will inhale and exhale for the last time.”

Cappadonna is teaching a May 10-12 Befriending Small Deaths–Big Deaths at Shambhala Mountain Center. We recently asked her a few questions about her fascinating life, about “small” and “big” deaths, approaching death with curiosity, and the workshop she will soon teach.

SMC: Tell us about your early experiences with death.
DC: I grew up in a medical family in a Children’s Hospital, at a time where there was no HIPA and I was free to visit children in the medical units in their wide spectrum of healing. Many of my friends were children I met in their healing time. We continued in friendship after they went back home. Some of my hospital companions died. Death was kitchen-table conversation. I knew I could die as a child, and at any age. Death was treated with respect as a natural process in our family, and I was held securely in this knowledge.

SMC: Tell us a bit more about your work with refugee medicine.
DC: We worked in the Killing Fields with 150,000 Cambodian refugees in a United Nations camp on the Thai border. I also worked inside a camp of Khymer Rouge. As a humanitarian, I practiced being with humans with wounds beyond label of friend or enemy. Our team brought back Cambodian families, and they have taught me a great deal about the resilience of our human Spirit.

SMC: What are small deaths?
DC: ‘small deaths’ are daily and numerous. Death of dreams, hopes, visions, viewpoints, emotional states, events such as losing work, breaking up, aging, loss of anything dear to us. What I ‘thought’ would arise or fall away and more. It can be the smallest thing, like the death of a pen. I’ve shifted from using a pen in my appointment book to using a pencil to honor the impermanence of things!

SMC: What does it mean to approach death with curiosity?
DC: To recognize our cultural tendency to deny or avoid death, to take death out of it’s natural place in the circle of life. To approach death with curiosity suggests to respect the reality of what we see around us and know for ourselves directly. Respect at it’s Latin root means: “to look again and again.” Looking at big deaths~small deaths allows us to be present and alive to this moment and appreciate this generous opportunity of being alive to learn and grow.

SMC: What sort of spiritual skills does one need to be fearless in the face of the unknown?
DC: There are a number of spiritual skills in all wisdom traditions which offer tools of courage, and which engage our body, mind, emotions, and spirit. I will offer some that have a Buddhist basis and are universal in nature.

SMC: Is there anything I’m not asking you that you want to share with me regarding your retreat?
DC: It is a rare privilege to meet within the Great Stupa. The generating field of this world peace center creates a resonant field of profound wisdom, fearlessness, joy, and compassion as our vessel for learning and Being. To be so held within, as well as roam out in the lush fields of spring surrounding the Stupa, cultivates a spaciousness and warmth that expands our conscious awareness of ‘never born, never die’ in an essential way.

Sign up for Cappadonna’s weekend retreat!

In the Fort Collins Magazine article, “Solace of the Stupa: Neurobiology, the science of pain and the Buddhist retreat,” Laura Pritchett writes about dealing with chronic pain through meditation, among other things. A central theme in this piece is how she finds peace and the ability to be present with her pain in the “flat-out funky, magical, and free to visit…” Great Stupa at Shambhala Mountain Center (SMC). She discusses the science behind Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a technique she learned at a MBSR retreat at SMC, and how she uses that technique while meditating at the Great Stupa.

“It’s more than about ‘stress reduction,’” she says, “it’s about how to face life when all hell breaks loose…” She learns that she can, in fact, change her attitude toward pain. The gist of the practice, she explains, is “…the mind can be taught to pay attention to the present in a particular way, purposefully, without judgment, and, most important, without worrying about the future.” This, she adds, reduces the experience of pain.

In conclusion, she brings the reader back to the “magic” of the Stupa as a place where people can bridge the gap between the mind and the body to heal themselves. “If healing pain-or coping with anything life throws at us—is mostly up to oneself,” she says, “then the Stupa is part of that for me.”

Read the full article in Fort Collins Magazine. It starts on page 42.

I don’t remember how I found the Shambhala Center in Boulder or why I started meditating. No one had recommended meditation or suggested I might benefit from mindfulness. I’m pretty certain I just wandered in one day.  All I remember is I found myself sitting in the Shamatha Shrine Room at a Monday Night Open Class listening to senior teacher Jim Yensen and wondering what the heck he was talking about.

But somehow whatever he said penetrated the confusion and pain of my mind and resonated with me. I was depressed—deeply, wondering, “Why?” Why exist? Why care? Why me? At the Center I found a sense of peace, not unlike that which I found doing yoga. But learning to meditate was different; it was definitely harder and scarier. I felt crazy sitting there with thoughts bouncing around my mind like a thousand spiked ping pong balls. But it was also compelling, somehow. So I started volunteering for Shambhala on Monday nights, and I started practicing regularly.

I never had illuminating or climactic moments … no bright lights, no great realizations. I just liked sitting. It wasn’t something I had ever really done before, being the Type A, hyper-athletic, workaholic I was. It gave me the opportunity to well … just sit. I don’t remember considering mindfulness or deepening my sense of self-awareness. I didn’t care about learning Buddhist principles like the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path. I just liked focusing on my breath. Breathe in, focus lightly on the outbreath, breathe in, breathe out…

For many years I didn’t even notice whether or not meditation was “helping” me. I often found myself depressed and confused, and I continued to question: “Why, why, why?” But, my friends started to notice I was becoming calmer. And I started to notice I was becoming calmer. And the “why, why, why?” questions started to fade. After eight years I am more involved with Buddhism. I read Buddhist teachings, am a part of a community of practitioners, and I practice regularly. Can I tell you what learning to meditate has given me? I could try to put it in words, but you would have to know me to really see how meditation has positively affected me. Really, the only thing I can honestly tell you is that I smile more often, I love myself 99% of the time, and I feel immensely grateful to be alive.

Shambhala Mountain Center offers several retreats for those new to meditation. Click the links below to check out our most popular weekend meditation retreats:

Learn to Meditate
Shambhala Training Level I
Retreat And Renewal

Read another piece by Lizzy about Meditation in the Mountains.