Great masters of many traditions have advised that we can live our lives more fully knowing some day we will die. Barbara Becker’s highly anticipated memoir Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind reminds us of this cornerstone belief of death literacy.

The term “heartwood” refers to the core of a tree—the part that is no longer living, but supports the newer growth rings that surround it. To Barbara, it’s “a reminder to embrace the inseparability of life and death… a message of wholeness.”

Join us for this special virtual conversation with the author and her beloved Zen teacher Robert Chodo Campbell as they navigate the broad questions of the paradoxical marriage of life and death, and delve into the meaningful personal stories Barbara shares in her book. 

“In Heartwood, Barbara Becker inspires us to follow our curiosity into a world that is both universal and a source of our uniqueness. And what could be better than that?”
– Gloria Steinem

Barbara Becker is a writer and ordained interfaith minister who has dedicated more than twenty-five years to partnering with human rights advocates around the world in pursuit of peace and interreligious understanding. She has worked with the United Nations, Human Rights First, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, and has participated in a delegation of Zen Peacemakers and Lakota elders in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. She has sat with hundreds of people at the end of their lives and views each as a teacher. 

Sensei Robert Chodo Campbell, is a co-founder of the New York Zen Center for contemplative Care, —a non-profit organization that focuses on the teaching of Zen and Buddhist practice with the goal to make them more accessible to people all around the world. The center delivers contemplative approaches to care through education, personal caregiving, and meditation practice. Chodo is a dynamic, grounded, and visionary leader and teacher: he has traveled extensively throughout the United States instructing in various institutions. Sixty-thousand people listen to his podcasts each year. His passion lies in bereavement counseling and advocating for change in the way our healthcare institutions work with the dying.