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Roy Remer
Roy Remer
01:52

Roy Remer

Zen Hospice Project

San Francisco, CA US

"It's a totally radical concept, and maybe really difficult for people to understand-but [it's helpful] to practice dying when you're healthy. This is who I was yesterday, that's gone. This is who I am today."

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Roy's work combines: Non-Profit Organizations, Philosophy & Religion, and Helping People

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Day In The Life

Volunteer Coordinator

I guide earth-based rites of passage programs and support people through all of life’s major transitions.

Life & Career Milestones

My path in life has been direct

  • 1.

    Says that we live in a death-denying culture, where no one wants to accept the reality of death until it "bashes them over the head."

  • 2.

    He realized that this denial was unhealthy, so he decided to "befriend" death, and become comfortably with his mortality.

  • 3.

    When his grandmother died, he was working for a small Buddhist publisher.

  • 4.

    Seeing that Roy was having trouble with her death, some of his co-workers introduced him to the Zen Hospice Project.

  • 5.

    Soon his volunteerism started to become more meaningful than his publishing work.

  • 6.

    Says it was hard to give up his career and his comfortable income, but he had to leave that smooth routine to leap into the unknown.

  • 7.

    He knew that if he followed the thing that was most nourishing for his soul, everything else would fall into place.

  • 8.

    A big part of his practice is honoring thresholds: when one experience ends, he honors who he was before that experience, and accepts what's next to come.