LEWIS RICHMOND (Buddhist teacher and author, Aging as a Spiritual Practice): Buddhist wisdom begins with a very simple principle — everything changes.

(to audience): Aging is really about time, and our experience of time...

The things that we love and cherish will change, will get old, including us, and pass away. A big challenge for us is to see aging as it really is. Not as we imagine it, not as the society or advertisements say it is, not as our friends say it is, but what is it really for us?

(to audience): This book is a user’s guide to aging well. It is about aging from a spiritual perspective.

All of Buddhist spiritual practice is a kind of great re-framing. Seeing all of human life differently, much more positively, and deeply. So Buddhist mindfulness practices, as it relates to aging, is really...pay attention, pay close attention, to what’s really going on in your body, in your emotions, in your fears.

(to audience): It’s about the courage to just be there, you know, to be there in whatever your life is bringing you.

Illness does come more as we get older. We also worry about money and is there going to be someone there to take care of us when we need it? Lots of worries and I’m very candid that, yes, this is the way it is. I’m not pretending to erase all of that with some magic potion. What I’m offering is something different, is find a different approach, a different way of seeing it, a different level of meaning, a different context that’s bigger than just those things.

(to audience): This is a gratitude practice. I want you to close your eyes. When you hear the words, ‘thank you,’ I want you to notice the first thing that comes to mind.

One woman said, “I never knew that I was thankful for my eyes, my eyes, that I could see,” and she started to cry.

I think that gratitude is right under the surface of everyone as they age. Let’s face it, aging is partly about eventually this life is going to end. What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen when I die? When people ask me that, as a Buddhist teacher, I say, “Well, you’ll return to your divine nature, which is who you fundamentally are anyway, all the time.”

(to audience): As we age, may we be filled with loving kindness. As we age, each of us, may we be free from suffering, to the extent possible. And, as we age, may we be happy and at peace.

I had a Buddhist teacher who once said, “Every breath, new chances.” This is a great teaching for older people, because part of aging is “there are no more new chances for me, I’m stuck with what I’ve got.” Well, that’s not really true. Every breath, every day, every morning, every person you meet, is a kind of new chance.