Biographical Information

Dale Borglum is the founder and Executive Director of The Living/Dying Project. He is a pioneer in the conscious dying movement and has worked directly with thousands of people with life-threatening illness and their families for over 30 years. In 1981, Dale founded the first residential facility for people who wished to die consciously in the United States, The Dying Center. He has taught and lectured extensively on the topics of spiritual support for those with life-threatening illness, on caregiving as a spiritual practice, and on healing at the edge, the edge of illness, of death, of loss, of crisis.

Dale has a BS from UC Berkeley and a PhD from Stanford University. He is the co-author of Journey of Awakening: A Meditator's Guidebook, Bantam Books and has taught meditation for the past 35 years. He has intensively immersed himself in the practices of devotion, meditation, and contemplative prayer for over forty years, studying with many of the greatest masters of the last century, including Neem Karoli Baba, Suzuki Roshi, Ananda Mayee Ma, Kalu Rinpoche, the 16th Karmapa, Dilgo Khyentse, Mahasi Sayadaw, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Trungpa Rinpoche, Goenka, Dudjom Rinpoche and HH the Dalai Lama. Dale has taught with Ram Dass, Stephen Levine, Joan Halifax, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Rev. Wayne Muller, and many others. His life’s work and passion has been and continues to be the healing of our individual and collective relationship with death and also using our mortality as an inspiration for spiritual awakening.

History of the Living/Dying Project

In 1976 Stephen Levine founded The Dying Project as part of The Hanuman Foundation. Shortly after founding the first organization in the Western world to actively promote conscious dying, Stephen was joined by Ram Dass, Dale Borglum, and Ondrea Levine. The Dying Project offered conscious support to people with life-theatening illnesses and also included a national call-in consultation hot-line. For many years after its inception, the Project was the only organization here in the West which advocated seeing the dying process as an opportunity for spiritual awakening and using caregiving for those with life-threatening illness as a spiritual practice.

In 1981, as part of the Hanuman Foundation Dying Project, the Dying Center in Santa Fe, NM, was created. This was the first residential facility in the West to care for clients who wished to see their confrontation with death as an opportunity for awakening, rather than seeing death merely a tragedy. From 1981-1984 Dale Borglum, the founding Director of the Dying Center, guided the facility in which approximately 85 people were served free of charge.

In 1986 Dale relocated the Project to its present location in Marin County and changed the name to The Living/Dying Project.The Open Circle program of the Project offers free-of-charge emotional and spiritual support to people with life-threatening illnesses and to those who care for them. As well, the Project has an educational component whose mission is to explore healing in the context of a life-threatening illness. Dale has trained thousands of hospice care workers, nurses, therapists, doctors, and volunteers in palliative care.


Brief History of Hospice in the United States