Employing a wide range of literary sources, the essays in this volume focus exclusively on the moment of death and practices associated with the transition
from this world to the next. Five of the essays deal with Asian religions, primarily Buddhism in India, Tibet, China, and Japan. The other five essays
deal with the moment of death in the West, old Norse-Icelandic, Old English, and the Judeo-Christian tradition. The authors explore the many ways in which
the good death was envisioned. Remarkable parallels emerge between the good death in religious texts and in heroic sagas . Despite the diversity
of cultures, time periods and religious traditions represented in these essays, this volume vividly illustrates the fundamental human need to see in the
inevitable moment of death a possibility of choice and a promise of hope.
Koichi Shinohara teaches East Asian Buddhism in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. He has been studying the writings of a seventh century scholar monk Daoxuan and the anthology of scriptural passages and miracle stories compiled by his colleague Daoshi. He has written on monastic biographies, sacred places, and image worship in medieval Chinese Buddhism. With Phyllis Granoff he edited Pilgrims, Patrons and Place, Localizing Sanctity in Asian Religions, ed. University of British Columbia Press, 2003 and Images in Asian Religions: Texts and Contexts, University of British Columbia Press, 2004, in which he has articles on “The Story of the Buddha's begging bowl: Imagining a biography and sacred places," and “Stories of Miraculous Images and Paying Respect to the Three Jewels: A Discourse of Image Worship in the Seventh Century China .”