Join us for our 11th annual Rohrbach Lecture!

Premodern Japanese believed that one’s dying thoughts could determine one’s postmortem fate. Even a sinful person, by dying with a mind calmly focused on the Buddha, could be reborn in a “pure land,” where one’s enlightenment would be assured. Conversely, a stray distracted thought at that final juncture could send even a devout practitioner tumbling down into the hells or other miserable rebirth realms. The ideal of mindful death generated both hope and anxiety and created a demand for ritual specialists to serve as religious guides at the deathbed, contributing to Buddhist preeminence in matters of death management.

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Jacqueline Stone is Professor Emerita in the Religion Department of Princeton University, where she taught Buddhism and Japanese Religions. Her published work includes Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (1999) and Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhist Deathbed Practices in Medieval Japan (2016). Currently she heads the Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism.

📷: "Welcoming Descent of Amida Buddha" (1300) | via Wikimedia Commons