Right Thoughts at the Last Moment by Stone Jacqueline I.;Buswell Robert E.;Stone Jacqueline I.;Buswell Robert E.;

Author:Stone, Jacqueline I.;Buswell, Robert E.;Stone, Jacqueline I.;Buswell, Robert E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2016-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

Anxieties

Whether depicted in paintings, described in ōjōden accounts, enacted in liturgical performance, or beheld in dreams and visions, images of the Buddha’s welcoming descent conveyed that, for those whose hearts were fixed on the Pure Land, death was beautiful, even to be joyfully anticipated. The possibility of birth in a superior realm must have tempered the fears of the dying and provided comfort and reassurance for the bereaved. The idea that one could be received into the Pure Land simply by fixing one’s last thoughts on the Buddha must also have given hope to persons who had led less than exemplary lives, or who were unable to keep the precepts or carry out demanding practices. And yet the luminous imagery of Pure Land aspirations in early medieval Japan was shot through with darker undertones. What if one failed to think of the Buddha at the last moment? What if one died badly? Especially when we turn away from the exquisite raigō paintings and ōjōden accounts of exemplary death and look to other kinds of sources, we encounter a disquieting discourse about the many things that could go wrong at the time of death and the frightful consequences of losing right mindfulness at that crucial moment. We also find evidence of serious anxiety on the part of individuals that their own death might fall short of the mark. Concerns of this kind spread among elites in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and appear across a broader social spectrum by the thirteenth.1 The present chapter, divided into three parts, examines this “dark side” of the ideal of exemplary death and the content of anxieties surrounding it. The first part investigates the difficulties, dangers, and potential obstructions thought to lie in the way of achieving a mindful death. The second part considers the interpretive crisis confronting the bereaved in cases of questionable or downright bad deaths, especially on the part of eminent masters. The third part examines the major strategies of preparation by which people sought to insure in advance that all would go well in their last hours.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.