Forty Nine Days : A Buddhist Guide to Dying and Accompanying the Dying

We do not know how to die. Modern secular culture has removed death from the centre of life and left us with almost nothing to draw on when it arrives.

This book draws on two sources rarely brought together: contemporary neuroscience on what the dying brain actually does, and the accumulated wisdom of Buddhist traditions that have been thinking carefully about death for two and a half millennia. The dying person is still present, still receiving, still being shaped by what surrounds them. The traditions have known this for centuries. The neuroscience is now confirming it.

Four traditions are examined in depth. Tibetan Vajrayana provides a detailed map of the dying process and specific practices for those who sit with the dying and the recently dead. Japanese Pure Land offers a complete release from the requirement to perform at the moment of death. Korean Zen kido is sustained collective chanting for the dead, giving grief something active to do across the forty-nine days. Theravada trains the mind directly in the perceptual encounter with impermanence. Chinese Pure Land and Zen death culture are explored as additional perspectives, each offering something the others do not.

Written from the inside, by a practitioner with more than two decades across these traditions. No prior Buddhist knowledge required.