A Buddhist Death: Practical matters

Some matters relate to death and dying regardless of spiritual or religious affiliation. Here are some resources that offer useful and practical assistance.

Home Funerals can be a final act of caring for your loved ones. Passing Through Our Hands: Home Funeral Care Guide is a video on how to provide after-death care of the body. In our culture we have little opportunity to see or learn how to care for a body, and this video gives step-by-step instructions on how to do that in a simple and loving way.

"What to do when you can't afford a funeral," an article from the Funeral Consumers Alliance, offers suggestions for creative ways to economize without giving up the essential value of a final send-off. At the end of the article are links to a few organizations that may help contribute for the funerals of children in certain circumstances.

The Funeral Consumers Alliance offers many useful pamphlets on their web site, including:

Consumer's Guide to Cemetery Purchases
Veterans Burial Benefits
Death Away From Home (Information on death while traveling, and on how to cut costs when shipping a body for a distant burial.)
Ten Tips for Saving Funeral Dollars
Four-Step Funeral Planning: Where to start when you don't know how to start

Crossings' Resource Guide: A step-by-step how to guide for home funeral care

This blog

The purpose of this blog is to offer support and information to anyone interested in the topic of death and dying within the context of the very diverse Buddhist tradition.

My own efforts to learn about this topic have been frustrating. Many web sites and books offer information, guidelines, and instructions that purport to be "Buddhist" but in fact reflect the ideas and practices of only a specific tradition (i.e., Tibetan, Theravada, Pure Land). The doctrinal and practice differences within the overall Buddhist tradition can be vast. As I seek to overcome my own confusion, I feel drawn to help alleviate others' confusion by offering an overview of what death and dying mean in the Buddhist tradition. I also hope to help people address their needs and concerns about death and dying, both their own death and the death of others.

My approach is non-sectarian. Here, you will learn about many different Buddhist ideas and practices associated with death and dying. If you would like help within a specific tradition, please contact me and I will try to help. Through monastic friends, I have access to specific information about practices and understanding in many different schools/traditions of Buddhism. As a Western Buddhist monastic, I can also help Westerners find a way through the vastness of these traditions to create your own approach to death and dying.

May the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha support and protect you.

Dedication

This site is dedicated to my dear friend, Bill Ford, with whom I had many warm and heartfelt discussions about death. We had planned to organize a death-and-dying workshop together with our friend, Julie. Before we were able to do this, Bill died suddenly. Just as he taught me about death during his life, so he taught me a tremendous amount about death with his own death.

The death of my Dharma friend, Emily Barlow O'Donnell, provided the energy to dedicate myself to this effort.

May all their rebirths be happy and may they quickly attain liberation!

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