Review of Mindfully Facing Disease and Death in Pure Land Notes

Book Review by Steve Lane in Pure Land Notes (the Journal of the Shin Buddhist Fellowship UK) Mindfully Facing Disease and Death: Compassionate Advice from Early Buddhist Texts by Anālayo, published by Windhorse Publications, 2016.

Few books will offer a greater show of original translation than Anālayo’s remarkable publication. What we have here are original texts from the early centuries of Buddhist culture translated into English for the first time. Twenty-four texts, each having a specific focus – the best attributes of nurse and patient, coping with pain, the inevitability of death, the realms beyond death, are set out in logical order with an introduction, a translated text and a follow up discussion.

This is not a book for the run of Buddhists. You need to have a specific interest in early Buddhist medicine and health, or be facing or have approaches to the same subjects. Considerable research has been done in relatives facing mortality. It would have been of greater interest to a wider audience had the author linked the texts and his discussion to modern recent years on mindfulness and pain control. I know from my own experience that Mindfulness meditation is now recommended by the NHS for the control of pain. Showing the contemporary relevance of these ancient texts would have been helpful to a wider readership.

Anālayo’s remarkable book is probably one that will inspire further research into early Buddhist approaches to health, disease and dying, and we will all benefit subsequently from that.