Book Forum––Robert Desjarlais’ Subject to Death: Life and Loss in a Buddhist World

This article is part of the following series: Book forum

Robert Desjarlais’s Subject to Death is like stepping onto a train already in motion. Its momentum isn’t fierce but there’s no time to ease in––from its first pages, as readers we find ourselves in the midst of death and life and loss as they take and are given form. At the risk of overusing the term, there is great care in this book, and the five commentaries that follow are reflections of this care, not owing to an expected attitude or comportment towards life and death, but attending to what is required by the invitation Desjarlais makes to readers, made between author and subject and reader, as we are brought into a conversation rather than relegated only to eavesdrop. It is a great honor to present this forum on Robert Desjarlais’s Subject to Death.

Living with Dying

Anand Pandian

Johns Hopkins University

Insider’s Note

Karma Gyaltsen Lama

You are here.

Sarah Pinto

Tufts University

Life in Death

Summar Saad

Wayne State University

Making Death: A Narrative Medicine Exploration