Where Do the Dead Go? — Stories of Faith
Every human being will one day face death.
This truth has remained unchanged since the emergence of Homo sapiens some 400,000 years ago. And yet, the fate of the dead remains a mystery, wrapped in countless stories told across cultures.
Recently, at Honen-in Temple in Kyoto, we held a gathering themed “Where Do the Dead Go?”. I served as facilitator, inviting three monks among the more than 200 I have dialogued with—monks who have stood closest to the bedside of the dying, and thus most deeply questioned what it means to live. Each shared their own story.
Where Do the Dead Go? — Stories of Faith
Moderator:
Shoukei Matsumoto
Speakers:
Buddhist monk Shunryo Yada (Zensaiji Temple, former life sciences researcher)
Buddhist monk Kanjō Ueda (Shinnyo-ji Temple on Mt. Myoken, pioneer of “Circulation Burial”)
Buddhist monk Engyō Ōkura (Enman)
The audience was diverse, including many monks. But on this occasion, everyone set aside sectarian teachings and came simply with their own personal experiences of life and death. The sharing of honest voices seemed endless, stretching on even as evening fell. This gathering will surely continue into the future.
Life Science ✕ Buddhism: Attending to the Departing and the Bereaved
Shunryo Yada, once a life sciences researcher and now a Buddhist monk, provides grief care at medical sites. Standing not as a physician but as a monk, he has been present to the inner reality of both the dying and their loved ones.
For those left behind, the question of whether an afterlife “exists or not” can be less about metaphysical truth than about a desperate need: “It must be there—without it, how could I, how could the world, go on?” Buddhist teachings respond to this raw need, as well as to the anguish that can only be expressed through the question, “Why did this person have to die?”
When someone loses a beloved suddenly, they almost always ask why. The question repeats endlessly, even though no answer can be found. Yet in asking, they are in fact drawing close to their own deep pain. A doctor might explain: “He worked too much, smoked a pack a day, drank late at night, exercised little, and thus the mechanism of illness unfolded. Despite treatment, he passed away. That is reality.” Such an explanation is sometimes sought—but not always.
Between those habits that seem to “cause death” lie other moments: walking the dog, fishing for years as a hobby, listening to a coworker’s worries during late hours at the office. To hear the story of a life is also to hear the stories of those who shared that life.
Through storytelling, the living gradually accept death alongside cherished memories. Walking forward in this way also loosens our grip on the past. After all, the Buddha taught that clinging itself is the root of suffering.
Opening “Circulation Burial” to Society: Returning the Dead to the Mountain
Kanjō Ueda’s temple sits atop Mt. Myoken, where worship of the North Star intertwines with primeval beech forests over ten millennia old. To protect the mountain is to carry on the faith itself.
But traditional family-based grave systems in Japan no longer match the realities of modern life. In response, he introduced “Circulation Burial：Return to Nature,” returning cremated remains to the mountain. Freeing funerary practice from fixed styles aligns with Buddhist views of interbeing—and makes deep sense.
Today, families are scattered, marriages dissolve, and inheritance of graves is increasingly fragile. Some must close family graves altogether. Carrying social roles and entanglements into the realm of the dead burdens descendants with unresolved karma.
Japan’s grave system itself is historically shallow. Before the modern era, bodies returned to nature—through burial, wind, water, or sky burials. Perhaps the absence of fixed forms once gave people greater spiritual release.
In recent decades, tree burials—collective interment under trees—have become popular. This shift reflects a desire to entrust the dead not to human “family systems” but to the wider story of nature.
Hearing the Buddha’s Words Through Past-Life Memory
Engyo Okura (Enman) says that he has lived with memories of past lives since childhood. In Buddhism, there is the notion of muki (“unanswered”), and it is often said that the Buddha left questions such as “Does the afterlife exist or not?” unanswered. On this point, Rev. Okura explains: “The Buddha deliberately avoided answering questions like ‘Is there an afterlife?’ or ‘Do past lives or souls exist?’ in order to admonish those who clung to metaphysical speculation without engaging in practice. Yet, as seen in the Jātaka tales that recount the Buddha’s previous lives, Buddhism fundamentally presupposes reincarnation and the existence of the soul.”
To him, clinging to gravestones or ashes becomes a form of attachment, and he holds that graves and ashes are not fundamentally necessary. The soul is not bound to any one place, but like a radio signal, free. In Japanese, the word yama (mountain) shares roots with yomi, the realm between the living and the dead.
Though this sensibility has faded in modern times, Japan’s land—shaped by earthquakes and disasters—holds countless bodies returned to sea and soil, never retrieved. People still bow to mountains, rivers, and rice fields because they know life has always depended on forces beyond human control.
Even within Buddhism, interpretations and understandings differ by region, and the paths of its development have taken many forms. Even within Japanese Buddhism itself, there are numerous schools and divergent doctrines.
In reality, understanding and interpretation vary further depending on past experiences, the environment in which one was raised, and the mind and body one has been given. Truth may be one, yet the stories that lead to it are so diverse, and at the same time overlapping.
Just as fairies appear in folktales around the world, in Japan, “Yokai” have long been passed down within people’s daily lives. Animals would appear in transformed shapes; The thunder is called “Kaminari-sama” and the sun “Otentou-sama” with the honorific “sama”, —people saw divinity in the natural world.
Japanese Buddhism originally coexisted with Shinto, and for a long time an animistic spirituality—seeing soul in mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees—was alive in Japan. Modernization changed both society and people’s consciousness, but once again more people are seeking to rediscover this original way of being. What is now called “spirituality” was once nothing other than nature itself, rooted in everyday life together with human birth and death.
Looking Ahead
Now, as we look toward an unknown future opened with AI, many people are turning their thoughts to calling back this ancient sensibility. Science has not yet proven what becomes of the dead. Yet, just as research in physics seems to be approaching the Mahāyāna Buddhist truth that “form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” someday science may come to speak of the journey of the dead.
And still—will we need stories?