BOOK BRIEFS

HEN DEATH CEASES to be an abstraction and becomes an inevitability, rumination upon its imminence requires a rare act of courage. Such is the exquisite fortitude exhibited by the late scholar C. W. Huntington Jr. in his posthumously published (Wisdom). After a lifetime of studying and teaching Buddhism in academia, a cancer diagnosis leads him to devote his remaining time to reflecting upon how the Buddhist teachings have shaped his approach to death. He reinterprets central tenets of the Buddhist teachings in light of this exercise in , often reaching profoundly startling and moving insights. In the shadow of mortality, the first noble truth of suffering becomes a commentary on our unshakable existential dread, our “dis-ease” with life