Sacred Steps: A Buddhist Lay Minister Asks ‘What Is A Good Death?’

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many Americans into sudden intimacy with difficult feelings: anxiety, fear, and grief. In this story from The Spiritual Edge, we get to know a North Carolina woman whose Buddhist practice has helped her navigate fear and grief. "What I realized was that people were unprepared for death. Almost everybody was unprepared for death." Caroline Yongue is the founder and director of the Carolina Memorial Sanctuary, a small cemetery offering environmentally-friendly burials in Western North Carolina. The Sanctuary is grounded in a Buddhist ethos and committed to restoring native ecosystems. It’s part of a larger project to change how Americans approach death and grief — creating new ways to live with loss, from the ground up.