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The purpose of the article is to consider one of the aspects of the understanding of friendship in Buddhist thought (according to Japanese sources) in comparison with the meaning given to the concept of friendship in Christian thought. In Ja­panese Buddhism, the term zenchishiki (Skt. kalyāṇa mitra) means a "good and wise friend" in general, and in a narrower sense, someone who helps the dying person meet death with the right thoughts. The tasks of a friend at his deathbed partly coincide with "care for the sick", partly opposed to it. Zenchishiki main­tains the proper mood of the dying at the hour of death; if in the case of caring for the sick, it is a matter of bodily suffering that can be weakened, then in the case of zenchishiki, it is about suffering that cannot be canceled; in the first case, the stronger takes care of the weak; in the second, two mortals are on an equal footing, although one had to die before the other. The Japanese instructions for death hour rituals formalized the role of zenchishiki to a large extent, and its original meaning was lost. The question of friendship at the hour of death, of good and bad friends, is again discussed in essence by Kamo no Chōmei in Hosshinshū (1210s). He shows zenchishiki at work, gives examples of how peo­ple choose their friends for the hour of death, talks about the experience of friendship or enmity of a person with himself: relationships with other people are built on this experience, and this experience itself changes under their influence.

The tradition of "biographies of eminent monks", kōsōden, was adopted by Japa­nese Buddhist masters from China and developed in various works, including collections of setsuwa tales. There are three components in monastic biogra­phies: the path of the Buddha, retraced by his follower; the role of the monk in the history of the country; ascetic experience, which allows to assign the monk to one of the categories within the community (exegete of the Buddha teaching, miracle worker, merciful helper to the suffering living beings etс.). The genre of biographies partly overlaps with other genres: tales about miracles and about posthumous retribution; the same story, depending on the context, may shift toward one of these genres. "Genkō Era Buddhist History" ("Genkō Shakusho", 1322) contains about 400 biographies of monks, which are divided in several categories. What categories turned out to be the most extensive in this text – in particular, the biographies of miracle workers – allows us to make some assumptions about the sources the compiler used or at least took into account. One of these sources was "Anthology of Tales from the Past" ("Konjaku mono­gatari-shū", 1120s). This collection of setsuwa tales showcases the structure of biographies as they differ from texts of related genres based on several series of examples. In turn, a number of stories included in this collection trace back to "Miraculous Tales of the Lotus Sutra" ("Hokke Genki", 1040s). A comparison of the two texts shows how, with a change in context, the tale about a miracle can become the tale about of a person who experienced a miracle, that is, acquire the features of a life story.

The article summarizes the results of the historical and philosophical research "Collection of ancient stories" (Konjaku monogatari-shū, 1120s). This largest Ja­panese collection of setsuwa tales paints a picture of world history from the era of Buddha to the age of mappō, "Decline of Buddhist Teaching", tracing the milestones in the spread of Buddhism in India, China and Japan. The two most important Buddhist attitudes – the world is impermanent and at the same time each event is embedded into a universal system of cause-and-effect rela­tionships – are reflected not only at the level of the content of an individual story, but also at the level of connecting stories into a holistic narrative. All events have instructive educative? meaning; everyday experience always leads to the same conclusions as the teachings of Buddha. In this experience, a person in­evitably makes some connections – with other people, living and dead, with ani­mals and spirits, gods and buddhas – and these connections involving this person in the cycle of birth and death, if properly understood, provide the basis for liber­ation. The narrator draws a line between a proper and an inappropriate under­standing of what is happening, talking about the "immeasurable" (grief, joy, fear, etc.), and thus allows the readers to find the "measure", kagiri, in their relation to what is happening. The march of time can be understood both as a general move­ment from the best to the worst, and – on small intervals – as a reverse move­ment from grief to happiness, from misunderstanding to understanding. A person is free to choose which events to keep in memory and which to forget; people make this choice whilst instructive storytelling, and setsuwa tradition preserves it.