Death

Death

Death has a great impact on people's lives in such a way that they learn to value life or even live it to the fullest. But what happens to us after we die? Many religions have answered this question for us according to their faiths. Buddhism is a religion where Buddhists believe in the concept of death and reincarnation or rebirth. On the other hand, Christians believe that after you die you go into a period of dormancy and until the second coming of Jesus will you be woken up and decided your fate whether you go to heaven or hell according to how you have lived your life. Christianity teaches salvation from sin through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Through Him, the gift of eternal life is also attained.

Christianity started as a missionary religion and has now become the world's most widespread faith. It focuses on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The traditional story of Jesus tells of his birth in a stable in Bethlehem in the Holy Land, to a young virgin called Mary who had become pregnant with the son of God through the action of the Holy Spirit. The story of Jesus' birth is told in the writings of Matthew and Luke in the New Testament of the Bible. The New Testament, a collection of twenty-seven books written in the century after Jesus' death in 30 C.E., has had importance by shaping the church's teachings, ethics, ritual, organization, and mission in the world (Van Voorst 245). His birth is believed by Christians to be the fulfillment of prophecies in the Jewish Old Testament which claimed that a Messiah would deliver the Jewish people from captivity ("The Basics").

Christians ultimately believe in two places to go after death, Heaven where eternity is spent in a state that is beautiful beyond our ability to conceive, or Hell, where eternity is spent with Satan and his demons. All are tormented and tortured, in isolation from God, without any hope of mercy or relief (Robinson).

Many Christians believe that when a person dies, they enter into complete oblivion - a state of non-existence. They remain in dormancy. At the time of the second coming of Jesus, the dead are resurrected and judged. Those who had been saved while on earth will be given special bodies and go to Heaven unlike the unsaved who will go to Hell for eternal punishment (Robinson). Therefore, all of the Christians including the Patriarchs and such who have died over the past 2 millennia, and every human who has ever lived, are currently held in a temporary state of non-existence. Thus, every human who has ever lived, are in a state of dormancy, awaiting resurrection (Robinson).

Others believe that the soul separates from the body and is taken to a type of holding place - referred to as Sheol in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and Hades in the Christian Scriptures (New Testament). At the time of Jesus' second coming, they will be reunited with their reconstituted bodies and judged. Many will have been there for thousands of years before they are resurrected (Robinson).

Some important verses from the Bible refer to the deceased waiting for their call to resurrection:

Job 14:14-15: "If mortals die, can they live again? This thought would give me hope, and through my struggle I would eagerly wait for release. You would call and I would answer, and you would yearn for me, your handiwork." (NLT)

Daniel 12:2: "Many of those whose bodies lie head and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt."

John 3:12-13: "If you don't believe me when I tell you about things that happen here on earth, how can you possibly believe if I tell you what is going on in Heaven? And no man has ascended up to heaven..." (NLT)

John 5:28-29: "...the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God's Son, and they will rise again. Those who have done good will rise to eternal life and those who have continued in evil will rise to judgment." (NLT)

Acts 2:29-34: "Dear brothers...for he (David) died and was buried, and his tomb is still here among us...For David himself never ascended into heaven." (NLT)

The history of Buddhism is the story of one man's spiritual journey, Siddhartha Gautama - The Buddha, to Enlightenment and of the teachings and ways of living that developed from it. By finding the path to Enlightenment, Siddhartha was led from the pain of suffering and rebirth towards the path of Enlightenment and became known as the Buddha or 'awakened one'. He was born around the year 580 BCE in the village of Lumbini in Nepal into a royal family protecting him from the sufferings of life: sickness, old age, and death. After learning of a fate no one can avoid, he gave up his life of wealth and began a new one of neither luxury nor poverty, the middle way ("The Buddha"). One day, seated beneath the Bodhi tree, the tree of awakening, Siddhartha became deeply absorbed in meditation, and reflected on his experience of life, determined to penetrate its truth finally achieving Enlightenment and became the Buddha. The Mahabodhi Temple at the site of Buddha's enlightenment is now a pilgrimage site. Buddhist legend tells that at first the Buddha was happy to dwell within this state, but Brahma, king of the gods, asked, on behalf of the whole world, that he should share his understanding with others. Buddha started the wheel of teaching: rather than worshipping one god or gods, Buddhism centers around the importance of the teaching, or the dharma ("The Buddha").

In Buddhism, death is a process that is continuous in a cycle of death, rebirth, and reincarnation. The ultimate goal of the religious life is to escape the cycle of death and rebirth. Buddha asserted that what keeps us bound to the death/rebirth process is desire, desire in the sense of wanting or craving anything in the world. Hence, the goal of getting off the Ferris wheel of reincarnation necessarily involves freeing oneself from desire. Nirvana is the Buddhist term for liberation. Nirvana literally means extinction, and it refers to the extinction of all craving, an extinction that allows one to become liberated (William).

Instead of eternal souls, individuals consist of a "bundle"