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What Happens When You Die?

godnotgod

Thou art That
I think the Japanese Buddhist poems provide valuable insight to this
question. I would like to cite two of them in particular.


***


Poem number one:

Koko ni kie

kashiko ni musubu
mizu no awa no
ukiyo ni meguru
mi ni koso arikere.

This body
keeps returning
to the sad world
like foam
on the water that
disappears here
to be reborn
over there.




Poem number two:

Adame naki
mi wa ukigumo ni
yosoetsutsu
hate wa sore ni zo
narihatenu beki.

This brief body,
often likened
to floating clouds,
in the end
must become that.


***


In summary, our bodies and the surrounding environment both share the attribute of pure existence. As such, difference between life and death is irrelevant from the perspective of existence, because it is indeed present in both. It is relevant for us as sentient beings, but not for us as aspects of reality. Reality has one body, the body of Mahavairocana Buddha, or Dainichi Nyorai, which is the embodiment of the emptiness. Perhaps it would be less complex to say that reality is emptiness and all things are part of it, whether dead or alive, organic or inorganic, matter-based or otherwise.

Thus, what is after death is what was before birth, and most importantly, what is right now. Reality exists in any case.

The distinction needs to be made between the Reality you mention, which is Ultimate Reality, as compared to our conditioned 'reality'.

Thank you for the poetry.

Here are a couple more, from Zen:


Breathing in, breathing out,
Moving forward, moving back,
Living, dying, coming, going –
Like two arrows meeting in flight,
In the midst of nothingness
Is the road that goes directly
to my true home.
- Gesshu Soko




Empty handed I entered the world.
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going-
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
- Kozan


More here, if you like:


The Magical Zen Death Poems | superaalifragilistic


Japanese Death Poems


Death Poems
 

Leftimies

Dwelling in the Principle
The distinction needs to be made between the Reality you mention, which is Ultimate Reality, as compared to our conditioned 'reality'.

Thank you for the poetry.

Here are a couple more, from Zen:


Breathing in, breathing out,
Moving forward, moving back,
Living, dying, coming, going –
Like two arrows meeting in flight,
In the midst of nothingness
Is the road that goes directly
to my true home.
- Gesshu Soko




Empty handed I entered the world.
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going-
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
- Kozan


More here, if you like:


The Magical Zen Death Poems | superaalifragilistic


Japanese Death Poems


Death Poems


I love Buddhist poetry, and death poetry in particular - both Japanese and Joseon Korean. And yes, I was referring to the reality beyond the chains of human perception; sometimes the term 'reality' comes to refer to the totality of meanings and systems of structural, emotional and social nature, which comprise human world.

I was indeed talking about ultimate reality: the existence as the infinite loop of arising and disintegrating possibilities, which is itself's own substance and sustenance. Possibilities which manifest throughout an uncounted number of universes, each corresponding to a set of possibilities, each arising and each disintegrating on an unending and unborn continuum.

And within these countless worlds of possibility, each occurrence is related through karmic bound of cause and consequence, forming a sort of abstract incarnation where living beings may become organic soil and once again from organic soil to living beings in cycle of life. Whether in state of death or life, both are equally real.

When I realised that all phenomena is Mahavairocana Buddha, always was Mahavairocana Buddha and will always be Mahavairocana Buddha, I think that was for me the significant "aha" event. Like the Brahma Net Sutra goes on to say:

Now, I, Vairocana Buddha am sitting atop a lotus pedestal; On a thousand flowers surrounding me are a thousand Sakyamuni Buddhas. Each flower supports a hundred million worlds; in each world a Sakyamuni Buddha appears. All are seated beneath a Bodhi-tree, all simultaneously attain Buddhahood. All these innumerable Buddhas have Vairocana as their original body.

I think this Sutra does beautiful job in poetic form describing how number of universes (sets of possibilities coming to pass) are innumerable and how in each of them Mahavairocana (emptiness body) is the basis of everything, even of the enlightened beings.

It kinda comes back to your original post on this thread: where the guy said that he doesn't exist in the first place. Kinda. All is emptiness, all is Mahavairocana. Death and Life are simply its modes.

Great poems by the way!
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
I

It kinda comes back to your original post on this thread: where the guy said that he doesn't exist in the first place. Kinda. All is emptiness, all is Mahavairocana. Death and Life are simply its modes.

I love the way Alan Watts puts it
: 'You are the Indestructible Sunyata itself'
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian

I love the way Alan Watts puts it
: 'You are the Indestructible Sunyata itself'

Not buying that.
As assembly....we can be disassembled.

So it is written....
Do not fear anyone who would harm the flesh....fear instead He who can rend the soul.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
Not buying that.
As assembly....we can be disassembled.

So it is written....
Do not fear anyone who would harm the flesh....fear instead He who can rend the soul.

You are not a mechanical man. Your form comes and goes, like a cloud, but cannot be assembled nor disassembled. Disassembly requreis a 'disassembler', but where is that but a notion in your mind?

Your true nature, however, does not come and go; is unborn, and therefore, deathless. Being empty, there is nothing that is created nor destroyed. That you think so is just your delusion.

Where is 'soul'? How can you encapsulate the non-physical within the physical? Maybe its the other way around.
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
You are not a mechanical man. Your form comes and goes, like a cloud, but cannot be assembled nor disassembled. Disassembly requreis a 'disassembler', but where is that but a notion in your mind?

Your true nature, however, does not come and go; is unborn, and therefore, deathless. Being empty, there is nothing that is created nor destroyed. That you think so is just your delusion.

Where is 'soul'? How can you encapsulate the non-physical within the physical? Maybe its the other way around.

You need to back to that graveyard and walk about a bit longer.

Then stop and consider that form you are walking in.

Then stop and consider.....you will stop.

Unless of course you can muster the belief that death cannot stop you.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
You need to back to that graveyard and walk about a bit longer.

Then stop and consider that form you are walking in.

Then stop and consider.....you will stop.

Unless of course you can muster the belief that death cannot stop you.

OK. Went back to graveyard. Looking all around, I see no one there who died. There's no one here who lives. It's all just a fiction. The only thing that ends with death is the fiction that you exist as a separate ego acting upon the world. You just dissolve back into the eternal nothingness that was before your fiction began, like a drop of water returning to the sea.

There is no one named 'Thief' who is terrorized by the grave; there is only terror itself.
 
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Thief

Rogue Theologian
OK. Went back to graveyard. Looking all around, I see no one there who died. There's no one here who lives. It's all just a fiction. The only thing that ends with death is the fiction that you exist as a separate ego acting upon the world. You just dissolve back into the eternal nothingness that was before your fiction began, like a drop of water returning to the sea.

There is no one named 'Thief' who is terrorized by the grave; there is only terror itself.

Dude!....really?

The boxes either contain a spirit as some religions believe....
and those spirits are awaiting resurrection.
Or...
The spirit of each one has already forsaken the flesh and moved on.

Either way.....you didn't see anything.
You don't know how to look at things!

Now if you want to speak of things of terror....
imagine someone dying, caught off guard, unprepared....
just because he couldn't see straight.
Into the box goes the body, the box into the grave.
Eternal darkness CAN be real.
Lay in your grave and rot??

Not me.....I'll be moving on.

Did you notice?....Job was blind-sided.
 

Leftimies

Dwelling in the Principle
Dude!....really?

The boxes either contain a spirit as some religions believe....
and those spirits are awaiting resurrection.
Or...
The spirit of each one has already forsaken the flesh and moved on.

Either way.....you didn't see anything.
You don't know how to look at things!

Now if you want to speak of things of terror....
imagine someone dying, caught off guard, unprepared....
just because he couldn't see straight.
Into the box goes the body, the box into the grave.
Eternal darkness CAN be real.
Lay in your grave and rot??

Not me.....I'll be moving on.

Did you notice?....Job was blind-sided.


There is soul, indeed, but it is temporary and not everlasting. It is compilation of our memories, identity, values, desires and fears. But it is bound to our body, carved onto our brain. Our body is like computer hardware, our soul is the software. When ever have you observed software working without hardware?
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
Dude!....really?

The boxes either contain a spirit as some religions believe....
and those spirits are awaiting resurrection.
Or...
The spirit of each one has already forsaken the flesh and moved on.

Either way.....you didn't see anything.
You don't know how to look at things!

So when you went to the cemetery, did you see spirits hanging around their corpses?

Now if you want to speak of things of terror....
imagine someone dying, caught off guard, unprepared....
just because he couldn't see straight.
Into the box goes the body, the box into the grave.
Eternal darkness CAN be real.
Lay in your grave and rot??

Not me.....I'll be moving on.
.

You're already caught in the trap, Thief! Don't you see that? The more you try to escape, the more entrapped you will become. Just accept death as a fact of life and then it won't continue to be such a nagging issue for you. Acceptance is freedom. Then you won't carry the fear of death into the actual experience of death itself, thereby contaminating the experience.

You don't know how death will come to you, so preparation may be futile, and even be the cause for complications. It's consciousness that animates your body. When dead, consciousness is no longer present, so what is there that experiences rotting and darkness?

Don't be like those men huddled in the darkness, shouting to lend comfort to one another. Stop your fussing around and turn on your light. Then there;s no death to fear.


'When I was born I had no head
My eye was single and my body was filled with light
And the light that I was, was the light that I saw by
And the light that I saw by, was the light that I was'
 

mahasn ebn sawresho

Well-Known Member
In Islam -
First - the torment of the grave







Secondly -
Visit hell ---









Muslims go to hell ---
Quranic verse says
And that you and the normal result was a judgment is res judicata Lord
Thirdly -
Stay in paradise and the pleasures of cheap sex -
Disengagement tackle Nymphs -
And the young men -
The God of Islam is his duty to provide 40 per nymph Muslim suicide bomber in paradise
 

atanu

Member
Premium Member
...

Don't be like those men huddled in the darkness, shouting to lend comfort to one another. Stop your fussing around and turn on your light. Then there;s no death to fear.


...

When the breath wants to go away from the body, demand for air by organs can be fearful, I think. Or may be it is just a thought??
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
There is soul, indeed, but it is temporary and not everlasting. It is compilation of our memories, identity, values, desires and fears. But it is bound to our body, carved onto our brain. Our body is like computer hardware, our soul is the software. When ever have you observed software working without hardware?

Your description of soul seems to be identical to that of the temporal self of the state of Identification, the Third Level of Conscious Awareness, called 'Waking Sleep'. Taoists use the metaphor of the Uncarved Block (of wood) for our original, unborn nature. Buddhists call this pure state of mind 'Original Mind'. The idea is that society puts its marks on the Uncarved Block, creating an identity, which, essentially, is fictional, but is taken as real and acted out, with deleterious effects, as the current misery that is the world is testimony to, while our original, pure natures have been put to sleep. When this fictional self is discovered, an epiphany occurs, and perhaps even an awakening onto the Fourth Level, that of Self-Transcendence, in which one sees clearly the drama of the self in the throes of life and death occurring on the Third Level.
 

atanu

Member
Premium Member
There is soul, indeed, but it is temporary and not everlasting. It is compilation of our memories, identity, values, desires and fears. But it is bound to our body, carved onto our brain. Our body is like computer hardware, our soul is the software. When ever have you observed software working without hardware?

That is wrong from any religious perspective. There is a subtle body and further there is a causal body. These two bodies are not physical.
 
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godnotgod

Thou art That
I was indeed talking about ultimate reality: the existence as the infinite loop of arising and disintegrating possibilities, which is itself's own substance and sustenance. Possibilities which manifest throughout an uncounted number of universes, each corresponding to a set of possibilities, each arising and each disintegrating on an unending and unborn continuum.

It kinda comes back to your original post on this thread: where the guy said that he doesn't exist in the first place. Kinda. All is emptiness, all is Mahavairocana. Death and Life are simply its modes.

I am glad you mentioned 'the unborn', which I had completely forgotten about, and which actually is the key to what Chopra is trying to communicate. If you were never born, who is it that dies?

Can you elaborate a bit more on this idea of the Unborn, from your perspective?

 

godnotgod

Thou art That
The God of Islam is his duty to provide 40 per nymph Muslim suicide bomber in paradise

Oooops! Miscount! Sorry! We've only got 38 at the moment. Will that do, sir? Seems one of the boys got greedy and snatched 42 for himself. Tsk tsk. Muslim boys will be Muslim boys, heh, heh, heh. All in good, jolly fun, you know! Cheers!:D

(BTW, what is it about Muslims and virgins anyway? Are you afraid that the woman you will be with is somehow contaminated (ie; 'used property) by her previous lover? This gets into some very complicated and weird deviant psychological stuff. It is what is known in sociology as 'mores'; very powerful unwritten codes of behaviour over which men have justified killing one another. For example, there is a song written about a true story in Mexico called 'El Preso Numero Nueve', (Prisoner Number Nine), in which a man is caught in bed with his best friend's wife. The husband is compelled by the social mores to kill them both, or suffer dishonor amongst the townspeople. During his trial, when asked if he regretted his action, he said he would do it all over again if faced with the same situation.)
 
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atanu

Member
Premium Member
There's no one here. There is only the process of addressing Thief, without an 'address-er'.

This is as intellectual as it can get. :D A name has a corresponding reality, howsoever transient that may be.

Why is there any need to argue, filling page after page?
 
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