The average human lifespan compared to the age of the universe is the same as comparing a blink of an eye to that human lifespan. Relatively speaking, short and long lifespans are the same. Both are non-existent compared to the infinite that’s ahead. Furthermore, we cannot change the past, and have no guarantees for the future. We are only in charge of the present. The present is nothing—and it is everything.
John K. BrownTags: life paradox afterlife cosmology metaphysics spirtuality
It would be especially comforting to believe that I have the answer to the question, What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that’s that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness, persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my laptop?
Mary Roach...the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.
Socrates trans. G.M.A. GrubeTags: philosophy afterlife
True spiritual love is not a feeble imitation and anticipation of death, but a triumph over death, not a separation of the immortal form from the mortal, of the eternal from the temporal, but a transfiguration of the mortal into the immortal, the acceptance of the temporal into the eternal. False spirituality is a denial of the flesh; true spirituality is the regeneration of the flesh, its salvation, its resurrection from the dead.
Vladimir Sergeyevich SolovyovTags: death afterlife spirituality immortality resurrection transfiguration spiritual-love death-and-love
All three explanations—eternal life, reincarnation, and nothingness—are descriptions of the same reality.
John K. BrownTags: afterlife spirituality metaphysics reincarnation nothingness
As for karma itself, it is apparently only that which binds "jiva" (sentience, life, spirit, etc.) with "ajiva" (the lifeless, material aspect of this world) - perhaps not unlike that which science seeks to bind energy with mass (if I understand either concept correctly). But it is only through asceticism that one might shed his predestined karmic allotment.
I suppose this is what I still don't quite understand in any of these shramanic philosophies, though - their end-game. Their "moksha", or "mukti", or "samsara". This oneness/emptiness, liberation/ transcendence of karma/ajiva, of rebirth and ego - of "the self", of life, of everything. How exactly would this state differ from any standard, scientific definition of death? Plain old death. Or, at most, if any experience remains, from what might be more commonly imagined/feared to be death - some dark perpetual existence of paralyzed, semi-conscious nothingness. An incessant dreamless sleep from which one never wakes? They all assure you, of course, that this will be no condition of endless torment, but rather one of "eternal bliss". Inexplicable, incommunicable "bliss", mind you, but "bliss" nonetheless.
So many in the realm of science, too, seem to propagate a notion of "bliss" - only here, in this world, with the universe being some great amusement park of non-stop "wonder" and "discovery". Any truly scientific, unbiased examination of their "discoveries", though, only ever seems to reveal a world that simply just "is" - where "wonder" is merely a euphemism for ignorance, and learning is its own reward because, frankly, nothing else ever could be.
Still, the scientist seeks to conquer this ignorance, even though his very happiness depends on it - offering only some pale vision of eternal dumbfoundedness, and endless hollow surprises. The shramana, on the other hand, offers total knowledge of this hollowness, all at once - renouncing any form of happiness or pleasure, here, to seek some other ultimate, unknowable "bliss", off in the beyond...
Tags: science life death religion faith afterlife physics transcendence nirvana science-vs-religion contradiction karma scientism asceticism moksha samsara higgs-boson ajiva jiva mukti shramanism
There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone ... Mind cannot arise alone without body, or apart from sinews and blood ... You must admit, therefore, that when then body has perished, there is an end also of the spirit diffused through it. It is surely crazy to couple a mortal object with an eternal...
LucretiusTags: eternity mind life-after-death afterlife hell crazy materialism immortality matter dualism
Oh, how crafty of religion, I cried out indignantly, to transplant rewards and punishments into a future life in order to comfort cowards and the enslaved and aggrieved, enabling them to bow their necks patiently before their masters, and to endure this earthly life without groaning (the only life of which we can be sure)!
Nikos KazantzakisTags: afterlife
The only satisfactory thing about death is that our knowledge about it is unsatisfactory.
Raheel FarooqTags: knowledge death afterlife
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