Whats the afterlife like?

neither was i...

This was not an important question during the Buddha's lifetime. His teaching was primarily concerned with suffering, and the ways to mitigate suffering. When questioned about what happens after death, the Buddha generally shrugged off the question as irrelevant. Each of us has to live this life, moment by moment. During the Buddha's lifetime, virtually all Buddhists were monks ... each of whom sought to duplicate the Buddha's Awakening experience. With that experience one comes to understand that Death is just as illusory as life in the Preceptual World.

A few hundred years after the Great Decease, Mahayana Buddhism began to adopt a series of doctrines compatible with the Buddha's direct teachings, but aimed more at laymen. The strictures for laymen were relaxed, so that they could continue living in the World, doing business, and raising families. The merit earned by Bodhisatvas could be shared with laymen to supplement their own efforts to mitigate suffering in the Perceptual World. The number of Buddhists exploded, and Buddhism began to expand beyond India. Buddhism, like Christianity, incorporated local superstitions, myths, and practices of the indigenous people into Buddhism. This is the period when Buddhism first began to deal with death as a process.

For many Mahayana laymen and even priests death is a comma, not a period. If the dead have lived a meritorious life, at the moment of their death they may merge into Ultimate Reality and in extinction become again all. If the dead still retains attachment to "Self" and the Perceptual World, they might inhabit any number of Hells or Heavens on a temporary basis. The dead are no longer individuals, but their attachments to the Perceptual World results in a new incarnation further perpetuating the Illusion of multiplicity; time and space. What survives from death to birth isn't a person, or a personality, much less a "soul", it is instead the residual causation that keeps the illusary world alive. Laymen who feel that they have little chance of stepping of the wheel of existence can look forward to some sort of temporary "heaven". The nature of death in Buddhism isn't an easy concept, and we are constantly running into folks who misunderstand it. Shucks, I've studied Buddhism for many, many years and I'm still not comfortable with Mahayana concepts regarding death and dying. When pushed to it, I far prefer the simpler and older teachings found in the Theravadan Canon.

When you put it that way, Buddhism seems more like a philosophy than a religion. That is, the one taught by Buddha.

Coolwhip,

You are not the first to make that observation, and there is some truth in it. However, in the end Buddhism is a religion that is strongly tinged with philosophy. Buddhism has great appeal to intellectuals, yet it cautions against elaborate intellectualizing and seeking to build intellectual structures that perpetuate categorization and dualistic thought.

In my thousands of posts, you will notice that I very, very rarely talk about what happens after death. It truly is irrelevant to the central doctrines of Buddhism.

I understand. I was making the point that when something doesn't exist (or it does, and we have know way of knowing it) then those who believe in it have equal ability of guessing about it's nature as those who don't.

I think the afterlife involves a beach... and naked cabana boys... rubbing my feet and feeding me grapes....

Oh... and lots of ice cream.

This guy dies . . . there's a brief instant when he realizes he is fading out, and then . . . nothing . . .

***************************

After a while, he is conscious of reclining on a comfortable sofa, and lies there as near to thoughtless as anyone can be, and finally recalls that he had thought he was dying. He sits up and looks around himself wildly. He sees that he is a tastefully furnished room, and there is a gentleman in an impeccably tailored suit of a startling bright red sitting in an overstuffed chair smiling at him.

"Hello . . . feeling more like yourself now?"

"Uh . . . yeah . . . I guess . . . who are you?"

"That's not important, you can call me Joe if you like--I'm here to show you around."

"Is this Heaven?"

"Well . . . no . . . they're an awfully exclusionary bunch."

"So I'm in Hell ? ! ? ! ?"

"Well, i suppose you could say that, but it's misleading. Say, let's get going, i want to show you your condo."

"My condo?"

But before he can get an answer, the man in the red suit whisks him out of the room and into a street in what appears to be a large city, with a warm climate, but surprisingly clean and quiet. The few people they see smile and nod their heads. The guide ushers him into a Lamborghini convertible, saying:

"This is yours by the way, but i though it might be better if i drive, you know, until you get used to your new situation."

"This car is mine?" He sees a thin thread of smoke on the horizon, but ignores it.

"Yeah, now pay attention, you want to be sure you can find your condo again."

They come to a walled and gated "community," and the guide drives him to a spacious condo in a small condo complex surrounding an Olympic-size swimming pool. He hands the man a set of keys, to the car and the condo, and they go inside. The condo is spacious and beautifully decorated and furnished, and in the master bedroom is a walk-in closet filled with expensive and comfortable clothing.

"OK, OK, what's the catch? What's going on here?"

"There's no catch, you've just been mislead all your life about the afterlife."

Then he notices the thread of smoke on the horizon again, only now he realizes that it is further away than he thought, and therefore must be bigger than he had thought.

"What's that smoke in the distance?"

"Oh, don't pay any attention to that. Come on, i want to show you the country club and the golf course. We can walk from here."

So off they go to the country club. It is just beautiful, with tennis courts in addition to the 18-hole course, which is a masterpiece of course design and landscaping. The guy notices that the column of smoke looks closer, and also ominously larger--it appears to reach hundreds of feet into the air. He asks about it again.

"Oh that, that's not important. Let me show you the beach club."

So they walk down a hill by the golf course, and follow a beautiful white path of pea gravel and crushed sea shells, and come out on gorgeous beach by a beautiful topaz sea, with waves steadily rushing in. The guy notices that the beach has several bathers, but is not crowded--and many are really very lovely young women. Then he notices the column of smoke again, which looks closer and more ominous. Again he asks about it.

"I don't know why you're so fixated on that, it's really not important. Come on, i want to show you where you can rent the jet skis and the parasails."

At this point, he notices a cafe racer with the key in it in the parking lot by the beach, and he runs up, hops on and turns it over, and goes roaring off up the road to the top of the ridge behind the beach. From here, he can see that the column of smoke comes from a huge but low lying volcano, and that there is a line of people snaking around the cone of the volcano, it must run for miles, and as each person reaches the summit, a demon is poking them with a pitchfork so that they jump into the blazing caldera. By this time, his guide has caught up to him on a bicycle, although he's almost out of breath . . .

"I knew it, I knew it . . . this is Hell, and you were just trying to sucker me with the condo and all the amenities--you just wanted to lull me into a false sense of security to make the horror of the end all the greater."

"No . . . really . . . the condo . . . the clubs . . . it's all real . . . and it's all yours . . . if you . . . want it."

"Oh yeah, well explain that to me." He flings out his arm to indicate the volcano.

"Oh, like i said . . . don't pay any attention to that . . . that's for the Baptists . . . they wouldn't have it any other way."

Hehe, thats hilarious! Just off the top of your head? Good stuff...

Whenever I'm asked what I think of The After Life, I cannot resist asking my interrogator what he thinks of The Before Birth.

The afterlife is Man's hope for something beyond what he believes is a pitiful existence (like the Bible).

My belief? People should "live life to the fullest" and be greatful for the life they have, because what else is there? Nothing.

I like that. And to me my life IS Eternal. It's all there is for me; it's MY eternity. I don't want to waste it preparing for a NON-existent after-life.

There's this book called The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold about this young girl who was murdered. She describes "Heaven" not as a place of glory and boundless beauty, but a place where her simplest pleasures were granted. Since she was a school-age child in her early teens, she went to school is Heaven, except instead of reading from textbooks she would read magazines instead.

I like that too. If there is a heaven it is our everyday life.

Heaven must be invented for those whose means of sustenance is the consumption and sale of leftover lizard **** scraped from a rock.

How wonderful: two new A2Kers ("newbies") with their feet on the ground. A hearty welcome to the two of you, mcho2k and itismesaj.

mcho2k, if everyday life has "heavenly" qualities it is because of our ability to appreciate it on its own terms, not with respect to ideals; the ideals ruin it. Consider--if you have the time and inclination--Nietzsche's notion of the psychological value of the principles of "amor fati" and "The Eternal Recurrence".

Might also be because we were created to live on earth.

I agree. If one could appreciate all the blessings one receives here within the living, why it would be Heaven on Earth! I consider myself not religious, but spiritual would be a better term. I'm not too sure about the afterlife, but this is how I feel: I cannot worry myself too much on the afterlife, if there is so one. My duty is to live life at face value, enjoy and appreciate it. Live life with integrity and with best intentions, and if there is a God, whether it be Jesus Christ or Allah, I believe the Creator will see I've lived a wholesome life and judge me by those standards. BTW- Thanks for the welcome JL, it's always apprciated! The next chance I get I will look into those works. I find myself growing an appetite for knowledge and am eager to absorb as much information as my little head can hold.