by ThomasCovenant 17 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
On a short-term basis, we're all going to be "reincarnated" as nutrients that will go on to become a part of other living beings and will maybe shuffle their way up the food chain until being ingested by a human and joining the human race again. Maybe even a woman about to conceive, in which case that new person would experience a whole new life with a part of us inside them.
So we're going to be shit?
Gregor wrote: "So we're going to be shit?"
Roses grow from shit. It's the cycle of life, the Tao, whatever you want to call it. There can be no good without bad. Two side of the same coin.
A case handed down by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals holds that atheism is entitled to the same treatment that traditional religions receive under the Constitution.
Kaufman v. McCaughtry (2005)
Many religious traditions allow for different interpretations, depending (among other things) on the degree of "education" (in the most comprehensive sense) of people.
What is understood as a positive doctrine of "reward/punishment" on a popular, "outward" level, may be understood in a(n almost) purely negative way from a more "esoterical" or "philosophical" perspective. The Buddhist notion of nirvâna is a good example I suppose. No matter how they try, some will understand it as a sort of "afterlife," while others will come closer to accepting it as total "extinction". Perhaps the ambiguity is vital, as our perspective on self, life and death changes a lot with time and experiences.
In the ancient Jewish tradition Sadduceism was about as devoid of any notion of "afterlife/reward" as one can get (cf. Ecclesiastes). But it was an aristocratic school: it could never become popular -- it wasn't even meant to.
Perhaps the difference is not that important after all. "Death," "extinction," "nothing" are no less images and representations in a living mind than "heaven," "resurrection" or "reincarnation". The point is that while we are alive and conscious, we all (religious or not) have to relate to an idea of life after us, just as we relate to an idea of life before us, through cultural, symbolical and imaginary mediations. At some stages we construe this relationship as "realistic" beliefs, at others as poetical metaphors. And our tastes change too, from the sweet to the bitter, and sometimes back to the sweet.
One interesting thought ascribed to Cardinal de Retz might translate as: "Whoever forsakes ambiguity does so at his own expense."
In Myths To Live By, the great scholar of comparative religions, Joseph Campbell, writes: "...there has dawned [in the human brain] a realization unknown to the other primates. tt is that of the individual, conscious of himself as such, and aware that he, and all that he cares for, will one day die. This recognition of mortality - and the requirement to transcend it - is the first great impulse to mythology."
As far as I can detemine, for Campbell, the two terms - mythology and religion - are synonomous. So, to say that the recognition of mortality is the first great impulse to mythology is tantamount to saying that it is the first great impulse to, and basis for, religion. According to Campbell, the inevitability of death - and the desire/psychological imperative to transcend it - is the first great impulse toward mythology (religion). If one accepts this thesis, I believe that one would be hard-pressed to find a religion/mythology that did not have some conception of an after-life.
According to Campbell, there runs a second realization which provides an impulse toward mythology - namely the recognition on the part of an individual of the endurance of the social order into which he/she is born. That is to say that every person comes to the realization that the social group into which he/she has been born "was flourishing long before his/her own birth and will remain when he/she is gone."
In other words, every person must face the ultimate reality of death, he/she also confronts the necessity of adapting him/herself to whatever order of life may happen to be that of the community into which he/she has been born. Each person has a dual awareness - an awareness of him/herself as an organism, and an awareness of his/her community as a superorganism, a superorganism into which a person must allow him/herself to be absorbed, and through participation in which he/she will come to know the life that transcends death.
And finally, for Campbell, there is yet a third great impulse to mythology, "the, spectacle, namely, of the universe, the natural world in which [a person] finds himself, and the enigma of its relation to his own existence: its mgnitude, its changing forms, and yet, through these, an appearance of regularity."
I view Being itself as absolutely the greatest enigma of all. I am stupified and utterly confounded whenever I contemplate it. I am a finite being who opens onto infinity. I am an ephemeral being who opens onto eternity. I am a relative being who opens onto the absolute. Not only I am baffled be the idea of infinity, I am also baffled when I contemplate my own finitude. I am baffled both by the idea of eternity and the idea of my own ephemeralness. I am confounded and perplexed when I try to reconcile my relative existence with the idea of the absolute.
'He who wishes to save his life, will lose it'
So I guess we're all screwed, believers or not.
As a Zen Buddhist, I don't have a belief in the afterlife or reward. Some Buddhist sects do, but as an individual you create a path that works for you and as a Zen Buddhist, it is not necessary to believe in this.
For Unitarian Universalists, there is no official teaching with regard to what happens after the body dies. Members are encouraged to learn about many different views, and to believe whatever is the most meaningful to themselves. There was a song played recently in the local congregation in which the verses were about the different things people believe, while the chorus basically said "since we can't be sure, I'll just let the mystery be".
To UU's, the important thing is NOT what happens after a person dies, but what a person does while this life lasts, not only achieving good things for themselves, but actions taken to make the world better for everyone.
