Cycle of Life to Death. 1

Different Religions have defined cycle of life and death differently. Communist View. Life and death are but one ofthe pairs of cyclical phases, such as day and night or summer and winter. Life and death are each other's companion. Life and death are not in opposition but merely two aspects of the same reality, arrested moments out of the flux of the universal mutations of everything into everything. Man is no exception; "he goes back into the great weaving machine: thus all beings issue from the Loom and return to the Loom." Death is natural, and men ought neither to fear nor to desire it. Biological View: "To live is to function" and"that is all there is in living." But who or what is the subject who lives because it functions? Is death the irreversible loss of function of the whole organism that is, of every one of its component parts? Or is it the irreversible loss of function of the organism as a whole; that is, as a meaningful and independent biological unit? To perceive the difference between these questions is to understand many modern controversies about death. The described dichotomy is clearly part of a much wider one.Civilizations fall apart yet their component societieslive on; societies disintegrate but their citizens survive; individuals die while their cells, perversely, still metabolize; finally, cells can be disruptedyet the enzymes they release may, for a while, remain active. Such problems would not arise if nature were tidier. Innearly all circumstances human death is a process rather than an event. A quiet, classical death provides perhaps the best illustration of death as a process. Several minutes after the heart has stopped beating, amini-electrocardiogram may be recorded, if one probes for signals from within the cardiac cavity. Three hours later, the pupilsstill respond to Pilocarpine drops by contracting, and muscles repeatedly tapped may still mechanically shorten. A viable skin graft may be obtained from the deceased 24 hours after the heart hasstopped, a viable bone graft48 hours later, and a viable arterial graft as late as 72 hours after the onset of irreversible cardiac stoppage. Cells clearly differ widely in their ability to withstand the deprivation of oxygen supply that follows arrest of the circulation. Similar problems arise, but on a vastly larger scale, when the brain is dead but the heart are kept going artificially. Under such circumstances, it can be argued, the organism as a whole may be deemed dead, although the majority of its cells are still alive. Indian View: Darkness was there: at first concealed in darkness. As in Rig Veda "Song of Creation." "Death was not there," "nor was there aught immortal." The world was a total void, except for "one thing, breathless, yet breathed by its own nature." This is the first recorded insight into the importance ofrespiration to potential life. This ingredient of inhaling air for existence is the source of life without which death is imminent This hint of inhaling air for existence got developed andended in a regular science how to moderate, cultivate and regularize the breath by wayof pranayam. The Upanishad record the quest for a coordinating principle that might underlie such diverse functions of the individual as speech, hearing, and intellect. An essential attribute of the living was their ability to breathe. Their prana"breath" is so vital that on its cessation the body and its faculties is lifeless and still. The concept of the soul is central to an understanding of most practices related to death. Just as we rid off the clothes when they are torn and used up, so is our body and the soul leaves it to enter into a new one. It is immortal and so the cycle of life goes on. Human Soul is that cosmic particle in the body that survives after death and it transmigrates to a new life or is released from the bonds of existence. While in the early Vedic texts it occurred mostly as a reflexive pronoun oneself, in the later Upanishads it came more and more to the fore as a philosophic topic. Itmade other organs and faculties function and for which indeed they function and it underlies all the activities of a person, as Brahman the absolute underlies the workings of the Universe. Of the various systems darshans, the Samkhya Yoga and the orthodox school of Vedanta particularly concerned themselves with the emancipation of the Soul, though the interpretation varied in accordance with each system's general worldviews. Buddhism. Buddha based his entire teaching on the fact of human suffering. Existence is painful. The conditions that make an individual are precisely those that also give rise to suffering. Individuality implies limitation;limitation gives rise to desire; and, inevitably, desire causes suffering, since what is desired is transitory, changing, and perishing. -RNK -> 2