Cycle of Life to Death. 2

Post 1 -> It is the impermanence of the object of craving that causes disappointment and sorrow. The Buddha departed from the main lines of traditional Indian thought in not asserting an essential or ultimate reality in things. Moreover, contrary to the theories of the Upanishads, the Buddha did not want to assume the existence of the soul as a metaphysical substance, but he admitted the existence of the self as the subject of action in a practical and moral sense. Life is a stream of becoming, a series of manifestations and extinctions. The conceptof the individual ego is a popular delusion; the objectswith which people identify themselves--fortune, social position, family, body, and even mind--are not their true selves. There is nothing permanent, and, if only the permanent deserved to be called the self, or atman, then nothing is self. There can be no individuality without a puttingtogether of components. Thisis becoming different, and there can be no way of becoming different without a dissolution, a passing away. To make clear the concept ofno-self (anatman), Buddhistsset forth the theory of the five aggregates or constituents of human existence: (1) corporeality orphysical forms (rupa), (2) feelings or sensations (vedana), (3) ideations (sañña), (4) mental formations or dispositions (sankhara), and (5) consciousness (viññana). Human existence is only a composite of the five aggregates, none of which isthe self or soul. A person is in a process of continuous change, with no fixed underlying entity. Islamic View. Questions concerning the meaning of life and the nature of the soul are dealt with patchily in both the Qur'an and the Hadith. The Qur'an records that, when asked about these matters by local leaders of the Jewish faith, the Prophet answered that "the spirit cometh by command of God" and that "only a little knowledge was communicatedto man" (17:85). Humanity was created from "potter's clay, from mud molded into shape" into which Allah has"breathed his spirit" A vital spirit or soul is withineach human being. It is associated, if not actually identified, with individuality and also with the seat of rational consciousness. Death is repeatedly compared with sleep, which is at times described as "thelittle death." God takes away people's souls "during their sleep" and "upon their death." He "retains those against whom he has decreed death, but returns the others to their bodies for an appointed term" (39:42-43). During death, thesoul "rises into the throat" (56:83) before leaving the body. These are interesting passages in the light of modern medical knowledge. The study of sleep has identified the episodic occurrence of short periods during which the limbs are totally flaccid and without reflexes, as would be the limbs of the recently dead. Modern neurophysiology, moreover, stresses the roleof structures in the upper part of the brain stem in the maintenance of the waking state. Lesions just a little higher cause excessively long episodes of sleep. Irreversible damage at thesesites is part of the modern concept of death. Finally, various types of breathing disturbance are characteristic of brain-stem lesions and could have beenattributed, in former times, to occurrences in the throat. Nothing in these passages outrages the insights of modern neurology. The absence of any cardiological dimension is striking. Jainism. Jainism made paramount the mendicant life of meditation and spiritual exercises dependent upon the fulfillment of vows of poverty. The functions of the priesthood were sublimated in a process of self-salvation, centered around the purpose of the deliverance of a suffering humanity from the cycles of rebirth. An ultimate distinction between "living substance" or jiva and a-jiva, the doctrine of anek-antavaha, or non-absolutism, the doctrine of naya, the thesis that there are many partial perspectives from which reality can be determined, none of which is, taken by itself, wholly true, but each of which is partially so, and the doctrine of karma, a substance, rather than a process, that links all phenomena in a chain of cause and effect. As a consequence of their metaphysical liberalism, it developed a unique theory of seven-valued logic, according to which the three primary truth values are"true," "false," and"indefinite," and the other four values are "true and false," "true and indefinite,""false and indefinite," and"true, false, and indefinite." Christianity. Death is at the very core of the Christian religion. Not only is the cross to be foundin cemeteries and places of worship alike, but the premise of the religion is that, by their own action, humans have forfeited immortality. Through abuse of the freedom granted in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve not only sinned andfell from grace, but they alsotransmitted sin to their descendants: the sins of the fathers are visited on the children. -RNK -> 3