I Die Daily

There is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist saying: “When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. When you die, you rejoice, and the world cries”.

What is death, exactly, and what does it mean to us as we are living? Throughout the world, death and the rituals that surround it are steeped in taboos. Death is celebrated, embraced and feared. Around death and the dead, cultures put in place diverse restrictions and practices associated with clothing, food and ritual.

For the Roman Catholic Church death is the “complete and final separation of the soul from the body”. However the Vatican has conceded that diagnosing death is a subject for medicine, not the Church. In 1957 Pope Pius XII raised the concerns over whether doctors might be “continuing the resuscitation process, despite the fact that the soul may already have left the body.”

Some Orthodox Jews, Native Americans, Muslims and fundamentalist Christians believe that as long as a heart is beating–even artificially, you are still alive. Followers of religions like Zen Buddhism, and Shintoism believe that the mind and body are integrated and have trouble accepting the brain death criteria to determine death.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, whose actual title is “The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State” or “Bardo Thodol”, is ostensibly a book describing the experiences to be expected at the moment of death, during an intermediate phase lasting forty-nine days, and during rebirth into another bodily frame. The Bardo Thodol is a guide that is read aloud to the dead while they are in the state between death and reincarnation in order for them to recognize the nature of their mind and attain liberation from the cycle of rebirth.

Some think, however, this book is merely the esoteric framework which the Tibetan Buddhists used to cloak their mystical teachings. The language and symbolism of death rituals of Bonism, the traditional pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion, were skillfully blended with Buddhist conceptions. The esoteric meaning is that it is death and rebirth of the ego that is described, not of the body. Either way, or perhaps for both, the death/rebirth process is examine.

A graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School, Brian L. Weiss M.D. is Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. He has written many books on reincarnation, and maintains that we have all lived past lives. All of us will live future ones but at some level time probably does not exist. All lives might be occurring simultaneously. He thinks that what we do in this life will influence our lives to come as we evolve toward immortality. This would make death more of a marker between lives.

What do YOU think?

June 22, 2008 |

Comments

2 Comments so far

sjoukes, Women June 22, 2008 11:06 am
I’m sorry to be a disappointment ..but I think that you are born and then you die..and that’s it..
nature is a wonderful thing and we are a part of it..ashes to ashes and dust to dust. but as I’ve said before ..each to his own..
Bad Momma, Moms June 23, 2008 7:14 am
“When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. When you die, you rejoice, and the world cries”.
Love that quote.

My father & I had great chats before he died. He used to stress that ” It’s not about the QUANTITY of life but the QUALITY of life that is important. Both he and my mom suffered from cancer and were ready to die when they left this world. While I miss them, I know that they are in a better place.