The Baha"i and Buddhist's point of view.
There's a beginning and an end to everything. That is what we, as human beings, have come to know it as the cycle of life. Whether we live to be seventy, eighty or ninety, dying is a natural part of life that is inevitable. But what happens once we close our eyes for the last time? That question has perplexed so many of us, for thousands of years. "What happens after death?" We don't know for certain, however, exploring the topic, gives us a better perspective regarding life after death. Depending on the cultural and religious background of an individual, the topic of afterlife can be an interesting one to discover, since not all religions have the same belief systems. This research paper will be focusing on the Buddhist and Baha"i faiths. Division of this research will be done as follows: a brief look at the religious background, in order to better understand their approach to an afterlife; what happens after we die and the quality of the afterlife. .
Buddhism.
Religious Background.
Examining the Buddhist faith will give us a better comprehension to what their approach is to an afterlife. Buddhism dates back as far as the year 563 B.C. at Lumbini on India's border with Nepal, with the birth of Siddhartha Gautama, who was later known as the "Buddha" or "enlightened one". Authentic Buddhism is a form of atheism, which is derived from Hinduism with the belief in karma and the cycle of rebirth, but with a significant alteration. This alteration did not accept the idea of an atman or soul, which would, after death, be reunited with God. "They believed that good deeds bring a good rebirth and bad deeds the opposite". (p.209) Instead of believing in "life after death", Buddhist believe in "life after life". Samu Su Nim, who is a Zen Buddhist master and spiritual head of a Zen Buddhist temple in Toronto, proclaims: "We prefer to speak of life after life, or of the emergence of a new birth rather than of death itself".
