I often wonder, how would we live our lives if we knew death was not the end?
Would we live differently? How so? And why?
I was recently in New York. I came across an exhibit called Death Is Not The End at the Rubin museum.
This is the description of the exhibit:
Death Is Not the End is a cross-cultural exhibition that explores notions of death and afterlife through the art of Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity. During a time of great global turmoil, loss, and uncertainty, the exhibition invites contemplation of the universal human condition of impermanence and the desire to continue to exist
Interesting, I thought.
I walk through the dimmed gallery, the air conditioning cooling the sweat on my skin. I felt instant relief from the unrelenting humidity outside.
I stop face to face with a beautiful 15th century Christian painting. I peer into a different time, a different reality.
Jesus gazes back at me with a solemn stare. He is sitting atop a throne, light emanating out from him in every direction. Surrounding him is a circle of joyous looking angels and saints. On the periphery of this circle are people (souls?) who are basking in the radiance and proximity of Jesus.
Further away however, are signs that not all is well. Some souls look frightened, fearful, uneasy. Some look confused, bewildered. Others are engaged in combat with what appear to be demons – snarling sinister looking beings. Farther below there are people being tortured, skewered, and burned alive. These souls look like cornered animals, as they look up pleadingly, with terror and confusion. Fires burn, skulls litter the ground, and there are holes in the earth that appear to be portals that lead down to God knows where.
I take a breath, and a sideways step – hanging beside this painting is another; a Tangka from 13th century Tibet.
This Tibetan Buddhist painting shows a similar radiant being, the Buddha, at the center with rays like the sun shining in every direction. One hand turned upright in a mudra of compassion he has a radiating aura, almond eyes, and a slightly upturned smile.
Surrounding the Buddha are the 6 realms, those different spheres that souls go to based on their karma – that is, according to the kind of life they lived. There is the god realm (known as the heavenly realm), the demi-god realm, the human realm, the animal realm, the hungry ghost realm, and the Hell realm. The overall idea is that based on one’s actions and behaviors people are reborn into one of these realms, and experience the natural causal results of their positive or negative karma.
While most beings strive to attain to the heavenly realms, it is in fact the human realm which his considered most lucky to be reborn into, as it is only in the human realm that one can become enlightened.
And make no mistake – these Buddhists believe in equally dark hell realms.
These bardo hells are similarly littered with skeletons, flames and blackened beings scrambling to find a way out. They can be seen wailing and howling, apparently unable to escape the furnace of suffering in which they find themselves. Again the torture, again the worst imaginable and perverse forms of misery.
I am struck by how similar these are to the Christian paintings of the Last Judgement. I do a mental checklist: grotesque skulls, check. Flames and smoke across a barren landscape. Check. Monstrous demonic beings who seem to be enjoying their work of torturing humans. Check.
The beings up above in the higher realms are seen reclining by pools of water, floating on clouds and meditating on the cosmic principles of the Dharma. They hardly seem to be aware of what’s happening down below them.
That looks a lot better, I think to myself as I remember the hot summer heat just outside the glass museum doors.
As I walk I start thinking. I do a mental inventory of the various religious traditions around the globe that I have read about and studied. Why is it that nearly every single one, from Buddhism and Taoism to Christianity and Judaism, as well as many of the indigenous and shamanic cultures around the world, have these incredibly detailed and vivid descriptions of the afterlife?
The phrase Momento Mori pops into my head. It is the Latin phrase which means, Remember Death. The Christian tradition emphasized a meditation on death, believing it would help people remember the transient and fickle nature of the human condition and therefore help people to focus their thoughts on the more important health of the soul. The Hindus and Buddhists did the same – I remember seeing the sadhus and holy men meditating by the Ganges and watching the human bodies burn in the crematory grounds.
Eyes unblinking, bodies covered in ash.
Remember death, the ancients admonished us.
Why? Us moderns might ask.
Because, they echo in chorus back to us through the ages, to forget the soul is a dangerous thing. Because to focus solely on satisfying the temporary and transient human ego leads to more suffering. And eventually, at some point, for everyone, we have suffered enough and want to learn the secret to salvation and peace. And it turns out, they tell us, those secrets are connected to the invisible realm of the soul, and to the heart.
Back to the exhibit. It turns out there are quite a few similarities between the ways that Tibetan Buddhists and Christians relate to death and the afterlife. I won’t go into all of them here but it’s worth noting a few, just for fun.
1) Life continues after death!
Both traditions have vast, sophisticated and yet very different cosmologies of the world and the afterlife. Yet despite the myriad differences, both religions have categories for those that are deemed to have lived well in their human life, and for those that have not. There are very similar descriptions of heaven and the bliss that is to come if you have attained to the highest realm of kindness, generosity and ethical living.
Likewise the hell in both traditions are quite similar, as evidenced by the paintings. Burning apocalyptic flatlands, all types of perverse and disturbingly vivid forms of torture and suffering. Both traditions however articulate that it is actually one’s isolation and separation from God/Dharma that is the most painful element of such punishment.
At their core, both religions teach that there is an essence (whether one calls it the Soul, the Atman, or theSelf/non-Self) which lives on after death. Consciousness does not end with the cessation of the human body. It continues, and more than that it continues on in fascinating, complex and indescribable realms after leaving earth. On that both Tibetan Buddhists and Christians agree.
2) Ethics and Morals
The artistic portrayal of these graphic and disturbing afterlife scenes, as well as the religious teachings of both religions themselves, is meant to urge mortals towards moral and ethical living, towards kindness and tolerance, as well as various forms of generosity. They are emphatic in their teaching that living to serve one’s own ego and well being at the expense of others is the single fastest way to hell, while serving others and helping others above thought for oneself is the most effective path towards heaven.
Jesus taught turning one’s cheek to violence, attending to the blind and homeless, and above all preaching a message of love. Buddha likewise taught about right action and right perspective that was rooted firmly in a cosmology of inter-dependence and therefore compassion and love.
There is moral accountability for both traditions. Christians will be judged by God in the Last Judgement, Tibetan Buddhists teach about karma, which posits that one’s experience in the Bardo (afterlife) as well as their reincarnation is based on ones’ actions in this life.
3) Salvation and Liberation
Both religions have an ultimate goal. Both are incredibly similar – yet they use different terminology and language. It is worth a moment to unpack it.
In the Christian tradition the person who commits their life to Jesus Christ and lives a holy life can expect to pass the Last Judgment with flying colors and ascend to the right hand seat/throne of God. What does this mean – well we don’t exactly know, but the fact of the matter is that the accounts of Near-Death Experiences can fill it in. We can assume it means a life of bliss and peace and ever-new joy that stems not just from the fantastical astral realm of heaven, but primarily from the intimacy and proximity to God. It is to live in deep attunement to the Divine Source and all goodness and bliss radiates from the intimacy and proximity of this relationship to God.
In the Buddhist, and in particular the Tibetan Buddhist, traditions one attains a similar state of unity and proximity to the Divine Source – often called Nirvana or the Pure Land. In this liberated state one has shed the human ego and its narcissistic grandiosity and instead merged into a liberated state of union with the inter-connected unity of the Dharma. Nirvana in essence is a state of ever-new joy and peace that comes from a union with the Source of All That Is. There is a lack of any individual self that causes the pain or suffering of separation, and when aligned with the source of the Dharma there is nothing but bliss, joy, and peace.
Whether one calls it Liberation or Salvation, and whether it is through Jesus and his teachings of love or Buddha and his sophisticated states of the 8 fold path, we have an opportunity to transcend the narrow world of suffering in the human realm.
4) Importance of spiritual practice
There is, however, only one way to make it to Liberation or Salvation. And that is consistent spiritual practice.
The Buddhists are renowned for clear instructions not only on the ethical and moral commandments (known as precepts), but also highly sophisticated meditative practices. There are many commentaries and holy books written about beginner as well as advanced forms of meditation – everything from mantras, mandalas, mudras, prayers, chanting, prayanama (breathwork) as well as many intricate levels of focused concentration practices. These different rituals and practices would prepare someone to attain very potent forms of concentrated awareness which would ultimately lead them away from the delusion of the separate self and towards the unitive merging with the Dharma in a form of Satori, or enlightment.
In the Christian tradition, there is also a profound focus on spiritual practices, despite a common misunderstanding that simply taking Jesus Christ to be your Lord and savior would do the trick and get you into heaven. When we take time to look at the canon of Christian saints, it becomes clear that practices such as fasting, chanting, deep prayer and contemplation as well as a highly sophisticated system of ritualistic practices (sacraments, liturgies, hours, etc.,) are critical in order to ascend into holiness and connect consciously with God and the angels.
Attaining holiness and therefore liberation or salvation is actually not an easy feat. Quite the contrary. It requires years (indeed lifetimes) of hard work, commitment to rigorous spiritual practices, fasting, denial of comfort and a life of ease. It pushes one invariably into discomfort and struggle. The commonality between both traditions is forsaking short-term pleasure and ease for a longer term goal of attaining to virtue, service, and renunciation.
It is essentially the spiritual version of the Marshmallow test.
5) Transformation and inner change
Finally there is the commonality both traditions have of a focus on transformation and inner change. When one looks into the mystical core of both traditions (saints are always helpful to study) it becomes clear that one does not enter “heaven” after death simply because one believes in a certain dogma or creed. Souls are magnetized towards certain realms (heavenly or hellish) based on the inner spiritual vibration of the person at the moment of death.
Said another way, if someone still holds anger, hate, prejudice, and selfishness when they pass over, they will be magnetized and drawn through the Bardo to an astral realm where others (human souls or astral beings of all kinds) who are at that vibration also reside. There is in fact an entire spectrum (the Christian orthodoxy and dogma simplified it down to 3 – hell, heaven, and purgatory but many earlier Christian sects had a larger range) where souls can end up after death.
So in order to ascend to the highest levels of peace and joy in the afterlife, we must stay committed to the difficult road of inner transformation while still alive. This is what all the mystics of both traditions continually reiterate. That we must remain vigilant and committed to do the hard work every day, every week, while we are still in these human bodies.
High performance athletes don’t exercise once a month and then sit around eating chips and ice cream the rest of the time. Why would it be different for the spiritual athletes who are committed to Waking Up and living an enlightened life? When we have transformed from the inside out, then after death we can feel confident that whatever happens, we gave it our all and can trust our consciousness will rise (hopefully not descend) to its natural resting place.
The Great Diamond
As I walked out of the exhibit at the Rubin museum and back into the sweltering humidity of Manhattan, I looked around me at the teeming multitudes of people on every street corner. They were like ants, busy and focused, going about their individual lives. I wondered what they were all thinking about.
I began to think myself, and I started to reflect on a great metaphor I once heard – that all the world’s religious traditions each reflect one facet of the Truth of the Divine. It turns out that there are many different facets of God and of divinity. Each time one turns over a diamond, a different fractal ray shines forth with a different element of the rainbow. So it is with all the rich variation in symbolism and ritual that we find in each of the many religions and mystical traditions.
So it is also with the symbolism, mythology, and storytelling around the afterlife in each tradition. The ancient Egyptians had their beautiful stories and teachings (including an incredibly sophisticated manual called The Egyptian Book of the Dead), as did the Taoists, the Jews, the Zoroastrians, Greeks, Muslims, and Hindus. St Augustine, representing the beautiful Christian tradition, says: "We believe that man alone has a substantial soul, which lives though separated from the body, and clings keenly to its senses and wits.”
Each tradition however posits with great certainty and disarming clarity that consciousness (no matter how you define it) lives on after death. That we do not cease to be when the physical body ceases to function.
That, in fact, we can thrive beyond our wildest dreams once we are liberated from the body.
So why not listen to and study all these traditions to piece together a cosmology that is real and accurate? That is what my brother and I at Coming Home are committed to doing. Interviewing people who have had personal experiences during death, as well as studying and researching what the great wisdom traditions have to say about death and the afterlife.
Good reflections Jesse. Art is a wonderful source of transpersonal contemplation!
I'm just working my way through Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death", and loving it. Recommended!
Keep on keeping on my brother ~ Bring me that Higher Love!
Thank you for sharing the gist of the exhibit with all of us who would have never even known it existed!
After being raised as a Catholic, I discovered the Baha'i faith 44 years ago and have found that my life has been much more meaningful. Through it I have learned about the oneness of God, the
oneness of man, and the oneness of religion, i.e., that religion is progressive, just as we go through grades of school.
Each teacher knows much more than they teach us, but only give us what we're ready to hear. Jesus said, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the
Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will tell you things to come."
From The Hidden Words, revealed by Bahá'u'llah in 1857/58:
"OH MY SERVANT!
Abandon not for that which perisheth an everlasting dominion, and cast not away celestial sovereignty for a worldly desire.
This is the river of everlasting life that hath flowed from the wellspring of the pen of the merciful; well is it with them that drink!"