A Tibetan Perspective on Birth and Death Essay -- Death Religion

Many religions and philosophies attempt to answer the question, what happens after(prenominal) a soulfulness dies? around religions such as Christianity and Islam believe there is an afterlife. They believe that good and chaste people enter Heaven or paradise and that bad and evil people go to Hell. Other religions and cultures believe that death is final, and that nonhing happens after a person dies. Buddhism and Hinduism hold a different idea just roughly death. Both of these religions originated in India. Buddhists and Hindus believe that death is not final. They believe that a person develops back after he or she dies. This process is cognize as reincarnation, and it provides opportunities for people to enter the world multiple times in different forms. Buddhists and Hindus want to reenter the world as humans, and they want to improve their locating through reincarnation. In ancient India, many members of lower casts wanted to come back as members of higher casts. Whi le this is an important goal of reincarnation, the chief(prenominal) goal is to reach either moksha (Hinduism) or nirvana (Buddhism). In former(a) words, the goal is to reach a point of spectral enlightenment that removes the person from the reincarnation process. Geoff Childs, an anthropologist examines the views of the Buddhist religion by studying the lives of the people in Tibetan villages. He looks at issues that adversely affect these people such as infant mortality. He overcarefully looks at the lives of people who have been left behind by deceased loved ones, and he pays careful attention to customs and traditions surrounding death. Tibetan Buddhists view death as a means of reaching spiritual perfection, and they seek to reach this train of spiritual perfection through living spiritually meaningful lives.... ...eath is is not a cessation in Buddhism. demise can be seen as a new beginning. A new opportunity to reach spiritual perfection. Infant mortality is a difficult subject to talk about for many Tibetan parents. Survivors are often faced with poverty and new(prenominal) extreme hardships after the loss of a loved one. However, Buddhism provides commodious puff to survivors by teaching that Earthly bodies are impermanent. Tibetan cremation procedures place great emphasis on reincarnation. Tibetan views about death are rivet on nirvana and spiritual perfection. These practices are spiritually meaningful for some(prenominal) the living survivors and the dead. Works Cited1 Geoff Childs Tibetan Diary From Birth to Death and Beyond in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal (Berkeley University of California Press, 2004) 41. 2 Ibid., 54. 3Ibid., 54. 4 Ibid., 54 5 Ibid., 146. 6 Ibid., 147.