Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

RS4,Part A Question, Explain a Variety of Religious Teachings about Life…

- - - - After death, a person is separated from God for eternity. This is sometimes seen as a place of eternal pain and punishment often depicted in art as a place in which people are tortured by demons with fire.
      - In the bible, hell is sometimes described as a rubbish dump, where the useless people are thrown. The book of revelation, the writer has a vision in which the bad people are thrown into a lake of fiery sulphur (Revelations 21:8).
      - Issue: can the existence of hell with eternal punishment that can never be escaped, be compatible with the existence of a perfectly loving and just God?
      - Some say that every kind of wrong we do , we wrong God and that every wrong deserves eternal punishment because wronging God is eternally bad and therefore the majority of people would be in hell.
      - Eternal punishment might be, as boring as eternal pleasure, we might become immune to pain and suffering and stop feeling it any more. What would eternal punishment achieve, if there were no possibility if redemption and if the good were too far away to nee protection from the bad.
      - Some may say the person dies twice, the body dies at the point of physical death and then the soul dies in hell.
- - - - Issue: Personal Identity, it is difficult to see how we could still be the same person in a Life after death, if we are incapable of feeling pain.
      - Objection: God would make sure this would not happen as heaven is the place of bliss and he would make sure we felt like that. Perhaps finding out about the Wonders of God would never get boring/ we would never feel the feeling of bordness.
  - - - Buddhism has a best heaven. Everything is just the way you want it to be. In this heaven, there is no reason to change anything. You are ultimately happy. The problem is that it's not permanent, as is everything in Buddhism. One day in the heaven realm is equal to 400 human years, and your stay is four thousand heaven years, so you will be there a really long time.
      - one day the karma that put you in this heaven will be used up. You are only in heaven as long as your Karma account has merit in it. You can only draw from your Karma account while in heaven, because there in no way to make a deposit. You can't practice generosity or compassion, and you're not striving to gain wisdom. When the karma that put you in heaven is used up... you're reborn...
      - The second heaven realm, which is a lower one, is where things are almost perfect. It could be better, if only you owned one more building or house. You see, there is still some desire associated with this heaven realm, and so it can't ever be perfect.
      - The next realm is the human realm, where all of us find ourselves in this lifetime. This is the best place for us to be, because this is the only place we can become enlightened. We cannot become enlightened in heaven, things are too nice, and we have no reason to strive. We cannot become enlightened in hell, because things are so bad, all we do is suffer.
        
        In this human rebirth, we have enough happiness and joy to keep us from taking our own lives, and we experience anxiety and fear to keep us striving. We cannot relax too long in any one mental state as a human, because all things are in a constant state of flux.
      - The next lower realm, is the animal realm. The animal realm is marked by wanting to have sex, wanting to have food, wanting to have sleep, and being totally confused. Those are the four characteristics found in the animal realm. So you can see, we are not likely to become enlightened as an animal.
        
        A Zen question-- Does a dog have Buddha nature?-- comes to mind. Yes, a dog does have the potential to become enlightened, but only in the human realm.
        Can animals be reborn as humans beings? Yes, if they come into contact with the Dharma, see a Buddhist temple, or smell incense burning. The contact can plant a Dharma seed which takes root when they're reborn as humans. They can achieve their full potential and become enlightened, but only as a human being. So, it's up to all of us to help our pets be reborn in the human realm.
      - The next realm is called the hungry ghost realm. The hungry ghost is often pictured as a giant creature, with a large stomach and a pinhole for a mouth. It can never end it's hunger no matter how much it eats, it never finds satisfaction.
      - In the hell realm, the worst place, you find the most suffering. Your are given little hell bodies when you enter. Then, one day you might be walking through a forest, when all the leaves on a tree turn into razor blades and fall, cutting you into a million pieces. You cry out in pain, and your hell body resurrects, so you can be killed over and over again.
        
        The only way to get out of the hell realm is to burn through the karma that put you there. Suffering is the only act of purification in hell, and much suffering is necessary before the next rebirth.
- - - - At death, this stream of mental energy is re-established in a new body.
    - - Antarabhava= inbetween.
- - - - Karma is the Buddhist version of law of cause and effect, it teaches that whatever you recap in life is what you sow (introduce something desirable).
      - Each day gives people the chance to rewrite their karma, with the chance to do good or not.
      - Whatever you did in this life will effect what you become in your next life- the cycle of samsara is driven by the law of karma.
    - - The only thing passed on from life to life is feelings, impressions and moments, as well as karma. Your personality exists in your present life and some aspects of it are passed on making you similar to your present self.
      - Your karma affects your surroundings of your rebirth and each life is an opportunity to do good and improve your karma to break the cycle and get closer to achieving the state of nirvana.
        
        Nirvana= to distinguish/ liberation from the cycle f samsara from the stress and pain of life.
      - Samsara teaches that human beings have the ultimate control over themselves. By using the laws of Buddhism in daily living practice, they will eventually reach self-acceptance.