Reply to: Today's disturbing fact

[oraclesmith]

Milk and Cookies been keeping you awake OS ?

Venti (ie. bucket of) Caramel Latte with Marmite & Cheese Toastie !

[AlfredJPruffock]

The Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymus Bosch

Jings !

Milk and Cookies been keeping you awake OS ?

Give him his money Barney ...

[oraclesmith]

The Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymus Bosch

[AlfredJPruffock]

People like Jabberwocky and AndyW you mean?

Well heres one view of the afterlife and it aint pretty, first to name that painter gets a RockofCrack Pencil !

PS When you die its not really like this, but it all helps to keep you going

[Jabberwocky]

Shouldn't you be larding up some poor guys' buttocks about now ?

[Captain Jack]

Would they be writhing in Hell, ascending to Heaven or just illiterate ?

All three, given Jabberwocky's vivid imagination.

[oraclesmith]

Human beings have the capacity to belief anything.
....
As far as I am aware, there is not one world religion who teach that when you're dead that's it.

Hmm...maybe I could start one.

How about a religion where believers have to do good in their finite existence because that's genuinely all there is. Their immortality is clearly embodied in the favourable impression made on those that survive them (eg. descendants and colleagues) and their contribution to the progress of humanity. There'll be none of this egotistical salvation nonsense. I'll call it....now lets see we'll need a website.......Ponna.

[oraclesmith]

Would they be writhing in Hell, ascending to Heaven or just illiterate ?

[Captain Jack]

All those medieval pictures of people writhing in Hell or ascending to Heaven or whatever are intended for an illiterate audience who needs to actually see something.

People like Jabberwocky and AndyW you mean?

[oraclesmith]

Sort of. The idea of Nirvana being a nothingness is a Western interpretation.

Mind you, most religious belief about the afterlife ends up in a kind of nothingness - a nothingness of happiness or torment.

Although we think of actually going to Hell or Heaven or Nirvana or wherever, it's not your actual body that goes there obviously. It's your soul or conciousness or whatever you want to call it that is being damned, enlightened, saved etc etc.

All those medieval pictures of people writhing in Hell or ascending to Heaven or whatever are intended for an illiterate audience who needs to actually see something.

[threaded]

by becoming nothing

HTH

[oraclesmith]

In Zen Buddhism, after death you are reborn into one of the Six Realms. Eventually you may reach Nirvana, which is the state of supreme and permanent happiness - but it's not extinction.

See : http://www.zenguide.com/principles/k...ncarnation.cfm

[threaded]

I'm on about the Zen version of Nirvana

[oraclesmith]

Not quite. The term nirvana does not indicate annihilation but rather entry into another mode of existence and experience.

[threaded]

As far as I am aware, there is not one world religion who teach that when you're dead that's it.

Zen - nirvana - nothingness

HTH