spiritual.wiki

Concept

Death

Every tradition has to meet it. What each tradition says about death shapes what it says about life.

universal

Contemplative traditions tend to insist that meeting death clearly is a precondition for living clearly. Stoicism‘s memento mori, the monastic rule of keeping death before one’s eyes, the Buddhist meditation on the nine stages of a corpse, the Tibetan bardo practices — all point the same direction.

What is to be done about death differs. Christianity and Islam center a bodily resurrection. Hinduism and buddhism (with important differences) teach Reincarnation. Taoism often meets death with equanimity as the dao’s natural turn.

Most agree on this much: the fear of death shapes most of what one does in life; and something is different after that fear has been faced.

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