#speakingofdeath

From a Buddhist perspective, death is a temporary end to a temporary process. Energy is neither created nor destroyed – it is always in flux, changing forms.  When it comes to rebirth vs reincarnation you can think of the question in this context – consciousness is like energy – it is never destroyed, never “dies”, but is always changing form.

Re-birth is instantaneous, and it happens from one moment to the next. The previous formation, thought, feeling, phenomenon disappears and a new one arises. That also happens when we die, consciousness continues after the body dies, into the next moment.

Reincarnation, on the other hand, takes longer and is the building up of the form, the body, which consciousness inhabits.

And speaking of death, dying and re-birth – an important thing to distinguish from the Buddhist point of view is that after we die, what is re-born is consciousness itself, not your ego personality.

Thought for the Day – 14 March 2018 – Wednesday of the 4th Week of Lent

Each of us must enter on eternity. Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

“Each of us must come to the evening of life.   Each of us must enter on eternity.  Each of us must come to that quiet, awful time, when we will appear before the Lord of the vineyard and answer for the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or bad.  That, my dear brethren, you will have to undergo. … It will be the dread moment of expectation when your fate for eternity is in the balance and when you are about to be sent forth as the companion of either saints or devils, without possibility of change. There can be no change;  there can be no reversal. As that judgement decides it, so it will be for ever and ever.   Such is the particular judgement. … when we find ourselves by ourselves, one by one, in His presence and have brought before us most vividly all the thoughts, words and deeds of this past life.   Who will be able to bear the sight of himself?

And yet we shall be obliged steadily to confront ourselves and to see ourselves.  In this life we shrink from knowing our real selves.   We do not like to know how sinful we are. We love those who prophesy smooth things to us and we are angry with those who tell us of our faults.

But on that day, not one fault only but all the secret, as well as evident, defects of our character will be clearly brought out.   We shall see what we feared to see here and much more.   And then, when the full sight of ourselves comes to us, who will not wish that he had known more of himself here, rather than leaving it for the inevitable day to reveal it all to him! …………………….We can believe what we choose.   We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”