RGST 12 Week 4

It is kind of difficult for me to write about mourning at this time, but it is something that most of us, or more likely all of us, will eventually have to go through. Although many religions may have very ritualistic aspects within the mourning stage of someone’s death, it is first and foremost a period of time in which, usually, feelings are released. Mourning doesn’t necessarily have to be a religious act, rather I would say that in general it would be considered a social one. But we must look at those cultures that do incorporate mourning into their religion and turn into something more ritualistic. 

According to Brown’s piece on the practices of mourning within the Han dynasty there are a lot of things that occur when a person dies. There is a term that the Hans use, sangli, that “seems to evoke much of our common sense of mourning as the ceremonial expression of sadness at death or loss.” This is one of the reasons we know that the period of mourning is universal across the world, save for a the different and sometimes very specific ways that people of certain cultures decide to mourn. The Han have a “chief mourner” who ends up being the one to endure the most since they are the ones given the task of figuring out the interment for the deceased. Due to their strong belief in filial piety, this chief mourner tends to be the eldest son of the person who has passed away. And going off of that, it was pointed out by Brown that generally it was only the men who must really undergo all of these mourning rituals, and not just men but those men who belonged to the higher social classes only. Rarely did you see women doing the same kind of thing. After the soul-calling and a three-day period, in which the family and friends of the deceased waited in the hopes that the person wasn’t actually dead and could come back to life, the burial and mourning practices began. Like I had mentioned, it was during this period of time when the chief mourner decided how the body would be buried, and then he would continue his own personal mourning for about another three years, sometimes longer. In the reading it was not difficult to identify how mourning, even in ancient China, has a social aspect to it. It was very interesting to read about and realize how the different dimensions in Chinese culture affected the way in which the members of the Han dynasty were able to mourn.

RGST 12 Week 3

For a really long time I was under the impression that post-mortem judgment was a thing solely of the Christian church. That is, the idea that one would be judged after their death for what they had done during their lives. Of course, this was until I learned that there were many different religions and that everyone held many different beliefs about what happened after someone dies. Taking this class has really opened my eyes to many things, and if I didn’t know what to make of death before, now I just feel like I am even more confused; especially with a recent death in my family. Based on the Abrahamic religions from last week and the Eastern ones this week, I will compare Christianity with Buddhist ideas.

To answer the main questions to this week’s prompt, these two religions do not hold similar ideas about judgment after death. Like I had mentioned previously, Christianity has a very strict way of going about their post-mortem judgment where the person that has passed away is told whether they deserve to go to Heaven and rejoice with God, or if they must be confined to the pits of Hell. Personally, I remember being told about this when I was younger and realized that many people actually go about their lives here on Earth based on this idea of post-mortem judgment so they try their best to be righteous in order to deserve Heaven upon death. 

Contrastingly, Buddhist traditions do not seem to have quite the same ideas about what happens to a person’s being after death. Instead, Buddhist ideas focus more on the “life” of a person because they have come to realize that life is suffering, so why even fear death? They actually prefer to believe in Karma, which is in a way a personal form of judgment but mainly tends to occur while the person is alive and once the person dies the good or bad karma that person has collected will be the deciding factor in what they will be reborn as. If the person has a lot of good karma then they could possibly be reborn into a godly realm, whereas if they have more bad karma stored up they are more likely to be reborn as animals, or worse. The only actual ritual that seems to take place in either of these religions concerning the dead, is within Buddhism where people will pray for the lingering soul of the deceased for 49 days after their death.

RGST 12 Week 2

Myths are just a type of story that people have, whether it be true or not (although they are generally believed to be false), and they often are used to explain something in the natural world (ex. creation myths). Religion uses myth a lot, and I think I might’ve been in the sixth grade when I first heard about myths, when we studied the Ancient Greek traditions. Christianity also has its own religious myths, although many of its believers would not consider them to be myths at all given the false connotation that myth usually takes. All of the books in the Christian bible are filled with these stories, parables aside, about the past and Jesus and how it all started, including the beginning of  time. The first book in the old testament, the book of Genesis, explains how god created  the world and made humans, etc. As well as the story with Adam and Eve, thus giving us the creation of sin. Again, these stories serve their purpose in religion by bringing meaning to certain things about the world (e.g. how the world and humans came to be, and why we will have to die.)

I’m not really sure what connections to make with the other religions we have discussed except that it seems to me like most religions incorporate myth into their teachings in a similar way. The same way Christianity has its own creation myth, the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Egyptians have their own creation myths which both contain more of a similarity with each other than with the Christian creation myth. The other connection that I can make between most religions in relation to myth is that the people who believe in them take them to be completely true. People feel the need to have a thorough explanation of certain things in their lives sometimes, which is when a lot of them decide to turn to religion. 

RGST 12 Week 1

There isn’t a particular piece of artwork that shaped my understanding of death. What I came to know as the idea of death, was that you are here on Earth now and one day, sooner or later, everyone will be gone. Coming from a Catholic background on both sides, it was also brought to my attention that once a person died they would be allowed to enter either Heaven or Hell, depending on how they had lived their life down here. For a very long time I believed this idea to be the truth, until my later teen years when I finally learned and understood that there are so many more religions and beliefs about death/the afterlife out there and that everyone holds their own belief as true. 

After freshman year of high school, my perceptions and thoughts about death, and also religions in general, fluctuated a lot. I had the opportunity of exploring two very different religions, aside from Catholicism, and it wasn’t until I came to college and took a course in the Religious Studies Department that I realized that religion was just not for me. Therefore, at this point in my life I don’t have a set perception or belief on death. I don’t know if there’s anything after we die, or if we really do get judged based on our acts during our life, or if everyone goes to the exact same place after death no matter who you are. I guess taking this class will probably be really good for me, considering I don’t really know what to think about death. Sometimes I want to believe that I’ll remain on Earth in spirit and that that spirit will be 100% who I am now, or maybe it would be better if death just meant eternal sleep!

Since I don’t personally have a specific view about death, I cannot make many comparisons to the material we have covered thus far. If I consider the ideas and images I grew up with as a kid, then there can exist some similarities like we saw with the Ancient Egyptians and their idea of post-mortem judgment, as well as the idea that one must find true meaning in this world before they die. If there is one thing that I’ve found relevant within these past few days is exactly that idea of finding meaning and enjoying life while we have it, instead of having thoughts and feelings like the character in “A Dispute Over Suicide.”