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.
Although I am not a Christian, I like to call myself "spiritual," a term I learned when I took Rg St 7 -- Intro to American Religions; prior to this class, I called myself an Atheist. I bring this up because I know where you are coming from. You were not exposed to other religions, to other beliefs. Despite having taken a course in religious studies, I, too, have had eye-opening experiences and learned new things in this class. Like you said, not all religions focus on the afterlife; some religions, like Buddhism, focus on the current life. In a way, Buddhists promote "carpe diem," or "seize the day." Live in the here and now, and do not fear death, but do so with good deeds so that one can accumulate good karma for reincarnation.
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