life after death

[cabinintheforest]

Can people here please explain and share their beliefs on life after death. Thanks.

I am interested in peoples beliefs on it on this forum.

[someNOTHING!]

Hi,

Which death are you referring to?

[Portto]

The only thing I can do is guess/assume.
Death is when the body, especially the brain, stops working.
So, my guess is that from the body/mind's point of view, death is like sleep - only you don't dream.

The miraculous thing is: how do we know that the body, mind, life, and death exist?
The mainstream assumption is that the body creates these perceptions.
However, the body doesn't really create anything. Rather, it seems to be created within perception, or to co-exist with perception.
'
So, my final take would be that the "thing" which created the body and the universe, and which perceives through all the bodies, wasn't born and doesn't die.
And this doesn't have to be an assumption: birth and death of perception are assumptions.

[zendancer]

SomeNothing: Ha ha, welcome back. I think of you like Hanshan, wandering through fog-covered mountains in Asia somewhere, writing poetry and playing with children and sages. LOL. But yes, which death? Who I thought I was died (it is probably more accurate to say that an idea disappeared) in 1999. Afterwards, I couldn't find anything else that might die except this bag of skin I'm temporarily using. Cheers.

[karen]

Feb 4, 2010 22:02:39 GMT -5 @cabinintheforest said:

Can people here please explain and share their beliefs on life after death. Thanks.

I am interested in peoples beliefs on it on this forum.

I don't really care about my or other's beliefs on the subject; after all what does belief have to do with anything real?

Instead, what was your direct experience of life 10 years before you were born?

[zendancer]

Karen: Yes, that's a great question. There is a Zen koan along the same line. "What was your original face before your mother and father were born?" People worry about what will happen to them after they die, but they never worry about where they were before they were born. My wife and often laugh about conventional ideas of heaven. Do people expect to come back in the body they had when they were eighty-years old or the body they had when they were six-months old? Nobody thinks about this, but I'll bet they would all expect to come back in a thirty-year old body with good health. LOL.

My wife's father asked to be buried in a coffin facing East because of some verse in the Bible. I wonder how the body parts of terrorist bomb victims should be arranged in their coffins to accord with that verse?

Some people once asked Jesus, "If a guy gets married, his wife dies, and he remarries, and this happens seven times , which one of his seven wives will he be reunited with in heaven?" Questions like that probably prompted the shortest verse in the Bible, "Jesus wept." He apparently had some really clueless followers.

[maggie]

I work in Hospice field and I regularly come face to face with the process, death of the body. I have been quite interested in this event.....or non event as you will.

One noticing has been as families grieve the loss of a loved one, why we grieve when a body leaves the planet, but are happy when one arrives, even celebrate?

Now as I wash up a body after death has occurred there is an observation that what animated or enlivened this body is not present any more it is most like a shell, an empty shell. So the question where does it go, where did it come from, what was it before?

My most intense question to self is what is this die before I die? What is this? A silent looking deeply listening....

I am noticing too what strings this process pulls in me as it is personal, with Dad and DJ preparing to depart. The question to self is what loses anything?.....seems to be answered with Nothing.

I do not know about life after death....was there life before?
Maggie

[klaus]

cabin,

Let the dead bury the dead....you are called to the kingdom of God.
There is only Life in God.

[karen]

ZD, I loved the Mark Twain quote: "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

Or from Epicurus: "Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?"

(not saying I've slayed that fear though)

[lightmystic]

Don't worry, death is perfectly safe.

[someNOTHING!]

Feb 5, 2010 9:38:43 GMT -5 zendancer said:

SomeNothing: Ha ha, welcome back. I think of you like Hanshan, wandering through fog-covered mountains in Asia somewhere, writing poetry and playing with children and sages. LOL. But yes, which death? Who I thought I was died (it is probably more accurate to say that an idea disappeared) in 1999. Afterwards, I couldn't find anything else that might die except this bag of skin I'm temporarily using. Cheers.

Hey ZD,

I do like drifting through the fog-covered mountains of the consensual mindscape, wherever they may be! Ha ha, and yes, I do sometimes think of the long periods of time in the mountains in South Asia and wonder about when we might again be heading this way and that, hanging with the village folks, and generally just blending with nature for weeks/months on end!

For the most part, these days I spend most of my working time training teachers who plan to work in school systems here in the East that I rarely get a chance to talk to folks interested in such topics discussed here (though, I suppose I could wander on down to one of the Ch’an temples,,,just haven’t). Yet, with respect to just kind of doing what I'm doing, it’s also nice to see the variations of the Play in all aspects of life,,,,even in academics! However, it is also nice to read your sagely perspectives and be reminded of the good company of fellow nutters! Haha! Luckily, my wife is quite open-minded and has always been a great life dancer, so our journey in the dream is one of exploration and wonderness. As you’ve alluded to about yourself elsewhere, I too am just simpleton. So it’s just that things, opportunities, and ideas just seem to pop up when needed, so it seems about just being free to let go of preconceptions thus having the clarity to dance along with it…Seeing what happens.

Thank you again for sharing your observations and encyclopaedic mind! ;D

[luminateartist]

Hmm, an interesting thing to consider today.

At this time I feel certainly and peacefully that my awareness will continue after this body expires. I feel that I will dissolve out of my physical body and thereby become concious in an energy body with a soft form, more controlled by intention and intuition. At the same time I will become aware of myself existing in common with other energy figures (many, many, many other, and also part of one fluid pool I think).

It seems to me that I wll be swimming in clouds of love and light (I once went there from my physical body, but haven't yet had the patience or expertise to determine how I can get there again and return to my physical body). Yet I also imagine that I will be aware of individual beings on earth, previously from earth, and others who exist only in energy form in that particular vibration frequency.

I do not understand rationally how much of me will be 'independent', with my 'own' intentions, and how much of 'me' will dissolve into the communal presence, but I believe there will be some seed of 'me' that remains able to break off and return to a physical form, or a lower energy form that is nearer physical than the communal presence.

But really, maybe we'll see, and maybe we won't!

This is a fun discussion board

[robert]

u.g. said it best when asked about past lives he replied ," i am still trying to figure out whether or not i was born this time." i have trouble understanding some of what he says, but i think he hit that nail right on the head.

[lightmystic]

Hey Robert, Well said.