What is death? For a Buddhist, it is more of a continuation than an ending. But what is it that continues; this is the tricky part. If you describe the Christian soul as being a repository of everything a human being has done while on earth and into eternity, then the part that continues for a Buddhist would be that soul, but only the impersonal part, the part that merely records our actions. A Buddhist calls this... karma.
Karma is a summation of all of our actions, and not limited to only this lifetime; karma has its roots in many lifetimes past, and continues in future lifetimes. So for Buddhists, death is not a one shot, make or break deal; death happens again and again. However, the karma can be resolved, ended, and therefore not eternal as a soul is.
When one body dies, another immediately replaces it, as our karma morphs from corpse to fetus. Or, we might not end up a fetus at all; there are numerable alternative destinations, thirty one of them, and all of them different fields of existence depending upon our actions this time around as well as our actions in past lifetimes. We could even temporarily be reborn in a heaven, but we could not stay there. We eventually would have to inhabit a human form again.
The fact that we made it into human form this time is a good sign. This indicates that we can pretty much count on rebirth in the human realm again, perhaps after a temporary stint in heaven unless something quite dramatic happens in this lifetime (which can either be good or bad)! Actually, it is possible to alter our destiny by our actions, and this is what Buddhists attempt to do. By altering their actions, Buddhists not only affect their destinies in the next lifetime, but also make this lifetime much easier.
Therefore, every lifetime prepares us for the next, and if a Buddhist is really clever, she or he can get out of the revolving door of rebirth and temporary heavens, and never have to worry about future lives again! This is called enlightenment, but until that occurs, the Buddhist must endure the lifetimes to come, regardless of their unpredictability.
At the moment of death, our strongest karma or trauma of this lifetime will arise in our minds. If we killed someone, that memory will pop up. If we were a Mother Teresa, a memory of all our kind acts will arise. Also visions might appear to us. We might see the weapon that we used to kill with, or we might see the faces of the children we have saved. These are called Kamma-nimittas.
Other common visions are ones that preview our next world, give us a peek so to say. This happened to my sister-in-law just before she died, "I see a beautiful place, with beautiful people, and beautiful music."
If we are Buddhist meditators and have trained our minds to simply observe thoughts, emotions, visions and nimittas as they arise and not become attached to them, then whatever comes up at the time of death will not affect us, especially the psychological fear of death and the pain and suffering that usually goes along with dying.
This moment of death is extremely important, and connects us to our next lifetime. We must prepare for this moment by living not only a virtuous life, but by understanding all about the mind from an intuitive level. We have to train ourselves well enough so that we can remain tranquil and unattached during our last conscious moments. If we are attached to our possessions, to our life, or to anyone that we leave behind, our next lifetime will reflect those desires by plopping us back into the same circumstances, only to relive them all again, and suffer old age, disease and death innumerable times.
When the meditator faces death with calmness and equanimity, this affects the future field of existence. As a matter of fact, just reading this article will have a subconscious effect on the reader. If the reader is also able to have friends assembled at the time of death that understand things at these levels and therefore doesn't project an atmosphere of doom and gloom, the next lifetime could be very favorable, especially if those assembled have trained their minds with meditation or contemplative prayer, which neutralizes any projections of fear.
So in summation, Buddhists believe in rebirth, not the reincarnation of a personality. Rebirth is the transference of karma, or our past actions, which mold our characters and tendencies. The body will be new, the brain and memory will be new, but our penchants will remain. The karma that fueled our actions this time around will do so again, until we are able to break karma's chains.
How to break the chains? A good way is simply to meditate. This not only breaks the chains very quickly, but also has the potential to break them forever. The deep contemplative prayer of the Christian mystics works too.
E. Raymond Rock (anagarika eddie) is a meditation teacher at:
[http://www.dhammarocksprings.org/] and author of "A Year to Enlightenment"
His 30 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk.
Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/E._Raymond_Rock/70020
