A pseudo-intelligent question on the afterlife
Posted by on June 12, 2010
In Sin, Death, and the Devil (1792) - Paradise Lost
I was born a Buddhist and raised a Buddhist. I studied for nearly 14 years at a leading Buddhist school in Colombo. I grew up listening to my grandmother’s affectionately morbid bed time stories of heaven and hell (the traditional Buddhist understanding of heaven and hell, that is), of rebirth and of sin and Karma and of the end of the world… and… the apparent cyclic nature of the universe (though, of course, not in so many words).
Then I was introduced to Christianity; or more specifically, Catholicism. Later, I developed a fascination over Islam, Judaism and even Hinduism. Theism intrigued me – mono and poly. To me, the theist argument that the world around us is just too perfect to be the result of a cosmic accident, while not 100% convincing, held some water – albeit with a few leaks here and there. (I beileve this school of thought is currently propagated as Intelligent Design).
Now, however, I don’t know what to believe. Not that ever I really “believed” in anything to begin with…
The originis of humanity and questions like what was there before the Big Bang and what will happen after the impending Big Crunch have been fucking with our heads for a long time now. Various religions have given us different ‘origin stories’ and possible doomsday scenarios. Which of these you subscribe to depends on what you find the most convincing and/or appealing. The Abrahamic religions seem to agree on the brief account given in Genesis, and Hinduism, too, tells us of a supmreme creator god who calls all the shots. However, Buddhism, interestingly, remains one of the handful of mainsteram religions to not directly deal with the beginning of time and, instead, talks about how everything that has ever existed and will ever exist is the direct result of the simplest and yet most complex concept ever – causality. Buddhism then goes on to say that pondering over such matters is an exercise in futility.
But it doesn’t matter how we got here. We are here – now. But what next? What happens to a person when they die? I believe that’s where religion plays its trump card: the promise of an afterlife. (Including the otherwise scientifically watertight Buddhism).
Here’s my question (finally):
If all beings are made of matter, and matter is composed of atoms that in turn consist of nutrons, protons, electrons, quarks and other subatomic particles, it is safe to assume that when a being dies, the matter it is composed of is simply and completely and wholly rearranged upon decomposition or converted to energy upon cremation – because matter cannot be destroyed (as per Conservation of Mass/Energy). That’s law. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…
If the above is true, then, what is this alleged afterlife made of? What leaves a being’s body when it dies?
Does the soul exist?
Even Buddism, while it denies the existence of a soul the way it is traditionally understood in the West, talks of a cyclic Sansara, where a being undergoes an endless cycle of births and deaths until it is liberated through Nirvana. So, something (be it a thought, a characterisitc, whatever) leaves the being’s body – something physical – a material entity. Why material? Because it’s got to be made of matter. Everything is. Unless we’re talking Dark Matter or Dark Energy here. But that’s another kettle of fish altogether.
To get back to my question, what is it that “moves on”? DO we really move on?
Does it even matter?
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if ignorance is bliss to you, then it doesn’t.
if continuity matters to you, then it does.
if you’re conscious of your causal effect, then it should matter.
this is a bunch of hippie shit here: http://www.mindreality.com/nature-of-all-reality-and-universal-construct
but there are some interesting points, though mostly contrived, and not entirely solid fact.
I doubt our egos, in any sense, move on.
But there’s quite obviously a trace of us still left, there can’t not be.
So in a sense we do, whether you believe in the soul or not, we do.
I don’t know. I guess something DOES move on. What that something is, is the question. Thanks for the link.
what good would it do to you if you knew what that something was?
what is it with humans the need to know things that won’t really make much of a difference in the end?
just need to find more puzzles to solve, ignoring the most important one of all.
ridiculous.
@St. Fallen – What is the most important issue of all?
if you haven’t figured that out for yourself, it’s not up to me to point it out.
and it’s sad if you haven’t.
keep wondering, it makes for good blog posts.
If you’re going to beleive in the concept of a soul, why weigh your mind down later by assuming it has to be of matter?
Because, like I said, EVERYTHING is made of matter (or antimatter, as the case may be). Unless the soul/spirit/whatever is a kind of Dark Energy…
That’s just foolish. We don’t know everything about the world around us, far from it. What’s to say, for example, that the soul is not of pure energy, or unicorn breath, or rainbows?
Also, *origins
Pedantic prick.
According to Buddhism, there is no such thing as a soul, and what ‘we’ are (in Buddhism there’s no such thing as an ego, or I, either) is basically a process, a process of thoughts, continually evolving. Your last thought when you die directly leads to the first thought when you are born. (They use a metaphor here: The last breath you exhale in this life is followed by the first breath that you inhale in your next)
The reason I believe in karma and the afterlife is pretty simple: why do some people, no matter how good they are, suffer in ways that others don’t? that others don’t even dream about? In a world of equality (with divine justice) is this possible? why them and not me?
So you judge them to be murderers and thieves in a past life?!
-______-
just saying
and no I don’t judge them. even the Buddha had a migraine from an incident as small as laughing at a dying fish from a past life. if sansara is true, we’re bound to have done some really regrettable stuff during our past births.
Chavie said, “even the Buddha had a migraine from an incident as small as laughing at a dying fish from a past life.”
Just imagine what will happen to people like you, Jerry.
Yes, Buddhism rejects the concept of “self”, which leads you to wonder whether in you’re next life you’re the same person or someone else.
Are you the same person you were 2 seconds ago? we’re in a state of constant change mate, we don’t take anything to our next life other than our thinking patterns. Hence people who meditate and reach a higher state of mind will carry that forward, and idiots will carry forward their idiotic-ness.
This doesn’t exactly answer your question directly, but check it out.
http://www.buddhanet.net/nutshell07.htm
Hey, VV,
Thanks for stopping by. Interesting read. Thanks for sharing.
Aney here, stop wasting time talking about shit you don’t know about and get back to work all of you.
Woldamote,
I’ve seen and personally known many trolls, and I gotta say… you’re easily the lamest of them all.
well that is a case of buddhism contradicting itself.
but the question is himal, why the questions? is there a point to it all?
you can’t explain everything using science, because science relates to theories that man’s intelligence explores and tries to explain, but then science itself explains that the human intelligence and scope of thinking is limited.
if you read deep enough into something like the science of alchemy, it will tell you that there is something beyond the cells, atoms, electrons and quarks that is the reason for life.
so as for the answer to your question – it’s simply beyond us, if the human mind could explain it, we would have already done so. but it’s since we haven’t and failed to do so, we have covered it up with an idea of what it could be like the soul, nirvana, etc, etc.
contemplating the beyond’s of this is a fool’s errand. in the word’s of Bob Marley – “But if you know what life is worth, You will look for yours on earth”
Good post man, enjoyed reading it and sorry about the long comment, I love stuff like this
I’m not sure I know what the “point” is, or if there is a point at all to begin with. I guess I’m just curious. Man is, after all, a curious creature.
I’m not necessarily trying to understand afterlife through science per se. I just want to know what exactly is it that moves on if/when a being is reborn.
Yes, alchemy and many other branches of philosophy/science/religion have given us many explanations but the common thread here is that pretty much ALL of them guarantee an afterlife. That’s what bugs me. How do we really know there IS one? :S
Thanks for the comment, dude. I like long comments.
Actually, Buddhism doesn’t contradict itself. It compares the human “soul” to a river- what you see at any point in time is water, but not the same drops of water that were flowing past a second earlier. So the person who is reborn IS you- but not the same “you” that existed in this life. As to why it is so, my personal interpretation is that, just as we learn from our experiences and mistakes in our earthly life, so we learn from our mistakes in our previous lives, as we move along in the cycle of sansara. Of course, we don’t consciously remember these experiences-but they serve as the driving forces behind our decisions, and the sources of our fears. That would explain phobias, and why two people raised in the same environment react differently to similar situations.
Also, the Buddha “having a migraine because he laughed at a dying fish” is pure nonsense IMHO. In superstition-riddled ancient India, the only way for Buddhism to survive was if it was “marketed” as a religion, and religion requires that you have a leader that can compete with the perfect, divine deities of other religions. But the Buddha, exalted as his teaching was, was only a mortal man suspect to illness and death. So such stories were invented to explain away his imperfections-after all, no one knew about germs and genes back then, and besides, who would worship a mere mortal?
Regarding the original question-what souls are made of-what does it matter?
Wow, S, that’s a VERY interesting way of putting it. I’ve never thought of it that way. Nice comparison with the flowing river. Makes a lot of sense.
well ‘shewhothinktoomuch’ looks like you didn’t think that one through (pun intended). so then when you take a river, it flows because of kinetic energy right? something we can’t see but we are certain is there. so in this ‘river of life’ – what was the origin of the kinetic energy? where does it end?
Lasantha, It’s an analogy. Look it up.
I also read that as ” Shew hot ink too much” at first :S
oh and, what’s is the purpose of ‘marketing’ buddhism? are you not deforming it from what buddha originally defined it as, a philosophy?
There is no afterlife. You don’t even have a life to begin with.
says the guy(?) who took the time out of his busy schedule to make an anonymous email account and write witty and insightful comments on other people’s blogs.
I’m sure everyone here is in utter and complete awe of you, dude. Really.
@Himal-
@purpleboxers- I was replying to what you said-that Buddhism contradicts itself. I was showing you that it didn’t-at least not on that point.:)
As for the original question-I already gave my answer, that it doesn’t matter. And the Buddha agrees-as in the arrow parable:”Suppose someone was hit by a poisoned arrow and his friends and relatives found a doctor able to remove the arrow. If this man were to say, ‘I will not have this arrow taken out until I know whether the person who had shot it was a priest, a prince or a merchant, his name and his family. I will not have it taken out until I know what kind of bow was used and whether the arrowhead was an ordinary one or an iron one.’ That person would die before all these things are ever known to him.”In the same way, those who say they will not practise the Dharma until they know whether the world is eternal or not, infinite or not, will die before these questions are ever answered.
The Buddha did not answer these questions because they are not relevant to the problems of suffering, nor do they lead to happiness, peace and Enlightenment. Whether one believes that the world is eternal or not, or that it is infinite or not, one has to face the reality of birth, old age, sickness, death and suffering. The Buddha explained suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path leading to the end of suffering here and now. The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths because He knew that they lead to happiness, peace and Enlightenment.”
Oh, and the Buddha himself, like most religious leaders, had no interest in “marketing” Buddhism. His aim was to tell his philosophy to as many people as possible, and this he did by preaching, and setting up the Sangha to help him. Since he was of royal birth, many kings were happy to listen to him and pledge allegiance to Buddhism-perhaps it was a fad, or perhaps some genuinely understood and accepted his teachings. Either way, once Buddhism was enmeshed in politics, Buddhist rulers had good reason to want to spread their religion to gain political advantage. This required that Buddhism become palatable to the masses, which led to “dumbing down” of certain concepts, creating the myth of Buddha’s almost divine perfection, and idol worship. This was not a phenomenon limited to Buddhism, by the way-you can see similar developments in the spread of Islam and Christianity as well, if you study Human Civilization.
Will someone shut her up please?
Nobody’s forcing you to listen to her, Woldamote.
your question starts at the end, not at the beginning. maybe you should ask how a being is created. Then you will be faced with the question of what this unique force is that you call ‘life’ so axiomatically. Personally i think answers lie in origins not in endings. Thanks for the post!
Interesting point. I sometimes wonder whether there really IS such a thing as an ending. I mean, should everything that has a beginning, by definition, have an ending in the, well, end?
Let us turn to the Abrahmic/Islamic/Judeo-Christian concept of the “soul”. In these religions it is assumed (tacitly) that what we call consciousness (a condition that we perceive) and the soul (a more mystical term) are more or less the same thing. I won’t try to distinguish between the two here and personally I think that they came up with this rather simplistic notion of “the soul” simply because they were working with the information at hand and were not sophisticated enough to come up with a more detailed explanation of what it means to be conscious and functioning. Yes this hinges on the claim that religions are man made which I firmly believe to be true.
If you want a thorough discussion of how what scientists refer to as “consciousness” relates to concepts like awareness, understanding and even intelligence check out The Emperor’s New Mind (Roger Penrose) and Kinds Of Minds (Daniel C. Dennett) two of my favorite books that I re-read from time to time (it takes several readings to appreciate their claims fully). I believe quite strongly that these books (and many others) provide a much larger, deeper and more detailed analysis of what it means to be conscious and aware than the pitiful notion of a “soul” as seen in the bible and many other monotheistic religions cooked up by “theologians” “scholars” and “scribes” thousands of years ago. Their grasp was pitiful at best (and dangerous at worst) and we have certainly come a long way since then and the current debate on this issue is far richer than the sum total of all the theological debates on the soul until the present time. St Augustine be damned
So lets turn to consciousness (or the soul) here is a brief survey of all of the current positions on the matter (the major positions worth considering at least) http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/what-is-consciousness/ it may seem that all of these positions are equally valid but research has indicated that there must be some kind of functional explanation. The things we feel are functions of the material changes/physical changes in the brain. Chemical drugs that can influence behavior strongly suggest that physical processes dictate consciousness. The details are yet to be worked out but most neuroscientists will tell you that the brain and the stuff inside and what it does is what creates the feeling of being conscious. Further complicating the matter, the mainstream recently embraced the notion that the brain is able to “rewire” its “circuits” (first proposed by Freud but substantiated by experiment much later), thus concepts like memory (is it like a computer register or something more complex? are memories remembered as they really happened/photographically or do we recreate them by simulating the event using bits of data) etc will have to be reexamined. Functional MRI scans indicate that there is a correlation between what we feel and certain physical locations of the brain. BCI (Brain Computer Interface) research indicates that we can process signals in the brain in much the same way we process electrical and photonic signals. I know because I have seen it firsthand at uni thanks to our BCI research group (I’ll be joining it soon “god willing” hehe)
We certainly have come a long way in understanding the brain (which was thought to be a cooling mechanism for blood by the Greeks!) and we have a long way to go (just talk to a researcher in the field of AI). So yes consciousness isn’t something “mystical” it has to do with the physical mechanisms of the brain and we will unravel this in time.
The Buddhist notion of “the soul/consciousness” is interesting in that it denies the existence of a homogeneous entity called the soul and makes the claim that we experience transient and fleeting moments of awareness. But this simply ignores an immediate problem with regard to reincarnation – something must move from one life to another (a karmic total perhaps – much like a form of credits in a video game) and as your point out correctly that something must be made up of the material “stuff” from which everything else is made. I have addressed this in a detailed post found here http://religurd.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/the-problem-with-buddhism-reincarnation/
People may claim various things but if you take a hammer and smash someones brain to bits the person ceases to be aware and conscious. Understanding the brain would definitely give us the key to answer these questions
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couldnt read beyond ‘leading buddhist school’. hahahahaaa
What’s that supposed to mean?