How to die well David Hart invites readers to consider various religious responses to death If our two unavoidables are death and taxes, then it is important for us to consider our relationship with these. Important, but perhaps difficult - not least because we might spend a considerable amount of our energies actually trying to avoid attain salvation (‘moksha’, release or liberation) through the threefold means of devotion (‘bhakti’), spiritual practice (‘yoga’) and knowledge (‘ynana’).
By performing these, death can then be accepted with equanimity as an inevitable stage of every life, preparatory to thinking about them at all, though in our moments of greater clarity we realise the impossibility of these evasion-techniques, either at the end of the tax-year or at the close of our lives.
Customs surrounding dying and the disposal of the body vary immensely of course from culture to culture. Today we can take a step back from our own cultural perspective and learn from the customs of other global communities, and this process may help us to ‘get a handle’ on the subject and understand some the next and thereby an occasion for hope.
Jews have the custom of lighting Yartzeit candles and placing them by the body on the floor because a biblical text refers to light as both commandment and law, and all Jewish communities appoint a Chevrah Kadisha (a holy society of men and women whose special responsibility is to attend to the needs of the dead). Any discussion concerning Judaism and death must be aware of the presence of those lost in the Holocaust and the resounding of the surrounding issues. Within an increasingly multi-faith society, we also have further options when we consider our own planning for the future - and of course the advent of AIDS has sadly and unavoidably forced many younger people to concentrate upon and take more responsibility for their own funeral rites.
For Hindus there is not one death, but a constant cycle in the course of which ‘karma’ from previous lives directs the self or soul (‘atman’) to a particular incarnation. During that life and all lives, the key to spiritual happiness is the realisation that 'thou art that’, the inter-dependence of all lives and the realisation that Brahman is Atman, the eternal Godhead (or nature of being) and the self are one. Within the ever-spinning cycle of creation, 'samsara’, the individual's goal is to David Hart impact it has had on concepts of God, good, evil, and what it means to die. How many Jews conceptualise death and the hereafter today? Is there still a ‘Jewish way of life’ and within it a Jewish way of death' when popular practices such as cremation and embalming appear to go against Jewish teaching?
Is the sending of flowers at a funeral still to be considered a non-Jewish custom? In a time when the doctrines of bodily resurrection and spiritual immortality still appear to compete and cause tension, it would seem that Judaism has and must contradict the notion that it only focuses on what happens in life.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo thodol) is very often found in our bookstores today. For many Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike it has Sof 66 july 2004 been an important source of knowledge and inspiration in this area. Reputedly based on the teachings of the revered Padma-Sambhava, it describes the process through which all sentient beings will pass on their journey to liberation or rebirth. Tibetans believe that the process of death and rebirth is made up of three phases or 'bardos'.
During the time spent in each of these three states, the opportunity exists for the transient being to recognise the true nature of their existence and attain liberation from rebirth. Originally conceived as a meditation instruction, the teachings have evolved into a ritualised death ceremony with prayers and readings for the deceased. For Tibetans, consciousness never ceases. It continually passes through death, 'bardo' and rebirth until liberation is finally attained. Death is not an end but a beginning. Here is another precious chance to attain enlightenment.
Christians like Jews have so that we can share some of his own glory as well as his own life.’ What is to be a non-realist response to all this?
From a Cupittian vantagepoint, the celebration of life at any cost may banish thought of death to the penumbra. This would seem to be faithful to Wittgenstein's insight that 'death is not an event in life’, but maybe equally the question will not stop there. The question of death has a curious way of continually reasserting itself.
It is my hope that those sympathetic to a Sea of Faith outlook might like to engage in some dialogue here with those of other perspectives, and I would like to encourage you to consider such a challenge.
To celebrate its ‘coming of age’ as the University of Winchester, from September 10th - 12th King Alfred's College, from its Theology and Religious Studies Centre, is hosting an International Conference to consider these inherited a linear view of time that sees death as a single occurrence to be Pcs tale oc fi ela eee followed at some later stage SEN ee FANE by a process of individual judgement. Modern Christians increasingly have looked towards their heritage here as being not so much in opposition to eastern views of rebirth and reincarnation as complementary to them. Thus John Hick in 'Death and Eternal Life’ suggests that the world faiths are working in similar directions in seeing that our current life is not the final end but can be seen as the close of a chapter with some further chapters to follow.
In an interesting book Life After Death? (SCM 1999), written by David Edwards when he was ‘threescore years and ten’, Edwards tries to learn from the world traditions. With regard to the specific Christian message, he writes: 'What many Christians have come to believe may be put very simply as God remembering us - and the reaction is: are we to be no more than memories? But a memory is not a small matter. Very largely, we are made what we are by our memories: so we can think of God's memory as being vitally important to God. And memories can glorify the past, thus adults remember the summers of childhood or widows remember their husbands. As he remembers us, God can remember in creative love, ONELE (a fecante fer efefefperanceSoeine tep Come, tarienqmeteSpable Bem Regen reconfect 1 Sie | = Sale 5% issues. Called 'On Dying Well’, it will be housed in our excellent conference facility with ensuite accommodation.
We currently run an M.A. programme in 'The Rhetoric and Rituals of Death' and our students on this will be helping to facilitate this Conference.
Among our participant speakers will be David Edwards himself, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, feminist theologian Liz Stuart, New York Buddhist writer Serenity Young, and Hindu expert Shirley Firth.
Workshops will among other tasks compare Christian and Hindu bioethics, look at choice of art in inter-faith hospices, and examine with funeral directors the changing face of the British funeral / cremation.
Why not send for more details and come and explore with scholars and practitioners alike? The total inclusive cost will be £100 for the three days (there is a day-rate also), and further details and registration form can be sent by e-mailing myself as Conference Secretary on David.Hart@wkac.ac.uk . pour &Zoutort (ince et mers, Y David Hart is a lecturer in religious studies at King Alfred’s College, Winchester. The college runs an MA in Religion: the Rhetoric and Rituals of Death available both in College and by distance learning. See http://www.wkac.ac.uk/trs/home.htm Patti Whaley reviews The Case for Religion by Keith Ward Oneworld Publications, 246 pages, £16.99, ISBN 1-85 168-337-2 In The Case for Religion, Ward states his aim to do four things: to demolish arguments against religion based on science, sociology and psychology; to show why religions differ — because they explore the logically possible set of answers to basic human questions; to provide a rational justification of religious belief; and to show how the established religions must change in order to be forces for good. He succeeds in three of his four purposes.