Death
views from non-Hindu cultures
WESTERN View :-
In some cultures, they keep some mementoes
of the dead as a way to remember them.
Graves,
mausoleums, ancestral sacred places are the ways we keep alive the memory, and
thereby we hope our loved ones.
As humans, we
often feel that if we are forgotten, somehow, that would be the ultimate death. For this reason, Egyptian kings used to wipe out
the names of their advisories from their mortuary temples.
Hoping that by denying them any recognition, they will be forgotten and that
would be a fate worse than the physical death.
The Egyptians, like most humans, could not
believe that their beloved relations could die and never come back, and hence found ways
to fill this void by envisioning a system, whereby the soul of the dead could journey
through the underworld and be reborn in the heavenly one.
The dead could communicate with the living and, on occasion, would need the
body they had during their life. To them, this
physical body was essential in the afterlife aswell.
Like all people, we mould the world from
our experiences. So did the Egyptians. Coupling the daily birth and death of the sun, and
the natural cycle of life in the world around them, they used their knowledge of the world
around them to reason how this could be. They
saw the world die during the summer months, be submerged in raging torrents during the Nile
floods, and be resurrected anew, with new vigour and new life after the floods. They imagined the same thing must happen to the
souls and bodies of the dead.
The major western religions (Judaism,
Christianity and Islam) have borrowed heavily from the Egyptian model of what happens
after death. The idea of final judgement,
physical resurrection and heaven being a garden with a river running through it, are all
ideas borrowed from the Egyptians. All of this
required being able to have a physical body that could be resurrected and one
that could enjoy the fruits of the afterlife. This
necessitated a place where the dead could be kept till resurrection. Early graves were just holes dug in the sand and
the body covered over in hot sand. The dry
heat preserved the body remarkably well. The
rich and powerful hoped for a bit better end than being buried in hot sand. They created the elaborate coffins in which they
would be spared the hot scalding sand. However, this did not preserve the body very well. So, elaborate methods were invented which would
preserve the body. As result, an entire
science and economy grew up around death.
The main idea was, people should not
forget their dead. Regular remembrance was a
must to preserve the memory of the dead, least they are forgotten and die. Feasts to commemorate the dead peoples
achievements in life, rituals to sustain them in the afterlife and reverence for the
mystic powers of the dead were instituted to make sense of it all. The dead, like the living were given tasks to do,
least they become lazy and wander off, away from their loved ones. They were asked to protect their family and assist
with such things as preserving the family line, protect it from disease and help in
intervention with the Gods in times of need.
People still go to the graves of the loved
ones and tell them of our joys and woes (more of the latter, and so little of the former
!). People often ask
the dead pray
for us and help us in dealing with our crisis. The dead ancestors are often considered
as our guardian angles and we request their help in times of financial or spiritual
emergencies.
In Western
religions, the dead have only two choices - to either go to heaven or hell.
To live in either of those places in perpetuity.
Everyone hopes to
go to the former and avoid the latter !
ANCIENT TRIBES :-
In some cultures, especially the tribes of
Amazon, and Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, it is essential to imbibe the essence
of the dead into the living.
Some eat the
flesh of the dead,
Some grind up the bones of the dead, or
Mix their ashes, with their food and
consume these as part of the death rituals.
This
is a very physical, intense ritual, a way of become one with the dead, so that they (the
living and the dead) can be together forever. This
helps them feel one with the dearly departed.
They feel this also passes on the essence of the dead to the living. Thus, the dead keep living through their friends
and family who have consumed them. As they
consume the essence of their loved ones, who have consumed the essence of their loved
ones, going back to the mists of antiquity, they feel that their ancestors are with them
at all times.
� Bhagwat
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