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Comment by Tony MacGregor on October 26, 2008 at 12:39pm

Comparison of ideas found in religions originating from the Middle East and those emanating from the Indian subcontinent

By Tony MacGregor

The concepts of the afterlife found in the religions emanating from the Middle East - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - differ greatly from those found in the religions that originated on the Indian subcontinent. However, the two religious traditions also share a surprising number of ideas
In the Abrahamic religions, life and death are believed to be linear. A being is born (usually understood as a new creation), lives, and then dies. At death his soul or other part that survives death, passes to a domain that is inaccessible to living beings and remains there indefinitely, or until the end of the world
Reincarnation - the rebirth of the soul in another body – is generally foreign to the Abrahamic religions, although it plays a limited role in some forms of Judaism and in the Druze religion which is derived from Islam.
Reincarnation, literally "to be made flesh again", is a doctrine or metaphysical belief that some essential part of a living being survives death to be reborn in a new body. This essential part is often referred to as the spirit or soul, the "higher" or "true" self, "divine spark", or "I". According to such beliefs, a new personality is developed during each life in the physical world, but some part of the self remains constant throughout the successive lives.
The Buddhist concept of Rebirth differs significantly from the Hindu-based tradition of reincarnation. The Buddha taught a concept of rebirth that was distinct from that of any Indian teacher of h is time. This concept accepted the idea of a sequence of related lives stretching over a very long time, but was constrained by two core Buddhist concepts: anattā, or non self; and anicca, the impermanence of everything, including the human personality.
One of the metaphors used to illustrate the Buddhist concept is that of a candle transferring its flame to another. The new candle flame depended on the old candle for its existence, but it is not the same candle flame. In the same way, there is a conditioned relationship between one life and the next; they are not identical but neither are they completely distinct. The early Buddhist texts make it clear that there was no belief in a permanent consciousness that moves from life to life.

Early Buddhists had to deal with the problems of establishing the nature of the causal link between two lives, especially the crucial one of how one being could receive the fruits of the actions of a previous being, now dead, and how volitional tendencies to act and think in particular ways can be transferred from one being to another.

Some schools concluded that karma continued to exist in some sense and adhere to a particular person until it had worked out its consequences. Another school, the Sautrantika, made use of a more poetic model to account for the process of karmic continuity. For them, each act 'perfumed' the individual and led to the planting of a 'seed' that would later germinate as a good or bad karmic result.

While all Buddhist traditions seem to accept some notion of rebirth, there is no unified view about precisely how events unfold after the moment of death. Theravada Buddhism generally asserts that rebirth is immediate. The Tibetan schools, on the other hand, hold to the notion of a bardo (intermediate state) which can last up to forty-nine days.
Incarnation from Latin (in=in, carnis=flesh) refers to the conception and birth of a sentient creature (generally a human) who is the material manifestation of an entity or force whose original nature is spirit..
In its religious context the word is used to mean the descent of a divine being or the Supreme Being (God) in human form on Earth. Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism accept this concept in different ways, but it is accepted by other religious traditions too.
It can be argued that in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, an incarnation is a person believed to be the next rebirth of someone deceased, in most cases a lama or other important master/teacher. However, this concept differs from reincarnation in Hinduism, because the Buddhist teaching of anatta (non-self) negates the idea that there is a permanent soul that could move from one life to another.
In Christianity, the Incarnation refers to Jesus Christ being God and becoming man. It is a central concept for many Christians because it is linked to how man can be saved from hell and enter heaven after death. The incarnation represents the belief that Jesus, who is the non-created second person of the triune God, took on a human body and nature and became both man and God.
Resurrection is the act of rising from the dead or returning to life. Miraculous resurrection of one sort or another has been a recurrent theme or central doctrine of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Religious accounts represent the resurrection of individuals, as well as a general resurrection of humanity on Judgment Day. Christianity also uses the term to refer to God's resurrection of Jesus. Accounts of resurrection also occur in other religious traditions. With the advent of written records, the earliest known recurrent theme of resurrection was in the ancient Egyptian religion, especially in the cults of Neith, Isis, and Osiris.
The resurrection of Jesus is a central Christian doctrine. According to the Apostle Paul, an early Christian missionary who wrote part of the New Testament, the entire Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. Christians annually celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at Easter time.
The concept of resurrection is not central to Hinduism or Buddhism but it is mentioned in both religions. For instance, in Chan or Zen Buddhist tradition the legendary Bodhidharma, the Indian master who brought Buddhism from India to China, was supposed to be resurrected as was Chinese Chan master Puhua. Hindu scriptures briefly refer to a resurrection.

Comment by Hiru on June 12, 2008 at 1:17pm

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