12012012

A coherent summarization on my current views on the matter of life and death, which is subject to change.

There are not too many people whom I have met that have had their thoughts together on the subject of being born, living and dying. After brief discussions the conversation always tends to run into a brick wall with a totalitarian comment on religion and its views on life after death. This is a shame, in my opinion, because I find it intriguing to propose ideas on the matter without the presence of religion. I guess that even if a person is not religious, they still try to explain things they don't know about with religion - in this case, denying the conversation using religion.

However, as of lately, I have decided to abandon the religous mindset for once and deal with the subject of life and death from a perspective that is new to me. Samuel Butler suggests in his novel, The Way Of All Flesh, a cycle of life that begins before our birth. The ouroborus begins from the time when you are an embryo, waiting to be born - waiting for your current life to end - and comparing the wait of being born to the one of an old person who is, in turn, waiting for death of another kind. Butler doesn't verbally implement the thought into his novel but one can easily conclude his suggestion that the same rebirth would apply to the time after death. A cycle of being born and dying, a snake eating its tail, perpetual motion in a larger scale.

The same thought is applied in another context in modern literature as well, where a wise man in a grey cloak states: “No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take."

If I were to return to a religious mindset now I would mention the concept of Heaven and afterlife. For me, this has always been quite the opposite to what most religions suggest, except for, ironically as I'm a Christian, Buddhism, which says that we should not fear death for there will be rebirth. Life will continue in one of the six Buddhist realms - all of which seem quite logical, even if science is taken into account here, though I think science plays a very small role of relevance here.

In conclusion, I think life consists of cycles. An action in now will meet us again in the tomorrow. The cycles vary of size and length and our life is just one them, ending in the matter that we call death, beginning from the end of another cycle - our time as an embryo.

As a sidenote: when alone, let your thought stream develop a wave further than you would normally let it - who knows what will flood out.