Death

Death. The human and religious imagination of the nature and meaning of death has been prolific: virtually everything that can be imagined about death has been imagined. Yet almost universally the major religious traditions did not in origin have any belief that there will be some worthwhile continuing life after death. This is in strong contrast to the popular impression that religions came into being to offer ‘pie in the sky’—i.e. some compensation for the miseries and inequalities of this life. This erroneous view was elevated to a formal theory by such anti-religious theorists as Marx and Freud.

In fact, the early human imagination of death was entirely realistic: since the breath returns to the air and the body to the dust, there is nothing that can survive. Thus in both E. and W., the emphasis originally was on the positive worth of this life, not on some imagined heaven or hell.

The development of beliefs that there may be life beyond death (see AFTERLIFE) came about historically in different ways and with different anthropologies (accounts of human nature) in different religious traditions. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the belief developed in the 3rd or 2nd cent. BCE that the ‘friendship with God’ (as Abraham's relationship with God was described) might perhaps be continued by God through death. The imagination of how God might bring that about then varied.

In the E., the sense that death can be contested and, in favourable circumstances (especially with the help of sacrifices), be postponed, led to the belief in Hinduism that a self or soul is reborn many millions of times as it moves toward mokṣa (release). In early Buddhism, it was accepted that there is continuing reappearance, but no self or soul being reborn. In China, the caution of Confucius was widely prevalent: ‘Confucius said, “If we are not yet able to serve humans, how can we serve spiritual beings?” Tzu-lu then said, “Then let me ask you about death.” Confucius said, “If we do not yet know about life, how can we know about death?” ’ But in the Immortality Cult, and even more in the development of Taoism, the quest for immortality was undertaken in the schools of alchemy, sometimes literally, more often in spiritual terms.

On the basis of these understandings of death, different religions have expressed different preferences in the treatment of dead bodies: see CREMATION; FUNERAL RITES. They have also been in agreement to a large extent that excessive grief or mourning is inappropriate. See also AFTERLIFE.