Death in Buddhism
To understand how death is treated in Buddhism), first stumbled on the relationship of body and soul.
Some researchers (eg, H. Oldenberg), believe that Buddhism denies the existence of the body. " Indeed, you can remember this, for example, a conversation with the Buddha's disciples:
"Corporal, on bhikshu (appeal to the students), there is no" I ". If corporeality was the" I ", on bhikshu, the corporeality could not be subjected to disease, and about the corporeality could say: let him be my body in such a and therefore will not let my body. But as corporeality, on bhikshu not have the "I", so corporeality subjected to disease and can not say about corporeality, so will let my body, and therefore will not let him. feelings about bhikshu not the essence of "I"... How do you think now, the disciples, is constant or is variable corporeality?
- Unstable, a teacher.
- Can, therefore, despite this volatile, suffering executed subject to change, say: this is mine, I am, it - my essence?
- No, the teacher can not. "
But the soul as a separate entity, too, is denied. She was given only nazyvatelnaya function, the function of symbols. When the Greek king Menandro asked a Buddhist monk Nagasenu what "I", he responded, in the sense that "I" - is nothing imaginary set. And illustrated his claim by comparing the person with the cart. No carts, Nagasena said, this is just a word, but there are wheels, axles, body, and others. The same and the person: has teeth, muscles, intestines, hair, but there is some "corporal."
"Nagasena - this is just the name, symbol, a simple word, the subject itself is not the same." So Nagasena for example, explained to the famous image of Buddha sermon on the lack of human souls as something eternal.
"In the Buddhist sacred books of the soul disappeared, sharing of four elements: a feeling, understanding, desire and knowledge (or consciousness), - writes the historian of religion, I. Kryvelev. - Disappears in the whole man, in its essence was included in addition to those elements and corporeality, but it did not help a cause as a real phenomenon. For the religious consciousness that solipsism, however, are contraindicated, that the Buddha him hesitate. "
There are such words of Buddha, which explicitly denies the reality of the individual and, therefore, the soul. The death of one of his students because the Buddha commented: "When the urge of life are disappearing, enabling forces (Triebkrafte), lost consciousness when the mind disappears, the name and image will disappear... vanish some senses... touch disappears." Next is the transfer that have disappeared: sensation, perception, the scope of (intellectual), life, birth, old age, death, sorrow, suffering, dejection (Missmut). Since the destruction of the body, it turns out, not only to kill non-existent entity, disappearing and those elements which constitute its real content.