What s It All For - 1850 Words

Although the majority of the world believes in an afterlife, some individuals believe that life after death just doesn t exist. The core group of people that don t have that belief, are both Materialists and Atheists. Materialists believe in the fact that everything and anything in the world is made up of matter. They feel that there is no unmaterialistic reality on Earth and that that serves to prove that there is no afterlife. Atheists are generally skeptical about any existence of an afterlife also (Religious Tolerance). They live their life without any belief in God or anything that pertains to him. Atheists theorize that the universe was created by the â€Å"Big Bang Theory†, and that humans arose from the theory of evolution. With†¦show more content†¦However, people who practice Buddhism and Hinduism believe in life after death. Both Buddhists and Hindus follow the teachings of karma and reincarnation, which is backed up by what Victor J. Zammit says about how â€Å"Buddha accepted the basic Hindu doctrines of reincarnation and karma†. Buddhists, unlike Hindus, dont believe that humans have eternal souls. They instead believe that people consist of a bunch of habits, memories, and desires, that reincarnate in body after body (p. 1). To people who follow Tibetan Buddhism, after death, a person’s spirit has to go through a forty-nine day long process. This process is separated into three stages referred to as â€Å"bardos†. When the three stages end, the person either reaches nirvana or is reincarnated. The first stage of Bardo is the dying one. It starts at death and can last from a half a day to up to four days. At this point in time, they believe that all people see â€Å"The White Light†. In the second stage of Bardo, called the Luminous Mind, the dead encounter peaceful or wrathful deities created by karma. The spirits have to go through the process without flinching in order to get into the paradise realm. The third stage of Bardo consists of the spirit being reincarnated back onto earth (Zammit, p. 2). Hindus, unlike Buddhists, believe that people possess souls that are reincarnated. Zammit says that â€Å"Unlike Western...reincarnation, which tend to make the idea...exotic, desirable, and even romantic,