KnightOfEnceladus
Lost child in time
- May 20, 2019
- 231
@Darkhaven: the idea of heaven and hell is Zoroastrian actually, or at least the idea the Abrahamic religions have of it is.
During the Babylonian Exile, the Jewish elite essentially ate Zoroastrianism whole, and post-exilic Judaism more or less is Zoroastrianiam by another name. Before the Exile, the Jews (like other ANE peoples including their ancestors the Sumerians and Canaanites) believed everyone just went to a nondescript underworld, "Sheol" in Hebrew, where there was no active reward or punishment.
It's the Zoroastrian scriptures, the Avesta and the Gathas and so forth, that introduced the idea of eschatology, judgment in the afterlife, the final battle between good and evil, and the triumph of good over evil. Notably, Ahura Mazda ("God") is said to melt all the metal in the earth's crust, which would sweep over the entire world and down into Worst Existence ("Hell"), thereby annihilating all evildoers and Angra Mainyu ("the Devil") at the end of history. Compare this to the passage in Revelation about the elements melting with "fervent heat," and the other one comparing God's wrath to a refiner's fire or fuller's soap.
Based on research and experience, I believe no religion has it entirely right but that the less-dogmatic Buddhists are the closest. Reincarnation does seem to be real, but also not something we should do, and there may or may not be something to the hypothesis that some powerful and unfriendly beings want us to reincarnate for whatever reason.
In any case, I believe the Tibetan Book of the Dead's general advice that everything you see after death, good or bad, is the product of your own mind, is sound. Refuse to reincarnate. Understand existentially that all conditioned phenomena--that's everything aside from The Source/The Absolute/God--are as empty and contingent as a soap bubble, and let yourself dissolve back into It. If you are dead, be serious about it!
During the Babylonian Exile, the Jewish elite essentially ate Zoroastrianism whole, and post-exilic Judaism more or less is Zoroastrianiam by another name. Before the Exile, the Jews (like other ANE peoples including their ancestors the Sumerians and Canaanites) believed everyone just went to a nondescript underworld, "Sheol" in Hebrew, where there was no active reward or punishment.
It's the Zoroastrian scriptures, the Avesta and the Gathas and so forth, that introduced the idea of eschatology, judgment in the afterlife, the final battle between good and evil, and the triumph of good over evil. Notably, Ahura Mazda ("God") is said to melt all the metal in the earth's crust, which would sweep over the entire world and down into Worst Existence ("Hell"), thereby annihilating all evildoers and Angra Mainyu ("the Devil") at the end of history. Compare this to the passage in Revelation about the elements melting with "fervent heat," and the other one comparing God's wrath to a refiner's fire or fuller's soap.
Based on research and experience, I believe no religion has it entirely right but that the less-dogmatic Buddhists are the closest. Reincarnation does seem to be real, but also not something we should do, and there may or may not be something to the hypothesis that some powerful and unfriendly beings want us to reincarnate for whatever reason.
In any case, I believe the Tibetan Book of the Dead's general advice that everything you see after death, good or bad, is the product of your own mind, is sound. Refuse to reincarnate. Understand existentially that all conditioned phenomena--that's everything aside from The Source/The Absolute/God--are as empty and contingent as a soap bubble, and let yourself dissolve back into It. If you are dead, be serious about it!
