But the Indian traditions all agree it is the ultimate horror - their aim is to escape from it. In the modern West, reincarnation has a positive flavour as a desirable alternative to the traditional Western afterlife. The righteous will enjoy the pleasures of Paradise. On the final Day of Judgement, Muslims believe the wicked will suffer torments in hell. There are two exceptions to this: those who die fighting in the cause of Islam go immediately into God’s presence those who die as enemies of Islam go straight to hell. It is a limbo-like state: those destined for hell will suffer in their graves those destined for heaven will wait peacefully. Within Islam, souls await the day of resurrection in their graves. In Buddhism, this “karmic flame of consciousness” plays the same role as the “soul” in other religions.Ī Persian miniature depicting paradise from The History of Muhammad, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. At the moment of death, we leave the body but this flame, particularly our flame of moral credit or debit, goes into a new body. Nevertheless, Buddhists believe our consciousness is like a flame on the candle of our body. There is nothing permanent in us, any more than there is any permanence in the world generally. But unlike Hinduism, it does not believe there is an eternal, unchanging “soul” that transmigrates from one life to the next. Like Hinduism, Buddhism accepts there was no time when we were not bound to the cycle of birth and rebirth. At the time of death, the sum total of karma determines our status in the next life. Each moral deed, virtuous or otherwise, leaves its mark on the individual. Our souls are continually reincarnated in different physical forms according to the law of karma - a cosmic law of moral debit and credit. Thus, we are all bound to Samsara – the infinite cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. All of us have existed into the infinite past. Within Hinduism, there has been never been a time when souls did not exist. The origin of the soul – Hinduism and Buddhism As in Christianity, opinions vary on when this occurred, but the mainstream opinion has it that the soul enters the foetus around 120 days after conception.įor all three religions, souls will live forever. Similarly, in Islam, the soul was breathed into the foetus by God. Modern Judaism remains uncertain on when, between birth and conception, a human being is fully present. But it did not develop a definitive theory on the timing or nature of this event (not least because the separation between body and soul was not an absolutely clear one). Death is thus the separation of the soul from the body.Īccording to Judaism, the soul was created by God and joined to an earthly body. British LibraryĬhristianity adopted the Greek philosopher Plato’s view that we consist of a mortal body and an immortal soul. Illustration of God measuring a soul, represented as a naked man, 14th century.
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