The Art of Death: Exploring Reincarnation and Enlightenment

The text below is the excerpt of the book The Art of Death. Myths and Rites (ISBN: 9781783107780), written by Victoria Charles, published by Parkstone International.

In the Hindu views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical subtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, unquestioning tradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and heaven-storming spirituality, are combined together on a scale of grandeur that is rarely seen elsewhere in the literature or faith of the world. Hinduism, with its 100,000,000 adherents holding sway over India, and Buddhism, with its 400,000,000 disciples scattered over a dozen nations, from Java to Japan, practically considered, in reference to their actually received dogmas and aims pertaining to a future life, agree sufficiently to warrant us in giving them a general examination together.

Buddha Gautama at Sankasya, Hindu — *Buddha Gautama at Sankasya, descending from heaven down the third staircase accompanied by Brahma and Indra, after urging his mother to adopt the Buddhist faith*, 18th century. Bangkok National Museum, Bangkok.

The most ancient Hindu doctrine of the future fate of man, as given in the Vedas, was simple and very different from the forms in which it has since prevailed. When a man dies, the earth is invoked to wrap his body up, as a mother wraps her child in her garment, and to lie lightly on him. He himself is addressed thus: “Go forth, go forth on the ancient paths which our fathers in old times have trodden: the two rulers in bliss, Yama and Varuna, shalt thou behold.” Varuna judges all. He thrusts the wicked down into darkness; and thus they are doomed. They were supposed either to be annihilated, or to live as demons, in sin, blackness, and woe. The good ascend to heaven and are glorified with a shining spiritual body like that of the gods. Yama, the first man, originator of the human race on earth, is the beginner and head of renewed humanity in another world, and is termed the ‘Assembler of Men’. It is a poetic and grand conception that the first one who died, leading the way, should be the patriarch and monarch of all who follow. The old Vedic hymns imply that the departed good are in a state of exalted happiness, but scarcely define the details of this paradise. The following passage, versified with strict fidelity to the original, is as full and explicit as any:

Where glory never fading is, where is the world of heavenly light,

The world of immortality, the everlasting, set me there!

Where Yama reigns, Vivasvat’s son, in the inmost sphere of heaven bright.

Where those abounding waters flow, oh, make me but immortal there!

Where there is freedom unrestrain’d, where the triple vault of heaven’s in sight,

Where worlds of brightest glory are, oh, make me but immortal there!

Where pleasures and enjoyments are, where bliss and raptures ne’er take flight,

Where all desires are satisfied, oh, make me but immortal there!

But this form of doctrine long ago passed from the Hindu remembrance, lost in the multiplying developments and specifications of a mystical philosophy, and a teeming superstition nourished by an unbounded imagination.

Padmasambhava and his Eight Manifestations, 19th century, HIndu — *Padmasambhava and his Eight Manifestations*, 19th century. Pigment and mineral colours on cotton, 148 x 97.5 cm. Phajoding Gonpa, Thimphu, Bhutan.

Both Brahmans and Buddhists conceive of creation on the most enormous scale. Mount Meru rises from the centre of the earth to the height of about two million miles. On its summit is the city of Brahma, covering a space of 14,000 leagues, and surrounded by the stately cities of the regents of the spheres. Between Meru and the wall of stone forming the extreme circumference of the earth are seven concentric circles of rocks. Between these rocky bracelets are continents and seas. The celestial spaces are occupied by a large number of heavens, called ‘deva lokas,’ increasing in the glory and bliss of their prerogatives. The worlds below the earth are hells, called ‘naraka.’ The description of twenty-eight of these, given in the Vishnu Purana, makes the reader well aware of the horrors of hell. The Buddhist Books of Ceylon tell of twenty-six heavens placed in regular order above one another in the sky, crowded with all imaginable delights. They also depict, in the abyss underneath the earth, eight great hells, each containing sixteen smaller ones, the whole 136 composing one gigantic hell. The eight chief hells are situated over one another, each partially enclosing and overlapping the next; and the sufferings inflicted on their unfortunate occupants are of the most terrific character. However these hints at the local apparatus of reward and punishment do not illustrate the scope of their mythological scheme of the universe.

The five hundred million Hindu and Buddhist believers hold that all the gods, men, demons, and various grades of animal life occupying the immeasurable array of worlds compose one cosmic family. The totality of animated beings, from a detestable gnat to thundering Indra, from the miniscule worm to the supreme Buddha, constitute one fraternal unit, by the unavoidable effects of the law of retribution constantly interchanging their residences in a succession of rising and sinking existences, ranging through all the earths, heavens, and hells of the universe, bound by the terrible links of merit and demerit in the phantasmagorical dungeon of births and deaths. The Vishnu Purana declares, “The universe, this whole egg of Brahma, is everywhere swarming with living creatures, all of whom are captives in the chains of acts.”

The one prime postulate of the Asian faiths, never to be questioned any more than the central and stationary position of the Earth, is that all beings below the Infinite One are confined in the circle of existence, the whirl of births and deaths, by the consequences of their virtues and vices. When a man dies, if he has an excess of good virtues, he is born, as a superior being, in one of the heavens. According to the nature and degree of his merit, his heavenly existence is prolonged, or perhaps repeated many times in succession; or, if his next birth occurs on earth, it is under happy circumstances, as a sage or a king. But when he expires, should there, on the other hand, be an excess of immoral deeds, he is born as a demon in one of the hells, or may in repeated lives run the circuit of the hells; or, if he at once returns to the earth, it is as a beggar, an outcast, or in the form of a rat, snake, or louse.