Just came across this and I found the bit about death interesting. How many of us think about our own future death? I for one do, I think it has to stem from having children. With me, I imagine what would happen if I should die. Is this really morbid or just realistic. I would also be interested to know how you feel about death - do you feel that loss through death is something to be accepted rather than grieved over?
Parinirvana Day is a Mahayana Buddhist festival that marks the death of the Buddha. It is also known as Nirvana Day.
Buddhists celebrate the death of the Buddha, because they believe that having attained Enlightenment he achieved freedom from physical existence and its sufferings.
The Buddha's death came when he was eighty years old, and had spent forty years teaching after his Enlightenment. He died in a state of meditation, and attained nirvana, a release from the cycle of death and rebirth.
The Paranibbana Sutta describes the Buddha's last days, and passages from it are often read on Parinirvana Day.
Buddhists celebrate Parinirvana Day by meditating or by going to Buddhist temples or monasteries. As with other Buddhist festivals, celebrations vary throughout the world.
In monasteries Parinirvana Day is treated as a social occasion. Food is prepared and some people bring presents such as money, household goods or clothes.
The day is used as an opportunity to reflect on the fact of one's own future death, and on friends or relations who have recently passed away. The idea that all things are transient is central to Buddhist teaching. Loss and impermanence are things to be accepted rather than causes of grief.
Meditations are carried out for the newly deceased to give them help and support wherever they might be now.
Swanx
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I have not experienced my own death nor, unlike Namaste, Ciariad and many others, have I experienced the death of someone very close to me. So I do not qualified to say anything of any worth about the effects of death.
I do know that for those people who have lost someone very close to them it has changed their life and that there is much to come to terms with.
Buddhists also believe that ultimately life and death are illusory and that our true inner nature is unborn and undying.
May I offer, at Parinirvana, my remembrance of what a wonderful woman and mother Ailsa Fuller, my late mother-in-law, was.
I hope that you don't think my last comment flippant. I experienced the first death of a friend last year - not a very close friend but someone who I had spent time with on holidays and knew fairly well over a period of the last 20 years. I can honestly say that I think far more about her since she died than when she was alive. I suppose it is perhaps that we take people for granted until they are not there. Then we realise far more what they brought to our lives and what they could be doing, if they were still there.
I was also interested in the concept of focusing on one's own future death, which as I mentioned I do far more these days. Is this something that you all do too?
No I can honestly say my future death does not feature in my thoughts. I would be happy if no trace of me remained after I die, although other people might wish otherwise. I do not want to be remembered, as I will be somewhere else getting on with other things!
We will all meet again in the universal mind.
Post a Comment