The religions of Islam and Buddhism both share some concepts of the death and the afterlife but their ideas are different. For Islam, the Qur’an is the supporting structure for the religion. In that book, the way of living and life after death are told through myths or stories. It is the book based from God’s mouth and his prophet Muhammad. In Buddhism, although not as detailed as Islam, their ideas were more laid back on the concept of death. Siddartha Gautama was the myth behind Buddhism and he was the one who brought upon the idea of Enlightenment.
In the Qur’an, by doing daily prayers you are showing your faith to Allah and Muhammad and everything you did during the time you lived is recorded into the Book of Life. After death, the Book of Life is handed to you on either your left or right hand and whichever hand will determine your path to either Heaven or Hell. How you live is where you will go in the afterlife. However for Buddhism, they believe that when you live, you will also suffer but attaining “nirvana” can still be done.
Both of these religion, although different, have the concept of reincarnation. In Buddhism, you are either reborn in a good or bad realm as humans/gods or animals/hungry ghosts. In Islam, when the Day of Judgement come, the dead will resurrect. Although both idea of resurrection are different, they both believe in the idea of the dead coming back.
In Islam, people have to do well in their life to in order to go to a better place after death. This concept is almost like Buddhism which the idea of karma in order to do well and avoid harm. All these religions are based on myths and without them, the religion wouldn’t come into being. Islam has the 5 Pillars of Islam and Buddhism has the Four Noble Truths and these are the “rules” in order to live peacefully and die peacefully. It is almost like the commandments for the religions or way of life.
Although both these religion are different in their own aspects, they still share some concepts of life and death. Practice of their religion are essential and accustomed for the people and this is why they cling to the idea of this in order to get a sense of the death they will face since it is inevitable.
I like how your last sentence is left almost as a note to the reader of your blog posting, as it emphasizes the truth about death being so unavoidable. And also how you made that comparison between the 5 pillars of Islam and the 4 Noble truths as the rules within their respective religions in order to live a more peaceful life since I hadn’t really thought of them in similar terms like that yet!
ReplyDeleteYour analysis on the concept of reincarnation as the similarity between Buddhism and Islam really stuck to me. Throughout our class discussions on postmortem rituals and judgment, it is interesting to see how reincarnation still remains a tricky subject to fully grasp, especially since many worldviews have different interpretations on it. Which brings me to the question: why do different worldviews have such drastic interpretations on reincarnation despite the mutual understanding of reincarnation itself? Hopefully, this will be answered as we study deeper into more worldviews!
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