Opinion: What does your faith tradition teach about death and the afterlife? csindy.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from csindy.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Sarah Bender - Buddhist
Sarah Bender is a Roshi (senior teacher) in the Koan Zen Buddhist tradition. She is a resident teacher for Springs Mountain Sangha, a Zen community in Colorado Springs (smszen.org).
If a soul is a shard of the great light that animates the body it inhabits during a lifetime, clearly it shines through animals as through humans. What happens after death? I donât know. Time and physical space donât seem to be obstacles to this light. It seems to live on in everyone and everything a being has touched, spreading like ripples, wider and wider. At someoneâs death, I am always struck by the dual nature of it. It seems ordinary. Hereâs a live person (or animal), hereâs a person in transition, beyond life. Not breathing. And yet. an impenetrable mystery. Where is she? Where did he go? How is it that I can, almost physically, feel that I am now carrying some of him/her?
Ahriana Platten - New Thought-Unity
Dr. Ahriana Platten is founder-executive director of In Good Faith, leads Unity Spiritual Center and speaks around the country on the topics of interfaith and intercultural understanding.
I think it should â but not for the reasons youâd assume. I donât believe we need a pledge of allegiance. The pledge suggests that I belong to one country instead of the planet. I think of myself as a global citizen. I donât like the idea of indoctrination into ideas and principles that we donât actually practice. We say âone nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.â While we may be one nation â we are deeply divided and the principles of liberty and justice for all are simply not reflected in our society. To say this untruth falls âunder Godâ seems so contrary to what I understand about the concept of God. Frankly, I donât think any God would want to be associated with these arbitrary word