The problem with Death

Death is and has been the big mystery of the ages.  Ever since we gained consciousness as a race, we’ve been wondering at what happens after you die.  Religion was pretty much created to address that and several other mysteries, but even with the advancement of science, what happens after death still lingers as the topic we know the least.

As we face different religious believes on a daily basis in this part of the world, it occurred to me that a bigger question is not so much what happens after you die but if there is any level of consciousness or better yet, self-consciousness after you cross the line.    I haven’t really being able to ask the question to anyone around here but it’s my understanding that for both Hindus and Buddhists, life is a continuum and your consciousness is recycled to another being, be it human or otherwise.  Most of what some devotees do in their lives is in preparation for being placed in the right body upon their deaths.  The believe is that if you do good in this life you either attain Nirvana or get closer to it by moving into a higher-level human being in your next life.  If you didn’t do so good then you get downgraded to another life form.  That in part might be why some animal forms are respected because they may contain an old family member or another lost relative.

However in all the discussions I have heard of reincarnation and such, none of them claim or mention any level of self-consciousness.

And, if there is no self-consciousness, do you even care what happens after you cross the line?  In essence, you would never know if you did cross the line or if you participated in another life before.  So, you’re pretty much back to square one.  I’d call this a little problem.

Christianity and Muslins, on the other hand, sort of figured that little problem out for themselves.  Not only there is heaven or hell to look forward to, but you will remember your sins and pay for them after you cross the line.  So not only you have to be fearful here in this life but anything which has not been fully paid for in your life time still has a chance to come back to haunt you later.  On the other hand heaven sounds like the perfect place to be.   Little lambs climbing on the backs of big lions still showing their big teeth that were the menace of those cute little lambs before.  For some lucky ones it means being pampered day and night by 70 virgins by your bedside.  --hope this translates into a heaven for those virgins as well--.   Nevertheless, heaven must be a nice place.   The level of self-consciousness should continue without a glitch. 

But as the mind wonders, continuing with the same level of consciousness does bring in another set of troubles.  Will your consciousness transfer at the same level as you had it here or will you get a 2.0 version?  I can imagine that most mentally-ill individuals would require some level of upgrade in their consciousness so for them there will be little that would be transferred from their previous lives.  Would you be able to selectively choose what you want to remember and leave behind things you want to forget?  If you remarried after your spouse die when you were alive, would you remember the old one or the new one?  Maybe the boundaries would not be the same as we have them now.

I could speculate like many before me but I just find it interesting that we have such a burdening curiosity to know what happens next.   Everyone has an opinion and a believe in how it’s going to be.  But just in case you have some of it wrong, make sure you at least do good in the one you have because once you cross the line, that’s it.

I didn’t mean to go so dark on this blog so to make it lighter, the picture above is of one of those entry points into the next life, the great Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) capital of the People’s Republic of Myanmar (formerly Burma) that we visited two weeks ago. 

Look Mom, No Motorcycles!

I’m not trying to make the argument that a repressive government is a good thing to have, but there are some things that a totalitarian government can do that democracies cannot.  And it is to dictate what they think is a good idea without regards to whether anyone else cares about their idea of what could be good or bad.  In the US we spend billions arguing whether healthcare would be good or bad for the people and for business, but in a totalitarian estate, what is decided by the few goes.

Last week we visited the country of Myanmar (formerly Burma) to start witnessing some of the changes the “more user-friendly” military government is doing in the country to alleviate the burden on their people and now to encourage outside visitors to start coming in.   In addition to having been isolated for a number of years, you also have to factor the difference in culture, language, royalty, and ethnic background from any of its neighbors.   There is so much more history on this side of the world that the differences in all those factors lingers for many generations.

Case in point is our experience with the motorcycles.  Each country has handled the motorcycles in a different way.   Thailand is probably in the middle of the road when it comes to that.  There are many motorcycles riding around but you can at least see cars in between.  The top (or is it the bottom) of the list for us is Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.  Another totalitarian government, which went a different way.   They figured that their people needed cheap transportation and they let them have motorcycles.  And on the other side is Myanmar, they must have figured that motorcycles are noisy, unsafe and polluting so they decided that their people were not going to have any of that.

It was almost a shock to us to find a city without a single motorcycle riding around.  I have to admit that I didn’t really miss them.  The streets were relatively quiet.  Walking around felt safe from being assaulted by a rough motorcycle on the sidewalk like is common here in Thailand.  And in combination with all their greenery, the air felt actually clean and breathable.

In conclusion, two repressive governments, two very different ways to handle a problem.  History will ultimately be the judge but thus far I liked the outcome in Myanmar rather than HCMC so far.

As a contrast from Myanmar, I’m posting here a short video I took of an intersection in a major street in HCMC.  I dare you to try to cross any of those streets by foot.