'The After Life'

Asiaprod

Excelsior wrote:

"Heaven is all well and good, but its not the end of the world"

What a great quote, I like that one a lot. Smart guy.

Excelsior wrote:

But we are bred to think about happiness as something we achieve by doing. As a Buddhist, you surely will agree with the Christian idea that in Heaven, we will be happy not because of what we do, but because of who we are.

That's a hard one to answer as it can so easily be misrepresented. Let me answer it this way.
Yes, one should be happy in ones afterlife because of who one is. Very valid statement, very acceptable.

The twist that differs from Buddhism of course is that we find out who we are because of who we spend our time with. In Heaven, we spend our time with our Creator and through relationship with him, fulfillment is found.

This is the tough bit. It is to simplistic a statement in its current form for me to agree with. It is only part of the story. We do not find out who we are simply by spending time with other people. That is only one of many approaches, though it is a limited one for me. In contrast, think of the Hermits and holy men from Jainism, Hinduism and early Buddhism. Think again of the Hermits and holy men of the middle ages in England and Europe, and in your own faith, of those closed orders of monks and nuns, and in particular those closed and silent orders. Their participation with their fellow man is highly limited, would you not agree? Their communion is more a non-on-one with their God.
The whole central core of what I believe in has more to do with changing myself and MY outlook,and not of those around me. Of course I want to help them as much as I possibly can, but Buddhism is a little selfish in that despite all we read and study, the message at the end of the day says "Ultimately, you are responsible for no one but yourself and this must be your prime derective"

Since Buddhism is atheistic in terms of God, but agnostic in terms of an afterlife or continuation of life-force, our focus is concentrated on the methodology of attaining the desired result. Therefore, if I was to jumble up both your and my faith to create the perfect equation for success it would read something like

Because of what we have become by virtue of what we do here, we can go to heaven and be happy with who we are.

So as you may see, we Buddhist concentrate solely on the here and now for the best path to the after life. We do not speculate on what this afterlife is, since it is meaningless to without actually talking to somebody who has been there.　In contrast, you practice to a living God that you know through his works and writings, and private interactions, and your sole mission is the desire to be happy with him in heaven.

In your statement, you place the emphasis on who you are in heaven (we spend our time with our Creator and through relationship with him, fulfillment is found), I place the emphasis on the journey to become who I am going to be and thereby achieve my happyness.

However, we can both agree that leading a good life is the correct way to attaining happyness.......right!

Still, I really want to beat Karl Marx at chess so I hope there is a games room amongst the many rooms of our Father's mansion.

Ha-ha, that is an interesting desire, I intend booking my time there with De Vinci. I got a lot of questions to ask him