Death, Dying, and the Afterlife

236 Pages·2016·15.86 MB·English

by  Mark Berkson

Subtopic
Topic Comparative
Religion & World Religion
Death, Dying,
and the Afterlife

Lessons from World Cultures
Course Guidebook
Professor Mark Berkson
Hamline University
PuBlisheD By:
the great Courses
CorPorate heaDquarters
4840 WestfielDs BoulevarD, suite 500
Chantilly, virginia 20151-2299
Phone: [phone]
fax: [phone]
WWW.thegreatCourses.Com
CoPyright © the teaChing ComPany, 2016
Printed in the United States of America
This book is in copyright. All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of
The Teaching Company.
mark Berkson,
Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, Religion Department
Hamline University
D
r. Mark Berkson i s Professor and
Chair in the Religion Department
at Hamline University. He teaches
courses in the religious traditions of East and
South Asia, Islam, and comparative religion.
Dr. Berkson received a B.A. from Princeton
University’s Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs with a minor
in East Asian Studies, an M.A. from Stanford University in East Asian Studies,
and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Religious Studies and Humanities.
He has twice received Faculty Member of the Year awards and has received
multiple fellowships for his work in Asian religions.
Having given more than 100 presentations at conferences, universities,
community meetings, and churches, Dr. Berkson has also appeared on radio
and television news shows in segments dealing with religious issues.
Dr. Berkson’s scholarly work has addressed such topics as Confucian and
Daoist thought, religious ethics, death and dying, religious studies pedagogy,
and interfaith dialogue. His work has appeared in the Journal of Religious
Ethics, Teaching Theology & Religion, and Buddhist-Christian Studies, as well as
in edited volumes published by SUNY Press and Blackwell Publishing, among
others. He has taught one previous Great Course: Cultural Literacy for Religion:
Everything the Well-Educated Person Should Know. ■
i
T C
able of onTenTs
I
nTroduCTIon
Professor Biography .............................................i
Acknowledgments ............................................. v
Course Scope ................................................. 1
l G
eCTure uIdes
Lecture 1
Death’s Place in Our Lives ....................................... 4
Lecture 2
Defining Death .............................................. 13
Lecture 3
Death, Illusion, and Meaning ................................... 21
Lecture 4
Is It Rational to Fear Death? .................................... 29
Lecture 5
Understanding and Coping with Grief ............................ 35
Lecture 6
Death Rituals and the Corpse ................................... 44
Lecture 7
American Death Rituals ....................................... 52
Lecture 8
Approaches to Dying Well ...................................... 60
ii
Lecture 9
Judaism on Death and the Afterlife ............................... 68
Lecture 10
Death and Hope in Christianity ................................. 76
Lecture 11
Islam on Returning to God ..................................... 84
Lecture 12
Death, Rebirth, and Liberation in Hinduism ....................... 92
Lecture 13
Buddhism on Impermanence and Mindfulness ..................... 101
Lecture 14
The Process of Dying in Tibetan Buddhism ....................... 108
Lecture 15
Confucian Remembrance, Daoist Forgetting ...................... 116
Lecture 16
Death and Syncretism in China ................................. 124
Lecture 17
Suicide Examined ........................................... 133
Lecture 18
The Choice of Euthanasia ..................................... 141
Lecture 19
Killing in War and the Pacifist Challenge ......................... 149
Lecture 20
Considering Capital Punishment ................................ 158
TABLE OF CONTENTS iii
Lecture 21
Killing Non-Human Animals .................................. 168
Lecture 22
Near-Death Experiences ...................................... 177
Lecture 23
The Pursuit of Immortality .................................... 185
Lecture 24
The Value of Death .......................................... 193
s m
upplemenTal aTerIal
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Image Credits .............................................. 227
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
a
CknowledGmenTs
I
am deeply indebted to the many teachers, colleagues, religious leaders,
and members of religious communities who have taught me so much
about the world’s religious traditions. I am grateful for the guidance I
received in issues related to death and dying in religious and philosophical
thought from my mentors at Stanford University: professors Lee Yearley, Van
Harvey, P.J. Ivanhoe, and Carl Bielefeldt. For this lecture series, I received very
helpful feedback from professor Deanna Thompson, professor Earl Schwartz,
Cantor Sheri Allen, Dr. Fatma Reda, professor Lucy Bregman, professor Emily
West, and professor Lisa Ferguson Stegall.
I have also benefited greatly from the teachings of religious leaders in the St.
Paul area. I particularly want to thank Mark Nunberg of Common Ground
Meditation Center, Sosan Theresa Flynn of Clouds-in-Water Zen Center,
Imam Makram El-Amin of Masjid An-Nur, and Shyamala Ganesh of the
Hindu Temple of Minnesota. I am grateful to Rich Purcell of Holcomb-
Henry-Boom-Purcell Funeral Homes for giving me a funeral director’s
perspective. I benefited in countless ways from the always-delightful, free-
flowing philosophical conversations with Chip Smith. I also want to thank
my colleagues and students at Hamline University, who teach and inspire me
every day.
Finally, I want to thank my family: my mother and father, Eileen and Myron
Berkson, for their unconditional love and support; my sisters, Sheri and Jill,
for their lifelong encouragement; my sons, Alex and Daniel, for putting up
with my absences during this project, helping me take breaks from it with our
outings, and never holding back their opinions; my cats Cooper, Tiger and
Sweetpea; my amazing dog Duncan, for giving me the four-legged beings’
perspectives on life; and, most of all, my wife Laura, for her helpful editing
and constructive feedback, her unflagging support, and her ability to hold
everything together. In the midst of writing and thinking about death, these
are the people who always bring meaning and joy to my life.
v
vi
d , d ,
eaTh yInG
a
and The fTerlIfe
l w C
essons from orld ulTures
T
he inescapability of death and our knowledge of our mortality
impact every aspect of our lives. We human beings die and know we
are going to die. Death is not only an event that lies in our futures;
it is the horizon against which we live our lives. We live in continuous
awareness that we will have to experience the death of loved ones, and we
recognize that because we are beings who love, we are beings who grieve. We
live in continuous awareness of our own inevitable death. The choices that
we make are shaped in countless ways by how we think about death, what we
believe happens after death, and by what death—and life—ultimately mean.
So thinking about death is an essential element of the reflective human life,
and it brings us face-to-face with questions of meaning in the face of finitude
and loss. In what ways might death threaten the meaningfulness of our lives?
And in what ways might death make a meaningful life possible? How have
human beings in different cultures and historical periods come to terms
with death?
This course is a multidisciplinary exploration of a complex topic. We will
see why the perspectives of numerous different disciplines are necessary
to more fully understand the role that death plays in our lives. We will
see that, in order to understand death in all of its dimensions, we need to
bring in the disciplinary lenses of theology, philosophy, history, psychology,
anthropology, sociology, literature, and many other areas of inquiry. We
will encounter great thinkers reflecting many different approaches to the
problem of death: religious thinkers such as Confucius, the Buddha, and St.
Paul; philosophers from Epicurus to Camus; psychologists and psychiatrists
such as Sigmund Freud and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross; writers and poets such
as Dylan Thomas, Jorge Luis Borges, Simone de Beauvoir, C. S. Lewis, Joan
Didion; and many others.
1
The course is organized around five big questions:
1 How do human beings think and feel about death? This section is
about our thoughts, representations, and attitudes about death. The
focus is on philosophical and psychological concerns. We look at the
ways we think about death—and the ways we avoid thinking about
death—and the ways we feel about death, along with the impact that
the fear of death has. We look closely at the phenomenon of death
denial, and the implications of denying death. We examine the various
ways people put a value on death—as good, bad, or nothing at all.
2 How do human beings experience death? In this section, we move
from our thoughts about death to our experiences of it. Experiences
of death can be divided into two kinds: the death of others and our
own dying. In this section we explore the ways that people in different
cultures and traditions deal with grief and mourning, carry out
death rituals, and prepare for their own deaths. Here we bring in the
perspectives of anthropology and sociology, along with psychology.
3 How do the world’s religious traditions understand and approach
death (and the afterlife)? In this section of the course, we will look at
the understandings of, and rituals surrounding, death in the world’s
major religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism,
Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. We will bring in the
approaches of theology and comparative religious thought to explore
the questions that arise. How do members of these traditions explain
death? How does death fit into their larger worldviews? How do
they conceptualize continued existence after death? We will look at
different understandings of what happens after death, and different
ways death is overcome, accepted, or transcended in these traditions.
4 When is it justified to take life? The fact that the issues surrounding
the taking of life are debated with such intensity is a testament to
the value that we put on life. Many of us would describe life as
sacred or precious. This is why whenever we decide to take life, we
should engage in deep reflection on our motivations, and on the
consequences, implications, and morality of our actions. The issue of
2 COURSE SCOPE