Transcript Value of Life and the Value of Death a Christian

The Value of Life and
the Value of Death
a Christian / Buddhist / Rationalist
Dialogue
Introduction:
• In the past the question facing humanity
was ‘how to survive?’ The issue facing us
here is ‘how best to die?’ Our answer to
these questions will determine the
character of our laws and their application.
What sort of world do we want? The great
religions of the world have thought long
and hard about these matters.
Life:
• A person can be:
– alive physically, but dead emotionally;
– intellectually brilliant but amoral;
– can also be spiritually alive, and this vitality is
expressed
• in the love of friend and foe alike
• in universal forgiveness.
• At that point there is an experience of the
Divine Presence.
Life:
• The more we live in the present the
more we perceive that we are living in
an eternal now.
• The more we enter into our present
joy, the more we see it as a promise of
endless joy - endless openness.
(contrast: ‘metaphysical closure’)
The value of dying
• It can make us question our life. What is really
important? And so we come to wisdom.
• It can lead to reviewing our life and choosing what
is good in it and so we make our life a gift to
others.
• Each person can then say:
– ‘Such is my life.
– It is a gift to you, just as the life you have chosen is a
gift to me.
– Even the manner of our dying is our gift to each other.
– I am of eternal value to you, and you to me.
The moment of truth:
• In the process of dying our faculties fail, and we
are stripped down to our essential being.
• Saint John of the Cross, the great mystic of 16th
century Spain, describes ‘the dark night of the
soul’ as the moment when understanding ceases
and only faith remains; when memory is irrelevant
and only hope prevails, when the person says
simply: “Your will be done”. It is the moment of
truth.
Interplay of life and death:
• According to the Christian tradition Jesus
experiences life and death, good and evil, the
highest heaven and the depths of desolation.
He experiences every paradox. Therefore he
has the fullness of knowledge and can draw
close to everyone, whether alive or dead, and
give them hope.
• He is the sacrifice which brings blessing.
Question to Lyn:
• The life of a day-labourer in India can be
short and brutish.
• What would you say that could give
fundamental value to his life?
Question to Di
• It is a Buddhist custom to dedicate the
merit of one’s practice to the benefit of all
sentient beings.
• In what way can one person’s dying
become a value to another person’s living?