Search This Blog

20130119

On Ghosts, the Fear of Death and the Affterlife

Most likely, ghosts are nothing more than fictions arising in the mind.

There is nothing wrong about creating fictions in your mind, as long as you get your facts straight, and that fiction obeys physical law but allows for anything seemingly supernatural to be metaphor for subtle qualities of the mind.

Thus, a ghost is actually based on the memory of a deceased loved one or mistaken for a dead family member.

If the latter, the purported "daemon from hell" pretending to be said family member is actually a manifestation of fear of death and the afterlife. It is similar to a wrathful diety.

However, ghosts do not exist in reality; for they are figments of the imagination "created" by the mind. A Buddhist would call ghosts delusions manifesting as spirits of the dead, and mostly likely projections of fear of death.

This is why Pure Land way came into existence, to prepare people for the afterlife.

One side effect for rebirth in the Pure Land is that it reduces any chance that a person's ghost will linger, provided that the deceased's family fully accept Buddhism as the toolkit to rationalize supernatural phenomena as projections of the mind.

By doing so, the Buddhist becomes acceptable to atheists.

No comments: