The nature of death
I cannot even begin to fathom such an attitude or belief. Death is something which affects the living far more than it affects someone who dies. Does this mean that there are worse deaths and better deaths? Is there some kind of league table where certain deaths are better and far more acceptable and certain deaths are much worse and to be avoided? Personally for me dead is dead, and each and every death of a human being impacts on other human beings and the experience of a bereavement is a unique and individual process. Each and every single death is a tragedy to be mourned because death always takes someone who is loved away from other people.
In trying to understand the logic or rationality behind capital punishment or the death penalty, and probably still failing, I feel that capital punishment has got nothing whatsoever to do with justice or restitution, and everything to do with moral outrage at either the cruelty or heinous nature of murder or its senselessness. I've noticed that in different states specific ways of killing someone, and circumstances are far more likely to result in a capital murder charge, and this cultural tendency is as unique to a state as its culture. For example in Texas it's murder without any weapon involved, i.e. strangulation which seems to attract a death sentence. In Georgia its the degree of intent and premeditation which is prominent. In Florida it's something else, but I haven't quite worked out what. But as there is no standard definition of cruelty or heinousness, it's all still rather arbitrary.
The Zebra Puzzle
Generally speaking the human perspective on death in terms of Western culture is just as subject to the Zebra Puzzle as life is. The Zebra Puzzle is my term for non-polar, dualistic thinking which sees everything in black and white terms. Two mainstream attitudes to death predominate in Western culture and generally it's one or the other.
The first is the religious view that you live only once and upon death your eternal fate is determined. You either end up in heaven or you end up in hell. For ever and ever and ever and ever. Then there's the so-called 'realistic' view, as explained by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, which states that you only live once and that's it, you cease to exist. There are however many people who struggle with accepting either of these two possibilities when it comes to death.
The eastern concept of reincarnation offers such people an 'out' when it comes to death, because it's easy to accept the fact that your soul is on some eternal cosmic pilgrimage through many different incarnations and lives. While this is common to all eastern religions which are based on dhyana or 'path' and samsara, I tend to flip to Tibetan or lama Buddhism which has a very well developed cosmology and mythology when it comes to the cycles of reincarnation, death, rebirth and birth. Apparently you started out from some obscure origin and worked your way through the entire course of biological evolution, so previously you were a single cell organism, a plant, a dish, a dinosaur, and on and on throughout the animal kingdom until you were reborn as a human being, which is a very privileged form of incarnation considered higher than not just other forms of life, but also gods, angels, demi-gods and demons.
Samsara offers six realms of existence, which if I remember correctly I have gone into in Ten or Twelve, either link opens in a new tab or window, but even if you embrace this comforting concept of the interdependence of life and death you still haven't solved the Zebra Puzzle because you're still conceptualizing both life and death and can easily fool yourself into thinking that there's some kind of trans-migration of soul going on.
The Three Marks of Existence
However neither Zen Buddhism nor Theravada go too far into the mythology or cosmology of life after death because both are far more focussed on nirvana - which means liberation from reincarnation, death, birth and rebirth and shunya-ta or sunnata (as it is written) or ultimate reality. This is the ultimate soteriological objective which is to evolve past all physical existence.
The Three Marks of Existence are craving, desire and trauma, which are all physical sensations and which are explained as attachments to samsara and the Wheel of Life and the perpetual cycles of death, rebirth and birth. While people in the West find reincarnation, samsara and nirvana attractive and comforting, many Hindus and Buddhists in the east are trying to get out of samsara and become the universe itself, which is the whole point.
However both Zen and Theravada differ in their approaches to nirvana and samsara, as both differ fundamentally in terms of '-yana' or 'vehicle'. Zen Buddhism is mahayana Buddhism, which means 'many paths to enlightenment' while Theravada is hinayana Buddhism, which means 'few paths' or even 'single path'. Zen is based on 'za-zen' or Zen meditation and the teaching of Buddhist koans or riddles, such as imagine the sound of one hand clapping, and the centring of an individual through a teacher and dialectic discourse. Theravada is much more about the ancient 'way of the elders', direct community action and participation, green environmental action, and social action, countered with both vipassana and samatha meditation. Samatha meditation to centre oneself, and vipassana to develop intuition, mystical insight and psychic abilities.
Theravada, which I was taught and trained in, places a great emphasis on impermanence and teaches that all forms of permanence are illusions and non-existence is illusion. Of major importance in Theravada is Khagganavisana Sutta, known as the Rhinoceros Sutra, which is a long poem which is often given the title 'Fare lonely like the rhinoceros'. The poem is a poem about the different illusions that Mankind gets caught up in, and the cycle of cravings and desires, trauma and suffering, and the endless cycles of disappointment, false beliefs, praise and blame, profit and loss, suggesting that you see these things for what they are in reality and walk your own unique path in life. The fundamental Theravada premise is that if the Buddha can find their enlightenment then so too can any human being. You simply have to find your path and walk it.
How can you die if you have never been born?
Let's think for a minute about what the two Sanskrit words 'atman' and 'anatman' mean. 'Atman' is self, individual, and 'anatman' is non-self, non-individual. If we are to get into the ground of being, or the eastern concept of Natural Law, then we need to understand that 'atman' refers to the human being as self, this world as self, and the universe and cosmos as self. In other words we are referring to existence as self. So if 'atman' is self, the human individual, the world, and the universe, and if 'atman' is existence in itself, then what is 'anatman'?
What I'm referring to here is the source of pretty much all eastern cosmology. While I cannot write about Sikhism, the monotheistic religion of northern India, what I'm writing about is the source of all Hinduism, jainism, Buddhism, and therefore yoga and meditation. This could be the basis of Sikhism too, but better you ask someone who is Sikh rather than rely on my second hand information. You see reincarnation has become infested with morality and moral reasoning. Many believe that if you live a good life, one of virtue, you will be reborn into an easier life. If you are cruel and wicked in this life, then your next incarnation will be much harder. If you cling to physical beliefs and desires in this life, then you will be reborn into a life of constant change, instability and trauma in your next incarnation?
My point here is how do you know? What is the source of such thinking and such beliefs? I mean, if you are that sure of what your next incarnation is going to be, then what is your life going to be like next year, or in five year's time? More to the point, why does all this matter so much to you?
You see from my individual perspective there is little or no difference between the various beliefs in life after death or lack of existence which comes after death. If you believe that you're going to heaven it's fine. If you believe that you're going to hell it's fine. If you believe that you're just a cosmic flash of consciousness and you live once and that's it, this is also fine. If you believe in life after death and reincarnation that's fine. It still does not change the fact that death is the ultimate experience of trauma and trauma, in whatever form it manifests itself as an experience coming at you from your environment, will always push you into the unknown and unfamiliar.
This is the reality. Yes you will die, but you don't know when, you don't know how, and you have zero way of finding out. Even if you have a terminal illness all you have is medical opinion as to how long you have left. If you have the misfortune to be incarcerated on Death Row in the United States, all you will have is a date and a time and until you know that, you're just in prison serving a de facto life sentence. However I will leave you to think about the significance of something such as capital punishment and how the fear of death is used by those in authority to control your thinking and behaviour in life. It's part of the duality between fear and desire that the cultural engineers use to manipulate the human mind and achieve total control over society and culture.
But what is the one thing that connects everything in existence which has physical form? It's a five letter word, starts with an 's' and ends with an 'e'. What is it that connects your physical body to your senses, your senses to your brain, and your physical body, senses and brain to your environment? The answer is always 'anatman'. If you are feeling angry where is that feeling coming from? Where is your anger coming from? How does your feelings of anger relate to your feelings of happiness? What is the connection between your memory and your mind?
I'm going to give you one more word in Sanskrit. Sva-bhava. 'Sva' essentially means the same as 'atman' or self, and 'bhava' means 'self-becoming' or if you prefer the unfolding nature of self, who you are becoming. Who you are becoming is always relative to your environment, and who you become as an individual human being is always relative to other people in your environment. Please keep in mind that your mind, which is space, is also your individual conscious perspective. Please also keep in mind that consciousness going into physical form is incarnation, and when it happens again and again and again, this is reincarnation. Change is the only constant in existence, and this means that sva-bhava is also the only constant when it comes to who you are. You can only believe in death as an experience if you believe it to be a completely separate experience from life.
You cannot experience death. See life is an experience of an environment, so death can only be a kind of non-experience of an environment. If someone or something, such as a pet, dies then the consciousness you feel which is the connection immediately turns to a sense of emptiness or void. Sleep is another non-experience of an environment. The connection remains in the subconscious, which is of course the eternal mystery.
But see if you understand sva-bhava, you understand that life and death are the two intertwined aspects of existence, and existence is nothing more than a developing relationship with an environment through space. Self in itself cannot exist without a constant relationship to environment. This is where we get into the concept of dependent arising, you are constantly changing because your environment is constantly changing. Self cannot exist without environment, just as you cannot exist without this planet in your present form, just as you cannot exist without a universe to exist in. Can you think of anything which defines the relationship between your physical being and your environment than your mind and individual conscious perspective?
I can't.