Death and what follows

The teaching

As each tradition in its own books and rites teaches it.

What parts at death

Every teaching in this art begins with a parting. Death, in nearly every tradition, separates what life held together, and what a tradition says comes next follows from what it says a person is. The Hebrew Bible puts the parting in a line of Ecclesiastes: the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit to God who gave it.

The traditions count the parts differently. The Egyptians knew several, each with its own fate, among them the heart that is weighed, the ka that is fed with offerings and the ba that flies out of the tomb by day. In Homer what goes down is the psyche, a shade with the face of the living and none of their strength. Plato teaches an immortal soul, and Jewish, Christian and Islamic teaching a soul that waits to be joined again to its body at the resurrection. The Hindu schools speak of a self, the atman, that leaves one body for the next, carried by a subtle body; the Buddhists of a stream of consciousness and karma with no lasting self in it; and Tibetan teaching describes dying itself as the elements of the body dissolving one into another until the mind's own clear light dawns.

So the first question a student puts to any teaching is what goes on: a shade, a soul, a self or a stream. No question parts the traditions more, and each answer is given on its own page.

The road and the guide

Death, in most tellings, opens a journey, and the dead do not make it alone. The Egyptian dead cross the Duat, a hidden country of gates, lakes and guardians, with the spells of the Book of the Dead to answer each keeper. The Greek dead are led down by Hermes and carried over the river by Charon for a coin. The Tibetan dead pass through the betweens for as long as forty-nine days. In Islam the dead wait in barzakh, the barrier, from the grave to the resurrection, and in the oldest books of the Hebrew Bible they go down to Sheol, where great and small lie together.

The one who leads the dead has a name in this art, the psychopomp, the guide of souls. Anubis fills that office in Egypt and Hermes in Greece; in Islam the angel of death takes the soul, and the old Latin Mass for the dead asks that Saint Michael, the standard-bearer, bring the souls into the holy light.

The reckoning

Almost every road leads to a reckoning, and what is weighed is the life itself. In Egypt the heart is set on the scale against the feather of Ma'at, truth and right order, and the one whose heart balances is declared true of voice. In Plato's myth the dead are judged naked, soul looking on soul, so that the judge sees every scar a wrong left behind. Catholic and Orthodox teaching speaks of a judgement of each soul at death and of a last judgement of all; the Qur'an of a Day of Reckoning on which deeds are weighed and nothing is lost, not an atom's weight of good or of evil; the Bardo Thodol of a mirror of karma, before which good and evil deeds are counted out in white and black pebbles.

The measure in each is conduct. The Egyptian dead declare the wrongs they have not done; the Gospel's judgement turns on what was done for the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner; the Qur'an weighs deeds and sets God's mercy over all things; the Tibetan mirror shows the karma a life has made. That is why the teaching of a judgement after death has always been a teaching for the living.

The lots of the dead

After the reckoning the traditions give the dead their lots. Egypt gives the justified the Field of Reeds and the heart that fails to the Devourer. The Greeks give the many the pale Asphodel Meadow, the great offenders Tartarus and a favoured few Elysium. The faiths of Abraham speak of heaven and hell, Gan Eden and Gehinnom, the Garden and the Fire, and Catholic teaching adds purgatory, a cleansing for those who die in God's friendship but are not yet ready for heaven. The Indian traditions set heavens and hells within the round of births itself.

Whether a lot lasts is where the teachings differ most. The rabbis taught that Gehinnom cleanses most of those it holds within twelve months. Plato lets the curable wrongdoers out of Tartarus. The Prophet taught that whoever has faith in the heart, even a mustard seed's weight, is brought out of the Fire at last. The heavens and hells of the Buddhist teaching, however long, all end. Christian teaching holds heaven and hell to be for ever, with purgatory a passage toward heaven.

Rising and returning

For many traditions the last word is not a place but a return. Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach the resurrection, the dead raised in the body on the last day; the Book of Daniel says that many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake. The Indian traditions teach rebirth, each death followed by a birth for as long as karma runs, with release from the round as the goal, and Plato's tale of Er has the souls choose their next lives. The Book of the Dead promises the justified that they come forth by day, the ba flying out into the sunlight and home again at night. Rebirth and karma are taught as an art of their own, past lives and karma.

At the bedside

Every tradition keeps watch at the moment of dying, because it holds that the moment matters. Jews say the Shema with the dying and do not leave them alone; Muslims help them to say that there is no god but God; Hindus give a few drops of Ganges water and speak the name of God; Catholics bring the last rites; and in Tibet a lama or a friend reads the Bardo Thodol aloud, calling the dying person by name and telling them what is coming. The hospice tradition teaches families what the last weeks and hours are like, and to listen when the dying speak of who has come for them.

Beside the teachings stands what people at the threshold have told. Some who came close to death and returned describe a deep quiet, a sense of being outside the body, a passage, a light that is also a presence, the dead they loved, their life seen at once and a border from which they were sent back; a minority describe terror. Many of the dying speak in their last days of a parent or a friend who has died coming for them, and some long lost to confusion have a clear hour near the end. These are given as testimony on the pages of near-death experiences and deathbed visions, beside the teachings and not in their place.

What the living do

Every tradition gives the living work to do for the dead, and gives grief a shape in time. Jews sit shiva for seven days, keep thirty days and say Kaddish through the months that follow; the Orthodox pray on the third, ninth and fortieth days; Muslims wash, pray over and bury their dead quickly, and ask forgiveness for them; Hindus offer rice balls through the days after the fire; Buddhists in Tibet and East Asia make merit for the dead through seven weeks. The Egyptians carved the offering prayer on their tombs and asked everyone who passed to say it, so that the dead might be fed by the words of the living.

None of these customs says where any one person who has died is now, and none asks a mourner to stop grieving on a date. They are a rail to hold. How the traditions mourn gives each in full.

Remember that you die

The teachings about death are given to the living, and their first practice is to remember death for the sake of life. “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom,” says the psalm. The Rule of Benedict bids the monk keep death daily before his eyes, and the Church taught Christians the art of dying, the ars moriendi, long before they would need it. The rabbis taught that a person should repent one day before death, and since no one knows the day, should repent today. Tibetan teachers reflect that death is certain and its hour uncertain, and the root verse of the between of this life asks the living not to waste the time they have.

In every one of these, remembering death turns a person back toward their life: to amends made, love said and the day used well. If reading of death stirs in anyone a pull toward dying rather than living, the step is to speak to someone today: a doctor, a crisis line or the local emergency number.

How a student begins

Begin with your own. Learn what your tradition, or your family's, teaches of death and asks of the living, from its own books and its own clergy or elders, and keep one of its days: a name said aloud, a candle watched while it burns, a visit to a grave or to a place the person loved. Then read one other tradition as its own people tell it, and notice what it asks of the living, for that is where the traditions meet. If you are called to sit with someone who is dying, the oldest counsel is the plainest: stay, speak calmly, say their name and listen.

The branches and how they stand

The branches fall into three groups. The pictures of the old world come first: the weighing of the heart in Egypt and the Greek underworld. Then the teachings of living faiths: judgement and the world to come in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the Tibetan bardo. Last comes what is told from the edge of life and what the living do: near-death experiences, deathbed visions and how the traditions mourn. A reader who is grieving may wish to begin with the last of these.