Afterlife: Life After Death

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Recommended: Compare jainism, hinduism and buddhism

Afterlife can also be referred to as life after death and how the afterlife is described in Jainism, Taoism and Judaism. Afterlife is an important issue in mostly every religion because it defines their beliefs that the world is comprised of essentially two substances which are soul and matter. Soul is life which makes it eternal and valuable; on the other hand, matter is lifeless such as material and evil (Lewis M. Hopfe). Many religion beliefs that their life will be continued after death in form of punishment due to their good or bad karma. It is an interesting topic to learn about as every religion has their different beliefs and values for afterlife. It is a good learning material by providing the reasons for their faith in an afterlife.
In many ways Jainism is comparable with Buddhism. According to Jainism, Jains believe that everything is a living thing on earth such as trees, stones, rivers and many more. In Jainism, Jains believe that their purpose of their life is to achieve moksha, which means salvation by creating a good karma by doing good deeds and living a life without harming anyone else.
However, they also believe that the revived souls after death will get punished through suffering in hell if they do not get salvation because of their bad karma due to bad deeds done in their human life. As it is stated in Jainism that there are eight levels of hell, heaven and souls are reborn in a new human life after they get punished based on their deeds or karma (A Brief Introduction to
Based on the teachings of Jainism, the freedom of the person’s soul depends on their action involvement and they are not allowed to get help from outside or from any other different person, and the deed has to be done by themselves. Therefore, in Jainism the Gods have little penalties for them based on their karma as they believe that matter which is material, evil is eternal. “Jains recognize heavenly beings, but they are simple creatures living on a different plane from that of humankind and are also yet bound by karma. These gods cannot help human in their search for release. Therefore, prayer and worship are worthless. So, although Jainism acknowledge the existence of gods, it does not rely on them” (Lewis M. Hopfe).
Secondly, Taoism religion was established through ancient Chinese oral tradition as there has not been any identifiable time for beginning of Taoism. “In the third century B.C., the philosopher Lao-tzu assembled his interpretation, in a volume titled “Tao te ching,” which became the fundamental text of Taoism, remaining so until this day” (Vankin). Taoist belief in a system that is more apparent than in the ideas about the afterlife because death and afterlife was developed in reaction to Buddhism and they were adopted by Taoism over the time

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