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The Tamed Dog or The Wild Lion?
When reading Ecclesiastes 9:1-18 there is a quote saying, “A live dog is better than a dead lion”. This saying is how many people live in our everyday lives, safely and with little to no chance of danger. A lion is a dangerous creature, untamable, free and predatory. It is also a lazy animal in a sense it needs to relax and sleep every day before hunting for only a few hours. Dogs are tamable animals, loyal, willingly chained but happy as far at the owner treats them. Life is our owner, and we can either choose to be the lion who is dangerous to oneself but free or the dog who is not free but can live a long comfortable life. This passage of how we spend our time in the world can be interpreted as living a full life according to the bible or living a full life of pleasure and your own set morals. I am choosing a full life with set morals as my answer to this question of what this passage is explaining. We should value
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I would however, like to add that you must consider your own moral compass when making decisions. Not every human is the same, one may think an idea is wrong and this is okay. Differences in culture, religion, lifestyles etc. will always conflict with the paths we want to take and the ones we actually take. Happiness for me is the key to life. When you are happy you are more productive and you in turn give joy to the world you live in. Before death you can spread the lessons you have learned through your journey to happiness. As death is the last frontier no one has come back from and fully explored. There may be those who have died for a few minutes but no one to actually reanimate from blood and bone to tell the tale. Once you die, that’s it. Living in happiness is the greatest gift humanity has ever received. That is my answer for how we should spend time on this earth; in happiness with the lessons we
Mortality, the subject of death, has been a curious topic to scholars, writers, and the common man. Each with their own opinion and beliefs. My personal belief is that one should accept mortality for what it is and not go against it.
The big question. No not that, the other one. The "what happens to us after life" question. It is something that has intrigued people everywhere. It has prompted the beliefs and semantics of different cultures all around the world. It started wars, divided people, and now dictates how we are all to act. "We should do this, we should do that. If we don't, we will be punished." I, for one, am tired of it. By all means, think what you will. But this is my writing, and you will have to open your mind to my thinking if you wish to continue. If you do wish to continue, I will be brutaly honest in what I think. There will be no sugar-coating in this oppinionated essay of mine.
Many religions and philosophies attempt to answer the question, what happens after a person dies? Some religions such as Christianity and Islam believe there is an afterlife. They believe that good and moral people enter Heaven or paradise and that bad and immoral people go to Hell. Other religions and cultures believe that death is final, and that nothing happens after a person dies. Buddhism and Hinduism have a different idea about death. Both of these religions originated in India. Buddhists and Hindus believe that death is not final. They believe that a person comes back after he or she dies. This process is known as reincarnation, and it provides opportunities for people to enter the world multiple times in different forms. Buddhists and Hindus want to reenter the world as humans, and they want to improve their status through reincarnation. In ancient India, many members of lower casts wanted to come back as members of higher casts. While this is an important goal of reincarnation, the main goal is to reach either moksha (Hinduism) or nirvana (Buddhism). In other words, the goal is to reach a point of spiritual enlightenment that removes the person from the reincarnation process. Geoff Childs, an anthropologist examines the views of the Buddhist religion by studying the lives of the people in Tibetan villages. He looks at issues that adversely affect these people such as infant mortality. He carefully looks at the lives of people who have been left behind by deceased loved ones, and he pays careful attention to customs and traditions surrounding death. Tibetan Buddhists view death as a means of reaching spiritual perfection, and they seek to reach this level of spiritual perfection through living spiritually meaningful lives....
Admittedly, the philosophy of the late nineteenth century German Friederich Nietzsche had a profound impact on my world view. I concur with his belief that humans should occupy themselves with living in the reality that is, and not to be preoccupied with fantastic illusions of working towards a great afterlife. Granted, I am still very young, but from what I can see, humans have no universal nature nor do any set of underlying human morals dictate what is right and wrong. And as much as people would like to believe, unfortunately, we do not have free will. Every action carries the weight of a punishment or reward, so in essence, people do things either in fear or in hope of attaining one of these outcomes, therefore, humans do not have free will. So, then what is the meaning of life? To live each day as if it is heaven itself is all anyone can really do; accepting and embracing the reality of your life is the source of meaning. Whether God exists or not is irrelevant, the only thing that is within the control of humans is the power to embrace life. As 1950’s Beat poet Allen Ginsburg stressed, people should be concerned with "living in and inhabiting the human form." Living means to not let outside forces take away your pursuit of life, once this thirst for life is taken, you are simply existing, waiting to die.
The five Eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Shinto have some similarities when it comes to the their beliefs on death. Hinduism and Buddhism both believe in karma and reincarnation, while Daoism and Shintoism revolve their beliefs around nature. Confucianism chooses not to focus on things we do not know, so their beliefs on death are limited. In deciphering the different beliefs on death associated with each religion, it is important to understand the different belief systems and their origins. While some religions merged the views of the other religions, some came from the views of an originating founder. Each religion has their own view on life after death and whether or not their followers should be concerned
“The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.”(Raushenbush)
Overall, the ending of one’s life should be left in the hands of that one individual and nobody else. People should be free to determine their own fates by their own autonomous choices, especially when it comes to private matters such as health. No one person’s life should be at the mercy of what other people believe would be best. Life or death and the way they will be carried out or ended, should be nobodies choice but the individual.
Imagine your laying in a hospital bed hooked up to various machines. The doctors and nurses are persistently coming in to check up on you while you’re trying to get through the pain, weakness and slow wasting away of your body. On top of that you are grieving the side effects from numerous drugs, constipation, restlessness, you can barely breathe. You have no appetite because you are constantly throwing up. The doctors have given you little to no chance of survival; and death is at hand, it is just a matter of when. You have said your goodbyes, you have come to terms with dying and you are ready to meet your creator. Now if you had the chance to choose how and when your life ended would you take advantage of it?
Plato’s “Crito” and Sophocles’ “Antigone” both argue that it is better to die than live life in a different way. Contrary to that, some would make the point that one should do anything to save one’s life even if it meant conforming to the common belief. I agree with both of these claims. I agree that a life lived with constant guilt is not worth living. Rather live your life how you want and you will be content with it. This is because life should be pleasant and if one spends their whole life regretting something they did not do then how can one be happy with themselves. Rather committing the act and looking at the big picture not just the present creates contentment and allows you to be content with your life even if it means death as a punishment.
Death is part of the circle of life and it's the end of your time on earth; the end of your time with your family and loved ones. Nobody wants to die, leaving their family and missing the good times your loved ones will have once you pass on. In the Mercury Reader, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross “On the Fear of Death” and Joan Didion “Afterlife” from The Year of Magical Thinking” both share common theses on death and grieving. Didion and Kübler-Ross both explain grieving and dealing with death. Steve Jobs commencement speech for Stanford’s graduation ceremony and through personal experience jumps further into death and how I feel about it. Your time is on earth is limited one day you will die and there are many ways of grieving at the death of a loved one. I believe that the fear of death and the death of a loved one will hold you back from living your own life and the fear of your own death is selfish.
One of our emotion that cause us the choose death or our life is fear, with fear in ourselves, we choice to make merciful decision. Although some form of euthanasia made be necessary, but by taking a life, even though it is for a good motive, we are not living as equal as we should have (according to god laws). Even if a doctor says that the patient can die, they have no rights to perform euthanasia because of the Hippocratic oath. Some may say that, people should have the right to choose whenever they live or die, but people will come to conclusion about their life due to outside influence such as peer pressure and medical
In BJ Millers TedTalk, “What Really Matters at the End of Life?” BJ Miller discusses on how we think on death and honor life. He speaks to the audience about how for the most people the scariest thing about death is not death itself, it is actually dying or suffering. The targeted audience is everyone in the world, because eventually everyone is going to die and everyone thinks about death. BJ 3 has big points in the article saying, Distinction between necessary and unnecessary suffering. Also by having a little ritual that helps with this shift in perspective. Another point is to lift and set our sights on well-being. We need to lift our sights, to set our sights on well-being, so that life and health and healthcare can become about making life more wonderful, rather than just less horrible.
Death, and people's perception of it are a major part of many philosophies. It could be argued that the questions surrounding death and the afterlife form the basis of many philosophic concepts. To some philosophers, not only is the concept of death itself important, but also how people perceive it, and why they perceive it the way they do. Epicurus's claim that the soul is mortal, is an excellent explanation for why we should not fear death.
Death is inescapable for all living beings. It is the one commonality all cultures share. It is an equalizer in a world of diversity. Although death itself is absolute, the practices which surround death are varied and complex from culture to culture and individual to individual. As Mike Parker Pearson elaborates:
Death is a controversial topic that most people in society tend to avoid. Death is often difficult to talk about regarding people. People often tend to lean towards having insight and control on everything in this world. Death is one thing that people cannot have control over or do not completely understand. Death often results in sadness for friends and love ones who wont see that person anymore. Death in a sense is unclear to individuals sense there is no scientific proof to understand what happens when a person dies. There are various beliefs of what happens when a person dies, according to different cultures. Some have a stance as seeing death as termination from existence. Others have a stance on death as leaving one world and having a portal to another life. In a sense comparing these to beliefs death is either real or not real. Philosophically death would be examined through human reasoning. Personally, I believe that when you die physically your spirit man goes to either Heaven or Hell, depending on belief in Jesus. My stance is based on the Christian stance on how you will spend eternity in one place or another. Even though there is no evidence of what happens when you die, when you die you either go to heaven or hell because the Bible and Christian faith have a firm belief in this doctrine. An individual also has a spirit that is eternal.