MYTHS OF IMMORTALITY: PART 1

D.S. Moss comes back from the jungle for more adventures in death, yo. Life coach turned death coach, Devin Martin, gets filled in on Moss’ post-psychedelic reflections. This leads Moss to the ultimate question: how to live life with psychological anxiety of knowing you’re going to die? To help answer this question, Moss gets social psychology professor and egghead crush Sheldon Solomon on the horn to discuss if the fear of death truly is the worm at humanity’s core.

REGGIE STUTZMAN

Pastor Reggie Stutzman, is an Ordained, Assemblies of God minister.  Founder and Senior Pastor of Real Life Church and Founder and CEO of The Prodigal Center, a charitable, 501c3 nonprofit helping those in need in the South Bronx.  Born and raised in the mid-west, New Yorker for the past 20 years with different ministry experiences.  Married with three children.  For more information, visit www.RealLifeChurchNyc.com andwww.theProdigalcenter.org

TRUDI JINPU HIRSCH-ABRAMSON

Trudi Jinpu Hirsch-Abramson is an ACPE certified chaplain supervisor and an APC certified chaplain. A resident of Zen Mountain Monastery for 12 years, she completed her monastic training in 1998 and was ordained as a Zen Buddhist Priest and received Denkai transmission in the White Plum Sangha. She previously worked for 14 years as a chaplain and supervisor at various hospitals in New York City. For eight years, Jinpu served as a faculty member and Chaplain Supervisor for the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care in NYC. She is presently the chaplain supervisor at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY.

.

Music Attribution

transcrips

MUSIC: "Santa cruz boardwalk" By Alison Ables

TRUDI

Well, most chaplains, it's very important to have your own religion, to have a foundation within your own religion, but you're not pushing that forward. You just need that in a way for yourself, because the work is so emotional.

D.S. MOSS_VO

At the end of our conversation during the last episode, The Act of Dying, Chaplain and Zen Buddhist Priest Trudi Hirsch-Abramson suggested that I would make a good chaplain. 

TRUDI

You're interested in people. Your questions and your way of being personable is really nice. 

D.S. MOSS_VO

Recruiting numbers may have just been down, but since most of my significant life choices are made from peer pressure, dares and flattery, I am actually looking into it. 

D.S. MOSS_VO

The problem is - and it's a fairly big problem - I don't have my own religion.

And to complicate things even more - according to wikipedia it's estimated that there are currently, right now, in 2018 - 4200 different religions.

That's a lot of podcast episodes. So instead of 4200, in a three-part series called The Myths of Immortality, I'll be exploring perspectives of the afterlife from the view point of 6 major religions.

MUSIC: "White room 1" By Alison Ables

D.S. MOSS_VO

Contrary to the way this set up sounds, I will not be "handing a rose" to the winning religion. Picking one, is not the point. At least going into it. I actually have no idea how this whole thing is going to end. 

The point, is to simply to get educated. If you're the curious type with an open mind, then please join me as I speak with a priest, a pastor, a priestess, a monk, an imam and a rabbi to get a deeper understanding of their beliefs and views on what happens after we die.   

We begin the series with Jesus and the Buddha in part one of: The Myths of Immortality. 

MUSIC:  "MEMENTO MORI" BY MIKEY BALLOU

RUTHIE_VO

From The Jones Story Company, this is: THE ADVENTURES OF MEMENTO MORI, A Cynic's Guide for Learning to Live by Remembering to Die - the podcast that explores mortality. Here's your host D.S. Moss.

CHAPTER 1: LOGIC OF THE MYTHS

MUSIC: "bass recorder meditation" by Daneil Heikalo

D.S. Moss_VO

Back in episode one of season 2, psychologist Sheldon Solomon makes an interesting argument. He suggests that religion and the concept of an afterlife - the myths of immortality as he calls them - are narratives created by mankind in order to alleviate the terror of our impermanence.

I mean, that does make sense...

Imagine for a second - you're the new self-aware species on the block and you catch a bad case of the existential dreads.

What do you do? What any talking self-aware bipedal with an imagination would do. Create a story in which you, or some version of you, survives death.

Dust your hands - Problem solved.   

D.S. MOSS_IN

Is there evidence of when this behavior began? I guess ultimately, when did we become self-aware? 

D.S. MOSS_VO

Back with philosophical spirit animal, Sheldon Solomon.

SHELDON SOLOMON

Yeah. Good question...I wish I could answer it. If I could, I'd be chugging rum out of a coconut on my beach with a Nobel Prize somewhere.

D.S. MOSS_VO

Of course, mental processes leave no fossil records, but scholars do agree that something incredibly significant happened to homo sapiens around a hundred and 50 thousand years ago.

It's known as the cultural big bang  - a relatively simultaneous appearance of art, language, body adornment, and most significantly in the context of this episode - ritual burials. 

SHELDON SOLOMON

Certainly, ritual burials with grave goods, like pyramids and stuff, where people are buried with their servants, with their pets, with musical instruments, with incredibly luscious food and alcohol, he argument is that those are relatively clear signs of immortality beliefs.

D.S. MOSS_VO

And interwoven with these immortality beliefs are the cultivation of mythical narratives. AKA religion. 

SHELDON SOLOMON

What a lot of folks, though, claim is that mythical narratives would not have been sustainable in an absence of physical reality that kind of made those notions concrete.

D.S. MOSS_VO

Meaning, in order for mythical narratives to stick they also needed to be supported by rituals.

SHELDON SOLOMON

One way of describing rituals, that in our book, we talk about rituals as wishful thinking in action.

D.S. MOSS_VO

I actually just googled bizarre rituals to see if I could find a ritual that wasn't wishful thinking in action. Sheldon's right. I couldn't. I also can't unsee the incredibly weird shit I just saw.  

SHELDON SOLOMON

If everything is going well, you don't need ritual...

...If the crops are well-irrigated because it's raining, then you don't really need a rain dance.

It's only when things are not going well, particularly in life-threatening circumstances, that rituals arise essentially in order to do something.

D.S. MOSS_VO

But weird shit is understandable when your daily life is consumed with surviving famine, weather catastrophes, war, disease, and saber tooth tigers. 

It makes sense that we'd create myths of immortality as a way to exert control over a world that was ultimately uncontrollable. 

And it's that logic that leaves me in my current state of religionless. Blind faith in the supernatural is not my strong suit.   

So then, that's the conflict....how can you help people transition over as a chaplain if you don't believe in a God?  

CHAPTER 2: WHAT IS BUDDHISM

TRUDI

Do you know anything about Buddhism?

D.S. MOSS_VO

Back with Zen Buddhist Chaplain Trudi Hirsh-Abramson.

D.S. MOSS_IN

I know the basics.

TRUDI

What's the basics?

D.S. MOSS_IN

Well, it's that ... I wouldn't even call Buddhism a religion, right? It's more of a belief in-

TRUDI

No, it's a religion.

D.S. MOSS_IN

Is it a religion?

D.S. MOSS_VO

By the basics, I evidently meant not much...

Buddhism is non-theistic religion, - meaning they don't believe in a God.

TRUDI

... We don't take it up, whether there's a god or not. Really, it's an independent ... You can believe in whatever you want, because it doesn't have to do with belief.

D.S. MOSS_VO

Ok. So here are the basics...

Buddhism is the world's fourth-largest religion with over 520 million followers.

It originated in Ancient India about 2500 years ago.

As the story goes, a young prince named Siddhartha Gautama was raised in opulence and protected from the outside world by his father the king.

Finally, At the age of 29 Siddhartha ventured outside the walls of his kingdom for the first time and discovered the suffering that existed in the real world. So affected what he saw, Siddhartha Gautama gave up his rights to the throne and lived in poverty on the streets. But after 6 years, he realized that this life wasn't the truth either. In an attempt to discover the truth - he sat under a Bohdi tree where he meditated vowing not to move from that spot until the truth was realized.

He left the tree as "he who is awake" also known as the Buddha.

His enlightenment - The Four Noble Truths

TRUDI

The first is, "Life is suffering." That's the first Noble Truth. "Life is suffering." 

...Second Noble Truth is-

Trudi

Think about it. If there's suffering, what do you want to know now?

D.S. MOSS_IN

The converse, which is happiness or joy?

Trudi

No.

D.S. MOSS_IN

No?

TRUDI

If there's suffering, like the First Noble Truth is, "Life is suffering."...

...The Second Noble Truth is, "There's a cause to suffering."...

...The cause is usually, always ... I won't even say "usually." Always some kind of clinging or attachment. That's what causes suffering.

Now, think about it with patients. Think about it with dying. You're in that same boat. If you cling to life, you're gonna have a really tough death. What you need to do is help somebody begin to let go of that clinging, and if you're not dying, let go of the clinging you have in everything in your life. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be totally immersed in it, or part of it, or participate 100% in life. It just means, "Don't grab it." Because think about this. If you're grabbing something, you feel you don't have it. If the coffee's over there, and I'm thirsty, and I know I'm out of coffee, then I'm gonna grab this and make it my own, because I'm missing it. I'm lacking it. Cause of suffering is dukkha, or attachment, or clinging.

D.S. MOSS_VO

Ok, so the first noble truth is Life is suffering. The second noble truth is that attachment is the cause of suffering.

And the Third Nobel Truth is the cessation of suffering.

TRUDI

Yeah. There's a cessation. The way to end suffering would be to have an experience or a realization, and these are all bullshit words, too, but a realization of your enlightenment. A realization of your oneness.

...Of course, how you do that, which is not always easy, and that's called "the path," right?

D.S. MOSS_VO

And that leads us to the Fourth Nobel Truth...

the path of cessation. 

CHAPTER 3: BUDDHIST AFTERLIFE

D.S. MOSS_VO

Now that I understand the basics for real, what are the Buddhist beliefs in the afterlife?

TRUDI

A great way to understand this is to imagine everything vibrational, and the smallest little particle, neutrino, to the nth degree, right? Whatever you want to say, this whole universe is created with all this. Let's say that's the ocean. Now, out of this ocean, we appear as a wave. You're a wave. I'm a wave. You're a wave with a mustache. I'm a wave without a mustache.

D.S. MOSS_IN

I have a beard too, for the record. I'm not just mustachioed right now.

TRUDI

Yeah. It's a really nice beard, too.

D.S. MOSS_IN

Thank you.

TRUDI

But he's a wave with a beard and mustache. Okay. What happens is, as you're growing up, in the beginning, you're aware of your oneness, right? "I'm a wave, and I'm aware that, wow, I can't be a wave without the ocean. Actually, I am the ocean. There is no difference." Right? We're the same, except I'm taking a form. That's all.

D.S. MOSS_VO

And when I die, I'm still a part of the metaphorical ocean. The only thing that's changed is just the mental frame that's holding me into a wave.

TRUDI

What happens with each of us, and I think it's very human, is we start to believe in our waveness, in our separateness, and our self, but not self, in our mini little self, that it becomes so important, and our life begins, right? We make it very, very real, and we invest in it, and we worry about it, and we deal with the past that's created this wave, and the future that we're gonna be this great wave in the future. We get caught in it, and as you're maturing, you start to put cement blocks underneath your wave so that you never have any memory again that you were ocean, until maybe ... I'm talking about this culture. Maybe at some point you're dying, and you go, "Whoa. The cement is breaking." In Zen, we say, "The bottom of the bucket falls out."

MUSIC: "bass recorder meditation" by Daneil Heikalo

Guess what? You've never been anything but ocean. You forgot. It's almost that simple.

D.S. MOSS_VO

More ocean and less clinging, after this. 

CALL TO ACTION 1

MUSIC: EMERGENCY EXIT BY DR. FRANKENSTEIN 

RUTHIE_VO

Hello fellow provocateurs that believe death is a topic worth talking about. We need your help spreading the word. Be the slightly odd yet endlessly fascinating conversationalist at your next party and tell your friends about The Adventures of Memento Mori.

Have show ideas? Contact us on our site remembertodie.com

Be sure to stay up to date with the quest for enlightenment on Instagram and Twitter by following @remembertodie.

And now, back to show...

CHAPTER 4: THE SOUL

MUSIC: "Italian disco saints" by Glass boy

D.S. MOSS_VO

Earlier in the show, I was talking with Sheldon Solomon about the theory Ernst Becker discusses in his book Denial of Death.

The idea that in an effort to manage existential terror brought on by self-awareness, we created stories in which we, or some version of us, survive death.  

One of the most widely shared beliefs - despite religion - is Cartesian duality. The idea that consciousness is separate from the fragility of the body. Otherwise known as the soul. 

SHELDON SOLOMON

Again, a lot of Becker's ideas come from Otto Rank...in one of his books said, "The soul was created in the big bang of an irresistible psychological force, our will to live forever colliding with the immutable biological fact of death."

D.S. MOSS_VO

That's why every culture, regardless of how disparate they appear to be, has some kind of soul concept.

SHELDON SOLOMON

Rank's point is, this is brilliant. If you have an immutable essence that's detachable from your physical carcass, then you can hedge all of your bets with regards to the prospect that some segment of yourself can persist over time, even if you're no longer here bodily.

D.S. MOSS_VO

Is the soul really just man's invention?

MUSIC: "Pretend" by Malyssa bellar 

D.S. MOSS_VO

What do you think? 

It's time for my favorite segment of the show...

"Ruthie On a Street Corner"  

SOUND: NYC STREET NOISE

RUTHIE_in

So I'm going to ask you a couple of death related questions you know, to start the week off right... Do you believe that people have souls or spirits?

Sasha

Yes, I do. I'm not sure exactly what that means but I think that there is an essence, a core of people and um that that is the spirit and the body is not that and the mind is not that it's something else.

Christine

That's something that I've been thinking about. I think people can have souls. But I'm not sure, not positive people do.

RUTHIE_IN

If they do what do you think happens to these souls or spirits after we die?

CHRISTINE

I've been thinking about the reincarnation and everything and I think that might be a possibility.

Diana 

Well, I'm not sure I have the answer or anyone does have one cause no one has returned from death but I do believe or I like to believe in the idea of reincarnation.

John

...I don't want to say like evaporate like into this greater consciousness but like kind of um..I don't know what the word is...it's not evaporate it's just like...yeah, let's just say evaporate.

SASHA

The more that I learn about reincarnation the more that I am on board with that and the idea of coming to earth in another body and experiencing that until enlightenment is found and maybe enlightenment by all beings. I think that makes sense to me.

D.S. MOSS_VO

Thank you Ruthie.

Since Buddhists don't believe in a God or an afterlife, I asked Trudi if they believed in a soul. 

TRUDI

...What's a soul for you? Why would you even need it, or ask questions about it? What's important that you're missing?

D.S. MOSS_VO

As the saying goes, when interviewing a Zen Buddhist priest expect Zen Buddhist answers.

But when interviewing a Christian pastor... 

D.S. MOSS_IN

So what is the Christian belief in the soul?

Pastor Reggie

The Christian belief of the soul of my understanding, and just to preface everything, my foundation and anchor of all the questions that I will try my best to answer is, of course, the biblical text.

D.S. MOSS_VO

Get a biblical answer.

MUSIC: "BMV 1094" BY James Kibbie

D.S. MOSS_VO

Pastor Reggie Stutzman pastor of Real Life Church in the South Bronx. 

D.S. MOSS_IN

Welcome back to the show.

PASTOR REGGIE

Great. Thanks for having me...

...It's awesome.

D.S. MOSS_IN

...So you're the voice of Christianity.

PASTOR REGGIE

That's a very scary thing.

D.S. MOSS_IN

Don't mess it up.

D.S. MOSS_VO

Back to the Christian perspective of soul.

PASTOR REGGIE

And Jesus said, "To love the Lord God with all your heart, your soul, and your strength." So there's an understanding that, just as God ... God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit...

...That there is also three parts of us: spirit, soul and body.

...So we are a triune being of spirit, soul and body.

The soul of a person is just their emotional makeup, if you will. But the spirit is that part of the human being that then would go on into the afterlife.

D.S. MOSS_IN

Okay. That's a very good clarification.

PASTOR REGGIE

Yeah, because I think, often ... I think that would be across the board of any belief system. We are human beings that have a soul of our anger, our love, all the things we could say are "soul-ish", but that is not what would move on to the next life. It would be our spirit being that is also inside of us. 

D.S. MOSS_VO

Before we go any further, here is the Christian basics...

Christianity is the worlds most practiced religion.

It's teachings are centered around Jesus, a carpenter, who was born 2000 years ago in modern day Palestine. Jesus is considered the incarnation of God - or the son of God. Christians believe he died for the sins of all people and rose from the dead.

Like most religions there are variations and Pastor Reggie is a minister of the Assemblies of God denomination. 

D.S. MOSS_IN

Can you explain for the audience what Assembly of God is as compared to the other denominations?

PASTOR REGGIE

The Assembly of God is a Pentecostal Evangelical denomination, one of the largest in the country.

Basically a full gospel, spirit filled denomination.

D.S. MOSS_VO

The reason why I chose the Assemblies of God perspective instead of say Catholicism is because that was my childhood church. 

If you've ever seen the movie Jesus Camp, that was my life. The Rapture, speaking in tongues, and the whole ball of gospel wax. 

CHAPTER 5: THE AFTERLIFE

D.S. MOSS_IN

]Okay. So we want to talk about the spirit version of soul. 

...So hypothetical. I'm on my deathbed. 

I'm in the final stages, said all you need to say to the chaplain. And then it's time to make the transition-

PASTOR REGGIE

Yeah.

D.S. MOSS_IN

Into the afterlife. What does that look like, with the Christian belief system?

PASTOR REGGIE

First of all, Jesus said that, "You have to love the Lord God with all your heart, your soul, and your strength." The beginning of all of this, the genesis of all of this, is having a relationship with God.

D.S. MOSS_VO

And the Bible defines a relationship with God as the belief in him along with the confessions of our sins. 

PASTOR REGGIE

So first of all, the Lord is the doorway for the afterlife. And not only for the afterlife, but for the life we live now.

And there's clear verses in the Bible that says, that when we believe in Jesus Christ, that when we die, whether it's a car accident, or cancer, or whenever our time is up, that when we have that relationship with Jesus Christ, we have a guarantee, that our spirit man will then be absent from our body. Our body is just a tent, a temporary housing for the real man, if you will, for the real inner being, the real [00:08:00] person inside of you, if you will, to then split and to be present with the Lord.

D.S. MOSS_IN

And then what is ... Present in the Lord, in heaven?

PASTOR REGGIE

For a time being, yes...

...So, I think what

... To a lot of Christians, there needs to be some clarity of what does happen when you die. And I think that a lot of people have different beliefs, within that framework. To the Catholic, it's Purgatory, that you're there in Heaven, for a time, whether you are a sinner or a saint...

...To the Protestant, to my side of the Christianity faith, if you will, that, when we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, the Bible tells us that, when we meet Him at the pearly gates-

D.S. MOSS_IN

Yeah image of Saint Peter sitting there with this big logbook, and he's like looking down at you and he's like checking for you.

Pastor Reggie

Checking names, yep. Yep. 

D.S. MOSS_IN

Is that described anywhere in the Bible or is that just-

PASTOR REGGIE

It's said in the Book of Life. There's actually ...

...a reference to two books. One is the Book of Life, where all those names are recorded, in the Book of Life, that have been predestined by God.

...And then the Bible says that there are other books that are laid out of what we have done on Earth. So, as long as our name is written in the Book of Life, and Peter, or whoever's checking the names off, and if we get to those pearly gates and those names are checked, because we have gained access into Heaven, because of our relationship with the Lord, the Bible says that we will meet with Him and He will say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." 

D.S. MOSS_IN

So,... what's ... I'm asking this in comparison to a possibly stereotypical version of Heaven. Pearly gates, first you started with Saint Peter, checking off the names, so we make it in, we have a relationship with God, we've made it through the Book, now we're through the pearly gates, we have this imagery of it being in the clouds, and the streets are made of gold. Is that described anywhere in the Bible?

PASTOR REGGIE

The Book of Revelation talks about the streets of gold. It talks about a river that runs through the city. It talks about a temple. It talks about ... Scholars and people have debated what the Lord meant by, "In my Father's house are many mansions." Some have taken that literal, that we'll have a mansion in Heaven, an eight bedroom, four bathroom mansion in Heaven.  ... We just don't know until we get there.

D.S. MOSS_IN

And so what is our spirit version of us look like physically? As we then transition to Heaven?

PASTOR REGGIE

I think that's another issue that is just hard to nail down. I mean, I've heard people say, the way they look at that is that you're in your prime, you know, your thirties.

D.S. MOSS_VO

I don't know, I kinda feel like I'm in my prime now. Physically, I'd say 28 but as a whole package prime definitely early 40s. I wonder if St. Peter gives us a choice?  

PASTOR REGGIE

You know, I don't know. Those are things that I question, many times. What does that look like? I don't know the answer...

But I do know that, for a certain time, we, as our spirit man, is in the presence of the Lord, the Bible says that on the day of the Resurrection, we will then be given a new body as there's a new Heaven and a new Earth.

And the Bible says there will be no crying, no pain, an absolute utopia of perfection, because we'll be in the presence of the Lord and we'll be on a brand new Earth, that could be like the days of the Garden of Eden-

D.S. MOSS_IN

Nobody better eat that fruit.

PASTOR REGGIE

Nobody better eat the fruit!...

...Scripture even says that the wolf will lay down with the lamb. There will be a cohesiveness between man and the animal kingdom. I mean, just absolute perfection and a utopia that even that word falls short of just the expanse of perfection.

D.S. MOSS_VO

But to be perfectly clear, the relationship with God isn't a universal God.

You only get the expanse of perfection if you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. And those that do not accept Christ go to a lake of fire and burn for eternity. 

PASTOR REGGIE

It's nothing easy to talk about because nobody wants to, you know. But there is a line.

D.S. MOSS_VO

What to expect in hell. After this.

CALL TO ACTION 2

MUSIC: "O CEREBRO DO MORTO" BY DR. FRANKENSTEIN 

RUTHIE_VO

Do you consider yourself a fan of podcasts? Show it by donating to the Adventures of Memento Mori. Donate 10 dollars or more and we'll mail you a surprise Memento Mori keepsake. $100 or more will give you a post credit shout out to let the world know how much you mean to us. Go to remembertodie.com slash donate. That's remembertodie.com slash donate.    

CHAPTER 6: HELL

D.S. MOSS_IN

So let's take ourselves back into that hospital deathbed. Now the scenario, it flips where I did not believe in Jesus, that I go to Hell...

...What is the Hell process?

PASTOR REGGIE

Well, the Hell process is nothing that God intended for any human being to be in. And I'll say that with clarity because of the matter of fact that so many people have a belief system that God made Hell for man. He did not do that. He made it for Lucifer and all of his fallen angels that went with him.

D.S. MOSS_VO

Lucifer, also known as the devil, was God's favorite angel that turned on him in a quest for power. 

PASTOR REGGIE

And, again, it's nothing that he created for mankind, but those who make the choice of not believing in God, not following God, being completely belligerent and rebellious, and so forth, there is a place for them. And really, the way I've described Hell is ...

What people don't realize now is that, you could be the worst sinner, you could be the worst atheist, agnostic, unbelieving heathen there is, and in this life, whether you know it or not, you're surrounded by the love of God...

...So the way I've described Hell is not just this lake of fire picture scenario, but, what's scarier, to me, is to be absolutely cut off from the love of God, which is far more scarier than an eternity of torment.

D.S. MOSS_IN

I mean, that's pretty scary.

PASTOR REGGIE

It is very scary. It is very scary. And it's nothing to play with. The audacity that people have, really, of shaking their fists at that and saying, " How can you say that?" Then God must be angry all the time.

...And the afterlife is a scary thing because you just don't know what the next life holds. But, I'd rather be on the side of, let me try this ... Not only try it, but let me go this way.

D.S. MOSS_VO

So, although the Christian afterlife narrative is complex in detail it's pretty simple in theme. Believe in Jesus and go to heaven. Don't believe in Jesus and go to hell.

PASTOR REGGIE

I have a better way of putting that... I used to, and I still work with the homeless population a lot. One time, a very good, dear man that I helped many, many times died downtown at the Bowery Mission... He had died on the train next to a pile of empty beer cans.

Anyway, I don't know, I could meet him one day. Even though I know his whole life was full of pain and addiction and he hated God, all of this. But I don't know until I get to Heaven that, it could be at that last, final moment,...

...he could've just said, right when he was dying, "Lord, forgive me." And he could be in Heaven.

MUSIC: "Vibrations" by Alison Ables

So, you just don't know. Somebody could have a whole lifetime of believing a certain way, or living a very prodigal life far from God, and at that right moment, they could call the name of the Lord. And be saved, and be in Heaven. We just don't know.

D.S. MOSS_IN

Great mystery.

PASTOR REGGIE

Great mystery.

CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION

D.S. MOSS_VO

I can't help but wonder if during his years of spreading the gospel Jesus happened upon the teachings of the Buddha? The dogma of the two religions couldn't be more different, but there are some similarities in the path. Plus, I have a feeling they'd be besties. 

MUSIC:"3 in Raw" BY jazzafari

D.S. MOSS_VO

Thanks for joining me on another episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori...please join me on the next episode as I explore Voodoo and Hindu and their beliefs in the afterlife.

Thanks to Zen Buddhist Trudi Hirsh-Abramson and Pastor Reggie Stutzman for sharing your beliefs and wisdom. Please go to www.remembertodie.com for a link to her work. 

I am D.S. Moss. Back again next time for more...The Adventures of Memento Mori.

CLOSING BUMPER

MUSIC: END WITH OUR THEME MUSIC

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

The episode was produced by Josh Heilbronner and D.S. Moss Theme music composed by Mikey Ballou. This has been a production of The Jones Story Company. Until the next time... remember to die. 

CHAPTER 9: THE ORIGINS