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Thus
Kohelet’s bold opening—the assertion that such efforts are
futile—constitutes the first step of an intellectual revolution.
However, having rejected the notion of achieving immortality through
material gains, Kohelet must seek another way. One possibility is the
negation of life in favor of the world to come, represented in both the
Christian and Islamic approaches to immortality by means of richly
described afterworlds. The Koran, for example, emphasizes the similarity
of heaven to the temporal world: “As for the righteous, they shall
surely triumph. Theirs shall be gardens and vineyards, and high-bosomed
maidens for companions: a truly overflowing cup.”13
Similarly, Christian scripture includes vivid descriptions of souls in the
world to come, much of which were elaborated upon by Dante in his visual
descriptions of heaven and hell, and which were captured in the grandiose
paintings of Hieronymous Bosch. In all these cases, the afterlife is
portrayed as a concrete reality, thus ingrained in its adherents from
childhood.
The
religions of
India
and the
Far East
offer, instead, the idea of
reincarnation. They emphasize the immortality of the soul, yet attach
little significance to the self-conscious awareness of the reincarnated
individual. With the
exception of certain rare enlightened beings, immortality is achieved at
the expense of identity. Yet one need only look at the elaborate Tibetan
Book of the Dead to see that the nature of the afterlife is, once
again, considered concrete knowledge, and is described—and illustrated,
in numerous mandalas—in lush detail.
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