Dying, Death, and the Afterlife: An Analysis and Comparison of Karl Rahner and the Dalai Lama

abstract: This article presents and discusses dying, death, and the afterlife from the point of view of the twentieth-century German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner and compares it to the Tibetan view of death and rebirth, represented by his Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. The driving question that gave rise to the discussion in the following pages is this: How does dying and death relate to life? I will attempt to address the question from both Christian and Buddhist views, then draw out their points of contact and differences. Both traditions share the view that death is not the end of life but signifies a new dimension of life. From this common ground, it can be argued that both Rahner and the Dalai Lama share a conviction that the human person is essentially an embodied-spirit, and thus, the human physical death is not the end of life, but a transition into a new dimension of life in which the human spirit continues its movement towards fulfillment .