Comparing Dialogues With Death: The Last Days Of Socrates And Buddha
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Have you ever thought of death? What will you do if you know you are going to die soon? Majority of us will probably not want to face death even the death of the people around us. We are too afraid of separation because we depend on each other. In “Dialogues with Death: The Last Days of Socrates and the Buddha”, by Matthew Dillon, it talks about how Socrates and Buddha taught their students, faced their impending death and their perspectives toward death. Socrates and Buddha were from two different countries, one from Greek and the other from India. In the article, Dillon uses Socrates’ dialogues with students and some documentaries from Sutta to support his claims towards the two masters’ perspectives. Although Socrates and Buddha were apart and using different ways to teach, they shared similar philosophy towards death. Dillon first talks about how the two great teachers teach their students and how they act like in front of other people. Dillon uses a conversation between the two dialogists to express what Socrates wants his students to be. The two dialogists were discussing secretly. Socrates notices that, and asks them to rise up their question (Dillon 528).…show more content… Most of the Greek philosophers, including Socrates, want their bodies to be buried as soon as possible because they believe in that way they can join the soul (Dillon 536). They believe that even they die; their soul will never die and will attach to another life. Also, they claim that the past and pervious life will affect each other (Dillon 538). In addition, from Buddha ‘s conversation with Ananda, it can show that Buddha believes there are hundreds and thousands times of rebirth, and wants his funeral to be simple because he thinks that no matter what things bury with him, he is happy to die (Dillon 537). Although the wordings are different, it ends up to a similar conclusion that there are numerous rebirths in our