How to Conquer Pains and Fears
The Buddha did not teach people about the afterlife. He taught how to to conquer pains and fears caused when people were born, got sick and old, and finally died. Therefore, even today some schools of Japanese Buddhism do not mention about the afterlife and men's souls and spirits while others are focusing on the afterlife or the pure land.
The ultimate goal of Buddhism seems to attain the state of mind that transcends any pains and fears through understanding truth. But, some schools of Buddhism teach that men can be saved by entering into the spirit world or the paradise.
The original teaching of the Buddha must have had nothing to do with the spirit world and the God who presides over this world and the spirit world. But, Japanese people who had believed spiritualism promising the afterlife before the coming of Buddhism to Japan around the 6th century accepted Buddhism mostly as a teaching of assuring the afterlife.
Christianity is based on the notion that there are Heaven and the hell in addition to the God. According to original Christianity, love of the God created this world and human beings, so that we have to love the God so as to get eternal life.
The most important difference between Buddhism and Christianity is whether or not regarding love of the God, the sole creator of this universe and the spirit world, as the source of everything, including our lives.
If we follow Christianity, we have to think that pains and fears in this world would be resolved by our faith in the God. It means that the status of a human mind when praying to the God should be similar to the ideal status of a human mind that can be acquired through ascetic training of Buddhism.
It is interesting that most of reports on the spirit world, as reported by spirit mediums who communicated with spiritual entities living in the spirit world, tell that human souls that have entered into the spirit world after death in this world are required to perform ascetic training and enhance their internal status in order to ascend to the higher levels and came closer to the God.
However, it is said that when our souls receive love of the God in Heaven, we can understand truth in the human world and the spirit world. We must understand in Heaven why we lived in such manners and ways as we had in the human world while living in the material human world. All the answers to questions we have in this world must be found in Heaven or in light from the God.
And, we should believe that Christ Jesus taught people to love the God with all of our hearts and might based on such answers as can be found in Heaven or truth. In this context, we should be able to conquer pains and fears in this world by loving the God, since the God is the source of everything.
++++ ++++ ++++John 11, King James Version
18 Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off:
19 And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.
20 Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.
21 Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
22 But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.
23 Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.