REL 3180 Discussion; Asian WorldviewDeath in the Modern World

please watch this video https://gostream.site/little-buddha/
also two further readings attached.
Death in the Modern World /Buddhism. AssignmentThe PDF document I posted, “In the Mirror of Death” has the section, “Death in the Modern World.” In it, Sogyal Rinpoche gives his views of death in the modern and technically advanced west, juxtaposing that against the very traditional Buddhist upbringing he received in Tibet. As I was reading through that section, it brought me back to an earlier reading I had you do, specifically, the Erich Fromm reading about death in the Middle Ages. If you recall that reading, Fromm maintained that in the Middle Ages, although there was a lack of what we might call today, “individual freedom’ – this was not really perceived as a deficit because the individual as we understand the concept now simply did not exist then. Most of you rightly pointed out in that assignment that the Church in Medieval times was the dominant ideology of the day. This got me thinking about Sogyal Rinpoche’s experiences growing up as a monk in a Buddhist order in Tibet. Certainly Buddhism would have been his dominant ideology (as well as the dominant ideology of all those he interacted with). With that in mind it is not difficult to understand his shock in seeing the way western culture treats death. Your assignment here is to tell me – based upon the glimpse of Buddhism you have seen thus far – do you think Buddhism has any contribution to make to the west’s understanding of death and dying? Why / why not?*I’m going to be evaluating these papers based upon your ability to use the actual materials I gave to you. Please do not use outside sources! You need to demonstrate that you have watched the movie, done the readings, and given careful consideration to the question. You should probably plan on writing about 2 pages. *So you know: Your responses to this will almost assuredly necessitate our diving a bit deeper into Buddhism still.
Asian Worldview Discussion(please read!) Discussion TopicOkay. You’ve now been exposed to a lot of mind-boggling ideas (no self / no soul, skandhas, impermanence of all things, Buddhist realms, etc.) and your minds should be spinning by now. Do not worry. This is to be expected. But as we are not in a traditional classroom environment, you have no way of getting any immediate feedback through asking questions so, it’s impossible for me to know whether or not you’ve all understood the material so far. As such, I want to give you a chance to ask some questions. So go ahead and post your questions in your groups and I’ll try my best to answer them. We are going to take our time with this stuff for several reasons: first off, it’s difficult. Second, the remainder of the class is pretty easy! So yes, I will amend the due date for this module (but I will open up the next module this coming Friday).