Death as a Transformative Journey

UPL views death not as an end but as a significant transition in the soul’s eternal journey. Death is revered as life’s ultimate lesson, serving as a profound reminder of the transient nature of physical existence and the unending journey of the soul. This view of death fosters a deep-seated recognition that despite material dissolution, the soul not only persists but evolves, continuing its journey within the limitless bounds of the divine.

This teaching comes to UPL chiefly from Seicho-No-Ie. Its holy sutra, the Nectarean Shower of Holy Doctrines, says that when the time comes a person leaves the body as the silkworm leaves its cocoon and rises to the world of spirit, and that the essence of a person is life, for which there can be no death. The Bhagavad Gita says of the soul that it lays aside a worn-out body as a person lays aside worn-out clothes. When the sutra says that death is not real, it means that death is not the end: it seems final, and it is not. UPL holds with both that the soul goes on, and that death is a passage in a journey that does not end.