Chapter 4 — Islam and Buddhism: Memory as the Cycle of Transition
Author’s column in philosophical anthropology. An essayistic reflection.
Philosophical systems that took shape in the Middle East and South Asia offer a fundamentally different, non-linear model for making sense of death. In place of a paradigm of final rupture, a concept of transformation and passage dominates here. This analysis looks at how Islam and Buddhism, each within its own logic, built «architectures of transition,» in which the physical end is not a finale but a turning point in an ongoing movement.
I. Philosophical Foundations: From Linearity to Cyclicality
The key difference in how death is perceived is often rooted in how time itself is understood. Where a number of Western models are characterized by a linear perspective — birth, life, a final judgment, or oblivion — Islam and Buddhism offer a cyclical or transformational view.
Central to Buddhism is the concept of samsara — the wheel of rebirth, driven by the law of karma. Death here isn’t annihilation, but the dissolution of one temporary aggregate of elements, the skandhas, and the beginning of a new one forming. The higher goal is to break this cycle, to attain liberation, nirvana: death turns out to be a key stage of the spiritual path, but far from its final one.
In Islam, the emphasis shifts to an intermediate state, barzakh, and the subsequent resurrection at the Day of Judgment. Death is a passage from the world of earthly trial, dunya, into another form of waiting: also a path, but a path toward a final, predetermined outcome set by Allah — paradise or hell.
II. Ritual Practice: Minimalism and the Duty of Memory
These philosophical positions find direct expression in strictly regulated rites that emphasize equality before the eternal and the importance of a continuing bond.
The Islamic funeral rite, janazah, is extremely spare: washing the body, a simple shroud (kafan), burial in the ground facing Mecca. The deliberate rejection of any distinction by status — rich and poor equal in the shroud — becomes a powerful assertion of equality before God; even grief here is regulated (for example, the widow’s waiting period, iddah, of four months and ten days), placing personal emotion within a divinely ordained order.
In Buddhist tradition, rites are directed at helping the consciousness of the departed through the transition: monks recite texts — such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead — to guide the dying. Cremation, widespread across many Buddhist schools, symbolizes not annihilation but the accelerated return of the elements to the cycle of the world and the liberation of consciousness from attachment to its perishable form.
III. Collective Memory: An Ongoing Bond
In both traditions, death doesn’t sever the bond between the living and the departed for good — it transforms that bond into a form of duty.
In Islam this is expressed through dua prayers for the departed which, according to the teaching, can ease their state in the barzakh: memory is sustained through regular remembrance and charity (sadaqah) given on the departed’s behalf. In Buddhism, the family makes offerings to the monastic community — food, clothing — and performs good deeds, dedicating the merit (punya) to the departed for the sake of their next rebirth.
Both practices build their own architecture of eternity — not on the monumentality of stone, but on the regular, living act of remembrance, woven into the fabric of the community’s everyday religious life.
IV. Existential Consequences: Acceptance and Liberation
Viewing death as a lawful stage within a larger order has deep consequences for one’s relationship to life.
In Buddhism, the recognition that all things are impermanent, anicca, doesn’t lead to pessimism — on the contrary, it becomes a source of liberation from the suffering caused by attachment. In Islam, accepting death as predestination, qadar, strengthens trust in Allah’s mercy and directs the believer’s attention toward responsibility for their deeds in earthly life — a preparation for eternal life.
V. Conclusions: An Alternative Architecture of Memory
The Islamic and Buddhist traditions, for all their differences, show that other, non-monumental forms of working with memory and death are possible. Their architecture is built not on a material monument asserting individuality across the centuries, but on cyclical time, ritual duty, and a continuing — if transformed — bond between worlds. This model offers an alternative in which accepting finitude and impermanence becomes the foundation of a meaningful existence.
The key difference in how death is perceived is often rooted in how time itself is understood. Where a number of Western models are characterized by a linear perspective — birth, life, a final judgment, or oblivion — Islam and Buddhism offer a cyclical or transformational view.
Central to Buddhism is the concept of samsara — the wheel of rebirth, driven by the law of karma. Death here isn’t annihilation, but the dissolution of one temporary aggregate of elements, the skandhas, and the beginning of a new one forming. The higher goal is to break this cycle, to attain liberation, nirvana: death turns out to be a key stage of the spiritual path, but far from its final one.
In Islam, the emphasis shifts to an intermediate state, barzakh, and the subsequent resurrection at the Day of Judgment. Death is a passage from the world of earthly trial, dunya, into another form of waiting: also a path, but a path toward a final, predetermined outcome set by Allah — paradise or hell.
II. Ritual Practice: Minimalism and the Duty of Memory
These philosophical positions find direct expression in strictly regulated rites that emphasize equality before the eternal and the importance of a continuing bond.
The Islamic funeral rite, janazah, is extremely spare: washing the body, a simple shroud (kafan), burial in the ground facing Mecca. The deliberate rejection of any distinction by status — rich and poor equal in the shroud — becomes a powerful assertion of equality before God; even grief here is regulated (for example, the widow’s waiting period, iddah, of four months and ten days), placing personal emotion within a divinely ordained order.
In Buddhist tradition, rites are directed at helping the consciousness of the departed through the transition: monks recite texts — such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead — to guide the dying. Cremation, widespread across many Buddhist schools, symbolizes not annihilation but the accelerated return of the elements to the cycle of the world and the liberation of consciousness from attachment to its perishable form.
III. Collective Memory: An Ongoing Bond
In both traditions, death doesn’t sever the bond between the living and the departed for good — it transforms that bond into a form of duty.
In Islam this is expressed through dua prayers for the departed which, according to the teaching, can ease their state in the barzakh: memory is sustained through regular remembrance and charity (sadaqah) given on the departed’s behalf. In Buddhism, the family makes offerings to the monastic community — food, clothing — and performs good deeds, dedicating the merit (punya) to the departed for the sake of their next rebirth.
Both practices build their own architecture of eternity — not on the monumentality of stone, but on the regular, living act of remembrance, woven into the fabric of the community’s everyday religious life.
IV. Existential Consequences: Acceptance and Liberation
Viewing death as a lawful stage within a larger order has deep consequences for one’s relationship to life.
In Buddhism, the recognition that all things are impermanent, anicca, doesn’t lead to pessimism — on the contrary, it becomes a source of liberation from the suffering caused by attachment. In Islam, accepting death as predestination, qadar, strengthens trust in Allah’s mercy and directs the believer’s attention toward responsibility for their deeds in earthly life — a preparation for eternal life.
V. Conclusions: An Alternative Architecture of Memory
The Islamic and Buddhist traditions, for all their differences, show that other, non-monumental forms of working with memory and death are possible. Their architecture is built not on a material monument asserting individuality across the centuries, but on cyclical time, ritual duty, and a continuing — if transformed — bond between worlds. This model offers an alternative in which accepting finitude and impermanence becomes the foundation of a meaningful existence.
About the column: Architecture of Memory is an intellectual topography of ritual culture as a universal language. Its subject is how societies encode their relationship with eternity. Its method is comparative research through the lens of design, anthropology, and philosophy. We don’t just describe rites — we read the codes that cultures leave in stone, ritual, and space, drawing a map of their philosophies of life and death. Not content. Not advertising. Dialogue.
P.S. The laboratory is open. The research continues. Every month, new chapters appear on the map of the «Topography of Eternity.»
— Iskandar Kadyrov
P.S. The laboratory is open. The research continues. Every month, new chapters appear on the map of the «Topography of Eternity.»
— Iskandar Kadyrov
Season 2 — 12 Cultures
Iskandar Kadyrov
See also