In a Gallup survey, 63.4% of people answered that ‘Paradise or heaven is not in the other world, but in this world,’ which showed that the people’s thinking is largely centered on this world. Humanity has dreamed of an ideal world since time immemorial. Where on earth is that place? In the East, people longed for the heavenly world where the Jade Emperor and the immortals lived.
Carl Busse, a 19th-century German lyric poet, said in his poem ‘Over the Mountains’, “There is happiness beyond the mountains, far away in the sky, so after hearing that, I followed others to find happiness, only to end up with tears in my eyes.”
Nietzsche is said to have been walking in the Alps in the summer of 1881 when the idea of eternal recurrence suddenly occurred to him like a lightning bolt. Eternal time forms a circle; within that circle, the universe, life, and all objects and perceptions repeat infinitely. In this way, he argued that since life repeats forever, there is freedom and salvation in life if you accept the agony and joy of life as they are.
Hydrogen and oxygen combine to create a completely new form— water, a mysterious metaphysics. A similar process is expressed as ‘God’s creation’ in Christianity, in Buddhism, it is called dependent origination.
It is often said that life is finite, but that is only life as an individual, and life as a whole has no death as long as its genes continue.
If you can let go of self-awareness, you can also let go of your obsession with the finite life of an individual. This is because when the self disappears, the self that will die also disappears, and thus death disappears. This means that only by letting go of self-awareness can one escape from worldly bondage and anguish.
Originally, this world was a beautiful paradise. Life is about enjoying a picnic in that paradise. Zhuangzi's 'Little Yayou' is also a story about going on a faraway picnic, purifying the soul, and enjoying absolute freedom while having fun. Zhuangzi's philosophy is "holistic encouraging disengagement from the artificialities of socialization, and cultivation of our natural ancestral” potencies and skills, to live a simple and natural, but full and flourishing life."
“I will return to heaven. At the end of my excursion into this beautiful world, I will go and say that it was beautiful.” The great poet Cheon Sang-byeong, who deeply instilled a positive mindset in us, lived in heaven like this even while suffering from the aftereffects of severe electric torture.
Saint Elizabeth of the Carmelite Monastery in France testifies that there is heaven in this world. “I have found heaven in this world. Because heaven is God and God is in my soul.”
Jesus also said, “The kingdom of God does not come in visible forms. “Behold, the kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:20-21), Jesus, however, called the children to himself and said, “Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these (Luke 18:16).
Likewise, in Christianity, heaven is the place where the soul of a true believer enjoys eternal blessings after death. However, it does not necessarily refer only to the afterlife but to a place where God's rule is completely achieved and was thought to exist both in this world and in the human mind. This world is heaven.
In Catholic teaching when we are baptized we put on Christ. It is no longer I but Christ who lives in me. We are living in God's kingdom in faith now but it is not complete for that awaits us after death. We also remember the words of St. Catherine of Siena who said: "All the way to heaven is heaven."
