Buddhist View on Death and Rebirth
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As a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, working as a Buddhist chaplain at several of Melbourne's hospitals and as well as Melbourne assessment prison, I have witnessed many personal tragedies faced by the living and of course the very process of dying and that of death and many of these poor people faced their death with fear, with misery and pain before departing this world. With the images of all these in my mind, on this occasion, I wish to share my view from the perspective of a Buddhist and we hope that people would feel far more relaxed in facing this inevitable end since it is really not the end of life, according to our belief.
Death and the impermanence of life
In the teaching of the Buddha, all of us will pass away eventually as a part in the natural process of birth, old-age and death and that we should always keep in mind the impermanence of life. The life that we all cherish and wish to hold on.
To Buddhism, however, death is not the end of life, it is merely the end of the body we inhabit in this life, but our spirit will still remain and seek out through the need of attachment, attachment to a new body and new life. Where they will be born is a result of the past and the accumulation of positive and negative action, and the resultant karma (cause and effect) is a result of ones past actions.
This would lead to the person to be reborn in one of 6 realms which are; heaven, human beings, Asura, hungry ghost, animal and hell. Realms, according to the severity of ones karmic actions, Buddhists believe however, none of these places are permanent and one does not remain in any place indefinitely. So we can say that in Buddhism, life does not end, merely goes on in other forms that are the result of accumulated karma. Buddhism is a belief that emphasizes the impermanence of lives, including all those beyond the present life. With this in mind we should not fear death as it will lead to rebirth.
More: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma5/viewdeath.html
How do you relate death and suffering in the context of our lives? I think it might be useful to discuss this topic in relation to some of the recent "news" - I'll comment once the thread gets going. Please discuss, the silence of this forum is profound, but for the lurkers I think it's an interesting discussion, if you have questions, please do not hesitate.
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The way I think about it is in terms of energy. No energy is lost in the cycle of life in absolute terms - it simply changes form be it from dinosaur to an ape. The message is simple, life goes on, and on, and on it's suffering until we essentially all come to the realization that desire is the cause of our suffering and we stop the cycle. I suppose the heart of the superstition is whether you believe it is possible at all to obtain a state where you do not desire and therefore do not suffer. I think to some extent you have to have a basic belief in the idea that within life there is a certain soul even if it does not always know itself.
Am I making sense, anybody? 
[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I definitely have thoughts on the subject and have been thinking about it even more lately, since my 87-year-old mother has asked questions, but I'll have to come back later on.
i like the traditional Buddhist simile of the flame.
as one torch dies down, another is lit from the fire of the old.
the new torch is obviously not the same as the old torch.
the fire passes from one to the other;
the new flame not the same as the old;
but the old giving birth to the new.
and this process happening every instant,
not just at the point of death.
so dying & being reborn as a different entity,
every infinitesimal moment of time.
as for the different realms of existence -
while i have no idea if this has any basis in reality,
or is just a wishful construct of my own mind -
i imagine them as different dimensions.
like the world of a fish under water,
or of a microbe in a bloodstream,
or, for that matter, the existence of a right-wing fascist,
is so different from our own; and yet the same.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland
Here's a start: http://www.changesurfer.com/Bud/BudBioEth.html
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