If you are spiritual but not religious, how do you want to die? | Jackie Bailey

Many of us won't get a choice. But dying rites are not just for those of faith

• Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life

In the past, death rites were based on what religion you belonged to. I was raised Catholic and, for Catholics, death was seen as the gateway to eternal life with God. To shore up my chances of making it to heaven, I would have received extreme unction, a priest coming to my deathbed to absolve me of any last-minute sins I may have committed.

In my 20s I transitioned to Buddhism, my mother's ancestral religion. For Buddhists, death is a transition point, the staging platform between this life and another. The goal of the dying is to have the best possible reincarnation, to set up the future self with the best chance of attaining enlightenment. I might try to visualise the Buddha, and see myself moving towards them, guiding me to the best possible version of my next self, in this realm or another.

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