Harold Camping, an American Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio, has famously predicted that the end of times Rapture would occur today, May 21, 2011 and that God would subsequently completely destroy the Earth and the universe five months later on October 21. (He had previously predicted that the Rapture would occur in September 1994). On this heralded Day of the Rapture, it would be wonderful – blasphemous as it seems - to reclaim the word rapture to include transportation into another realm by things other than Judgement and the second coming of Jesus.
For Buddhists, rapture is a common translation of the Pali word piti, which is a very specific joy associated with a state of deep tranquility or meditative absorption.
As an emotional state, rapture is a feeling of joy or delight, synonymous with ecstasy.
Nature has the power to enrapture, delight, and send into ecstasy. This is my preferred form of rapture, particularly in this fecund, dynamic Spring season when Nature is transcendentally alive with regeneration and growth.
