How are you defining "imponderables"?

vinlyn

Not what are they.

Are you saying Buddha forbade people to ponder the imponderables. Or did recommend against it? Or?

compassionate_warrior

My understanding is he was saying that some mysteries are too great for the ordinary human mind to fathom, and to try to do so would be a waste of time. Better spend the time meditating, practicing, studying.

fivebells

He just said it's a waste of time and would drive you crazy.

federica

Nothing is forbidden.
I strongly suggest you sit and try to ponder each one in infinitesimal detail, and not stop until you find the definitive, accurate and inarguable answer, then get back to us.

I won't wait up.....

Sabre

The Buddha should have made rebirth an imponderable. Would have saved a lot of threads on this board.

But because it is result of karma, maybe we can make it an imponderable anyway. :vimp:

fivebells

He basically did make it an imponderable. Dhatu has the relevant quote.

Cinorjer

My personal opinion is, people often use that term as an excuse not to examine their assumptions and beliefs. What people don't realize is, what was an imponderable thousands of years ago might not be today. Beliefs that some monk held a thousand years ago? Maybe we've actually learned a thing or two since then about the world and the universe.

Let's take past life karma and next life karma, which in those days was really the only type that mattered. Imponderable, according to the monks. In other words, their best theories don't really answer the questions. Now, for the hard part. I want you to try to imagine living in a world where you don't know that life is composed of cells, or anything about this thing called genetics, or cell division, or how environment effects fetus development, or recessive genes. All you know is, a man and woman get busy and by a miracle, a baby is born.

Why does the baby look the way it does? You have no idea. So past life karma. Why are some babies born sick or deformed when mother and father are healthy? No idea. So past life karma. Why does this baby have blue eyes and not brown? Why is it lighter skinned than his father? Why does it have a birth mark on its back in the shape of a flower? Don't know. Gods? Something caused by a previous life? That's it. Past life karma. There's no other possible explanation, without the invention of the microscope and microbiology.

Thus karma is the best theory they could come with at the time. But what did the boy do in the previous life, to cause the withered leg? Did he injure someone else on the leg in previous life? Maybe. Why is this baby born blind? Must have slandered Buddha in a past life. But there's no way of knowing why, really, so it's an "imponderable". Even if you believe in past life Karma, anything else said about it just leads to more questions.

So maybe some of the beliefs that helped make sense of the world a thousand or two thousand years ago can be examined, and we can cut the monks some slack on doing the best they could while knowing something they didn't. Just a thought to throw out there.

Dakini

Just a thought to throw out there.

What a great thought! It makes perfect sense! So does that mean we disregard some of the teachings because times have changed and science has provided answers for us that were unavailable in the Buddha's time? Do we amend what we accept from the canon whenever there's a relevant scientific discovery? (Just asking...)

Cinorjer

Just a thought to throw out there.

What a great thought! It makes perfect sense! So does that mean we disregard some of the teachings because times have changed and science has provided answers for us that were unavailable in the Buddha's time? Do we amend what we accept from the canon whenever there's a relevant scientific discovery? (Just asking...)

Well, again, my opinion only is that some things have not changed, not in a thousand years, not since humanity evolved millions of years ago. That's the human mind. Suffering has not changed. The reason why has not changed. The remedy still works.

And we know this, because we have evidence that people have mourned over their dead and killed each other and cried out, asking why, then as now.

Dakini

I'm not saying throw it all out. Maybe throw out the past-life-karma-determining-present-life-circumstances part. Or the concept of karma carrying over at all to a new rebirth. That seems to be where your point was leading. Now we have science, so we don't need karma linked to rebirth.

vinlyn

My personal opinion is, people often use that term as an excuse not to examine their assumptions and beliefs. What people don't realize is, what was an imponderable thousands of years ago might not be today. Beliefs that some monk held a thousand years ago? Maybe we've actually learned a thing or two since then about the world and the universe.

Let's take past life karma and next life karma, which in those days was really the only type that mattered. Imponderable, according to the monks. In other words, their best theories don't really answer the questions. Now, for the hard part. I want you to try to imagine living in a world where you don't know that life is composed of cells, or anything about this thing called genetics, or cell division, or how environment effects fetus development, or recessive genes. All you know is, a man and woman get busy and by a miracle, a baby is born.

Why does the baby look the way it does? You have no idea. So past life karma. Why are some babies born sick or deformed when mother and father are healthy? No idea. So past life karma. Why does this baby have blue eyes and not brown? Why is it lighter skinned than his father? Why does it have a birth mark on its back in the shape of a flower? Don't know. Gods? Something caused by a previous life? That's it. Past life karma. There's no other possible explanation, without the invention of the microscope and microbiology.

Thus karma is the best theory they could come with at the time. But what did the boy do in the previous life, to cause the withered leg? Did he injure someone else on the leg in previous life? Maybe. Why is this baby born blind? Must have slandered Buddha in a past life. But there's no way of knowing why, really, so it's an "imponderable". Even if you believe in past life Karma, anything else said about it just leads to more questions.

So maybe some of the beliefs that helped make sense of the world a thousand or two thousand years ago can be examined, and we can cut the monks some slack on doing the best they could while knowing something they didn't. Just a thought to throw out there.

I enjoyed reading this.

One of the issues I have with almost any religion is that they are trying to fit a modern world into documents that are 2,000 or more years old. That's not to say that certain principles are not universal or timeless, but we abandon most novels and writings and biographies and histories when they're even just decades old...because we know more now.

Gotta think more about this.

Thanks

vinlyn

Just a thought to throw out there.

What a great thought! It makes perfect sense! So does that mean we disregard some of the teachings because times have changed and science has provided answers for us that were unavailable in the Buddha's time? Do we amend what we accept from the canon whenever there's a relevant scientific discovery? (Just asking...)

Funny, because the way you put that, I was more tempted to answer yes than I would normally be. After all, how many people in this forum describe Buddhism as being the only scientific religion?