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The connections made in the "present" life, do they continue or end after death?
Aura, that's a lovely story, but "you" are not reincarnated in any way that really matters in this life, and that's what even Buddhists struggle to comprehend. It's marvelous that you remember a few memories that once belonged to someone else living in the past. But, those memories are of that person, and you are someone else, with your own form and thoughts and memories and habits and such, your own skandhas. You are not simply that person's spirit or atman sucked into a new body. It doesn't work that way.
We might as well say that we are our parents, because we have their DNA, or that we are our mother because we were once her flesh.
Where were we before we were born? What are we now? Where do we go? These are important questions. What happens to us after we die is perhaps the seed of religion throughout time. We are the only animal on this earth we know of that can comprehend our own mortality. All the little questions lead to this big one.
"That is the path and it makes a long journey, but it is not a journey to becoming more and more convinced about our views and opinions..........it is a journey into allowing ourselves to remain open to truth and reality from whatever direction it comes from, without losing our way.
It is not a matter of grasping at a bit of truth here and a bit of truth there and believing we now know something. It is more about learning what real knowing is and it is open-ended with no object to grasp on to.
And yet, it is knowing and it is knowing that changes us, even if only for a tiny flash or moment of time - or at least it seems that way. Then we have to let go and let reality claim us rather than we claim reality. It is a very unsatisfactory place to be from the ego-centric point of view. It undermines the ego but strangely opens up the heart."
~ Lama Shenpen Hookham from Buddhism Connect a free email teaching
Aura, that's a lovely story, but "you" are not reincarnated in any way that really matters in this life, and that's what even Buddhists struggle to comprehend. It's marvelous that you remember a few memories that once belonged to someone else living in the past. But, those memories are of that person, and you are someone else, with your own form and thoughts and memories and habits and such, your own skandhas.
This doesn't square with Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I don't believe Aura's memories are of a complete stranger.
Aura, that's a lovely story, but "you" are not reincarnated in any way that really matters in this life, and that's what even Buddhists struggle to comprehend. It's marvelous that you remember a few memories that once belonged to someone else living in the past. But, those memories are of that person, and you are someone else, with your own form and thoughts and memories and habits and such, your own skandhas.
This doesn't square with Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I don't believe Aura's memories are of a complete stranger.
Well no, and neither are your parents strangers. There is a connection, perhaps, but there is a difference between the spirit transmigration belief of Hinduism and Spiritualism and the Buddhist rebirth that goes with the practice of no-self. The difference is still in the question, what part of you has been reborn? How can "you" still be here, when everything that makes you what you are today is completely different?
One school in Buddhism takes you down the path of asking, what is this illusion we call the Self? Then when you comprehend the no-self teaching, you have to see reincarnation as you being born into another body as misunderstanding what we are.
People use such terms as "reincarnation" "rebirth" "transmigration" to describe their own experiences, beliefs, or observations of reality. All I truly know is my own experience of reality. Such terms are not a part of my experience.
Cinorjer is quite right that I am not now the "person" I once was. None of us who are back here at this place and time in life are at all the same people we once were in that other life. It was amusing to meet my former sister and observe that she is a man in this life, progressing on the path by living and observing life from roles, rules, and perspectives of the opposite gender in society.
But the original question was if loving connections continue after death. My personal experience has been that loving connections continue after death. Does that then mean that love constitutes attachment?
It has been my experience that the more one is full of life and full of self, the more love is recognized as human emotion, desire, passion, sex... and the more it comes with its attendant attachments: greed! control! jealousy! hatred! contempt! revenge! The more one is full of life and full of self, the more love becomes mere attachment.
It has been my experience that the more one is empty of life and empty of self, the more love becomes recognized for what it truly is: the radiance of transcendent compassion, a phenomenon of Light, that manifests as the white Light, and that behaves in the cosmos in accordance with our extremely limited understanding of the physics of light.
A soul, an entity, is specific differentiated patterns and frequencies of Light. As such it is transcendent and recognizable beyond the mundane world and beyond whatever body it manifests to aid its evolution beyond its current limited patterns and frequencies. The physics of inductive coupling through harmonic resonance applies. It is affinity, communion, communication, and amplification of energy between entities, transcendent love that is not attachment. It is like singing a clear tone at a piano and the piano will resonate and sing a clear tone back: harmonic resonance.
Nirvana is way up there very far... it is the en-Light-enment, the complete absence of a differentiated pattern of self and complete unification with that Light; there is no differentiated frequency nor pattern.
Does one's concern for one's children bind one here? It bound me. It bound me because the tremendous violence they had witnessed at such a young age could well terrify them sufficiently to turn them from the path of understanding that violence is ignorance, to perhaps believing that violence provides power, safety, security, and survival. If they strayed from the path of understanding that violence is ignorance, they could end up exactly like those who had likewise once been children in a war, and who had grown up to become the destroyers, the purveyors of universal suffering.
Does one's concern for one's children bind one here? It bound me. It bound me because the tremendous violence they had witnessed at such a young age could well terrify them sufficiently to turn them from the path of understanding that violence is ignorance, to perhaps believing that violence provides power, safety, security, and survival. If they strayed from the path of understanding that violence is ignorance, they could end up exactly like those who had likewise once been children in a war, and who had grown up to become the destroyers, the purveyors of universal suffering.
My daughter, now 14, witnessed domestic violence toward me when she was 2 - whilst it would have been my preference that she never had this experience and subsequently I have done all in my power to prevent it from happening again, with direction and guidance, she has developed good understanding and healthy attitudes.
What do you find more compelling about this testimony than similar Christian testimonials which imply a contradictory cosmology? Even if you're naive enough to take as trustworthy claims of intrinsically unverifiable personal experience from an anonymous posting to an internet forum with an extensive history of bitter vitriol from people holding the view the posting advances, you must admit that a fair application of the epistemological standard you're applying here would lead to a morass of contradictory conclusions if you broadened your attention to testimonials which don't give you such a warm and fuzzy personal feeling.
Buddhism encourages you to drop attachments and your ego and share your love.
My family is an attachment. They are my priority and I will die for them. I feel guilty even when I spend more money on my dog then on some hungry kids in Africa.
From the objective point of view or Buddhism it is wrong. From the point of my DNA what I am doing the right. In many ways it must be a selfish wanting to bring your attachments from this life to the next one?????
And how do you cope with putting so much energy in the attachments when deep down you know that this should not be /from the ethical point/?
What do you find more compelling about this testimony than similar Christian testimonials which imply a contradictory cosmology? Even if you're naive enough to take as trustworthy claims of intrinsically unverifiable personal experience from an anonymous posting to an internet forum with an extensive history of bitter vitriol from people holding the view the posting advances, you must admit that a fair application of the epistemological standard you're applying here would lead to a morass of contradictory conclusions if you broadened your attention to testimonials which don't give you such a warm and fuzzy personal feeling.
If you feel that Aura's testimonial is untrustworthy, take it up with Aura.
What do you find more compelling about this testimony than similar Christian testimonials which imply a contradictory cosmology? Even if you're naive enough to take as trustworthy claims of intrinsically unverifiable personal experience from an anonymous posting to an internet forum with an extensive history of bitter vitriol from people holding the view the posting advances, you must admit that a fair application of the epistemological standard you're applying here would lead to a morass of contradictory conclusions if you broadened your attention to testimonials which don't give you such a warm and fuzzy personal feeling.
If you feel that Aura's testimonial is untrustworthy, take it up with Aura.
WHY???
This is a public forum.
I would love to read both points of view. Is not Buddhism not about tolerance and freedom of the opinions?
Points of view about what? I gave mine; I enjoyed Aura's testimony and found it compelling. I believe in rebirth, Fivebells doesn't, and he's trying to turn this into an argument about that. I refuse to fall for that. End of story.
Aura's right; we re-encounter those with whom we have attachments (not necessarily loved ones--there can be all kinds of energetic attachments, revenge, for example, for those not evolved in the Dharma) in the next life. That's how I see it. This has no basis in scripture, it's my opinion based on experience.
Maybe this topic belongs under "general banter", since it's kind of speculative. ?
Andyrobyn, it is very inspiring to see good parenting... excellent job! Please know that as she approaches dating and adulthood, or perhaps eventual parenthood of a 2 year old herself, the traumatic memory of that past may suddenly unexpectedly resurface and likewise require your good direction and guidance through that storm.
A 17 year old girl once came to me for parental comfort and counsel, a tidal wave of depression, violently oscillating emotion and confusion, written off by her parents, counselor, and school as "troubled teen in need of Prozac." An assault by a boyfriend had inadvertently triggered off a tidal wave of confusing traumatic memory, all apparently recorded before age 3! Her mother had relocated, remarried, and completely buried and hidden from her the fact that her birth father had been a violently abusive drug addict. The reunification of the girl with a distant grandmother and her grandmother's revelation of this history, followed by her mother's embarrassed and reluctant validation of it, finally enabled the girl to sort out her consciousness and emotions, and find peace, resolution, and healing. Witnessing this case truly impressed me that the extent to which even an infant can intensely mentally record and be severely traumatized by being a witness or subject of violence must never be underestimated.
Points of view about what? I gave mine; I enjoyed Aura's testimony and found it compelling. I believe in rebirth, Fivebells doesn't, and he's trying to turn this into an argument about that. I refuse to fall for that. End of story.
The point is, you found it compelling because you already believe the point of view it supports. A fair assessment would find it far less compelling.
Comments
We might as well say that we are our parents, because we have their DNA, or that we are our mother because we were once her flesh.
Where were we before we were born? What are we now? Where do we go? These are important questions. What happens to us after we die is perhaps the seed of religion throughout time. We are the only animal on this earth we know of that can comprehend our own mortality. All the little questions lead to this big one.
they are not the essence of Buddha-Dhamma & do not represent Buddha-Dhamma"
Are you hearing voices of the buddha telling you what he intended 2500 years ago, DD?
:eek2:
It is not a matter of grasping at a bit of truth here and a bit of truth there and believing we now know something. It is more about learning what real knowing is and it is open-ended with no object to grasp on to.
And yet, it is knowing and it is knowing that changes us, even if only for a tiny flash or moment of time - or at least it seems that way. Then we have to let go and let reality claim us rather than we claim reality. It is a very unsatisfactory place to be from the ego-centric point of view. It undermines the ego but strangely opens up the heart."
~ Lama Shenpen Hookham from Buddhism Connect a free email teaching
One school in Buddhism takes you down the path of asking, what is this illusion we call the Self? Then when you comprehend the no-self teaching, you have to see reincarnation as you being born into another body as misunderstanding what we are.
Cinorjer is quite right that I am not now the "person" I once was. None of us who are back here at this place and time in life are at all the same people we once were in that other life. It was amusing to meet my former sister and observe that she is a man in this life, progressing on the path by living and observing life from roles, rules, and perspectives of the opposite gender in society.
But the original question was if loving connections continue after death.
My personal experience has been that loving connections continue after death.
Does that then mean that love constitutes attachment?
It has been my experience that the more one is full of life and full of self, the more love is recognized as human emotion, desire, passion, sex...
and the more it comes with its attendant attachments: greed! control! jealousy! hatred! contempt! revenge! The more one is full of life and full of self, the more love becomes mere attachment.
It has been my experience that the more one is empty of life and empty of self,
the more love becomes recognized for what it truly is: the radiance of transcendent compassion, a phenomenon of Light, that manifests as the white Light, and that behaves in the cosmos in accordance with our extremely limited understanding of the physics of light.
A soul, an entity, is specific differentiated patterns and frequencies of Light.
As such it is transcendent and recognizable beyond the mundane world and beyond whatever body it manifests to aid its evolution beyond its current limited patterns and frequencies. The physics of inductive coupling through harmonic resonance applies. It is affinity, communion, communication, and amplification of energy between entities, transcendent love that is not attachment. It is like singing a clear tone at a piano and the piano will resonate and sing a clear tone back: harmonic resonance.
Nirvana is way up there very far... it is the en-Light-enment, the complete absence of a differentiated pattern of self and complete unification with that Light; there is no differentiated frequency nor pattern.
Does one's concern for one's children bind one here? It bound me.
It bound me because the tremendous violence they had witnessed at such a young age could well terrify them sufficiently to turn them from the path of understanding that violence is ignorance, to perhaps believing that violence provides power, safety, security, and survival. If they strayed from the path of understanding that violence is ignorance, they could end up exactly like those who had likewise once been children in a war, and who had grown up to become the destroyers, the purveyors of universal suffering.
Every once in a while I'm reminded again why I married the woman.
Correct me where I am going wrong PLS.
Buddhism encourages you to drop attachments and your ego and share your love.
My family is an attachment. They are my priority and I will die for them. I feel guilty even when I spend more money on my dog then on some hungry kids in Africa.
From the objective point of view or Buddhism it is wrong. From the point of my DNA what I am doing the right.
In many ways it must be a selfish wanting to bring your attachments from this life to the next one?????
And how do you cope with putting so much energy in the attachments when deep down you know that this should not be /from the ethical point/?
WHY???
This is a public forum.
I would love to read both points of view. Is not Buddhism not about tolerance and freedom of the opinions?
Maybe this topic belongs under "general banter", since it's kind of speculative. ?
Please know that as she approaches dating and adulthood, or perhaps eventual parenthood of a 2 year old herself, the traumatic memory of that past may suddenly unexpectedly resurface and likewise require your good direction and guidance through that storm.
A 17 year old girl once came to me for parental comfort and counsel, a tidal wave of depression, violently oscillating emotion and confusion, written off by her parents, counselor, and school as "troubled teen in need of Prozac." An assault by a boyfriend had inadvertently triggered off a tidal wave of confusing traumatic memory, all apparently recorded before age 3!
Her mother had relocated, remarried, and completely buried and hidden from her the fact that her birth father had been a violently abusive drug addict.
The reunification of the girl with a distant grandmother and her grandmother's revelation of this history, followed by her mother's embarrassed and reluctant validation of it, finally enabled the girl to sort out her consciousness and emotions, and find peace, resolution, and healing. Witnessing this case truly impressed me that the extent to which even an infant can intensely mentally record and be severely traumatized by being a witness or subject of violence must never be underestimated.