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Past Lives = Ancestors?
mugzy
Veteran
We are all the continuation of our ancestors. Could this be a way of viewing our "past lives"?
I have been turning this idea over in my mind for many years now, and I still don't know quite how to explain it. I have always felt a deep connection to my ancestors, especially as a mixed-race person of Native American descent. I think of my parents, grandparents, and other close blood relatives and think of how I am a combination of their DNA. I see into our history, the millions of people leading up to now, those who died long ago but their genetic material continued on, creating new life and new consciousness. It makes me wonder if our ancestors and the knowledge of our history would influence the idea of reincarnation.
If we don't have children, what does that mean for our future lives?
I have been turning this idea over in my mind for many years now, and I still don't know quite how to explain it. I have always felt a deep connection to my ancestors, especially as a mixed-race person of Native American descent. I think of my parents, grandparents, and other close blood relatives and think of how I am a combination of their DNA. I see into our history, the millions of people leading up to now, those who died long ago but their genetic material continued on, creating new life and new consciousness. It makes me wonder if our ancestors and the knowledge of our history would influence the idea of reincarnation.
If we don't have children, what does that mean for our future lives?
0
Comments
it is for sure
but still not sure about how the exact relationship works
still working on it
The idea of rebirth in Buddhism comes from the other side of the planet, from people who are not genetically related to Native Americans.
My ancestors were all Irish Catholic, and one known ancestor was actually (supposedly, you know how the Irish are about inflating stories) converted to Catholicism by St. Patrick himself. This would plant the idea of life after death according to Catholicism in my subconscious.
Then again, when my son was about 12, he had been looking at some pictures of the exact area that my Irish ancestors lived, and some pictures of Tibet. Once he just sort of off-handedly asked me "Dad, can we move to Ireland or Tibet?" and I was a little surprised by the question, so I very calmly asked him "Why do you ask that, Son?" and he said "Because it feels like home."
Go figure.
“… The Tartar Chinese speak the dialect of the Apaches. The Apaches bear a striking resemblance to the Tartar. In about the year 1885, W. B. Horton, who had served as County Superintendent of Schools, at Tucson, was appointed Post Trader at Camp Apache, and went to San Francisco to purchase his stock, where he hired a Chinese cook. His kitchen adjoined his sleeping apartment, and one evening while in his room he heard in the kitchen some Indians talking. Wondering what they were doing there at that hour of the night, he opened the door and found his cook conversing with an Apache. He asked his cook where he had acquired the Indian language. The cook said: “He speak all same me. I Tartar Chinese; he speak same me, little different, not much.” At Williams, in Navajo County, is another Tartar Chinaman, Gee Jim, who converses freely with the Apaches in his native language. From these facts it would seem that the Apache is of Tartar origin. From the fact that the Apache language was practically the same as that of the Tartar Chinese, colour is given to the theory advanced by Bancroft in his “Native Races,” Volume 5, p. 33, et seq., that Western America was “originally peopled by the Chinese, or, at least, that the greater part of the new world civilization may be attributed to these people…”
Reference Source: The University of Arizona Library "Books of the South West" Chapter 1, Indians of Arizona:
http://southwest.library.arizona.edu/hav7/body.1_div.1.html
As for the idea of rebirth, evidence of rebirth is recognized all over the world by those who attend closely to very young children and do not shun and silence them, as many of them speak of having formerly been adults with definite issues just as soon as they are able to speak intelligibly at all.
Please don't let this become yet another rebirth thread.
And the OP was unclear about the OP question and has not been back to clarify. This thread could go all over the place.
There is no way to distinguish possible "ancestral memories" from memories acquired from oral traditions. That's all I'm trying to say. My ancestors were Christian, supposedly as far back as the first century CE. Therefore my ancestral memories would carry a belief in the Christian life-after-death scenario, yet here I am a Buddhist believing in reincarnation.
So my answer to these rather interesting stories about the integration of Orientals into Native American populations is "whatever". There's no evidence of Native American populations carrying Buddhadharma or a belief in reincarnation/rebirth, or that they carry on a collective consciousness apart from their oral traditions. And in his OP, Mugzy even admits that this is not a fully formed idea on his part.
So, as politely as I can state it, my answer is "whatever".
the dead ancestor as protector is a recurring idea... but I don't know in which tradition, if any, it originated.
Be well.
because
i didn't know that 'the self is not: foam, feeling, perception,formation nor consciousness'
if i knew it and i was aware of it at my last breath 'i wouldn't be here'
At least that is my observation and experience.
It is also my observation and experience that a child exists as a clearly differentiated, observable, and separate electromagnetic pattern, before it is ever conceived, and that conception merely acts as a conduit through which it protrudes/manifests its desired growth pattern into this dimension.