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Buddhists Against Reincarnation!!!
DaltheJigsaw
Mountain View Veteran
The Buddha clearly asked his followers not to believe things simply because he said them or they are stated in religious texts but because you have experience of them being true (Kalama Sutta). It follows therefore that there should be no pressure on the Buddhist to believe in reincarnation – from others or from within themselves. Reincarnation is not one of the 4 noble truths and does not feature in the 8 fold path or Meditation.
This site is dedicated to encouraging open free debate and thought on the issue of reincarnation (a term used here to mean ‘Rebirth’at the point of death). We would like to make the following points derived from human experience.
1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil
It is true that some might gain significant reassurance from a belief in reincarnation and we should be sympathetic to this. People who need a belief will tend to defend it by ceasing to listen, switching attention, or being distracted by irritation and contempt. Hopefully they will not be harmed by this site. Perhaps they would choose not to read further.
2. Seeing is believing
To hold untrue beliefs has unpleasant side effects. Irrational beliefs are often in conflict with rational ones and this causes tension and suffering to the believer (Festinger Cognitive Dissonance Theory in psychology). ‘We learn things with great certainty through directly experiencing them via the senses.’- This human belief is in conflict with a belief in reincarnation (which few believers would claim to have any direct experience or evidence of). As there is no physical evidence for reincarnation there is little reason to believe in it.
3. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
Human beings have a tendency to reject a group of associated ideas (as in the case of Buddhism) if they find just one of these ideas to be untrue. This means that intelligent people might reject Buddhism on the basis of their strong reasonable disbelief in reincarnation. This would be unfortunate.
http://www.buddhistsagainstreincarnation.com/
This site is dedicated to encouraging open free debate and thought on the issue of reincarnation (a term used here to mean ‘Rebirth’at the point of death). We would like to make the following points derived from human experience.
1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil
It is true that some might gain significant reassurance from a belief in reincarnation and we should be sympathetic to this. People who need a belief will tend to defend it by ceasing to listen, switching attention, or being distracted by irritation and contempt. Hopefully they will not be harmed by this site. Perhaps they would choose not to read further.
2. Seeing is believing
To hold untrue beliefs has unpleasant side effects. Irrational beliefs are often in conflict with rational ones and this causes tension and suffering to the believer (Festinger Cognitive Dissonance Theory in psychology). ‘We learn things with great certainty through directly experiencing them via the senses.’- This human belief is in conflict with a belief in reincarnation (which few believers would claim to have any direct experience or evidence of). As there is no physical evidence for reincarnation there is little reason to believe in it.
3. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
Human beings have a tendency to reject a group of associated ideas (as in the case of Buddhism) if they find just one of these ideas to be untrue. This means that intelligent people might reject Buddhism on the basis of their strong reasonable disbelief in reincarnation. This would be unfortunate.
http://www.buddhistsagainstreincarnation.com/
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This discussion has been closed.
Comments
If you had a good life, and people loved you, they will speak of you with love and admiration after you die. Some people were so loving and compassionate, we will speak highly of them until the end of time.
If you were a nasty pain in the butt to everyone, that is how they will speak of you. Some people were so nasty, we will curse them until the end of time.
In that way, you are reborn after death every time someone speaks of you.
Not that we know it... :-/
I don't remember anything from any previous life and neither do most people. Even those who do only remember some aspects from one life. So in effect death means annihilation of this person and all its knowledge and experience. The only thing that is generally said to carry over from life to life is the karma, not the individual identity.
life and existance has a funny weirdness to it that I don't feel the need to be uptight about rebirth.
Someone people should maybe go outside and get some nature intake.
I understand your objection, but disagree that Buddha taught rebirth in "all his teachings" and also that people remove this element out of dislike or consider reincarnation disbelief as an obstacle. For some of us, belief is not a choice. I don't begrudge your belief. In the same way, if someone wants to believe their loved ones are waiting in Heaven and draw comfort from it, I'm happy.
:bowdown:
What? :eek2:
With metta,
Sabre
he said Reincarnation is not part of the 4NT, the 8Fold path or Meditation - and he's right.
Furthermore, it's not LeonBasin, saying it. He's quoted a passage, with a link at the base.....
Reincarnation happens at the point of death, or in a bardo of an indeterminate period of time. (Tibetan/Mahayana Buddhism.)
Rebirth, as a phenomenon, is a different matter entirely.....
In other words, my baked potatoes are both baked and not baked, until I open the oven. We'll leave Schrodinger's cat in its box this time
That's mainly a debate about definitions. In this discussion both terms are defined to be the same thing -apparently-, which I think is fine because I personally don't think the difference is that important. But stating it is not part of the teachings is a bit of a fast statement.
Oops, @Sabre was quicker and said it better.
I can only infer upon personal experience....obviously I don't know what happens after death specifically. But in my opinion emptiness, consciousness, spirit....whatever you call that non-thing....seems indeed to permeate everything that exists. So it would make sense emptiness is not lost after death. That doesn't mean one reincarnates or any of that stuff. It just means that just like my bodily matter doesn't disappear , my essence doesn't either....
The only strange propriety of consciousness that I still haven't figured out....is why it seems to have a specific vantage point ("my eyes, my ears...etc). If we are all waves part of the same ocean....why is it...that we seem only to experience things as a wave with a specific location (i.e. the vicinity of this body in time/space)?
If there is anything that can say "I AM"...and it's not personal...and is everywhere...why don't all the other waves realize they are the ocean when this wave does?
I have heard some, who get extremely worked up about it.
But I take your point about the intention within this argument. In this, certainly, we are agreed.....
"Alex PATERSON is an Australian airline pilot by profession. He writes articles and advises on issues pertaining to aviation, politics, sociology, the environment, sustainable farming and forestry, history, computers, natural health therapies and spirituality."
What?
:eek2:
Note that mosst of the material presented are quotations from actual phsysicists.
The crazy and interesting world of quantum mechanics does make it looks like that it can be mixed together, but it can not. Why? We need to experiment.
I like the idea of string theory. It makes the world orderly and it fits perfectly well with general relativity. Yet, there is a problem. We can not experiment with String theory.
Also Lawrence Krauss & Richard Feynman will disagree without on spirituality.
Thats a good point that scientists need to base their findings upon experimentation. I think that buddhists we do that as well. Indeed our findings are based on our own experience both meditative and post-meditative. Buddha did not give a single teaching that did not have a practical relationship to alleviating suffering.
For a scientist their life is spiritual. A scienific text howevef is not spiritual. But a scientists own experience is spiritual due to their MIND. Mind is something not very well understood by science. But you cannot separate a scientist from their mind. In buddhism there are 5 senses and the 6th is mind. The first 5 are the form skanda and the form skanda is a part of sentient beings. So if you look outside at a mountain that is part of your form skanda. The other four skandas have to do with mind: feeling, perception, formations/volition, consciousness. It is these four that constitute 'spirituality' in buddism.
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec13.html
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27106
By the way how do you know whether the device is interacting or the consciousness?