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If there is no rebirth ...
... why can't we just enjoy life to the fullest, and forget about meditation etc.? If there is rebirth, the fear of taking birth in lower realms may impel us to follow dharma. But if there is no rebirth ...
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buddha is teaching you how to be free, to escape from "why can't we just enjoy life to the fullest, and forget about meditation etc.?" dont you think there is enough suffering in this very life?
With or without rebirth, you suffer in this life or not.
It's your choice to manifest the 4 noble truths or not.
But since meditation (and the rest of the Buddhist path) is pleasant anyway, it's a safe bet to do it when you are unsure about rebirth. Nomatter what, you become happy in this life. And if there is rebirth, you get a happy rebirth - or escape rebirth altogether.
In the same way you won't be reborn as you, because you have no permanent self. But your actions in this life will give rise to a new life, formed by you.
Why not give a damn about that life, just throw some bad karma at it?
The question is - do you want to form karma when you know karma affects yourself and others in a bad way, leads to dhukka? Do you want to create bad karma which leads to even more dhukka for yourself and others, than good karma?
Shakyamuni was asked a similar question and he got the guy to understand that either way the best thing one can do is to live wisely.
Various beliefs in what comes after death, from paradise to hell to reincarnation to nothing, can be used to justify our actions, but those beliefs don't drive our actions. Suffering does.
I've personally had a very recent experience myself... That joy in itself, can be something that you feel indescribably... in the absence of your physiological processes and chemical balances.
When you live wisely in the Eightfold Path, common sense tells you to a limited extent that things unfold in a far easier way for you to go in.
When you err in the Eightfold Path... You speak harshly, you tell lies, you kill beings, you steal, you follow the wrong doctrines and misinformation... These all are going to bog down your mind.
Think about it this way... Micro-organisms eventually affect macro-organisms. Anything that happens in a single cell can affect a whole being. Anything that happens in a single atom, can change a whole structure. Anything that happens at a far smaller scale, often results in a huge effect.
In my awareness, karma seems to work in a similar principle. Only a fully enlightened one can truly perceive karma as it is - because you need to have qualities that you do not yet have.
Karma is the phenomenon which shows the relationship of everything in the world. A bad deed is invoked by bad thoughts... and it plants the "seed" which manifests the pain in various ways in the future. A small action can effect a larger action.
If you believe in life cycles, it is often told by the Buddha that people often experience similar negative situations that they have been in before. One particular deva/deity paid for his negative karma by being born blind. One of his disciples had a very stubborn character even in a few life cycles before.
“For even the most diehard materials, Pascal’s famous “Wager” is still compelling: If we become nothing after death, we will not be there to regret having prepared for something. But if we are something after death, and we are not prepared at all, or are badly prepared, then we will long feel bitter, painful regret. So we have everything to lose by not preparing, and nothing to gain; we have everything to gain by preparing, and nothing to lose. Should our preparation be for nothing, a little time spent on it in this life will not be regretted for an eternity. Should our preparation be for something, the time taken away from it for the sake of life’s business or pleasure will be deeply regretted for eternity as the waste of a vital resource.”
Robert Thurman is a great scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, but has a huge blind spot when it comes to understanding the limitations of his world view. Pascal's Wager is certainly not compelling to anyone who is capable of logical thought. Basically stated, the Wager is, since acting as if God exists has no down side, then everyone should act as if God does exist since if it's true, you're betting on the winning side and if God doesn't exist, it doesn't matter.
Even without delving into the utter selfish, self-serving nature of degrading deep spiritual decisions to a simple win-loss ratio, the immediate logical problem should be apparent. All right, whose God or which God do we bet on? "God" as an abstract is useless. Say Pascal convinced me. So now what? Do I bow at the feet of the Christian God, or follow the Muslim practice, or maybe the Aztecs had the true God and I should sacrifice people to their sun God? I can't believe in reincarnation and the Christian Salvation both, because only one can be true. You are not allowed to just believe in some general God. You gotta be specific to be allowed into whatever God's exclusive afterlife you're betting on.
Also, there certainly is a downside to believing in something that doesn't exist. You're believing in something that doesn't exist. Apparently truth didn't matter to Pascal, but it certainly does to me.
If you do not think it is a problem then there is no reason to cultivate but if you want to avoid this suffering then you do have a reason to cultivate.
A well cultivated mind does not sway with emotion or outer disturbances as much as a n untrained mind does.
That is my experience.
/Victor
There is no hair’s breadth between practice and living life to the fullest.
(Unless you think breaking your precepts will make you so happy in this life but unfortunately there is a next life in which you will pay or it; which makes me feel sorry for you
And when your meditatation is a burden you're doing something wrong.
I can hear it when I stand beside the river.
I can see it when I look up in the sky.
I can smell it in the forest from the pines.
You're a part of me and I'm a part of you.
What ever time may take away, you and I will always be together.
Good thread. Different way of approaching the rebirth topic.
"It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him" (Abraham Lincoln).
No materialist can claim with certainty that rebirth is a complete fiction. He is guilty of a falsehood if he does (the materialist's position lies in treating rebirth "as if" it were already proven to be false).
On the other hand, for someone who believes in rebirth but doesn't know if it is true, it would be a falsehood to claim they know rebirth is real.
The materialist seeks to fulfill their desire by putting their hopes in mundane things that are impermanent and have limits though they are not aware of this. They will never have enough money, cars, people in their life, perfect job, etc... Always seeking more.
Over indulgence results in sickness, or the becoming sensitized to the quality of pleasure something may provide thereby requiring more and more. We see the extreme cases, but this happens on more subtle levels too. When a problem arises or something against their will or desire they suffer.
If they are in a sad, angry, or depressed state it is projected onto the objects they once adored and that had previously given them pleasure. I don't think this needs to be proved either because we all experience this no matter where we are at in our respective faiths.
In my Orthodox faith by cultivation of stillness of the heart through watchfulness and prayer, and trying to live the life I have and do experience the falling of the mountains into the sea as Jesus says, or for the Buddhist let fall body and mind. Everything melts away and you just are. In perfect contentment, and that keeps us continuing on our path. We see the enlargement of the heart, and not just the shrinking we also see in ourselves too.
I like you. You really did make me laugh out loud..
To me, karma that goes beyond this life would be unjust. You'd be suffering from something you didn't know you had done.
One doesn't have to have a literal view of rebirth, as applied to an individual person, in order to still see karma as applying beyond a singular lifetime. It's all "us", so it's from us and will continue to affect us. Take the individual out of the picture and it's still a very real phenomena, it's still important.
And here's where I think you have to be careful:
You say: "Why is someone born into either a poor family or a rich family? Because of the actions of people in the past, which led to a birth connected to either a poor or rich family."
Most Thais would similarly say: "Why is someone born into life with incredible physical or mental handicaps? Because of the actions in a past life."
All we have to do is see the causality involved. If we see causality, we can understand karma. Of course we have to get over "ourselves", into seeing how it is a selfless process, to really understand. To see causality, how the past and present and future are all an interconnected flow, is to see rebirth in action. It just is. We can have different views about rebirth, but we can't deny that there's a connection between the past, present and future... always. We can even at this point stop calling it "rebirth" if that confuses us. Just concentrate on the causality. That's enough.
Impermanence, Not-Self, Karma, Rebirth, Dukkha, Nirvana, Emptiness/Mind, these are all seen as coming together, as having the same ground, through causality. They are all aspects of causality. Bringing these together, seeing how they are all intertwined and related, is really important in Buddhism. Otherwise we're looking at each of them as something separate and not seeing why they're all part of the same reality. If we don't see how they work together, we're not going to understand them (we may even throw them out, as some people do with karma and/or rebirth).
It is not realistic to say that "science helps clarify how karma works, though we can't know the exact details". Science is a precise manner of studying phenomenon. It is not congruent with saying exact details don't matter.
Let's see, someone in our forum often likes to say, "Look it up!"
You can't say karma in a previous life could affect whether your are going to be born into a rich or poor family (on type of condition), but then say that karma cannot affect genetics...in fact, you said it does affect genetics.
You can't have it both ways.
If what the Thai version says is an expression of causality, then why are you saying it's wrong? I just said I'm not a Thai, I didn't comment on whether they're right or not. I haven't been part of this "old karma, new karma" debate that others have and really don't know the content of that debate. What are your thoughts exactly? That karma doesn't work this way because it's unfair? That we shouldn't be born into a poor family, for instance, because we didn't choose to be? Karma explains why this is so, makes it make sense... is it just the unfairness of it that you take issue with? That we should throw karma (at least over lifetimes) out because it's not fair we don't remember the actions of the past that have led us here?
This is what I call a more Western view of karma.
What I have seen in the East is the view that karma is a punishment or a reward, depending on whether your action was wholesome or unwholesome. For example, my ex told me the reason he has a heart condition, hepatitis, and aplastic anemia is because of his actions in a previous life and he is being punished. The street begger I talked with told me that the reason he was in an industrial accident and had his leg amputated was because in his previous life he had "done bad things".
This is what I see as the more Old World view of karma.
Each version has its limitations. For example, the Western viewpoint fails to answer the question of amorality.
The Eastern viewpoint fails to explain just what "power" (for wont of a better term) dispenses the karmic justice.
And that's just scratching the surface of the debate. And I know, not all Westerners have the more Western viewpoint, and not all Easterners have the more Eastern viewpoint.
@vinlyn
I remember a reading on the topic where if one has a tendency to fall ill frequently in life it is a strong indicator that they killed many beings in previous lifetimes.
In my tradition hell is the absence of God, and fire is not physical fire but of spirit caused by our rejection of His love. Just like we can experience a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven we can also experience a foretaste of hell in this lifetime.
“When you’re an atheist (when you don't believe in rebirth) you cannot have moral standards. Religion is the basis of society without it there’ll be chaos and anarchy.”
It’s such a big lie!
There’s a whole world of altruism and cooperation in animal life. Ants are better organized than people are, and I assume they are not religious.
Computers programmed for prisoners’ dilemma show the best results with a “moral” attitude of cooperation combined with moderate punishments for anti-social actions. Religion has nothing to do with that.
Some of the least religious human societies have the lowest crime-rates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_without_religion#Evidential_support
Who is reborn?
This question implies that someone (a self) or something (an essence) was born, died and (re)born again. With anatta, this cannot be although it appears to be so. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.012.nypo.html
Attributing specific past causes to account for present life circumstances is a very simplistic view when you take into account the vast plethora of diverse streams of karma that make up the average sentient's life inheritance.