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Past Lives
This question is inspired by our friend Knitwich.
Do you ever feel that you've lived in a previous life and, if so, who were you?
Do you ever feel that you've lived in a previous life and, if so, who were you?
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I'd love to find out somehow... wouldn't that be great?
So far I have seen for myself that I was a Gytha in the Viking age, that was my reference to a paid killer.
I had a short life in the middle ages as a sickly boy who enjoyed playing chess with an older man, possibly his uncle.
During the Napoleonic wars I lived in Devon and have met one of the people who was with me in that life which was quite a completely weird experience for both of us as we both remembered the same things simultaneously.
On a visit to York Minster with my ex we were coming out of the Minster as the midday bell was sounding and we both saw the same thing - we were being led out to be burned to death. He was a priest or monk and I was a Jewess. I could even feel the very tight bandage on my head which hurt. A crowd was baying for our blood and it was very very frightening. The vision only lasted a few minutes but we were both pretty shaken by it.
A dear friend and very experienced witch has seen that she was with me in Alexandria in the great Temple there before the city was drowned. I have only glimpsed that through her eyes.
Thus have I seen.
But yes. I've a past life memory. Always had it. As a child, walking around with this kind of thing, it doesn't seem strange at all...it doesn't occur to children that everybody doesn't have this kind of thing as part of their understanding. Identifying with a 'who' isn't important. For me, it's a 'karmic imprint' from a past existance...a memory to be resolved in this life under certain circumstances.
Tchah, beat me to it Digger....;)
It is an accepted premise in Buddhism that one does not deny or denounce the Buddha's teachings ourtright... But it is absolutely acceptable to say "I don't know about this one, I'm keeping an open mind...."
Refutation is a no-no....
Open-minded questioning is a yes-yes.....
Hi Windwalker,
I have had one very powerful past life recall and it was not anything like I would have expected it to be. I have been unable to verify it, as I do not know the name of the person in question, when she lived and died or the exact location of where she lived.
The biggest surprise was not that I was a woman (I'm a man now) but the kind of person she was. Whereas I tend to be very relaxed, a little lazy and prone to sensuality, she was quite the opposite; focussed, disciplined and exacting - the sort of person who would not rate someone like me, although she was a kind and tolerant person and an advanced contemplative.
This came as a massive shock. Until I experienced this recall I had always kept an open mind on the subject but had assumed that any past incarnations (regardless of race or gender) would be in some way 'me'. This was not the case - this lady was 100% a person in her own right!
The memory came to me in a split-second whilst on a train and wide awake. The oddest thing is I don't have the feeling that she's dead. My spiritual practice is a project with much work already done by her and in some ways she is present and I'm sure very impatient with 'this' rebirth.
The experience served to illustrate the extent of what we abandon through death. Of course we get a new body, name etc. but it goes much much deeper than that. Each life is like a self-contained pearl on an invisible string.
You are merely one custodian of a process and the invisible thread is no more your property than it is any other past or future incarnation's.
That was, for me, the fruit of this experience. I don't feel the need to know of more past lives - that event taught me what I needed. I'm not sure I could deal with knowing how many more people I'm indebted to.
The ball is in my court now.
Namaste
Kris
This could be the case. I was on one of my paranormal investigations a few months ago where there is a very well known ghost that has been seen several times in the street outside the hotel we were investigating. Our psychic medium, however, was told by his spirit guide that the woman seen in these apparitions is alive and well and living in Manchester. If he's correct then it raises all kinds of questions about the consciousness or soul (whatever you want to call it), life and death. Traditionally ghosts of the living (dopplegangers) are considered to be bad omens.
They showed me a picture of a Chan master. I said that I knew him, meaning I'd downloaded transcripts of his talks off the internet. They thought I meant that I actually knew him! Once I realised the misunderstanding, I tried to correct it, but I'm not sure if it worked. They gave me the picture to frame and put on my altar, and told me that if I kept meditating I'd remember more.
I guess that it's a common belief in some Buddhist circles that many attained masters are now being re-born as Westerners. Which may be true, but I'm not one of them!
I've had that feeling before. Windwalker have you come across this in your investigations before where people pick up strong vibrations from previous events that have not necessarily happened to them personally?
Actually I was more of an herbalist, making potions for people and such. I didn't practice magic per se, and I certainly wasn't in league with the devil. It was more like being a shamaness. But it was a pretty wild experience. I don't know if it was real or not, but it was very vivid and very unexpected. And fun!
I also felt an extremely strong attraction to Japan when I was there, Fede. Could be...
Palzang
Maybe they're doing it to avoid the Chinese!
Yes, this has happened a couple of times. One of my friends had a flashback to an attack on a young woman that happened in the room we were in hundreds of years previously. He was watching it happen in front of him but felt powerless to intervene. Another friend felt a rope round her neck as if she was being hanged. Why these things happen to certain people and whethere there is any connection is as yet uncertain.
Oi - that was one of mine!
Thanks for that Windwalker. Obviously my ex and I discussed it endlessly and we came to the conclusion that we must have just barged into someone else's experience - maybe we were there at just the right date and time and slipped into their lives.
I have felt that before with another friend where we were walking along a sea-front and came across a cannon - we both immediately felt how it was to be below decks on a man o'war working the cannons during a sea battle - it was ghastly and we both had to get out of that place very quickly. I can only assume that the object itself had got impregnated with the negative energy around it over years and was emanating it out again.
Careful, or I'll conjure up a curse for you! Or a love potion. Your choice.
Palzang
Palzang
Yes.
Better idea - you do a blessing for me at YOUR dawn and I'll do one for you at mine.
I've always had a little difficulty believing in reincarnation in a literal/straightforward sense.
Given that there's no real self, then I never really got what there was to be reincarnated. Recently, however, I was reading a book called "A Brief History of Everything," that had a couple of interesting facts that seemed relevent:
1. All of us have about 200 billion atoms of Shakespeare's atoms. This is simply because we have so many atoms to start off with. We also have a comparable number of the Buddha's atoms, and also Hitler's atoms, atoms of ants and trees etc. So I guess I believe that we are recycled, but not necessarily that we somehow pop into another person's body after we die.
2. Every nine years or so, our whole body, even our brain cells, are completely replaced. So all "we" are really just a trace pattern that persists over time as our atoms are churning and replacing. In a sense, we are reincarnated every moment as ourselves, albeit a little different than the moment before.
Be well,
Ben
The morning prayer I have used for years and years ....... and do forgive me if I have quoted this before (mind is starting to go, along with everything else)
I greet my Mother the Earth
And my Father the Sky
I rejoice that I am part of all this
I am the wind that blows
The stream that flows
The earth that turns
And the fire that burns
The spirit is within me and I rejoice
Blessed be all creation forevermore.
So what is it that is reborn? I would say that it is our habitual tendency to take rebirth, nothing more. Change the habitual tendency, and you will gain freedom from the wheel of death and rebirth.
I would say that we are not our bodies. Therefore it doesn't really matter whose atoms make up this mortal coil. Our body is simply an aggregate that is impermanent and ever changing. It is not separate from the universe.
Who is it that is reborn? Who is it that is asking?
Palzang
So I'll add my bit, too. The first time I ever felt connected to something in this sort of way was when I first learned of the Vietnam war when I was around 11 or 12. I felt very strongly that I was an American soldier who died there and I had all these powerful emotions about the whole thing. I felt a lot of anger and fear and frustration, like my hands were tied (not literally). There was also this weird thing about the sound of a helicopter, the 'whoomp whoomp whoomp' of the blades, that overwhelmed me with the feeling of relief. To this day when I hear a helicopter I immediately think "Rescue!!". There's also something about a bamboo cage, like I was a prisoner, and the thing that drove me the most crazy was not being able to move out of the sunlight when it got really, really hot, like I was roasting in an oven.
My only other past life thing was a dream I had when I was in my 20's. It wasn't like a normal dream filled with symbols and the like but felt like a vivid memory. It was so mundane but very emotional at the same time. I was a short, slightly stout, wealthy Russian man with short, dark hair and a thin, curled mustache which I used some kind of product on, like wax or oil or something, to keep the ends curled up. I was walking with my mistress whom I loved very deeply and I remember looking down at my shoes and they were very expensive, good quality shoes, and I was wearing a camel hair coat. My mistress was thin and plain, dowdy even and I think she was a maid or something because I associated bed linens with her, but not in a sexual way. Anyway, we're walking along and coming up to my house which was this beautiful beige stone, long mansion with a large, beautifully landscaped front lawn with bushes and lights, and my wife was standing in the doorway with an accusatory attitude to her stance. I felt no threat from her though because I knew she wouldn't or couldn't leave me and I wasn't going to divorce her, maybe I couldn't. But I felt heartbroken because I couldn't marry my mistress and I think this was going to be our last walk together, like we had to end it. My mistress was very sad, but resigned to the situation. I remember feeling grief stricken, just heartbroken that I couldn't be with her because I loved her so deeply. Then I woke up and thought, for the only time in my life, that I had just had a past life dream. I felt completely sure of it and it didn't seem strange to me at all. It was just like having a vivid memory of an event that happened in my life. Looking back it seems a bit weird but at the time it felt perfectly natural to have had that dream.
The Russian man in my dream wasn't me at all. It was like I was in another person's body, experiencing and feeling what that person was going through. He had his own history and frame of reference, none of which I was privy to during the dream. For example, although I felt everything he was feeling during that walk I didn't know what year it was or where in Russia I was or what our names were. I didn't have any memories of my childhood there and no knowledge of what was happening politically or socially. I just had those few moments walking with the woman I loved, noticing little details like my expensive shoes, and that my wife was a tall, blond, formidable woman. It all felt so completely natural, too. I wasn't surprise at all that I was having this experience in my dream. His experience.
I really don't know if it was all just my imagination because, as we all know, our minds can play pretty elaborate tricks on us. And I don't know if I felt it was a past life memory because I'm suggestible to the idea of rebirth. All I know is that it was absolutely fascinating yet so purely mundane at the same time.
So that's my story. Keep 'em coming, people! This is better entertainment than watching a movie or television any day!!
However, I have had many experiences that kind of tie me to a suspicion that I was formerly a grazing animal, such as a deer or a goat. When out on a lawn, I am endlessly picking up blades of grass or weed or flower to eat. All my life I've had some kind of association as a grazer and have often gotten lots of stems or leaves with serrated edges caught irritatingly in my throat.
Sorry, all, for telling y'all more than you probably wanted to know, but not having many lifetimes of human experience to draw on, it needs be that I must come up short sometimes.
It's a wonderful life, really, being human, and I hope someday to get the gist of the Art of Living. In the meantime, I just put the best face on all of this, remembering the words of Sri Ramakrishna when he said that as Wood is to Fire (having the best qualities to bring out the nature of fire), so the Human Being is to God or Nirvana — having a nature fundamentally divine, partaking of both wisdom and love. That is to say that the Image (of Buddha, of God) is Wisdom or Knowledge and the Likeness (of God, of Buddha) is Love — is an overflowing, flowering Heart.
The deepest treasure of being human is to have a discerning mind and an inquiring Heart wherein Love of Goodness and Beauty and Truth is enthroned. For me, one lifetime as a human being is sufficient.
I do not intend to make light of anyone else's thoughts or experiences. I am sure that experience is a Great River, and some drops of water in It have their origin in the highest mountain peaks, have gone down the Ganges, been bottled in golden vessels and released and re-released in countless other rivers and streams. But I come from a solitary brook that emanates from some hidden stream that its owners have tried to hide from their neighbours. This is my one chance at Liberation and my prayer is that I lose not sight of the eternal as I go along delighting in the ephemeral.
May Your Road Be As Broad As You Like and As Deep Behind You As You Dare! Bright Blessings!
Has anyone ever had a dream about the future? I've had several in my life, and they always turned out to be true. Mostly they were about places that I would visit later on and recognize. I always recognized the places immediately because of the dreams. One, though, was different. It happened not long after I got ordained. It felt very much like it was a dream about my next life, and I saw the house I would grow up in very clearly. It was sort of a Federal style house, and it was located near water. It seemed like it might be in the Northwest because of the water, but a couple of years ago I was in Tulsa accompanying one of our monks who went there for cancer treatment. One day I rented a car and went exploring, and I found the house completely by accident. It was near water, just off the Arkansas River which flows through Tulsa. I also dreamt that there was some sort of park or some sort of structure by the river, and that was there as well, a kind of stepped platform where you could watch the ducks or whatever. Again, I recognized it right away. So who knows, maybe in my next life I'll be an Okie!
Palzang
Palzang
Palzang
I must have some powerful hidden karma when it comes to Christianity. On a rational level, I don't mind the religion and I find the old Church buildings quite beautiful but on a subconscious level things go wrong. It's hard to explain but I often sense great evil within Churches. On a visit to an historic one with my family when we got into the oldest part of the building I felt some strange energy and noticed then that blood started pouring out of my baby boy's mouth (some kind of abscess had burst - nothing serious apparently).
It was like a scene from the Omen. I couldn't wait to get out.
There have been numerous incidents (all could be coincidence of course). Last Friday I was at a dinner with a society I belong to. One of the members is a priest who said grace in latin at the table. Upon my return home I got violently sick and couldn't keep the food down (yet another coincidence).
Add to this many strange, vivid and foreboding dreams and a pattern starts to emerge. All the incidents have been odd and unique but there is something deep within me that fears this religion. There must be something there. I'm not sure I want to recall it though.
Palzang
As a very little girl my mother would catch me talking to an invisible friend - not unusual at all. The strange thing was when she asked me about my "friend" I would say it was a little boy who looked just like me .............. at that time I didn't know about my twin brother who was stillborn.
As I have said before, I have no memory of any life before this one - and, as I age, I am forgetting this one too. As a professional, I am very aware of how deceptive (and, particularly, self-deceptive) memory is so that I acknowledge other people's anecdotes and still hold to my 'agnosticism'.
Personally, I prefer my personal 'myth': both Christianity and Buddhism strongly suggest to me that we are only victims if we choose to be and if we are born outwith our own decision, my life would be a victim of birth itself. As a result, this suggests to me that a choice was involved. I call this being a 'volunteer'.
Not a very Christian or Buddhist notion but, as an internal myth, it enables me to take responsibility, and I shall continue to hold it as long as it continues to fit.