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What Evidence Is Present To Prove Re-Birth Exists?
AllbuddhaBound
Veteran
The Buddha has been quoted as implying that if you can't see the proof for yourself, do not accept it. He reportedly also states don't even believe me. What is the proof people accept of re-incarnation here? Does anyone question this belief or is it simply accepted at face value because that is what a Buddhist does?
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http://newbuddhist.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3878
http://newbuddhist.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3861
In short, some accept it at face value and believe the Buddha taught it was fact and therefore hold the belief themselves and feel there is sufficient evidence for it being true; some accept that he taught it and are open to the possibility but haven't accepted it as fact; some people don't believe he taught it as fact and only taught it as a moral teaching to those who already held the belief; some believe he taught rebirth of the false "self" and that the realms of rebirth refer to psychological states, etc. etc. Lots of discussion on this already, the above links are a start.
And Buddha never said "if you can't see the proof for yourself, do not accept it." That's a common misunderstanding of the Kalama Sutta and doesn't make much sense if you think about it. Most people can't prove E = mc^2, but they can and do accept it.
That is why I said "it is quoted to Buddha". What does the Kalama Sutta say or what is the context in which it is meant?
Also, that's not a ridiculous misunderstanding of the Kalama Sutra at all. It's quite possible to live that way.
And the Kalama Sutta gives several tests for accepting an idea, including proof by authority ("these qualities are criticized by the wise.")
That's not quite what it says.
"When you know for yourselves that, .......'These qualities are praised by the wise'.... — then you should enter & remain in them."
And sneaky, sneaky, for substituting "authority" for "the wise," and "an idea [belief]" for "qualities," too.
In fact, regarding any beliefs, the Buddha says in this very sutta:
The proofs for rebirth are based on understanding pramana (valid cognition), the mind, cause and effect, and logic. If a smart person hasn't investigated this stuff then they'll generally tend towards not accepting rebirth for the obvious reason that there's no good reason to consider it. In fact if you're like me, you won't really even know what to consider, because the word rebirth would sort of be like a meaningless word.
Also there is the other side to this which is concentration. If you reach the higher dhyanas you attain special knowledges such as the existence of other types of lifeforms, past/future lives, etc . And so, instructions for this and things like this are taught.
An mp3 course on pramana, mind, and reasonings for past and future lives:
COURSE 4: Proof of Future Lives
Level One of Buddhist Logic and Perception (Pramana)
A course on buddhist logic:
COURSE 13: The Art of Reasoning
Level 2 of Buddhist Logic and Perception (Pramana).
Then there are a bunch of nice articles on berzinarchives.com:
Search results for query rebirth
I don't think skeptics boards contain a representative cross-section of "most people." Behaving the way you describe about a scientific proposition would be just as childish.
Thanks, aaki, that was interesting. I read the class notes for class 7 (p 15), the class where they claim to start the proof for rebirth. At the start of the notes, they say the notes are transcribed by a student, and must be checked against the audio file for class 7. I'm listening to that, now, but there is stuff in the class notes which seems sloppy. For instance, here is the claimed proof that "outside matter" cannot be the basis for mind:
This doesn't seem like logic to me. As an argument for why the mind can't have a physical basis, it seems like a non sequitur. It appears to be an argument by contradiction. To paraphrase it, it's saying "If the mind had a physical basis, then either it's an aggregate of physical materials, or in some way elemental, and it's clearly not elemental. But it can't be an aggregate of physical materials, because if you take one component of it away, it won't be the mind anymore." It won't be the same mind anymore, but it could still be a mind. I mean, that's what appears to happen when someone has a stroke... What am I missing, here?
Fivebells, so you think that everthing should have a proof. Don't you think by saying this you are going against the core philosophy of buddhism? Show me the proof that there is "no self" or no " I ". Dont you think that there is nothing that we know more intimately than our own conscious experience, or our own self? By saying that there is " no self", dont you think that that is practically counter-intuitive? Isn't the first premise to enter into any buddhist meditative practice is to accept that the self is illusion? You have to accept it as a given before you can even move on.
Or that the "ultimate reality " is empty? Where is the proof for that? But somehow even the most rational of buddhist practitioners accept these 2 premises as givens. And these 2 premises are at the core of buddhism, aren't they?
Although I'm not a buddhist scholar, dont you think Gautama Buddha was also influenced by his immediate culture , including of its literature, the Vedas and so might have indeed taught rebirth?
We listen to the Buddha because we take it that he is enlightened . That's like what Jin zang is saying: proof from authority, as noted in Kalamatta Sutta. And yes that practice is really very eastern.
I think that the notion of separateness really makes that idea hard to chug down, and perhaps it's more than a case of letting go. :wtf:
Secondly no that's not the gist of any of the arguments. The topic isn't about physical basis, it's matter as the material cause for mind (the idea of material cause is presented a couple of paragraphs earlier, it's not difficult). Reading 7's explanation is much clearer than the notes.
That's the whole point, it would no longer even be a mind because the material cause for it is not present.
For example, at the end of the Samyutta Nikaya (SN 55.53), there is a sutta where the laypeople of the town ask the Buddha an open question, namely, teach us something that will lead to our welfare & happiness. Usually laypeople people asked the Buddha about how they could be reborn in a heavenly world.
So when the Buddha was asked the open question, he answered from time to time, one should enter & dwell upon those teachings that are deep in meaning, supramundane, dealing with emptiness. This is very unusual in the suttas and the laypeople replied this would be difficult for them to do.
But in Buddhism, there is a place for faith following. The suttas make this very clear.
The Buddha taught the Kalama Sutta once rather than always.
Kind regards
DD
C4Reading.pdf
It's not that everything should have a proof, it's that people should take personal responsibility for personal beliefs, and avoid inferences which have no basis in their own experience. "No self" is not a positive ontological assertion, it's a gloss for the fact that practitioners come up empty when they go looking for a reason to believe in a coherent personal identity based in direct experience. Similarly for "ultimate reality."
Actually,reifying "no self" or "emptiness"as some kind of belief would itself be a corruption of Buddhist practice. Any kind of belief is.
We know we experience them. We also know we experience dreams. To assert the existence of thoughts and ideas like that is a bit lazy. For starters, what does that even mean, that they exist? What would it mean for them not to exist? If they exist, do dreams exist?
Maybe that's what you do. That's not the only approach, as demonstrated by the sutras themselves. (The Pali sutras, anyway.)
Thank you
I read through this. The argument is still unclear. It proceeds by contradiction, and goes down several branches. For simplicity, let's concentrate on one branch. To reject the argument, we only have to show that it fails on one branch of its tree. Let's be modern and stipulate that the mind has a cause, and the cause is material. I'm not saying this stipulation is true or false, I'm just saying that the argument's job is to show that it leads to a contradiction, and if it fails on this branch it fails completely. The branch below this stipulation, the sense-material/outer-material dichotomy which is presented next, makes no sense to me. I listened to the talk, and as I understand it, it suggests that the sense-material branch refers to sensory tissue; e.g. light-sensitive cells in the eyes. How is that different from "outer material?" This suggests that I may be missing something important. However, this dichotomy also seems irrelevant, because the same argument is used on both branches, and the "sense/outer" distinction seems to have no bearing on the argument. This apparent redundancy also suggests that I may be missing something important. I'd be grateful if you could point out what I'm missing.
So, given the stipulation that the mind has a material basis, the argument proceeds regardless of the sense/outer choice with another dichotomy, that the material basis for the mind is unitary or an aggregate. Again, let's be modern and stipulate that it's aggregate. Again, I'm not saying this is true or false, I'm just stipulating it to explore the argument. Here is the document's argument that this leads to a contradiction: How does this follow, and why would it lead to a contradiction? Clearly I'm still missing some crucial aspect of the argument. But frankly, it still seems like a total non sequitur.
Also, what does "mind" mean in this case?
What's the point of setting it up like that? Because if you can dismiss the sense powers and other then you've dismissed all matter that could have been the material cause. The reason the sense powers are singled out in the first place is because of their obvious significance in cognition (ie. everyone knows no eye no visual experience).
The "whole substance" can also have parts. The neural correlate for consciousness which is going to have to be pretty small to have escaped our notice so far would be an example of a whole substance with parts. The "atoms" aspect would be something with a less substantial structure, much smaller, and a bunch of them working together. So aggregate isn't really a good word to use here.
Did you read/listen to what a material cause is? The whole presentation is based on material causes.
For example, workers cause/produce a house. But workers are not the material cause for the house because the house is not made out of workers. Clay is the material cause for a clay cup. The clay is what flops over into being the cup. The material cause for a house is the mixture of rocks, cement, dirt etc or whatever the case may be.
So what's the material cause for mind? If you assert that just one or a combination of some (we just went through disproving that all the sense powers together could be the material cause) of the sense powers are the material cause, then the mind will be able to know what the sense powers which are not a material cause would have known (but do not, since they are just sense powers).
In other words even the mental consciousness which names colours and shapes must be directly apprehending those colours and shapes, because the eye sense power which we would ordinarily say is necessary for conscious experience is not a material cause for conscious experience (and thus can never become conscious experience). This is supposing that we take the eye sense power to not be a material cause and something else is/are.
Always refers to the 5th heap/aggregate/skandha.
However for this sort of personal contemplation we don't really need fancy definitions, we rely on our own direct experience of for example our experience of sights to be our definition of eye consciousness. Then there are times when it is appropriate to learn complex definitions and contemplate from that angle as well, in which case we go and study definitions.
Still, the same argument seems to apply to both, so I don't understand the basis for the distinction.
The implicit assumption here is that there is some single component responsible for consciousness. Why couldn't it arise from the aggregate behavior of the central nervous system as a whole, or from the behavior of a substantial chunk of the CNS?
I'm getting the impression from your response that there's an implicit assumption in the argument that consciousness must have a single prime cause. Where does it exclude the possibility that consciousness arises from an aggregate of complex interactions?
I don't understand your objection, here. Can you elaborate, please?
I excised this part about 15 minutes after I posted. I got confused referring back to the text, and I wound up responding to the neighboring cause-as-unitary-material branch. Sorry for the confusion. In future, I will PM you if I make such a change.
Well, I still don't understand why the bifurcation between "sense matter" and "other matter." In fact, it seems to suggest a branch which the argument hasn't covered: that consciousness arises from the aggregate behavior of all matter comprising an animal, and those aspects of its immediate environment which impinge on its senses.
Also, I still don't understand your argument, except as a non sequitur. You seem to be saying that if the eye is not necessary for consciousness, then the mind could apprehend visual data independently of it. Why? Where would blind people fit into this picture?
The elephant in this room is the brain. It's not surprising that the Tibetans don't refer to it in an ancient text like this, but have they updated their argument to address the obvious impact brain trauma can have on consciousness?
Thanks for clarifying. I was assuming a much more general meaning.
This is an argument from authority even if it does not say so in so many words. A wise person functions as authority, as they know what you do not and you accept what they say. There's nothing problematic about accepting a statement on authority, we do it many times a day. Ultimately its not valid, but provisionally we can.
What is "modern" about your statement?
Jinzang,
The Buddha does not say "take what the wise say at face value." The entire sutta is a result of a bunch of supposedly "wise" people teaching the Kalamas contradictory views. He tells the Kalamas that when they know for themselves (your quote omitted this essential clause) that certain qualities are praised by the wise, to "enter and remain in them." He teaches in this sutta that one should be a good person for the sake of being a good person, regardless of what happens after death. That's very different from what you're suggesting.
Accepting that McDonald's is out of ketchup when that omniscient, faceless voice in the speaker says so is very different from suggesting that we take it at face value when a person with a robe tells us that the Buddha taught rebirth and as a neccessary belief on the Path to Nibbana and therefore adopt that belief ourselves.
I don't know how to summarize the reasoning more simply. I think you're overlooking the import of material causes, and therefore overlooking the ridiculous implications of saying that just one of the sense powers could be the material cause. Basically, because the ear sense power can only pick up sounds, and yet is the material cause for the mind, then the resultant mind is somehow experiencing what the ear cannot experience, and so even our very thoughts of sights must be apprehending sights, which is ridiculous.
It's already covered by the buddha and the reasonings by indian masters 400AD. That's what the text we're reading is based on. Also that if you make parts of the brain disappear the experience of the mind changes is obvious, but it's an obvious non sequitur. It would be like saying that just because a car has stopped moving the driver must be dead. Maybe the driver is dead, maybe there is no driver, but there's nothing about that logical statement which proves it. It lacks that logical pervasion.
You're right I suppose, but the reason I say that is because the neural correlate is the base experience of consciousness, and so it must maintain itself and be held in common to all situations, including those when we stop thinking, stop seeing, etc but are still aware. But this is a distraction from the topic so nevermind.
It's not difficult to understand why. If we just took everything as a whole and reasoned that out, someone would come along and whinge and complain that it's not the whole, it's just the sense powers (or some other particular batch of flesh), and so why didn't we examine the sense powers. So we do, and then all other, and then that's everything. Now you want to say that everything is the material cause.... but if you think for a moment maybe you'll realize that you don't really want to be saying that. Doubly so with including the "immediate envirnoment".
Condition and cause are not synonymous. The matter of the body, both sense powers and other, are part of the definition of consciousness, namely as unique and general conditions.
Simplicity isn't really the issue. The problem is that the logical connections of the argument are murky. You could really make the argument's reasoning concrete if you took the contemporary view that consciousness arises from physical neural activity and explained where that fits on the argument's tree and how that branch of the argument refutes that viewpoint.
It's definitely true that neuroscientists should study the mind further. They are doing so.
In the meantime we will ignore other methods which claim results, such as for example perfect single-pointed concentration, and theories of pramana (valid cognition) based on these superhuman capacities of introspection and investigation. And we will do this mainly because certain barbaric systems of thought have never even known that such things could exist, and therefore marvel at the fact that when you get hit on (in? on?
It does it by dividing all matter which could be the material cause into 2 groups, and then disproving each of them in each of their various possibilities by showing their ridiculous implications.
As for the exact reasoning I can't really break it down any further then I have. If you want to go particular part by particular part of a paragraph I will help to clarify, because I don't know how to summarize the paragraph as a whole any more clearly than I have. An advice is to get the meaning of material cause clear, so that you have it clearly in mind what it means to say 'the material cause of x moment of mind'. Clay is a material cause for the clay cup, even though the production of the cup relies on the person, the machine, etc. The material cause is what flops over into being the cup before it was the cup.
Maybe you don't want to say that anything flops over into the mind. Maybe you want to say the mind only appears to exist substantially, but doesn't actually. Then we would really have to consider the opening salvo, "Suppose you say that the mind of a person who was just born has no cause. You are disproven by the fact that this mind is variable."
Vi = direct. Nana = knowing.
Consciousness is knowing or cognition. It is not a life force or energy.
This is why the Buddha taught there are six types of consciousness and this is why the Buddha never ever taught (unlike some) there is a stream of consciousness.
Instead, the Buddha taught consciousness is impermanent, that the arising & passing of consciousness has been discerned (eg. MN 148 or 149).
For knowing to occur, there must be sense organs. Sense organs are the condition (paccaya) for consciousness.
As for the cause (hetu) of consciousness, the Buddha was not interested in psycho-biology or meta-physics. The Budddha was concerned with remedying suffering. Thus he taught about the sense spheres because for a practitioner to be able to both develop concentration and ending suffering, they must have great intimacy with and vigilance over the sense spheres.
So regarding the cause (hetu) of consciousness, whilst the Buddha said nothing about it, it is neurons, electricity, the nervous system and all that stuff.
Consciousness is like an image reflected is still clear water. But this is inanimate. For the human being, there is the same reflection in the sense organs & brain but also a 'knowing', 'cognition', 'basic recognition' or 'acknowledgement'. This is human consciousness.
If you attempt to repudiate a quote from the Lord Buddha himself, it is best to offer an alternative quote in its place supporting your alternative position.
Please...the quote should be from the Lord Buddha himself, from the suttas, (rather than from Berzin).
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arajuna the soul cannot be cut and, after death in war & battle, it simply finds another body.
The Buddha did not teach like this. The Buddha exclusively sided rebirth with morality. The Buddha taught karma like this, rebirth like this, karma like that, rebirth like that.
The Buddha did not provide any meta-physical explanation for rebirth. For the Buddha, rebirth was a moral principle.
For starters, single-pointed concentration does not facilitate insight (vipassana) into the true nature of things. In fact, single-pointed concentration is an obstacle to clear introspection because consciousness is unmoving. It is one.
The Buddha did not teach the experience of 'oneness' and single-pointed concentration is enlightenment. The Buddha taught penetrating impermanence, unsatisfactoriness & not-self is enlightenment.
Prince Siddharta first attained single-pointed concentration when he was four or six years old (whatever). Yet later spend six year searching for what is true.
Your deferring to "superhuman" powers probably does not come from your own meditative experience. Rather, it is usually the same kind of blind faith like when one defers their reasoning to "God".
Basically, you appear to be saying: "This is true because the great yogis have said it is true".
Your example is unsound. The cup is not caused by the clay. Clay is earth & water. The cup is earth & heat. The clay does not flop over into being the cup. When the water is removed from the clay, the clay comes to an end.
In the quote I provide above, the Buddha compared consciousness to fire sustained by fuel, such as logs, wood, grass, etc. When the fuel ends, consciousness ends.
For example, if the physical eyes are removed, eye consciousness ends. If the physical ears are removed, ear consciousness ends. If certain parts of the brain are removed, mind consciousness will end.
For example, each night in sleep, when the mind is not dreaming, all states of consciousness end.
Science has proven enough about what enables and disables the mind. Removing some brainy matter can disable the mind. Or receiving an anethesia will disable consciousness.
I have advised previously, consciousness is just 'knowing'. A sight reflected on the retina/brain is like a form reflected in a dew drop. But the human being 'knows'.
However, a baby's knowing is weak, just like the knowing of an old person is often weak.
Various life forms have different levels of consciousness. For example, a plant that grows towards to sun must have some primitive consciousness of heat & light.
The buddha debated against nihilists (the Chravakas) who said that experience is caused by the sense powers, and so persons are totally annihilated at death. You cannot find anything more explicit than that. If you don't want to listen to the totally stupid, superstitious "hindu-buddhists", just read scholarly works. This is a non-negotiable point and any deviation asserted as being the words of the buddha are a serious corruption of buddhadharma.
What you are doing again and what seems to be the fashion around here is supporting your newage nihilistic assertions with impermanence and hiding behind pali terms, even though every single pali and sanskrit scholar I know of disagrees with what you think the words mean. The lineages of today which are continuations of the same lineages 1800+ years ago certainly don't agree with your meanings of the words. I guess you can read pali and sanskrit better than they can.
The buddha's instructions are not speculative, they are asserted as being verifiable and knowable. To know this however you would need to have actually investigated buddhism.
Furthermore just because you do not have any good evidence does not mean you adopt an unestablished position or a position shown to be unsustainable.
"rebirth was a moral principle"
Yes, it's clear why you would say so.
I choose to quote Berzin, but I can just as easily quote 100 other buddhist practitioner scholars. And they are quoting Dharmakirti, and Dignaga, and Shantideva, and Vasubhandu, etc, who themselves are quoting the sutras. Who can you quote?
What I am eluding to is how stupid a culture of thinking needs to be to be oblivious to perfect single-pointedness.
Thanks for wasting my time with the multiple ridiculous nonexistent implications you conjured up.
One fact learned from developing single-pointed concentration is when consciousness or awareness comes into clear & distinct contact with mental defilements, those mental defilements are purified and cleansed.
It is like consciousness is a solvent of mental defilements. Consciousness is like acid.
Now mental defilements are created by and stored in the citta. The citta is not consciousness. The citta is sankhara khanda rather than vinnana khanda.
The citta creates mental defilements and consciousness destroys mental defilements.
This one learns from perfect single-pointed concentration and superhuman introspection.
Therefore, that consciousness, being a solvent or acid, can carry mental defilements from "life to life", from "body to body", that is impossible.
Defilement or kilesa are part of the psycho-biological organism. For example, children generally do not have strong sexual lusts. But when puberity occurs, the mind explodes with the defilement of lust. This is due to the changes in the body.
Thus to associate consciousness with mental defilements or fruits of action, that makes no sense at all.
Clay is one of many causes and conditions and as I said, the clay ceases to be in the cup because the water element ceases.
Clay is water element & earth element and the cup is heat element & earth element.
Clay in itself has no intrinstic existence.
Your error is in asserting that the consciousness is produced by these conditions. Furthermore to say a thing is a condition is to imply it is not the direct cause.
It's possible to maintain single-pointed concentration while sleeping without dreaming.
What is 'knowing'?
No, the function of citta is not to store anything. You should study abhidharma and read proper explanations.
Firstly, all objects are comprised of each of the elements. Secondly, just because the earth element is increased and the water element has decreased, does not the make the cup not constructed out of clay.
Excuse me?
I don't have full faith that reincarnation is true although I think it's most like likely, I believe the possibilities of each outcome is;
Reincarnation: 60%
Endless 'sleep': 39%
Heaven or Hell: 1%
I'm never 100% sure about any belief I have that's not scientific proof, I could maybe be a polytheist but I'm not 100% certain so I just say I'm an agnostic....
Hmmm...:wtf:
Joe
Why don't we start there, then? You've presented an argument by contradiction that the mind can have no physical basis. The standard modern view of consciousness is that it arises from physical (largely neurochemical) interactions. For your argument by contradiction to be effective, it must address this view in some way. What part of this view plays the role of your argument's "material cause" of the consciousness you most recently experienced? (The most recent could be the consciousness you're experiencing as you read this...)
If you want to fit the modern view into a different branch of the argument, that's fine, but this doesn't seem like a very good fit. The modern view would be that the cause is the neurochemical interactions of the brain.
I think your reply is a cop-out. If the “no-self”, “reality is empty” are not ontological assertions, are you willing to accept that Buddhism is no different from Advaita Vedanta afterall both schools of thought are based on the position that the self is an illusion. I”m sure you won’t because ontological claims are stuff that helps make things make sense to us.
Abstract concepts are reified or concretized into an understandable notion as in language because we have no other alternative. Why else are we talking in a language we can all understand here in this forum? You can call that belief , I call that understanding , or engaging in a meaningful conversation.
You seem to think that only objects which have physical basis exist. Do you think a non-spatial mountain exist or not? What about multi-dimensional objects in the realm of mathematics? Does mathematics exist at all? What about the law of nature. Eg. Law of Gravity, or electromagnetism? (All physicist always say natural laws are discovered, not invented acknowledging its existence before they even have thought of it). Abstract concepts exist that are external to the physical world.
Besides mental states, what we are thinking, seeing red, as far as scientists are concerned exist because they have neural correlates in the brain. And dreaming is one of them.
What Im saying about proof from authority is that it is being naive to suppose that Buddhism as we know it today evolved from “historical/traditional vacuum”.
Aaki, good posts but I’d like to note that logic itself is not proof or evidence. Different schools of thoughts have different ways of approaching a subject. And one way is yours and being respectful to this site I will not discuss what way I subscribe to.
Fivebells said: Well, I still don't understand why the bifurcation between "sense matter" and "other matter." In fact, it seems to suggest a branch which the argument hasn't covered: that consciousness arises from the aggregate behavior of all matter comprising an animal, and those aspects of its immediate environment which impinge on its senses.
Also, I still do't understand your argument, except as a non sequitur. You seem to be saying that if the eye is not necessary for consciousness, then the mind could apprehend visual data independently of it. Why? Where would blind people fit into this picture?
The elephant in this room is the brain. It's not surprising that the Tibetans don't refer to it in an ancient text like this, but have they updated their argument to address the obvious impact brain trauma can have on consciousness?
Fivebells, I think your points makes sense, but the big question as noted by Sam Harris when commenting on a cutting edge studies on neuroscience (which i have just read today) is on the” connection between unconscious physical events and there being "something that it is like" to be the totality of those events seems likely to always appear brute — and, therefore, mysterious. I personally think he has made a strong point here.
About the blind person point you made, on the contrary, there is a recent newsitem about a patient in a vegetative state, which neuroscientists also called a locked-in state, who was fully aware the whole of 20 years eg. can hear, can see, can recognize family members but had no way of communicating to the external world. In my opinion, consciousness is fundamental.
Aaki and Fivebells, I can’t exactly make heads and tails of the differences in your positions, i wonder if you can restate your respective positions. Or better yet please comment on the comments I made regarding consciousness so I’ll have a better idea whose opinions somewhat match mine or if I’m alone among you here in this regard.
Dhamma Dhatu, I have read the Bhagavad Gita a few times but explaining the idea like that in one sweep does not do justice to the essence of the Gita.
Namaste
I agree with this. If persons are annihilated at death where does karma fit in? This ties in with karma.
Theories of mind being emergent properties are more sophisticted than the idea that physical particles themselves produce other particles which are the experience.
Yes, those particles would be variable, but a much cooler question is whether the emergent property is variable.
My position is like this:
COURSE 4: Proof of Future Lives
Level One of Buddhist Logic and Perception (Pramana)
In particular we are addressing reading 7 (starts pg 47) of the readings, and class 7+8+9 is the mp3 audio. That should give the discussion more context.