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In Mahayana Buddhism, it is held that all sentient beings will eventually attain nirvana. That means that there is an upper bound for the count of rebirths. However, that upper bound is unknown.
There is no starting point specified for rebirths, so there may be no upper bound for rebirths when one counts backwards in time. However, there is still an upper bound for the remaining rebirths starting from this point in time.
It's important to apply mathematics to Buddhism wherever possible, so as to obtain the greatest degree of clarity. ;-)
Hi learned audience,
The understanding of reincarnation, rebirth and reborn/resurgence???
Most of the living beings before knowing about life and death from Buddhism etc are subjected to the category of reincarnation based on karma or commonly known as destiny of the past,present and future.
Upon exploring the kinks of spiritual on enlightenment (or prana & samadhi) of ones infinite life and earnestly travel on the path of liberation, it spiritual well being will gradually upgrade or transform into the category of "Rebirth" - According to the Flower Adornment/Ornament sutra, there are mainly 52 categories of rebirths where the highest is supreme enlightenment or Buddha.
Reborn/resurgence is referring to the illuminated and elevated lamas, such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
my opinion is that u attain rebirths endlessly until u gain enlightment
also be careful there r many idiot buddhist monks or teachers who claim they r this n that, a true teacher won't praise himself but be humble and simple like H.H. The Dalai Lama
so like H.H. said be very careful in choosing ur teachers as later u might regret n blame the teacher n lose faith.
if u listen to h.h. dalai lama speeches u will understand wtever u need to cuz my dad understands me i have social anxiety, behaviour problem, n it runs in my family he told me he listened to h.h. dalai lama and slowly after couple of years he gained such confidence and happiness that he had never felt like that ever in his life b4
but i am not a professional but i have seen so much things i am only 21 but u know i did drugs n that is very big step, people will say o that guy is a loser, but u g2 understand how would someone do drugs cuz he likes doing it? my mom has so many mental disorder and such that slowly slowly, i broke my heart million times n just abandon my home.
it doesn't matter wt he or she says, cuz the only person who u can trust is you but the only person who understand u is ur close ones.
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited May 2010
jigme, please don't use text-speak on forum. It's not a 'phone. There's plenty of time and space, there's no limit.
Also, we have many non-English speakers reading and participating and quite frankly, it's confusing because not all single letters sound the same in different countries.
For example, the letter 'u' doesn't sound like 'you' in Italian.
It sounds like OO.
The letter 'r' doesn't sound like 'are'.
It sounds like err-eh'.
So it makes your post - gibberish.
Thanks.
I apologize if I am simply repeating what someone else said, but there is a fairly simple analogy that can be made. Rebirth and Nibbana could be thought of as a road to another city. Of course, the distance is finite, but how long it takes to get there is going to depend on how fast you are going. Never are you dealing with the infinite in this question, but at the same time, there is no set number that tells you how long it takes to travel to your destination, because that is determined by individual factors.
we don't have reincarnations in Buddhism. We have re-birth.
Tibetan Buddhism has the concept of reincarnation, but this is only for illuminated and elevated lamas, such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The reincarnated Lama is not a carbon copy but in essence a being chosen by the now deceased Lama to 'inherit' his qualities of elevated consciousness.
There are no "infinite reincarnations". When one reaches Nibbana, the re-birth stops.
Unless you happen to be a Bhodisattva who refuses to exit the cycle of rebirth in order to help all sentient beings understand suffering and bring it to an end.
Nothing is 'infinite'.
Isn't Nirvana a state of mind?
And if not, what do Buddhists believe happens to the spirit after the cycle ends? No afterlife at all? I remember reading about the six stages. Idk, it can get confusing.
I don't believe in Nirvana as being a state that's eternally sustainable. I think enlightenment is something that needs to be realized in every lifetime in every species and in every rebirth. To put it bluntly, I do believe that we go through an infinite number of rebirths. A rebirth as a human infant, a rebirth as a child, a rebirth as a teenager a rebirth as an adult, a rebirth as an old person, and a rebirth into whatever comes between that and the next life. I think its a completely random process too and something that's a valid, scientific and philosophical question. I'm a Soto Zen Buddhist, and really, the Soto sect doesn't have an official stance on rebirth and views enlightenment as being mindfulness itself, not a means to it.
To answer this question we are being asked to speculate and my firm yet honest answer is I don't know and do not care. There is not need to be distracted in this life, the only one we can ever be sure of having the potential to live fully and have the opportunity to practice in as we do now. By allowing ourselves to be distracted by what the historical Buddha described as being an imponderable question - as inticing as it may be - it will undoubtedly result in our concentration and time being taken away from focusing on interacting, living, studying and practicing in this and each moment as they arise.
The point is the quenching of suffering in this life, in which ever tradition you may choose to practice with.
p3fect,
I have the answer for ya! It is 430000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000+!
OK? Is that what you want? If u really want to learn something new, then here goes........
How many more days will ya live? It certainly is not infinite...... So it must be finite right? So this doesn't mean It has a fixed number for everyone....... It will be different for each person OK? And this number is nothing pre-planned....... It is like If you be good, you won't be born again - If not, you will be born again........ So it really depends on you!! And Buddhism is not a religion like any other... It doesn't state anything that man cannot comprehend...
It is mistaken to say that the number of births is limited simply because one can put an end to them. We have all had an infinite number of lives because confusion/samsara is itself beginningless. There are different sorts of infinite sets (see cardinality). In an infinite universe you can set out from a single point and go an infinite distance in any direction. Just because you are starting from a point does not put a bound on how far one may travel. In the case of lives, you are assuming that there is a beginning AND an end and hence the number of lives is bounded. According to abhidharma this is not true. Samsara is beginningless but not endless.
Realized lamas do not "reincarnate", they emanate (sprulku). They may give rise to thousands of different bodies at any one time, only a few of which become recognized as lamas. Some of their emanations may be simply as wholesome intentions in the minds of others, as food, as shade trees, etc.
On the larger issue of rebirth for ignorant beings, the use of the dream analogy is most illuminating. Each night we dream of having a body and inhabiting a world. Can we say that there is some entity that goes from one dream to the next? Of course not. There are simply accumulating tendencies that give rise to the various appearances. Awareness itself provides continuity but assuming that it must go anywhere for the various dream bodies to arise is silly.
It is mistaken to say that the number of births is limited simply because one can put an end to them. We have all had an infinite number of lives because confusion/samsara is itself beginningless. There are different sorts of infinite sets (see cardinality). In an infinite universe you can set out from a single point and go an infinite distance in any direction. Just because you are starting from a point does not put a bound on how far one may travel. In the case of lives, you are assuming that there is a beginning AND an end and hence the number of lives is bounded. According to abhidharma this is not true. Samsara is beginningless but not endless.
Realized lamas do not "reincarnate", they emanate (sprulku). They may give rise to thousands of different bodies at any one time, only a few of which become recognized as lamas. Some of their emanations may be simply as wholesome intentions in the minds of others, as food, as shade trees, etc.
On the larger issue of rebirth for ignorant beings, the use of the dream analogy is most illuminating. Each night we dream of having a body and inhabiting a world. Can we say that there is some entity that goes from one dream to the next? Of course not. There are simply accumulating tendencies that give rise to the various appearances. Awareness itself provides continuity but assuming that it must go anywhere for the various dream bodies to arise is silly.
...and your conclusive evidence (apart from commentaries and Vajrayana texts) for all of this is.....???
and its relevance to present moment awareness is..... ???
Three things were discussed in this thread that I responded to:
1) The idea that each of us have a finite number of lives;
2) That high lamas reincarnate;
3) How can we account for rebirth without entailing a reincarnating ens?
For the first point, even in the Pali canon samsara is always called beginningless. This is consistent throughout the Mahayana sutras as well. If you can find a point that speaks about any of us having a "first life" at some point in the hoary past, I will demur.
For the second, I am not here to provide conclusive evidence of anything. I was merely responding to an assertion that lamas reincarnate that was made in the thread. From the point of view of the Tibetan tradition this is not strictly true and I clarified how the tradition views this matter. You can take or leave the factuality of these claims as you so choose.
Thirdly, karma is a core concept for all buddhists. The dream analogy is a very simple way to understand how you can have multiple apparent births without their being any thing at all which is "taking birth". Your mileage may vary, but that one illustration helped me to understand the nature of so-called reincarnation. What is the relation of any discursive thought to the present moment?
Rebirth, reincarnation, or whatever you want to call it, is about as real as a baby being born to a virgin. Or, perhaps a dead man rising from the dead. Buddhism, like science, is not about belief. It is about empirical action. That should be your only concern.
Rebirth, reincarnation, or whatever you want to call it, is about as real as a baby being born to a virgin. Or, perhaps a dead man rising from the dead. Buddhism, like science, is not about belief. It is about empirical action. That should be your only concern.
I "believe" in Nirvana the same as I "believe" in the sun. I have met people who I believe truly do not suffer. I have seen them over the course of many years, and I believe these people have met with Nirvana. My last post was not meant to be pessimistic, but rather to challenge dogma. Most of us come to Buddhism from Christianity or Judaism, where we were forced to live with dogma. Why give up one dogma to blindly accept another? Ultimately, I don't care what anyone believes. To quote the Punk Rock band Screeching Weasel "It doesn't matter if it's real or not. Some things are better left without a doubt. And if it works, and it gets the job done, somehow no matter what the world keeps turning."
Believe what you want. Just don't believe blindly.
Comments
There is no starting point specified for rebirths, so there may be no upper bound for rebirths when one counts backwards in time. However, there is still an upper bound for the remaining rebirths starting from this point in time.
It's important to apply mathematics to Buddhism wherever possible, so as to obtain the greatest degree of clarity. ;-)
I will stay clear of creating flippant nonsense then. I happen to live in perpetual fear of the bolsevician wrath of Modorators.
/Victor
The understanding of reincarnation, rebirth and reborn/resurgence???
Most of the living beings before knowing about life and death from Buddhism etc are subjected to the category of reincarnation based on karma or commonly known as destiny of the past,present and future.
Upon exploring the kinks of spiritual on enlightenment (or prana & samadhi) of ones infinite life and earnestly travel on the path of liberation, it spiritual well being will gradually upgrade or transform into the category of "Rebirth" - According to the Flower Adornment/Ornament sutra, there are mainly 52 categories of rebirths where the highest is supreme enlightenment or Buddha.
Reborn/resurgence is referring to the illuminated and elevated lamas, such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
my opinion is that u attain rebirths endlessly until u gain enlightment
also be careful there r many idiot buddhist monks or teachers who claim they r this n that, a true teacher won't praise himself but be humble and simple like H.H. The Dalai Lama
so like H.H. said be very careful in choosing ur teachers as later u might regret n blame the teacher n lose faith.
if u listen to h.h. dalai lama speeches u will understand wtever u need to cuz my dad understands me i have social anxiety, behaviour problem, n it runs in my family he told me he listened to h.h. dalai lama and slowly after couple of years he gained such confidence and happiness that he had never felt like that ever in his life b4
but i am not a professional but i have seen so much things i am only 21 but u know i did drugs n that is very big step, people will say o that guy is a loser, but u g2 understand how would someone do drugs cuz he likes doing it? my mom has so many mental disorder and such that slowly slowly, i broke my heart million times n just abandon my home.
it doesn't matter wt he or she says, cuz the only person who u can trust is you but the only person who understand u is ur close ones.
Also, we have many non-English speakers reading and participating and quite frankly, it's confusing because not all single letters sound the same in different countries.
For example, the letter 'u' doesn't sound like 'you' in Italian.
It sounds like OO.
The letter 'r' doesn't sound like 'are'.
It sounds like err-eh'.
So it makes your post - gibberish.
Thanks.
This is for students who lack confidence in their teacher on enlightment in this life.
Isn't Nirvana a state of mind?
And if not, what do Buddhists believe happens to the spirit after the cycle ends? No afterlife at all? I remember reading about the six stages. Idk, it can get confusing.
The point is the quenching of suffering in this life, in which ever tradition you may choose to practice with.
I have the answer for ya! It is 430000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000+!
OK? Is that what you want? If u really want to learn something new, then here goes........
How many more days will ya live? It certainly is not infinite...... So it must be finite right? So this doesn't mean It has a fixed number for everyone....... It will be different for each person OK? And this number is nothing pre-planned....... It is like If you be good, you won't be born again - If not, you will be born again........ So it really depends on you!! And Buddhism is not a religion like any other... It doesn't state anything that man cannot comprehend...
Love And Light,
Nidish
It seems to me that many seekers nowadays ask the questions the wrong way around.
Realized lamas do not "reincarnate", they emanate (sprulku). They may give rise to thousands of different bodies at any one time, only a few of which become recognized as lamas. Some of their emanations may be simply as wholesome intentions in the minds of others, as food, as shade trees, etc.
On the larger issue of rebirth for ignorant beings, the use of the dream analogy is most illuminating. Each night we dream of having a body and inhabiting a world. Can we say that there is some entity that goes from one dream to the next? Of course not. There are simply accumulating tendencies that give rise to the various appearances. Awareness itself provides continuity but assuming that it must go anywhere for the various dream bodies to arise is silly.
...and your conclusive evidence (apart from commentaries and Vajrayana texts) for all of this is.....???
and its relevance to present moment awareness is..... ???
.
1) The idea that each of us have a finite number of lives;
2) That high lamas reincarnate;
3) How can we account for rebirth without entailing a reincarnating ens?
For the first point, even in the Pali canon samsara is always called beginningless. This is consistent throughout the Mahayana sutras as well. If you can find a point that speaks about any of us having a "first life" at some point in the hoary past, I will demur.
For the second, I am not here to provide conclusive evidence of anything. I was merely responding to an assertion that lamas reincarnate that was made in the thread. From the point of view of the Tibetan tradition this is not strictly true and I clarified how the tradition views this matter. You can take or leave the factuality of these claims as you so choose.
Thirdly, karma is a core concept for all buddhists. The dream analogy is a very simple way to understand how you can have multiple apparent births without their being any thing at all which is "taking birth". Your mileage may vary, but that one illustration helped me to understand the nature of so-called reincarnation. What is the relation of any discursive thought to the present moment?
I "believe" in Nirvana the same as I "believe" in the sun. I have met people who I believe truly do not suffer. I have seen them over the course of many years, and I believe these people have met with Nirvana. My last post was not meant to be pessimistic, but rather to challenge dogma. Most of us come to Buddhism from Christianity or Judaism, where we were forced to live with dogma. Why give up one dogma to blindly accept another? Ultimately, I don't care what anyone believes. To quote the Punk Rock band Screeching Weasel "It doesn't matter if it's real or not. Some things are better left without a doubt. And if it works, and it gets the job done, somehow no matter what the world keeps turning."
Believe what you want. Just don't believe blindly.
haha.