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Who Here Believes In Rebirth? Who Believes in Reincarnation?
Dakini
Veteran
I believe in rebirth and reincarnation. How about you all? Has anyone had past life memories, or do you know anyone (a highly-realized teacher, perhaps) who recalls details from past lives? How does the concept of karma from past lives help us understand our circumstances in this lifetime?
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Re-Birth
and
Reincarnation?
I'm open to both being possible, not to say likely.
I'm fine if they're true, I'm fine if they're not.
I'm too busy thinking about Kamma in this life, to worry about my 'past lives' Kamma.
After all, if I am now dwelling in the Human Realm, I guess I must have done something pretty much on the button to get here.
That's all that matters....
I believe that fundamentally rebirth, reincarnation and heaven are all the same thing; the belief in an afterlife. Different shirt, same pants, as the saying doesn't go:p
I was leaving the room I'd been meditating in when suddenly an overwhelming sense of loss, reunion, warmth, horror, shock, hit me so hard that I literally started crying. (I'm not normally one to cry, I don't even cry at sad films). At the same moment an image appeared in my mind of a scene which I couldn't quite make out completely, but was in some kind of tropical climate. I immediately recognised some people in it as members of my family, even though they weren't, and felt how I missed them terribly. I had the overwhelming feeling that something very tragic had happened. This all happened in a flash. It felt like a memory, but it wasn't mine. Never experienced anything quite like it before or since.
Past life memory? It certainly seemed that way, but I accept the possibility that it wasn't. I doubt I'll ever know for certain, but that's ok. It was one of life's many interesting experiences and I'm happy to leave it at that. I do beleive in reincarnation and rebirth though.
I can't answer your last question about karma helping us understand reality in this lifetime, because I don't feel that I fully understand reality. Is it meant to be understood?
I think that meditation quiets the "busy" left side of the brain, the intellectual, analytical side, and allows the intuitive right brain to come to the fore. So maybe that helps explain how past life memories might be spontaneously accessed as a result of meditation.
The one that I remember the best, was seeing a man in a military dress uniform. I didn't recognize the uniform but it looked 19th century in style. He appeared to be an officer because he had a tall hat and cape. I watched/felt him review the troop of soldiers. He seemed to be instructing them and showing them how to stand at attention. The next thing I saw was the flash of a cannon ball. The cape's red lining filled the scene then it was replaced by the tall hat, upright on the ground.
Maybe I was the officer, killed by cannon fire. Maybe it was just a vivid dream.
Namaste
If this was the only life we had and everything ceased upon death that there was no transmigration of consciousness and ceasing of this current self and re-becoming through various causes and conditions into our next mode of gross conscious awarness spurred by our karma...I would live this life however i pleased because at the time of death I could go with open arms and be forever free from suffering...
So its a good job Buddha has said that suffering doesnt just end with this life
I'm with you, Caz. But maybe this perspective is a Vajrayana thing? Other NewBuddhists have different views. So maybe it's a difference between schools. What do you think?
how can we comprehend profound meanings with minds so Ignorant ?
I like this paragraph because he clearly contradicts the rebirth deniers: He basically says what I have said before on these forums (and have been criticised for because of the direct way in which I have said it) - that without rebirth there is no need for the Buddha-dhamma to get us out of suffering or the endless round of rebirths (samsara).
So essentially the only value happiness has is to the present in which it is felt. If this is true then, in terms of value, of happiness the future and past are irrelevant. So the issue in our minds that "what i'm doing now is worthless because it will end in oblivion" is foolish because even if it didn't what would be the value of our present happiness to the future? Eternal oblivion changes nothing.
Furthermore because we only experience the present, having an infinite span of time in which your consciously experiencing reality doesn't change anything. You will always experience time in the present and so increased time hardly matters. Perhaps the only legitimate concern is that if your life is shortened you have less chance to achieve the highest happiness of Nibanna. But better to live as if this were your only shot at Nibanna then to give up and wait for round 2 to make your mark.
Regardless of the truth here, it seems to me that it is best to cling to no truth of this nature.
But to those who believe that, on rebirth, the sources do not convincingly connect with the dharma, citing sources is unproductive.
What to do?
how are you defining the "ego" ego is a sense of self, i don't see that a sense of self creates reality, maybe the physical body influenced by it does. but then you could say that the physical body creates the ego.
the universe constantly changing does anything but help the case of rebirth, what exactly is being reborn?
also - your life is simply an expression of the ultimate..?
CP -
what exactly are you referring to by rebirth, rebirth of the consciousness after death? or just the constant changing of the universe. i feel that the universe constantly changes yes, but what is being reborn?
And "rebirth" is just a term. It's a way of describing reality. Ultimately there is no rebirth. There is no "you" to be reborn. There is simply life. No person living, just life.
And all things are an expression of the ultimate. The ultimate is all that exists. Everything is just an attempt at the ultimate.
>>>Vangelis' closing point, that without the principle of rebirth, there's no cycle of rebirths/samsaric suffering to end via the dharma makes sense; that's pretty basic.
And yet he/she cannot explain how it fits with the 4NT's.
>>>>>Which sources don't convincingly connect to the dharma and why? (Why do I suddenly have the feeling I'm opening a huge can of worms, here?)
I believe that it's the absence of rebirth that is significant.
Consider what accesstoinsight terms the "Three Cardinal Discourses (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nanamoli/wheel017.html). There is no mention of rebirth in these three. Nor do they "NEED" rebirth to have their potency, clarity and wisdom. Am I mistaken?
In the dharmapada rebirth hardly gets a mention.
In the Maha-parinibbana Sutta it has a few mentions, but in the two core places I believe it is at least ambiguous. In the Mirror of dharma, I think compelling in its position of "nonrebirth".
In the kalama suttra we are guided to not believe anything just because of tradition or scripture or teaching.
I hope the can of worms wriggle with interest rather than dukka.
namaste and peace
I wonder what the source for this is (the Buddha seeing his past lives)?
Indeed: "life is short, make the best of it".
Good-bye all.
~~Cloud
"The Buddhist principle of 'punarbhava', or re-becoming/rebirth [...] states that it is the vijnana (consciousness or mind) that carries kammic influence from rebirth to rebirth, for it is part of Samsara. The lack of a fixed, permanent "self" (anatman) does not imply lack of continuity.
According to the Bhava Sutta (AN III.76) [OMG--he gives a source!] Buddha tells Ananda that 'Kamma is the field, consciousness the seed, and craving the moisture for beings obstructed by ignorance and fettered by craving to be established in a new realm of existence, either low (sense-sphere), middling (form-sphere) or high (formless-sphere). Thus there is re-becoming in the future.' ".
So it is "consciousness or mind" that is the medium by which karmic influence is carried from one life to the next. (To answer a question on other threads about "Who is the karmic scorekeeper?")
I suppose that if it's consciousness or mind that gets carried over, that could explain the tulku phenomenon, and recollection of past rebirths.
Can anyone explain the metaphor, or must it rest as it is; with candle flames and raindrops?
I have read this before and am reading it now. I like BB's writings very much, his book on the 8path is excellent in general. But this essay isn't much to me.
Briefly:
>BikkuBhodi>A quick glance at the Pali suttas would show that none of these claims has much substance.
I disagree. I posted a long post yesterday about the lack of rebirth in the cardinal suttras as being significant. Moreover if we think there has been augmentation/revisionism in the texts then we would expect rebirth to get snuck in.
>BikkuBhodi>The teaching of rebirth crops up almost everywhere in the Canon
This isn't true.
>BikkuBhodi>and is so closely bound to a host of other doctrines that to remove it would virtually reduce the Dhamma to tatters.
This is nonsense, and begging the question.Dharma is perfect without rebirth, its only when we add rebirth that we get these troubles.
>BikkuBhodi>First, the teaching of rebirth makes sense in relation to ethics. For early Buddhism, the conception of rebirth is an essential plank of its ethical theory, providing an incentive for avoiding evil and doing good.
Surely the reason for doing good dharmically is because of karma, not because of some incitive to benifit in a future life? Would he say the same of metta?
>BikkuBhodi>The Buddha includes belief in rebirth and kamma in his definition of right view, and their explicit denial in wrong view.
Where?
"And what is right view? Knowledge with regard to stress, knowledge with regard to the origination of stress, knowledge with regard to the cessation of stress, knowledge with regard to the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress: This is called right view."
— DN 22
Not here. In fact not in any of this http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-ditthi/
************
If, like me, you believe that the Buddha taught us to question all things we believe then I urge you to focuss on these lines of Bikku Bhodi's essay:
>BikkuBhodi>When, however, these seekers encounter the doctrine of rebirth, they often balk, convinced it just doesn't make sense.
Dharma is pure and deep and simple and indubitable without rebirth, do you really think it makes sense with it?
>BikkuBhodi>Some dismiss it as just a piece of cultural baggage, "ancient Indian metaphysics," that the Buddha retained in deference to the world view of his age.
This is one view, but another is that that the Buddha didn't retain it at all, rather he taught that we must escape the hindu idea of samsara. Attachment to it is dukka. Have a think on this possibility, wipe your belief filters clean and really see if you can make sense of it. Is it plausible?
I cannot doubt Dharma, I try and try, I am sure you cannot either.
But you and I and all of us can doubt the doctrine of rebirth.
Is this not a profound difference?
If they do not then please explain to me where and why rebirth is needed to understand and explain the four noble truths.
The Kutuhalasala Sutta also explains what carries a being over into its next rebirth, why some are not reborn, and why rebirth can seem so confusing.
"Of course you are befuddled, Vaccha. Of course you are uncertain. When there is a reason for befuddlement in you, uncertainty arises. I designate the rebirth of one who has sustenance, Vaccha, and not of one without sustenance. Just as a fire burns with sustenance and not without sustenance, even so I designate the rebirth of one who has sustenance and not of one without sustenance."
"But, Master Gotama, at the moment a flame is being swept on by the wind and goes a far distance, what do you designate as its sustenance then?"
"Vaccha, when a flame is being swept on by the wind and goes a far distance, I designate it as wind-sustained, for the wind is its sustenance at that time."
"And at the moment when a being sets this body aside and is not yet reborn in another body, what do you designate as its sustenance then?"
"Vaccha, when a being sets this body aside and is not yet reborn in another body, I designate it as craving-sustained, for craving is its sustenance at that time."
I thought he was responding to Thickpaper's query, "Such as?", after my comment, "There's more to the Buddha's teachings than...". Is that not clear?
If you can doubt it, it is not Buddha dharma. If you cannot doubt it and it leads to the cessation of suffering, it is dharma. This simple test, the test essentially of the kalama suttra, is supreme in it's methodology.
And yes, of course we should doubt the kalama suttra.....
I don't think he was, as it was just more exposition of the rebirth doctrine we are discussing - What other that the four noble truths is without doubt dharma?
Maybe those who accept the sutras and the words of the Buddha have examined the teachings, put them to the test, and found them valid. If they're not valid, why do some of the moderators urge members to cite sutric references when quoting the Buddha?