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What gets carried over to new lifetime in rebirth/reincarnation?
If there is no soul, self, anything, how can karma be transferred then? It just picks something to go to, and that's from what I've done that it goes to the next body or whatever? So, then are you saying there is no soul or consciousness? Then how does it know where to go, as if you would know.... Or do you?
What I got from some of the posts is that karma carries over via consciousness or mind, which is different from soul or self. This may be a subtle difference (which would take a more advanced student than me to explain), but that's how I understand it.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
what,exactly, gets carried over from past life to new life?
Consciusness, Karma and other Etheral things.
Your essence, your Being.
Even this is incorrect. Much as we might like it to not be....
"the kamma-energies, sent out by the dying individual, produce from the material furnished by the parents the new embryonic being. But no transmigration of a real being, or a soul-entity, takes place on that occasion, but simply the transmission of kamma-energy.
Hence we may say that the present life-process (upapatti-bhava) is the objectification of the corresponding pre-natal kamma-process (kamma-bhava), and that the future life-process is the objectification of the corresponding present kamma-process. Thus nothing transmigrates from one life to the next. And what we call our ego is in reality only this process of continual change, of continual arising and passing away. Thus follows moment after moment, day after day, year after year, life after life. Just as the wave that apparently hastens over the surface of the pond is in reality nothing but a continuous rising and falling of ever new masses of water, each time called forth through the transmission of energy, even so, closely considered, in the ultimate sense there is no permanent ego-entity that passes through the ocean of Samsara, but merely a process of physical and psychical phenomena takes place, ever and again being whipped up by the impulse and will for life."
what,exactly, gets carried over from past life to new life?
Consciusness, Karma and other Etheral things.
Your essence, your Being.
Even this is incorrect. Much as we might like it to not be....
indeed, nothing is carried over, not your consciousness, there is no essence, there is no being. but what does that matter? you can only feel happiness in the present, happiness is only valuable in the present moment. what is the value of past happiness? what is the good of an eternal existence? the closer you are to liberation the more valuable the present moment, the less valuable eternal existence. once you are liberated the present infinitesimal moment is eternity. (not in duration, but in value)
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
You know, I could really tie myself in massive anxious fretful knots worrying about what will happen when/after I die... It's stressful to worry in such a way... So I just don't think about it.
Really, what's the point?
Before you die, it's imponderable. After you die, it's irreversible.
Shucks, just go with the flow, roll with the punches and do the best you can, with what you've got right now. I mean, really, what other choice do we have....?
I like Bodhipunk's position (based on text) that karma travels via the consciousness (or "mind"), which isn't soul or self. Personally, I do suspect it is a "force", like electro-magnetism.
If there is no soul, self, anything, how can karma be transferred then? It just picks something to go to, and that's from what I've done that it goes to the next body or whatever? So, then are you saying there is no soul or consciousness? Then how does it know where to go, as if you would know.... Or do you?
In Buddhism, there is no soul. A soul implies a "permanent, everlasting" "self". This is refuted in Buddhism by the concept of Anatta (see Anatta-lakkhana Sutta http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.nymo.html). Each of the "entities" in the Anatta-lakkhana sutta are known as the 5 khandhas ("heaps" or "aggregates") that make up a being - basically, physical and mental impermanent phenomena. The Buddha shows that each of these is impermanent, suffering and not-self (as anything that is impermanent and suffering cannot be self).
As for the question on how kamma can follow one from lifetime to lifetime, this is a question that I thought deeply about some years ago by asking myself exactly the same question that you ask yourself (and us). I only came to a conclusion via logic by studying the known Buddhist "facts".
The first fact is the five khandhas. The second fact is how those khandhas work. They arise and then they cease. In the case of the mind, it does that in very quick succession, in many cases a thought arises and ceases before you can even notice it. Now, the Buddha teaches that none of these are "reborn" and logically, how could they? the body ceases and decays and the mind is arising and decaying (ceasing) from moment to moment. If it can't stick around longer than a few moments, how could the mind have any hope of following us into the next lifetime?
The clue came when I thought about the training and what it was achieving because the other problem I had was trying to figure out the point of training the mind when we are going to die without being enlightened anyway. If we can't become enlightened in this lifetime, is all the training a waste of time? Will we have to start all over again - destined to repeat the same training again and again until we get it right in a particular lifetime? I realised that what the mind gets itself into habitual modes of operation. All these little habitual "ruts" are what make up the individual personality and our preferences, likes/dislikes and reactions to particular situations. The mind training was all about breaking those mind-habits and creating habits that produced wholesome results instead of unwholesome results. Then it clicked - mind habits ARE kamma. The way the mind operates - all those little habitual modes of operation that go together to make up the personality - this was kamma.
The defining moment came when I went to a dhamma talk by Ajahn Kalyano at the Warburton monastery who basically said the same thing in his talk. I was shocked because this was only a few weeks after I figured this out so I asked him some questions to make sure I understood it right. He confirmed it. Mind habits are our kamma. This is how our kamma can follow us from lifetime to lifetime but not the mind itself. The mind continues doing its own thing - arising and ceasing (as all conditioned phenomena are prone to do) and in the "next" lifetime it still continues to do the same thing but the way thoughts flow and the types of thoughts that arise are what we condition when we train the mind. If we have conditioned the mind such that more and more wholesome thoughts arise then we are creating good kamma. The key is in the first 2 verses of the Dhammapada:
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts, suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like the never-departing shadow.
Well, I've probably confused matters even more but that's my understanding of kamma.
Mind habits follow us from lifetime to lifetime, but not the mind itself? So the training/dharma study we do stays with us and becomes cumulative over lifetimes?
Mind habits follow us from lifetime to lifetime, but not the mind itself?
Yes, thoughts arise and cease in quick succession so they don't go from lifetime to lifetime but the way we have trained the mind to behave is the way it will tend to continue to behave in the next lifetime. So if you create a more wholesome mind in this lifetime, you are creating a more wholesome mind for the next lifetime.
So the training/dharma study we do stays with us and becomes cumulative over lifetimes?
Well, the mental habits that we have spent time training are what stays. The dhamma teachings (intellectual aspect of them) doesn't really stay - that's more memory and I haven't figured out what memory is yet. I think things like our preferences ie our liking of the dhamma, our likes/dislikes of everything are based on mental habits which do follow us. As long as we continue the training, then yes, we accumulate the wholesome states until we eventually completely awaken.
Thank you for all your contributions, Vangelis.
You're welcome Dakini. This issue with the practice was really bothering me at one stage in my own practice because I felt that I was fortunate enough to come across the dhamma in this lifetime but all the training would go to waste when I died so I had to really think about how everything worked to reassure myself that I wasn't training for nothing.
You know, I'm much more interested in what I'm doing this life than worrying about what happens next. I figure if I practice to the best of my abilities than it'll work itself out. Something gets reborn, not sure what exactly, but would knowing what exactly it is affect my rebirth? I suspect not.
I've been studying the stages of dying, according to Tibetan teaching but the overall message I have understood is that if you are practice you are better prepared for death and rebirth, and if you don't practice you won't be prepared and it's likely to be a traumatic experience.
Vangelis; I think memory of teachings/training does carry over, because they say that some of the reincarnate lamas have some recall of what they learned in past lives, or at least, they learn extremely quickly in their new life, because to an extent it's just a review for them. But...that's Vajrayana.
This is not an issue that pertains only to future lives, "worrying about what happens in the next life", as so many have commented. It has a bearing on our experiences in this life, which are the fruit of past lives. Some people come into their current life with memories, or values or interests acquired in past lives.
The way I've tended to look at it, there is no "me", there is no "you", there is no "that guy sitting on the bench over there", etc. I've understood that "me", "you", "that guy", and everyone else are just vessels for karma. When that vessel ceases to exist, that karma is released into a new vessel.
Vangelis; I think memory of teachings/training does carry over, because they say that some of the reincarnate lamas have some recall of what they learned in past lives, or at least, they learn extremely quickly in their new life, because to an extent it's just a review for them. But...that's Vajrayana.
I don't think that the Vajrayana Buddhists are wrong in this. And I think memories are just like any other mental "pattern" or "habit". In fact, I was going to relate something that happened to me when I was a lot younger. It would have been at least 20 years before I started learning about Buddhism when I was still a teenager and had no idea whatsoever what Buddhism was or what Buddhist monks did. I remember a vivid image with 2 distinct paths before me. One of renunciation as a Buddhist monk (and I even felt reverence for them even though I had no idea who/what they did) and I remember thinking that the one with the greatest power and total freedom in this world is the one with no belongings and the other path was the one of the householder, accumulating property and possessions in order to gain some sort of financial freedom. I remember feeling how claustrophobic and limiting that path felt. Guess which path I took? Damn, maybe I'll have the strength to take the more open path in my next lifetime... maybe...
Waves arise seaming out of nowhere on the surface of the ocean when conditions are ready. They last for some brief unknown period of time and then disappear back into the ocean.
The wave is not separate from the ocean. It is the ocean. It is just that the ocean has taken the temporary form of the wave from the emptiness that is the ocean. It's not really empty is it?
We are like the wave that arises from the ocean. We have taken the form of this life from emptiness. Like the wave we are temporary but not separate.
Nihilism denies the existence of the ocean. Stating that when the wave dissipates it goes into oblivion. Total nonsense.
Eternalism or reincarnation does not deny the existence of the ocean. But states that the same wave returns again and again and that we should be concerned about this.
While each successive wave is yet another form or manifestation of the ocean. it is not the same wave. It is the ocean.
I like your analogy with the wave. you are the water. The water manifests as a wave, aka the ultimate manifests as you, and so you see all things are simply waves, expressions of the ultimate, manifestations.
The ocean is emptiness. The wave that arises is also empty (not self, simply arisen due to conditions and really still just part of the ocean). When the wave crashes back into the ocean, that same wave never arises again; but new waves do arise with the same water.
Thanks for the complement. I appreciate your posts also. You tend to hit the nail on the head.
I like the visualizations/analogies. They convey meaning that is sometimes hard to explain and understand with our normal conceptualizations. Not that this stuff is that complicated, it just is hard to see through the clutter.
Vangelis (et al.):Vajrayana teaches that karma gets transferred with consciousness, I just came across that in something I was reading. Anyway, I believe all those studies of kids in Asia and a few in the US, who remembered their previous life, including relatives, location of their home, etc. I guess that might fit in with your theory of memories as mental habit or pattern, like karma.
The original Buddhist scriptures state an actual person is reborn.
Quoted below are two examples:
Then Ven. Sariputta and Ven. Ananda, having given this instruction to Anathapindika the householder, got up from their seats and left. Then, not long after they left, Anathapindika the householder died and reappeared in the Tusita heaven.
Then Anathapindika the deva's son, in the far extreme of the night, his extreme radiance lighting up the entirety of Jeta's Grove, went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, bowed down to him and stood to one side.
Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, "Lord, that must have been Anathapindika the deva's son. Anathapindika the householder had supreme confidence in Ven. Sariputta."
"Very good, Ananda. Very good, to the extent that you have deduced what can be arrived at through logic. That was Anathapindika the deva's son, and no one else."
Now, monks, the thought may occur to you that the chariot maker on that occasion was someone else, but it shouldn't be seen in that way. I myself was the chariot maker on that occasion. I was skilled in dealing with the crookedness, the faults, the flaws of wood.
Now I am a worthy one, rightly self-awakened, skilled in dealing with the crookedness, faults, & flaws of bodily action; skilled in dealing with the crookedness, faults, & flaws of verbal action; skilled in dealing with the crookedness, faults, & flaws of mental action.
This is how our kamma can follow us from lifetime to lifetime but not the mind itself.
Kamma means 'action'. Mind habits are 'vipaka', namely, the 'result' of karma. But these are only conditioned or reinforced habits, what in psychology is called 'acquired motivation'.
The basis of habits are tendencies (anusaya). Buddha taught each being is born with anusaya. Possibly you could ask Kalyano about anusaya rather than kamma.
Each human being is basically born with the same anusaya. The Buddha did not say different beings are born with different anusaya.
For example, each human being is born with a nervous system, which feels pleasure & pain. From the feeling of pleasure, the tendency (anusaya) towards sensual desire will come into play. From the feeling of pain, the tendency towards anger will come into play. Or from any feeling, the tendencies towards ignorance and/or becoming ('selfing') can come into play.
Whether infant baby or adult, these same tendencies function. Personally, I am not sure any of this supports a theory of past karma. It all seems quite generic to me.
For example, the digestive system has the tendency to defecate & urinate. But this defecation & urination is not permanent. It is impermanent. It happens occassionally rather than always.
The mental tendencies are the same. They do not always arise. They are impermanent. Even if their capacity is permanent or latent like the capacity of the digestive system to defecate & urinate is permanent & latent, this does not mean the capacity exists after death. Have you ever seen a corpse defecating & urinating after death?
Habits are just like defecating & urinating.
Tendencies & habits are part of & strengthened (or weakened) by sankhara khanda. Habits are not something separate from the five aggregates. Each of the aggregates is impermanent.
Obviously, the tendencies, for example, sensual desire, are related to the body. For example, when children reach puberty, due to physical & hormonal changes, they begin to develop strong sexual desires. Clearly, it seems, this sexual desire, although being something mental, is intrinsically linked to the body, just as the desire to each chocolate in intrinsically linked to the tongue.
So, imo, habits do not provide the answer to the question of what gets carried over to new lifetime (after death).
Habits certainly lead to 'new becoming' (ponobbhavikā) in this life but it is still speculation whether they get carried over to new lifetime (after death).
The wave seems to accord with my own idea. That there is a distinction between consciousness and soul, where consciousness is simply a formless and timeless imputable dimension that when combined with time functions as a stream and soul is an eschewed term as it negates emptiness in its egocentrical implications. I try to imagine this universe through the lens of a human as a five walled prison of khandhas, the truth is karma could be transmitted in really simple but unimaginable ways. If nothing exists, not even consciousness according to my definition how does a Buddha with no karma both exist and not exist after death? Let me give you some food for thought: In Tibetan Buddhism, using Berzin's translations, karmic legacies are imputed as non-congruent affecting variables on mental-continuums. Legacies are a combination of potentials, in other words unripened vipaka (karmic fruit), and tendencies as DD was saying. The meaning of imputed is that mental contiuums mentally label samsaric phenomena through conceptual cognition which activates becoming in dependent arising by the failure to grasp causal phenonema and therefore emptiness. And by non-congruent affecting variable it means that karmic legacies are a type of non-static (empty) phenomenon that do not share five things in common with the primary consciousness and subsidiary awareness of the cognition in which they occur (ignore the fancy terms they aren't important for this analysis), and which are neither forms of physical phenomena nor ways of being aware of something; those five things are the five congruent features called such because they share the same reliance, object, mental aspect, time and natal sources. So if my interpretation is correct it seems to indicate that karma operates outside of our familiar space-time dimension, nevertheless, I believe I am right in saying that our conjectures are veiled by the prison of the khandhas.
Comments
Your essence, your Being.
"the kamma-energies, sent out by the dying individual, produce from the material furnished by the parents the new embryonic being. But no transmigration of a real being, or a soul-entity, takes place on that occasion, but simply the transmission of kamma-energy.
Hence we may say that the present life-process (upapatti-bhava) is the objectification of the corresponding pre-natal kamma-process (kamma-bhava), and that the future life-process is the objectification of the corresponding present kamma-process. Thus nothing transmigrates from one life to the next. And what we call our ego is in reality only this process of continual change, of continual arising and passing away. Thus follows moment after moment, day after day, year after year, life after life. Just as the wave that apparently hastens over the surface of the pond is in reality nothing but a continuous rising and falling of ever new masses of water, each time called forth through the transmission of energy, even so, closely considered, in the ultimate sense there is no permanent ego-entity that passes through the ocean of Samsara, but merely a process of physical and psychical phenomena takes place, ever and again being whipped up by the impulse and will for life."
from here:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanatiloka/wheel394.html
Really, what's the point?
Before you die, it's imponderable.
After you die, it's irreversible.
Shucks, just go with the flow, roll with the punches and do the best you can, with what you've got right now.
I mean, really, what other choice do we have....?
Really?
As for the question on how kamma can follow one from lifetime to lifetime, this is a question that I thought deeply about some years ago by asking myself exactly the same question that you ask yourself (and us). I only came to a conclusion via logic by studying the known Buddhist "facts".
The first fact is the five khandhas. The second fact is how those khandhas work. They arise and then they cease. In the case of the mind, it does that in very quick succession, in many cases a thought arises and ceases before you can even notice it. Now, the Buddha teaches that none of these are "reborn" and logically, how could they? the body ceases and decays and the mind is arising and decaying (ceasing) from moment to moment. If it can't stick around longer than a few moments, how could the mind have any hope of following us into the next lifetime?
The clue came when I thought about the training and what it was achieving because the other problem I had was trying to figure out the point of training the mind when we are going to die without being enlightened anyway. If we can't become enlightened in this lifetime, is all the training a waste of time? Will we have to start all over again - destined to repeat the same training again and again until we get it right in a particular lifetime? I realised that what the mind gets itself into habitual modes of operation. All these little habitual "ruts" are what make up the individual personality and our preferences, likes/dislikes and reactions to particular situations. The mind training was all about breaking those mind-habits and creating habits that produced wholesome results instead of unwholesome results. Then it clicked - mind habits ARE kamma. The way the mind operates - all those little habitual modes of operation that go together to make up the personality - this was kamma.
The defining moment came when I went to a dhamma talk by Ajahn Kalyano at the Warburton monastery who basically said the same thing in his talk. I was shocked because this was only a few weeks after I figured this out so I asked him some questions to make sure I understood it right. He confirmed it. Mind habits are our kamma. This is how our kamma can follow us from lifetime to lifetime but not the mind itself. The mind continues doing its own thing - arising and ceasing (as all conditioned phenomena are prone to do) and in the "next" lifetime it still continues to do the same thing but the way thoughts flow and the types of thoughts that arise are what we condition when we train the mind. If we have conditioned the mind such that more and more wholesome thoughts arise then we are creating good kamma. The key is in the first 2 verses of the Dhammapada: Well, I've probably confused matters even more but that's my understanding of kamma.
Metta,
Vangelis
Thank you for all your contributions, Vangelis.
I've been studying the stages of dying, according to Tibetan teaching but the overall message I have understood is that if you are practice you are better prepared for death and rebirth, and if you don't practice you won't be prepared and it's likely to be a traumatic experience.
= is permanent. :thumbsup: (is nice to have a flower on this thumb:rockon: )
This is not an issue that pertains only to future lives, "worrying about what happens in the next life", as so many have commented. It has a bearing on our experiences in this life, which are the fruit of past lives. Some people come into their current life with memories, or values or interests acquired in past lives.
Imagine the middle of the ocean.
Waves arise seaming out of nowhere on the surface of the ocean when conditions are ready. They last for some brief unknown period of time and then disappear back into the ocean.
The wave is not separate from the ocean. It is the ocean. It is just that the ocean has taken the temporary form of the wave from the emptiness that is the ocean. It's not really empty is it?
We are like the wave that arises from the ocean. We have taken the form of this life from emptiness. Like the wave we are temporary but not separate.
Nihilism denies the existence of the ocean. Stating that when the wave dissipates it goes into oblivion. Total nonsense.
Eternalism or reincarnation does not deny the existence of the ocean. But states that the same wave returns again and again and that we should be concerned about this.
While each successive wave is yet another form or manifestation of the ocean. it is not the same wave. It is the ocean.
The ocean is emptiness. The wave that arises is also empty (not self, simply arisen due to conditions and really still just part of the ocean). When the wave crashes back into the ocean, that same wave never arises again; but new waves do arise with the same water.
Brilliant.
Thanks for the complement. I appreciate your posts also. You tend to hit the nail on the head.
I like the visualizations/analogies. They convey meaning that is sometimes hard to explain and understand with our normal conceptualizations. Not that this stuff is that complicated, it just is hard to see through the clutter.
Nice talking with you, V.
Quoted below are two examples:
The basis of habits are tendencies (anusaya). Buddha taught each being is born with anusaya. Possibly you could ask Kalyano about anusaya rather than kamma.
Each human being is basically born with the same anusaya. The Buddha did not say different beings are born with different anusaya.
For example, each human being is born with a nervous system, which feels pleasure & pain. From the feeling of pleasure, the tendency (anusaya) towards sensual desire will come into play. From the feeling of pain, the tendency towards anger will come into play. Or from any feeling, the tendencies towards ignorance and/or becoming ('selfing') can come into play.
Whether infant baby or adult, these same tendencies function. Personally, I am not sure any of this supports a theory of past karma. It all seems quite generic to me.
For example, the digestive system has the tendency to defecate & urinate. But this defecation & urination is not permanent. It is impermanent. It happens occassionally rather than always.
The mental tendencies are the same. They do not always arise. They are impermanent. Even if their capacity is permanent or latent like the capacity of the digestive system to defecate & urinate is permanent & latent, this does not mean the capacity exists after death. Have you ever seen a corpse defecating & urinating after death?
Habits are just like defecating & urinating.
Tendencies & habits are part of & strengthened (or weakened) by sankhara khanda. Habits are not something separate from the five aggregates. Each of the aggregates is impermanent.
Obviously, the tendencies, for example, sensual desire, are related to the body. For example, when children reach puberty, due to physical & hormonal changes, they begin to develop strong sexual desires. Clearly, it seems, this sexual desire, although being something mental, is intrinsically linked to the body, just as the desire to each chocolate in intrinsically linked to the tongue.
So, imo, habits do not provide the answer to the question of what gets carried over to new lifetime (after death).
Habits certainly lead to 'new becoming' (ponobbhavikā) in this life but it is still speculation whether they get carried over to new lifetime (after death).