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Past Lives
Ethan_McCune
Explorer
in Meditation
I know some Buddhist don't believe in reincarnation, some believe in rebirth. I believe in both. So my question is, does anyone have a past life regression meditation they can teach me or is that just something you just learn through practice? Thank you.
0
Comments
The potential Dharmic teaching that a past life can impart is limited by your ability to meditatively allow it to unfold unmolested without attempting to interact with it in any way.
This is tough to do because the delusion that created it will be the same delusion that you are particularly vulnerable to.
A deliberate attempt to experience a past life simply insures the continuity of that delusion.
So..
you will not find a Dharmic Buddhist meditation practice to initiate past lives but what you will learn through a meditation practice is how to not share in it's delusion, should a past life arise.
Basically imagine yourself going back through your life to your earliest memories. Then keep going back to where you have no memories but still existed. Back and back to your birth where you have few abilities and memories. Keep going back through the fetal stages, where you exist, right back to when you had gills, then you are an egg and sperm. However 'you' still exist. Now you no longer have any existence but are still you.
Back you go into nothing that is you . . . then imagine a dying corpse, somewhere else, does not matter where, you will know through the spooky power of trance migration. Back into the senility and disease of a confused old person . . . and there 'you' are . . .
time to wake up.
More details on request.
:wave:
Australopithecus robustus #2342
Homo habilis #5729
Homo erectus #8543
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis #34726
Random Egyptian Laborer
Disciple of the Buddha
Alexander the Great
Julius Caesar
Marcus Aurelius
Martin Luther
Nostradamus
George Washington
Random Thai Thudong monk
General George Patton
Random guy somewhere
me.
also i'm pretty sure in between I was a highwayman, a sailor, a damn builder, and eventually I'll be a starship captian and cross the great divide.
ok in all seriousness.. Here ya go for the Suttas
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.036.than.html
"When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two...five, ten...fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, many eons of cosmic contraction, many eons of cosmic expansion, many eons of cosmic contraction & expansion: 'There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.' Thus I remembered my manifold past lives in their modes & details.
"This was the first knowledge I attained in the first watch of the night. Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose — as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, & resolute. But the pleasant feeling that arose in this way did not invade my mind or remain.
What about when he was animal or is this not mentioned?
( IMO ) The main value in having it be in our Buddhist lexicon is so that a practitioner in the midst of it doesn't have to assume that he or she is dementing.
Anyhow, I'm the wrong person to ask, I see rebirth as a metaphor, expedient means.
http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/poster-stardust.cfm
:wave:
I like to focus on this life, before it becomes a past life
I think we are all smoothies where most of the ingredients that provided the coheisive inertia of this existence are too fractured to easily identify.
It's tough to tell.
Just because a meditative "insight" fits ones storyline, doesn't, in itself, make it true.
Seriously, the buddha didn't engage with souls for a reason. They are something to cling to in the next life...
As we expand our dolphin consciousness, we realise we are astral dolphins.
Don't watch that movie by the way, it is not fit for a whale or a bowl of petunias . . .
:coffee:
Gotta stop laughing at my self. LOL. My sphincters are getting weaker!
i did this
i could recollect three previous lives
and then
i saw hundreds of, thousands of dead bodies laid in front of me
when i tried to see the faces of those bodies i couldn't recognize any of them but i had the strong feeling all those were my own bodies
then a thought came into mind 'what is the use of being born again, if the end result is death at each time i will be born'
after that i didn't want to see the previous births
anyway that experience strengthened 'my' confidence of the Buddha's words
anybody can do this
but most important thing is try to understand the 'Dependent Origination'
then
one does not need to think/seek
whom i was in the past
whom i am now
whom i will be in the future
because
the problem is solved
Homage to Buddha
Homage to Dhamma
Homage to Sangha (eight type of persons)
bottom:
just like the benefits of meditation, it is only when you experience it for yourself , then you can be sure.
it is the same for jhanas and past lives, if you dont experience it, then its just speculation.
if some people claim they can see their previous lives, they are either telling the truth or they are liars.
if there is no past lives, that would make buddha a liar.
read that 10,000 times
then direct your curiosity skillfully and gently.
people here have lots of answers! but most of the fun is finding out for yourself
@how brings insight rapidly in this thread, as letting an unmanipulated experience of your life-chain (which in buddha's teaching has no discernible beginning, is endless) requires the vast nonclinging of an experienced meditator.
an analogy might be a chain necklace. too far you zoom in and you have only one "life" or one link
too closely one holds an individuality apart from other beings and we fail to see the possibility of greater organisms made of many bodies, like how cells make up an organ (or a body) [so cultivate compassion : your pain = my pain, for everyone, until identity dissolves. through single-pointed awareness {mind and whole body energy (active and) mediated} the knots of your most sincere curiosities shall unravel].
"words ain't pure, son. but they're a good stepping stone over the ocean"
our best source is the pali canon.
and past lives is a recurrent theme through out the suttas.
And as a final note for those interested in exploring such things...Coming face to face with a delusive expression of karma that usually exudes the suffering of an unfulfilled life & the despair of a poorly accepted death, whose innate nature mirrors your own delusions, is no walk in the park.
I had my past lives 'read' once. In the life previous to this one, I died in a street fight. Another time (current life) a good friend who was getting her MA in counseling did a kind of regression or hypnosis thing on me and I still remember what came up. I was a very old woman remembering an infant I'd lost at birth or soon thereafter. The emotion that occurred was completely overwhelming. I sobbed for a long time, and my poor friend refused to let me 'regress' her. Big wonder, that.
I am open and willing about this whole idea (considering what I believe means squit in terms of what is or is not true). I have to lend it quite a bit of credence, as rebirth is involved in 2 of 3 of the Insights the Buddha had; since the third Insight about mental effluents is so effing obvious in my direct experience (so far as my ability to grasp it, I'm only beginning), I gotta figure the Buddha wouldn't LIE about something that foundational along side something so obviously true.
I like how Thanissaro Bikkhu puts it in Wings to Awakening; the fact of rebirth and how/why rebirth happens provides background for the third Insight about mental effluents.
the tear drop was once an ocean
berzin has talks and writing that imho elucidate that rebirth/incarnation is really no big deal. let's work with the blessings we got!
If your practice can not prove something, then either faith/devotion fills that gap or its just more dusty graffiti along the path to leave behind.
generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in
your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. ---Thich Nhat Hanh
http://genetics.thetech.org/online-exhibits/genes-common