the great rebirth debate

[Dhammanando]

i disagree. if one has not attained stream entry, why bother talking about arahantship?

Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.

With which post are you disagreeing?

[Laurens]

I have been on both sides of this debate, and sometimes still veer from one to the other.

A lot of people, in my view struggle with it because they think rebirth means the person you are now will be reborn in a different form. That somehow bits of it will come through. This, in my understanding, is not the case. Everything about your personality, all of your memories and so forth are obliterated at death. In every sense of our common understanding death is the end of our existence.

However the part of us that knows we exist. The Buddho. The part that knows 'it is hot' but does not itself get hot. The undifferentiated awareness that is what you really mean when you say 'I am', which is not a person. The screen onto which the experience of our lives is projected. This is what takes on another form. This is not a person, it is more fundamental than that. It's more like space or something.

If we take this awareness to be the screen, and the person to be the projection upon the screen. There is absolutely nothing from one film that survives into the next. It's gone. But the screen is the same. The screen is not the mind either, it's behind that. More fundamental than that. When you die you are gone, and you are not reborn. Life is over for you. But then another film starts on the screen...

[cappuccino]

Just another day, just another life.

Same thing.

To be continued . . .

[cappuccino]

When you die you are gone, and you are not reborn. Life is over for you. But then another film starts on the screen...

rebirth is continuing from where you left off

[Swami Bananananda]

Even from the American atheistic “you only have 1 birth, life, death” view.... we were suddenly born into this world without choice, we experience life, and we die and we go back to that same “place” before birth. What do you think is stopping “you” from experiencing a new “birth” as a new identity in this “world” again?

[justindesilva]

Even from the American atheistic “you only have 1 birth, life, death” view.... we were suddenly born into this world without choice, we experience life, and we die and we go back to that same “place” before birth. What do you think is stopping “you” from experiencing a new “birth” as a new identity in this “world” again?

In fact it is correct to say that any being has had one birth. Since then we continue in samsara. Death is only a separation of one life to change phase to another stage of life. Paticca samuppada is one unique explanation for this.
It may be interesting that the book Many Mansions written by
Gina Cerminara after a research of Edgar Caycee explains rebirths mentioned by Caycee. Being a Christian or Catholic Caycee was an atheist who saw the pre lifes of many patients who came to him for a cure. Caycee saw in a trance that the present sickness was a repercussion of a past immoral act.
The fact that an atheist or a believer if God could see the pre lifes of others in Virginia is sufficient data to show that life continues. There are other experimental material as such other evidence done by various scholars.

[Ryan95227]

Even from the American atheistic “you only have 1 birth, life, death” view.... we were suddenly born into this world without choice, we experience life, and we die and we go back to that same “place” before birth. What do you think is stopping “you” from experiencing a new “birth” as a new identity in this “world” again?

The first person I've across sharing the same belief as I am! I also go further as to say that trillions are being born all over universe. Who's to say I may be one of those beings born after I die? Also, if rebirth is not true there really is no point in practicing because one can just end one's life to end cycle of suffering. There will be no suffering then!

[cappuccino]

Also, if rebirth is not true there really is no point in practicing because one can just end one's life to end cycle of suffering. There will be no suffering then!

hence rebirth must be true

[AlexBrains92]

My first reply Here we go!

As "the descent into the womb takes place through the junction of these three: there is a union of mother and father, the mother is in season and the gandhabba is present" (MN 93), and apparently only the mother's fertility is considered, shouldn't the gandhabba necessarily be fertile sperm (and not a consciousness independent of the senses)?

As "with the wick in a lamp one lights another one, the burning of the original wick continues on the new wick" (Mil 3.5.5), and two or more wicks can burn at the same time, couldn't our past lives merely be our parents' and ancestors' lives?

If so, then rebirth is actually nothing but reproduction, which is exactly continuity without transmigration.

The ontological three lifetimes model of dependent origination, understood in this way, is observable and stoppable like the phenomenological mind moment model, here and now.

What do you think?

[cappuccino]

couldn't our past lives merely be our parents' and ancestors' lives?

What do you think?

No, such is not the teaching

[AlexBrains92]

No, such is not the teaching

Can you refute my arguments with arguments?
So I could change my mind.

[cappuccino]

Can you refute my arguments with arguments?
So I could change my mind.

well the teaching is very clear…

why argue?

[AlexBrains92]

well the teaching is very clear…

why argue?

This is a debate topic.
If you don't want to debate, why do you reply?
Why don't you ask an admin to close the topic instead?

[cappuccino]

why argue if you don't know the teaching


that's what I'm asking you

[SteRo]

My first reply Here we go!

... shouldn't the gandhabba necessarily be fertile sperm (and not a consciousness independent of the senses)?

... couldn't our past lives merely be our parents' and ancestors' lives?

If so, then ...

What do you think?

There is no end to speculation, but speculation isn't the path.