Before i left i wanted to answer the posts made to me here
although this doesnt disprove rebirth as part of Buddhadhamma, the Buddha never said anything life this in the suttas themselves. This mostly comes from later ideas/abhidhamma (of course if you accept the abhidhamma as coming from the buddha then your above post is in line with him )It is the stream of consciousness that continues. Yes, consciousness is impermanent but on the other hand there is a continuum. This can be noticed in this very life. There are different levels of consciousness, different objects to be conscious of, different ways in which consciousness operates but even though none of these instances of consciousness are static, unchanging or permanent one "mind moment" can have a residual effect to the next and the different kinds of consciousness can and do influence each other. If you can understand this then it's not such a problem to see that rebirth is a possibility even though anatta and anicca are true.
With Metta,
Guy
To Ben and Tilt
In some posts way back i put forward my points (using suttas) of why rebirth p.m. is not in the buddhadhamma. If i had seen your response a few days ago i would have posted all sorts of suttas and made points to argue with you but i dont feel the need to do that anymore since these arguments distract from contemplating the present moment. I have now decided to stop arguing for or against rebirth p.m. and have decided instead to follow the advice of Ajahn Sumedho (something i should have stayed with) since i agree with him that rebirth p.m. is speculative and conceptual and its more useful to put rebirth etc into practical terms which allows one to focus on and understand the here and now, the only place where Dhamma can be known and the deathless can be reached
I very much agree with these teachings of his
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TqKb ... t&resnum=3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and
http://www.amaravati.org/abm/english/do ... kamma.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and
http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/Books ... nd_Now.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;The only thing that’s certain about the future—the death of the body—is something we try to ignore. Just thinking about the word death stops the mind, doesn’t it? It does for me. It’s not particularly polite or politically correct to speak of death in casual conversation. What is death? What will happen when I die? Not knowing upsets us. But it is unknown, isn’t it? We don’t know what will happen when the body dies.We have various theories—like reincarnation or being rewarded by a better rebirth or being punished by a worse birth. Some people speculate that once you’ve attained human birth, you may still be reborn as a lower creature. And then there’s the school that says no, once you’ve taken birth in the human form, then you cannot be reborn as a lower creature. Or the belief in oblivion—once you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s it. Nothing left. Finito. The truth of the matter is that nobody really knows. So we often just ignore it or suppress it.
But this is all happening in the now. We’re thinking of the concept of death in the present. The way the word death affects consciousness is like this. This is knowing not knowing in the now. It’s not trying to prove any theory. It’s knowing: the breath is like this; the body like this; the moods and mental states are like this. This is developing the path. Saying “like this” is just a way of reminding oneself to see this moment as it is rather than to be caught in some idea that we’ve got to do something or find something or control something or get rid of something.
Developing the path, cultivating bhavana is not only formal meditation that we can only do at a certain place, under certain conditions, with certain teachers. That’s just another view we’re creating in the present. Observe how you practice in daily life—at home, with your family, on the job. The word bhavana means being aware of the mind wherever you are in the present moment. I can give you advice about developing sitting meditation—so many minutes every morning and every evening—which is certainly to be considered. It’s useful to develop discipline, to take some time in your daily life to stop your activities, the momentum of duties, the responsibilities and habits. But what I’ve found to really help me the most has been to reflect and pay attention to the here and now.
In conclusion ive decided to follow and learn from Ajahn Sumedho, im not going to argue about rebirth or no rebirth post mortem any more, its to speculative and distracting, both sides of the argument are. The present moment is all there is. As Ajahn Anando said on my retreat,
and full awareness of the present moment is the way to understand Dhamma, quench dukkha and reach the deathless and so thats what im going to focus on from now on, not speculative arguments about past or future which can cause distraction from pure awareness of the present momentthe past and future dont exist only the present moment does, have you ever known anything that isnt the present moment?"
Now is the knowing
Metta guy, tilt and ben