Waning Moon Conrad

Why not?

Captain Pedantic

I always say to people that I believe in life after death, just not necessarily my life. I think that sums it up as well as anything ever could.

Mageth

Speaking from my perspective, what is "self" but "I?" "I" cannot transmigrate because "I" would not be "I", "I"'d be something else. There is no "I" outside my physical existence, experiences, memories, etc. My life generates my "I". "I" end when my physical existence ceases.

Like I said in my first post, if something gets reincarnated, it is something separate from the "I" or the "we."

Thus the Buddhist cannot say "we" transmigrate.

IvanK

I don't know where you came from but I was the product of my parents' reproductive cells. Even the consciousness I call "I" has a material basis and a long history of instruction behind it. So I wouldn't say that I "popped into existence from nothing." Tracing the material basis of the being I call myself I find other material beings until the thread is lost in the distant past.

There are things that "pop into existence from nothing" theoretically or otherwise, such as quantum fluctuations in the vacuum, but none of these violate the physical laws of the universe as we understand them today and I wouldn't want to credit quantum fluctuations with consciousness.

I'm assuming you, like many others, get bored on a rainy afternoon. Why would you want to live forever, or even again in some other incarnation? This is your life, man, one per customer, no free plays, no more quarters, once around and then game over. Go live now.

Amos

This makes you the incarnate son of your parents and re-incarnate son of your grandparents and so on until the tread is lost in the distant past.

MortalWombat

So what is the difference between this reincarnated someone else, with a completely different body and no memories of an earlier life, and two different people?

MortalWombat

And there's no evidence that there are no invisible massless undetectable dragons in my garage, but that doesn't mean I am going to entertain the notion that there might be.

Marduk

“So what is the difference between this reincarnated someone else, with a completely different body and no memories of an earlier life, and two different people?”

You would be one of the two different people with no memories of a previous life, just like now.


“I'm assuming you, like many others, get bored on a rainy afternoon. Why would you want to live forever, or even again in some other incarnation? This is your life, man, one per customer, no free plays, no more quarters, once around and then game over. Go live now. “

I don’t want to live forever, this is plenty, the idea of reincarnation actually bothers me, I don’t want to repeat this cycle forever, just something to worry about.


“And there's no evidence that there are no invisible massless undetectable dragons in my garage, but that doesn't mean I am going to entertain the notion that there might be. “

Actually there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of reincarnation just nothing conclusive, The Strange case of Dorothy Eady, kids remembering people, places, events that happened before they were born, how they died and it being confirmed.
Anyway I am not convinced reincarnation actually happens, but to me it seems plausible.

Waning Moon Conrad

The Buddhism defines self as being an unchanging entity. Mind like everything else is in a constant state of flux. It's more of a becoming than a being.....and constantly so. It's logically coherent therefore, to say that there is no self as such.

Notwithstanding that, it is legitimate to speak of beings in the context of Buddhist philosophy if we understand that we're not imputing that they are static, unchanging entities but are always becoming.

We are beings.

A religion or philosophy or school of thought which says that beings (who are not static, unchanging selves-as-such, who are in a state of constant flux, who are lucid and aware (minds), transmigrate from existence to existence.

AND which says that we are beings, can extrapolating logically from its founding premises, legitimately say that we transmigrate.

Mageth

I guess that's why "I" am not a Buddhist. It don't make no damn sense.