andy_d

I think arguing over who is a true Buddhist is kind of missing the point.

That kind of elitism and sectarianism has nobbled many a fine philosophical & religious tradition. We should be concentrating on how much we all have in common, not at what drives us apart.

I hear much dharma coming from the mouths of people who wouldn't even call themselves Buddhists.

lugotorix

Well, actually, I wasn't trying to argue about over who is a true Buddhist. I was bothered by that phrase in the post I was responding to, and its implication that you either accept the belief in rebirth or you're "out of the club".
True, but I've also heard some people who have presented themselves as Buddhists who wouldn't know the Dharma if they tripped over it. The late Frederick Lenz, aka Zen Master Rama, comes to mind. If a newbie encountered Rama first, would it be a bad thing to point out what he taught was not Buddhism?

I agree that sectarianism is not a good thing. But I don't think it's elitist to try to discern the authentic traditions from the inauthentic, especially when the Dharma is still in the process of being transmitted to my country.

lugotorix

andy_d

I know. My post wasn't aimed at you, it just followed yours.

The bottom line is that dharma is so broad that it can encompass approaches which seem radically different to a casual observer. To me that's fine.

Preserving authetic transmission is undoubtedly very important if dharma is to be preserved in the world, but i'm always mindful that the historical buddha counselled against "accepted wisdom". Orthodoxy is a trap for lazy minds.

bagong

By the same token, all schools of Buddhism accept rebirth. There are some teachers who place more stress on the moment-to-moment interpretation of Dependent Originiation as of greater relevance than the 3 Lives interpretation, but that's not the same as saying outright: "There's no such thing as rebirth, kamma does not have consequences past the death of the physical body."

Such a statement would amount to uccheda-di.t.thi (annihilationism), which the Buddha clearly indicated was a wrong view, a clinging to a conception of personhood tied to the body and its related mental processes that is bound to lead to suffering. One of the major interpretations of the term "Middle Way" is the median between the extremes of Eternalism and Annihilationism, so I'd say there's a good argument to be made that any outright rejection of rebirth does not adhere to the Middle Way.

People tend to focus on Eternalism (belief in an immortal soul) as the main wrong view to be rejected, but Annihilationism (belief that the "person" is identical with the body and consequently annihilated at death) is equally a sakkaaya-di.t.thi (personality belief): a clinging to a false conception of an ego-identity. See the Brahmajaala-sutta.

As I said, I'm not sure if there's any respectable Buddhist teachers who reject rebirth completely. Phra Buddhadasa, for instance, stresses that it would be more fruitful to focus on the immediate relevancy of moment-to-moment death and rebirth (which I agree with), but I've never read anything by him that would suggest a complete denial of rebirth.

EDIT: Note that I'm not saying that you must accept rebirth as unquestionable fact to be a Buddhist. It's okay to be agnostic or feel that it is of little relevance to your practice. But an outright, complete rejection of the idea is clearly wrong view in all Buddhist schools. If you are utterly convinced that "you" are your body and that kamma has no consequences after death, the temptation will always be to live for the moment, to try and maximise pleasure over pain in the span of one lifetime. In the Buddhist view this is a sure-fire path to suffering.

muon

Ajahn Buddhadasa's stance could most rightly be characterized as agnostic with respect to whether physical rebirth happened or not. However, he was very clear that in his view the three lives teaching was not Buddhist. For example, here's a quote from him:

There is a rebirth every time one does a deed, and that rebirth occurs spontaneously at the moment of action. We need not wait for rebirth to come after death, as is generally understand in the worldly sense. When one thinks and acts, the mind is spontaneously changed through the power of desire and clinging, which lead to becoming and birth in accordance with the law of Dependent Co-origination (paticcasamuppada). There is no need to wait for physical death in order for rebirth to occur. This truth should be realized as the true teaching of Buddhism. It is a core principle of the original, untarnished Buddhism that states there is no self (atta) to be reborn. How the concept of rebirth after death crept in Buddhism is difficult to explain, and we need not concern ourselves with it. Merely prevent rebirth within the stream of Dependent co-origination, that is enough for us. Stopping egoistic rebirth is truly in accordance with Buddhism, and such action will be the kind of kamma with we can take as refuge. When a good deed is done, goodness spontaneously arises; when an evil deed is done, evilness spontaneously arises. There is no need to wait for any further results. If there will be any birth after death, that rebirth only occurs through the kamma one has done in this very life and the results of which have already occurred here. We need not worry about rebirth such that it obstructs our practice
Quotation from Kamma and Rebirth

As you can see from the above, Buddhadasa considered rebirth after death to be something that "crept in" to Buddhism, not one of the Buddha's original teachings.

I will agree with you that Buddhadasa did not outright deny rebirth. But he steadfastly refused to affirm it, either, and he explicitly said that its truth or falsity was irrelevant to Buddhism.

Let me suggest another interpretation of the problem with annihilationism. Couldn't the problem simply be that annihilationism affirms that the self exists, then gets destroyed at death? Such a teaching is in conflict with the anatta principle, which would deny that any self exists. If there is no self, how can one maintain that the self is destroyed at death? Objecting to annihilationism isn't the same thing as asserting rebirth after death, in my opinion.

Cheers,
Scott O.

boneyard bill

The Serpent Lord writes:


You're not trying to reconcile Buddhism with physics, but it certainly does appear that you are presupposing a materialist philosophy even in your assumptions of modern physics much less Buddhism. Materialism is not a necessary presumption of modern physics even if most modern physicists are materialists. In any case, for the record, Einstein's claims regarding relativity in this particular instance have been proven to be wrong and the claims of quantum mechanics have been proven to be right. Bell's Theorem, based on quantum mechanics, predicted that information could travel instantaneously and therefore faster than the speed of light. The Aspect Experiment (1984) at the University of Paris confirmed this.

This was a crucial point in the Bohr/Einstein debates in the early days of quantum mechanics. Einstein argued that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (Bohr's view) could not be correct because that would violate the special theory of relativity, and he presented a thought experiment to make the point. Bohr parried Einstein's thrust by simpy stating that if it violated the special theory that was so much worse for the special theory. So which was right i.e. which was a more complete theory, the Copenhagen intepretation or the special theory? At the time, Einstein's thought experiment could not be tested experimentally. By 1984 it could and Bohr won. Information can travel instantaneously under certain cirmcumstances. Buddhism does not conflict with modern physics on this point at least.

leyline

Hi

Returning to the original post

1) The three marks of existance: impermanance, change and non-self [anicca, dukka, anatta]

I read these as saying much the same thing. If something is impermanent then it changes, and visa versa, and if impermanence abounds then where can the self reside? The self must itself be changing and impermanent, which asks how can you define it? The moment you define anything according to Buddhism it changes and the definition no longer holds. How can this be true without logical contradiction?

Well first of all Buddhism is quite happy with logical contradictions. This is in stark contrast to science and rationality where contradictions require further investigation and explanation and cannot be accepted as two complementary truths in themselves.

Rebirth

What is reborn? This is what Buddhism is asking us to meditate upon. It isn’t just a problem of reincarnation across spacetime (if that is your angle) but from moment to moment in this life. They are the same mystery.

If I am different to what I was a minute ago, then where exactly in space resides the continuity? As someone has already pointed out, science says that after a few years that all of the molecules in our bodies have moved on…… so what is left? A pattern of information is the latest rational answer. But Buddhism asked this question thousands of years before these concepts were invented and the rational answers have changed over time.

Science and rationalism has faith that one day the search for objective truths will end. That there will be a final complete model of reality that will give (theoretically at least) a consistent, complete and stable response to any meaningful question. Buddhism disagrees. It says that complete faith in permanence of any kind is misplaced and further leads to suffering. Not that faith in impermanence will end suffering of course! The end of suffering is unstable like anything else. But recognition of universal impermanence changes ones attitude to life. (and isn’t incompatible with rationality) According to the Buddhists there is a beautiful experience when one achieves acceptance and the self lets go of its fear. It is an impermanent experience. One that can return again and again, and be different each time. Like sex. The first time you lose your virginity can be a very powerful experience. (and later one’s too! )

To recognise impermanence is to know why you are losing something. This sometimes gives one an attitude of meeting these losses with a kind of positivity. Values, lovers, youth, fingers …….. the self. We will lose them all and find that the self remains through change. We are losing them all all the time anyway because they are changing. Change is both death and birth simultaneously. Simultaneity is beyond the linearity of rationality. Science and rationality are unable to understand the great truths of simultaneity. The best they can hope for is to note that they occur.

Love is as fundamental to Buddhism as meditation and thought and language and the rest. It isn’t with science, that chases the holy grail of the perfect permanent text. But to fully appreciate impermanence you need to let all of your being expand and work together at the same time so that what you see and hear and feel is all of a sudden beyond cause and effect ……. inner and outer. Your mind won’t even bother to try and figure it out and just goes quiet. It’s an extraordinary memory but one that you can lose easily.

Permanence may be a myth, but knowing that doesn’t protect one from being seduced by it time and again. Which is a good thing in my opinion, else we wouldn’t do anything. After all how is impermanence itself supposed to be impermanent without the myths of permanence to change it? Myths like science, religion, philosophy and politics are powerful and useful.

If you see permanence as a myth, that grows and influences and changes, then there is no contradiction. It is both its changing status and the fact that it is a myth that points to the underlying truth of impermanence. Impermanence does not undermine usefulness. The conservation of energy in physics states that there is a permanent constant value to the total amount of all the energies in the universe for all time, and can be measured in joules. This is a myth not a fact. In fact some of the latest cosmological theories of science are already saying that on both the very small and the very large scales, that the conservation of energy may only be an approximation. But that doesn’t undermine the usefulness of the law, anymore than Einstein has completely undermined the usefulness of newton’s approximations.

Myths of permanence are necessary for life. Seeing them as myths is a very strange experience and often so frightening that most people won’t look. After all we live by myths and we hold on to them for our identity, so impermanence is a form of death ……. but the universe is often kind enough to let us find and lose them gently and even with sudden loss there usually comes a time of readjustment.

I have just come back from a week at Glastonbury. It is a myth that over the days you fall into. As soon as we left the site and hit the roads home however, the other myths of permanence that awaited us were, for a while, like being on safari in a strange world of manufactured order and etiquette.

muon

This is not quite right. Bell's theorem predicts that a measurement at one location can affect the result of a measurement at another location essentially instantaneously. You are correct that Einstein thought this was nonsense, but experiment backs up quantum mechanics.

The part that is not correct is the statement that "information" could travel faster than light. Even quantum mechanics only allows correlations to move faster than light. Bell's theorem cannot be used to transmit a signal. The information content of the correlations that do travel faster than light is zero.

This is getting highly technical, and maybe further discussion should move to the Science & Skepticism forum. But the relevant point here is that if rebirth involved the transfer of any sort of information (think karmic inheritances or something of that sort), then even quantum mechanics still forbids rebirth to happen instantaneously.

Volker.Doormann

Penny Thornton wrote in 1989 in her diary, what she has remembered from two dreams which (cite in her book) 'C.G. Jung might have termed two "big dreams"). The book ('With love from Diana') was published in January 1995. In the capital 'Foreshadows of the Future' she wrote about an event which has taken place in the future in the night of the 31. August 1997 in Paris, France. Penny Thornton wrote: Please note URL doormann.tripod.com/ladydi.htm for more details.

What is the basis in natural physics, that Mrs. Penny Thornton could got such detailed information's in 1989 from an event in the future?

Volker