Reincarnation

[tharpa]

"The language of "reincarnation" is meant to reflect only the reality of cause and effect, but the Tibetans have misapproprated the term so that it now means something completely different. And the original content is now lost, like a town that has been left by wayside with the building of a new road."

There you go again, redefining a term used by a particular tradition to suit your own fancy and then attacking them for not using their term your way.

If you want to criticise that tradition, first you have to understand what they mean by a term, and then show how it is incorrect; not use the term to mean something which for them it does not.

Futile!

If you are going to play semantic games, at least get some of your lingo straight since that is the main currency of your polemic.

[tharpa]

If you get too ornery about this, I will be tempted to go back to the beginning parts of the thread to provide specific quotes from your posts about how all Tibetan buddhist insist that realms are literal etc. etc. whereas you (only) understand them to be psychological states within the human realm.

Here is a quote from the back cover of a book containing talks by one of your deluded Tibetan Buddhists, given in 1971. I have yet to hear a single 'modern' buddhist teacher disagree with the basic thrust:

" The Tibetan word 'bardo' is usually associated with life after death. Here, Chogyam Trungpa discusses bardo in a very diffrent sense as the peak experience of any given moment. Our experience of the present moment is always coloured by one of the six psychological states: the god realm (bliss), the jealous god realm (jealousy and lust for entertainment), the human realm ( passion and desire), the animal realm (ignorance), the hungry ghost realm (poverty and possessiveness), and the hell realm (aggression and hatred). In relating these realms to the six traditional Buddhist bardo experiences, Trungpa provides an insightful look at the 'madness' of ou familiar psychological patterns and shows how they present an opportunity to transmute daily experience into freedom."

From Transcending Madness, The Experience of the Six Bardos. This book is compiled from public talks; needless to say there is far more material covering the topic in more depth in as yet unplublished lectures by many other teachers and older texts, not to mention that the book itself has much more to say than the brief synopsis above, which alone demolishes so many of your crass generalisations about 'modern' or 'Tibetan' buddhists.

In some sense, what you are doing could also be characterised thusly: arbitrarily boiling down the four noble truths to one aspect of the second and insisting that none of the rest are the true tradition, and that any buddhist who is cognisant of the larger context of your preferred subset is missing the (aka your) point. Without providing any reason why the other aspects of the quintessential approach - a method/way rather than a philosophy by the way - should be ignored totally, you insist that only you understand the tradition properly. Very strange.

[Kevin Solway]

If you want to criticise that tradition, first you have to understand what they mean by a term

I know exactly what Tibetan Buddhists currently mean by the term, and that is precisely how I know that they are misusing it.

. . . your posts about how all Tibetan buddhist insist that realms are literal

Today's Tibetan Buddhists do indeed insist that the realms are literal, and that a person really can be reincarnate as an actual cow grazing in the field, at the end of their life.

It doesn't matter that Trungpa thinks that the idea of the realms is also useful for talking about psychological states.

Where is the talk about how a person can reincarnate into countless other beings (other than his own body) in just the one day? For example, where is the talk about how Hitler reincarnates in his victims, or a gardener as his garden, or a pet owner as his pets, or a parent as his children, or a teacher as his students, etc? There is nothing from modern Tibetan Buddhists about this, because it is alien to their way of thinking.

And it doesn't matter if they use the word "reincarnate" or not. It is the substance that matters.

As I say, the understanding of cause and effect has been lost from their tradition - if it was ever there in any significant measure in the first place.

. . . arbitrarily boiling down the four noble truths to one aspect of the second and insisting that none of the rest are the true tradition

I believe in all four of the noble truths, so I don't know what you are saying here.

[tharpa]

"Where is the talk about how a person can reincarnate into countless other beings (other than his own body) in just the one day? For example, where is the talk about how Hitler reincarnates in his victims, or a gardener as his garden, or a pet owner as his pets, or a parent as his children, or a teacher as his students, etc? There is nothing from modern Tibetans Buddhists about this, because it is alien to their way of thinking.

It doesn't matter if they use the word "reincarnate" or not. It is the substance that matters. "

Yes, where is that talk? You have postulated this entirely from your own lingo. Why do you assume that others should see things this way. Now, if you are saying that the above description is a fundamentally accurate representation of buddhadharma, please supply quotations from traditional sources to that effect.

Otherwise, they are simply irrelevant assertions viz. the buddhist tradition. They might be valid points you are making, but you keep making them in the context of proving that buddhists don't understand buddhism. Show me why, how and where what you said above comes from buddhism.

To say, for example, that 'Hitler reincarnates in his victims' sounds more to me like: 'in any hell realm there are both victims and gaolers.' But this has nothing to do with the usual meaning of the word reincarnation. In fact, you are talking about a realm, or more spefically that people can lead others into a similar realm. But this is not the only meaning of 'incarnation' even though it provides an insight into how realms/incarnations can manifest and self-perpetuate.

Various buddhist abhidharmic texts clearly distinguish the difference between the realm and its inhabitants, just as in common language we determine the difference between a vessel and that which it contains. Yes, they are inter-related, just as passenger and automobile are interrelated, but this does not mean that they are the same, nor that any discussion of their differences proves idiocy or ignorance on the part of those making such distinctions.

(Also, your characterisation of Hitler is essentially derived from victor-propogated propoganda. Do you think that all the over 10,000,000 germans killed in WW II were his 'fanatical' 'incarnations', including the tens of thousands of children burnt to a crisp alive in gas-proof shelters from phosphorous-assisted fire-bombing raids on Hamburg, Dresden and so many other German zones of mainly civilian populations?)

In any case, whether such distinctions ( as realmic influence vs. incarnations) are made or not only matters in terms of why such distinctions are made, i.e. what is the point. Your point seems to be simply that since others disagree with your own particular distinctions, as Clyde earler (most gently, elegantly, succinctly) pointed out, they must by definition be 'false'.

You are into evidence and proof. Then show us all the many incarnations of Kevin that currently exist as you define incarnation in the statement above. If you can, you will also demonstrate that your use of the word incarnation is so different from the usual one as to be meaningless, and certainly irrelevant in terms of blanket criticism of all modern buddhists. I you cannot, then all your assertions are revealed to be vacuous. Or is it your contention, using your logic, that the poster tharpa is an incarnation of Kevin? If not, how could you deny it given your frequent definition of incarnation exemplified in the excerpt above? In short, you have not understood Tibetan buddhist, or even basic buddhist notions at all, rather you have misinterpreted terms in the light of your extensive contemplations on cause and effect.

As to your first question about countless incarnations etc., I refer you again to Gampopa's Jewel Ornament. This is answered in great detail bhumi by bhumi, though in far deeper context than the way you throw these notions around.

[tharpa]

"Today's Tibetan Buddhists do indeed insist that the realms are literal, and that a person really can be reincarnate as an actual cow grazing in the field, at the end of their life. "

As I said in the original remark which sparked this thread, and as was demonstrated in the quotation I provided a couple of posts above, clearly and unequivocably for anyone who can speak and/or read english: RUBBISH.

You are just repeating a self-created dogma that is clearly false. Did you read that excerpt? If you did, in what way can you possibly make the claim that you just did? And don't say you can't be bothered. It's a recent post, a precise set of sentences, and yet you read them, ignore what they say quite specifically about the realms being essentially 'pyschological' and continue to spout the same rubbish.

Again, to deconstruct simply the above statement, and as I offered on the first page of this post: since the buddhadharma does not admit to the existence of a self, how could it possibly insist that "a person really can be reincarnate as an actual cow grazing in the field, at the end of their life."?

Your point has no basis in the tradition; is not maintained by the vast majority of buddhist practitioners. In short, it is false propoganda, aka a lie, a deceit. Or more likely: simple ignorant misunderstanding of the law of cause and effect, along with the implications of interdependence, on your part.

There is no person, no life, no cow. Your whole point is totally absurd - from a buddhist point of view.

You may 'think' that people 'believe' X and Y, but mainly this is defined along the lines of your own 'beliefs', such as that memory is the precondition of consciousness and that there is such a thing as a self that dwells from one moment into the next and that this is the precondition of sanity. In fact, this belief which you have expressed in this thread is exactly the same as the notion that the same person/self can reincarnate from one moment to the next. You have contradicted your own critique.

Again, even if you are right despite the inconsistencies in logic, nevertheless this has nothing to do with buddhism. It is just Kevin's theory of whatever. Your critique of buddhism evidences such flawed misunderstandings of the basic notions as to make such criticisms utterly....

futile.

[tharpa]

To continue along the same theme:

You are asserting that
a) since all things arise from karma (shorthand for C&e)
b) there is no difference between asteroids and cows because they all arise from a) so
c) any buddhist who says that sentient beings 'incarnate' differently from rocks and flames is not a real buddhist and
d) by inference, anyone whos says that cups are different from saucers or lizards is a fool because all are derived from karma.

Similarly, one could say that since monkeys, mice, insects and humans all depend upon air for existence, anyone who maintains there is any difference between them is making a 'false' statement.

As I said initially: rubbish!

you wrote earlier: "I believe in all four of the noble truths, so I don't know what you are saying here."

As to the last phrase in the sentence: clearly that is the case. As to the former: such truths are not to be 'believed' but practiced. The Fourth Truth (8-fold path) is not a belief. Nor are any of them anyway. You keep defining buddhadharma in conventional western/theistic terms.

Futile!

[Kevin Solway]

Did you read that excerpt? If you did, in what way can you possibly make the claim that you just did?

All that excerpt did was to talk about psychological states in terms of the different realms. Just the same as Trungpa. It's no big deal.

That doesn't stop Tibetan Buddhist's from believing they can be reborn as a cow when they die - or that the Dalai Lama will be reborn as another Dalai Lama when he dies.

. . . about the realms being essentially 'pyschological' and continue to spout the same rubbish.

In the small part you quoted there was nothing about the realms being only psychological. So it looks to me like you are the one making it up.

Again, to deconstruct simply the above statement, and as I offered on the first page of this post: since the buddhadharma does not admit to the existence of a self, how could it possibly insist that "a person really can be reincarnate as an actual cow grazing in the field, at the end of their life."?

In the same way that a self (a non-inherently existent self) is reincarnate from one moment to the next during this life (through the psychological realms), Tibetan Buddhists believe that the process can continue into the life of another person, or a cow, etc, upon death.

Hence the line of Dalai Lamas, one after the death of the other, all of whom have been "measured" to have recognized objects from the previous Dalai Lama when they were young children, and shortly after the death of the previous Dalai Lama, etc.

Deny this all you like, but it's all there for anyone to see.

There is no person, no life, no cow. Your whole point is totally absurd - from a buddhist point of view.

Denying the existence of everything is just your means of avoiding the problem.

You may 'think' that people 'believe' X and Y,

This I know for a fact. Virtually all the Tibetan Buddhists I have ever met believe they are in the human realm for no other reason than they have a human body.

Work that one out.

Not only that, but so do the experienced Tibetan teachers also think these same people are in the human realm, for no other reason than they have a human body.

I remember one episode very clearly. I was in a teaching with about twenty other people, nearly all of whom were long-term dwellers of the lower realms - mostly the hell realms and animal realms. What should the teacher open his teaching with, but, "All you people here should be very thankful that you have been born in the human realm". I remember looking around me at the tormented and tortured faces in the room with utter incredulity. What cruelty! It was a very memorable and telling moment.

It is terribly cruel to tell people they currently have abilities which they do not actually have.

that there is such a thing as a self that dwells from one moment into the next

The self is a creation of mind. It persists only through memory.

and that this is the precondition of sanity. In fact, this belief which you have expressed in this thread is exactly the same as the notion that the same person/self can reincarnate from one moment to the next.

Only a fully enlightened person has a perfect self. So only the enlightened person can be the same person from one moment to the next. He is the only fully sane person, and his ability to be the same self, to maintain character, is the reason he escapes samsara.

[Kevin Solway]

d) by inference, anyone whos says that cups are different from saucers or lizards is a fool because all are derived from karma.

You will remember that I recently said that even though one candleflame is different to another one, they still reincarnate in exactly the same way.

So, do you see how things can be different, yet still reincarnate in the same way?

such truths are not to be 'believed' but practiced. The Fourth Truth (8-fold path) is not a belief.

People only truly practice what they truly believe. That's the context in which I use the word "believe".

[tharpa]

Kevin, I thought those last two posts of yours were very good in articulating your main positions. I will not go through point by point.

Although your characterisation of the beliefs around the Dalai Lama etc. (again, not someone with whom I have connection, nor most practicing buddhists in America and Europe but no matter) are no doubt accurate for many, they are quite simply false when applied to 'all'.

Those people who have such views are essentially mirroring their own sense of solid self and projecting it onto various aspects of the buddhist teachings. Such a view, which is a lived-in one, does not disappear just by wishing it away, rather it is the working basis.

Your overly literal interpretation of the realms being ONLY psychological means that you cannot see that a bunch of human low-lifes sitting together with human bodies, even if they are indeed in torment and lower realm states, nevertheless have the potential to liberate themselves from such realms. Indeed, the basic law of karma, i.e. interdependency, will tend to support the proposition that if a being has positioned him or herself in the presence of another being whose karmic role has been to study and practice the dharma of liberation from the realms, that their potential for doing the same is quite advanced, in some sense, at least relative to the millions of others in the same region who have not encountered such a situation. Presumably all those people chose to be in that room at that time.

Also, do not overlook that they are in a constant state of flux, these psychological realms, and that the way to use them most effectively is to get into them. For example:

Student: Were you ever in the hell world yourself? Have you yourself experienced the hell world?
TR Definitely, yes.
S: What do you do?
TR: I try to remain in the hell world.

.....

TR: The experience is, I suppose, realizing that the turbulent quality purely happens on the surface, so to speak. So you are not rushing to try to solve the problem of turbulence, but you are diving in - in other words, fearlessness. Complete trust in confusion, so to speak. Seeing the confused quality as the truth of its own reality. Once you begin to develop the confident and fearless understanding of confusion as being true confusion, then it is no longer threatening. That is the ground. You begin to develop space."

Earlier on some remarks on reincarnation:

"
Student: can you discuss what it is that reincarnates, especially in the Theravadan doctrine of anatman, egolessness?
TR: Well, from the point of view of anatman, nothing reincarnates. It is more of a rebirth[ing] process rather than reincarnation. The idea of reincarnation is that a solid living quality is being passed onto the next being. It is the idea of some solid substance being passed on. But in this case it's more of a rebirth. You see, something continues, but at the same time nothing continues. In a sense we are like a running stream. It has a name, but if you examine it carefully, that river you named three hundred years ago isn't there at all; it is completely different, changing, passing all the time. It is transforming from one aspect to another. That complete transformation makes it possible to take rebirth. If one thing continued all the time there would be no possibilities for taking rebirth and evolving into another situation. It is the change which is important in terms of rebirth, rather than anything continuing.
S: Doesn't that happen moment to moment within a lifetime?
TR: Yes, exactly. You see, the ultimate idea of rebirth is not purely the idea of physical birth and death. Physical birth and death are very crude examples of it. Actually, rebirth takes place every moment, every instant. Every instant is death; every instant is birth. It's a changing process: there is nothing you can grasp onto; everything is changing. But there is some continuity of course - the change IS the continuity. The impermanence of the rebirth is the continuity of it. And because of that there are possibilities of developing and possibilities of regressing. Certain new elements could insert themselves into the process of continual change. You can enter yourself into the middle of the queue, if you are queuing, because this queue is made out of small particles, or people, rather than one thing."

In any case, do not make the mistake of regarding the psychological realms as solid states, i.e. quasi literal fixed incarnations within the stream of a human life. This would be a far greater error than asssuming they are only literal or that one person reincarnates intact without change to personality into another. I have yet to meet someone who believes this, but I take your word for it that quite a few in your patch do.

[Nick]

Similar to what Kevin has said, we would have absolutely no identity if we did not have our memories.

Yes, but a sense of identity is an illusory construct in the first place, i.e. interdependent. Identity is one thing that consciousness can display on its screen, but is not the only thing, nor the quintessential essence or nature of consciousness. This is a common sense remark if you think about it. When you watch a movie on TV, there is the TV set, the transmitted signal, the actors making the drama, the story itself, and the cognitive mind that can take this all in and perceive a story, and then the underlying ability to be aware-conscious at all in which 'field' cognition is hosted.

And what exactly is the quintessential essence or nature of consciousness, according to you?

Before you even begin to answer this question you will be wrong. Even if it is a vague explanation it's still wrong because there is no single thing, force, energy, or anything else you come up with that can lay claim to being the "essence of consciousness". There are infinite causes which have brought us to this very moment and each moment that is to follow. To point to something as the essence of consciousness is blasphemy. The nature of consciousness is nature.

Without them we immediately terminate the status quo state of consciousness.

Says you. I don't see how you get to that.

Imagine if your entire memory were erased every ten seconds. You would have a clean slate or brand new state of consciousness each time this happened. There would be nothing to bridge your former state, with your new state of consciousness. You would effectively be a completely different person each time this happened.

This is a key factor when it comes to maintaing our consciousness and identity. Technically we are a slightly different person with a slightly different degree of consciousness each and every moment, AKA Reincarnation. But because we can recall our past and lay claim to what it contains through our memorys, we can learn from it and make plans for the future. Without our memory we would be no more conscious than a rock, let alone have the capability of self reflection, something which is a key component of higher consciusness.

Therfore it is a logical impossibility to physically reincarnate into some other being or body.

Yes, based on your unjustified assumption, you are correct. Perhaps. It all sounds like guesswork masquerading as logic.

It's far more than an injustified assumption, it is an Absolute Truth. Everything you say exemplifies how you worship the "self" and seek only to preserve the ego. One must come to hate the ego before he can begin to find God.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Matt and Kevin,

...a thought is an electrical impulse. ...Sometimes, there is less or no electrical activity in the brain...The energy obviously has "gone" somewhere ...(reincarnation is) basically recycled energy.

All of the energy that flows through the body is used to either change the body or it dissipates as heat. It doesn't just flow through the body mysteriously and disappear into the ether.

In this case, it would go through a cycle of being heat. The literal meaning of reincarnation is to be made flesh again, so even if we limit the definition to that, it does not exclude that there are periods between when the energy was one person's thought, when it was heat, (I'm hesitant to write "or powers your monitor" because shortly after I typed that, the green on my monitor blew out - interesting coincidence...)

Okay, let's take it the next step to a human baby, or a calf. At one point, there is no baby or calf, or fetus, and at another moment there is. When it was not there, it didn't have any energy in it - but after it was sufficiently there, there was energy in it. The energy didn't just poof from nowhere.

Matt, as you said one of the things energy can do is change the body. Energy, in the form of the food the mother eats, goes into the development of the fetus and supports any electrical function in the fetus (I won't go so far as to call it "thought" but there are at least reflexes in there). No need to go through the whole chain of where the energy in the food and its predicesors came from - but if you keep asking far enough back, sooner or later science starts getting vague or saying "big bang." Science (the first rule of thermodynamics) will also tell you that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes form (of course, if energy can not be created, how did it get here?). Anyway, it seems appearant that the energy we have now is a pretty static quantity, and humans are not so special that our energy should somehow be exempt from this recycling process.


This link is a good refresher for the above, and also goes over the second law of thermodynamics, which seems to be the point that neither of you see that I'm getting at.

...The power supply has simply been switched off.

Take your computer for example. Now its "thoughts" and memories are composed of electronic charges. But once you flip the switch then all the "thoughts" and memories are no longer supported.

What happens at death is a bit like that. Commonly the blood supply to the brain is cut-off (eg, heart failure), so oxygen is not supplied to the brain, and oxygen is necessary for supplying energy to make brain function possible.

Whether it is your computer or your lamp, it operates as energy flows in one prong stuck in the electrical outlet, and out the other prong back into the outlet, completing the circuit back to the power company. In that way, it is a good analogy as far as us being connected to the Source, but it falls short in what we are referring to is a totally closed system, whereas with the electric company, the energy used by the computer is removed from that system.

With living beings and the Totality, it is an entirely closed system (using technical language, although philosophically the Totallity can be neither open nor closed). Here is where the second law of thermodynamic steps in. The energy still exists, it just exists elsewhere and/or in a different form.

the energy that has been clustered together in a brain may maintain some cohesiveness even after it is released from the body. (bold added during second quotation)

There's no evidence that it is released from the body, any more than the contents of your computer's RAM memory chips
are released once you turn off its power supply.

The laws of thermodynamics do evidence that the energy is either released from or stored in the body. EEGs evidence absence of brain activity in brain-dead individuals. This much is evidenced, but I suspect what you really mean is that the cohesivness is not evidenced.

Because there is not scientifically acceptable proof of cohesivness ever occurring with the energy once used for thought, I used the term "may" rather than making a more definative statement. By using "may" I ask for the leeway given to non-scientifically backed theories rather than the hard evidence of scientific theories or scientific laws.

I do wonder your take on these various "ghost hunters" who use high tech equipment to try to debunk ghost stories, but sometimes find some pretty interesting evidence that they can not explain. here's one.

The stored memories, however, would not transfer. All that would transfer is the active thought.

Thought isn't possible without memory. That is, the essential part of any thought is memory.

A computer may have Read Only Memory, where long term storage is (for the reader, as I know Kevin already knows this) and this memory remains even after the poser is turned off, and Random Access Memory, which is the part being worked on now, and would be lost if a power failure occurred.

For the computer, both are memory, but a computer doesn't actually do any thinking in the way that a human would, and does not experience the electrical surge of emotion that a human does. Any ghost stories with any credibility to them seem to involve highly emotional states on the part of the deceased at the time of their death. Energy does have different properties to it at different times (volts:amps, etc). I don't have all the knowledge about electricity that I would like to have, but i have enough awareness of it to know it can do some things that look pretty bizarre to the less informed observer, and it is a lot more complicated than the average person is aware of.

[tharpa]

Similar to what Kevin has said, we would have absolutely no identity if we did not have our memories.

Yes, but a sense of identity is an illusory construct in the first place, i.e. interdependent. Identity is one thing that consciousness can display on its screen, but is not the only thing, nor the quintessential essence or nature of consciousness. This is a common sense remark if you think about it. When you watch a movie on TV, there is the TV set, the transmitted signal, the actors making the drama, the story itself, and the cognitive mind that can take this all in and perceive a story, and then the underlying ability to be aware-conscious at all in which 'field' cognition is hosted.

And what exactly is the quintessential essence or nature of consciousness, according to you?

Before you even begin to answer this question you will be wrong. Even if it is a vague explanation it's still wrong because there is no single thing, force, energy, or anything else you come up with that can lay claim to being the "essence of consciousness". There are infinite causes which have brought us to this very moment and each moment that is to follow. To point to something as the essence of consciousness is blasphemy. The nature of consciousness is nature.

Well, that last word is not defined so I cannot evaluate that statement. However, when you say tht thre is no thing as the essence is correct, and what I have been arguing all along. Consciousness, like everthing else including mental events (which some might regard as not being 'things' but which still are particulars, even as mental or non-physical ones should one choose to make that -unnecessary- distinction) is an interdepent 'thing'. So, like a 'river, it both is not a river and yet is a river. That is why one can indeed discuss the 'nature' or 'essence' of a river or consciousness even though they are without inherent existence as such.

The basic nature of consciousness is wakefulness, the root meaning of the word Buddha, for example (Budh). This is not a thing but a quality or property (same difference). In this context of kevin's (wherein it is that which pertains to the awareness possessed by sentient beings), consciousness could be described as the living interface between local and universal, being neither one nor the other, rather their inter-relationship.

A purely local thing is indeed a thing in the main sense of the word in the philosophical context, i.e. it is something which 'exists' in a particular place and time. It is a 'particular' versus a 'unversal' or 'absolute'. However, the particular exists only if there is a vaster, universal context or continuum, i.e. infinity. So infinity and finity are mutually co-dependent. So we have a particular. That cannot have consciousness because consciousness involves access to the space or universal principle, i.e. that which is outside the particular. In the sense of how we experience this as 'living organisms', i.e. complex particulars, the awareness aspect is that which exists in the interplay of self and other, the particular and the universal, and its quality is that of a sense of being aware. An analogy might be that without space around it, including field, sky, air and so forth, it would not be possible for a flower to exist, for colour to be perceived, for perfume to pervade the breezes, for grass to blow in the wind and so forth. So in some sense, awareness is the space principle as it interacts with the form principle, being neither one nor the other.

In this sense also one could say that even materialist scientists have it somewhat right when they say that life is the product of the rubbing together of certain elements, i.e. heat or lightning striking mud and gas and so forth. But what they are missing is the non-form, non-physical elements which are a sine qua non of any particular.

Without them we immediately terminate the status quo state of consciousness.

Says you. I don't see how you get to that.

Imagine if your entire memory were erased every ten seconds. You would have a clean slate or brand new state of consciousness each time this happened. There would be nothing to bridge your former state, with your new state of consciousness. You would effectively be a completely different person each time this happened.

This is a key factor when it comes to maintaing our consciousness and identity. Technically we are a slightly different person with a slightly different degree of consciousness each and every moment, AKA Reincarnation. But because we can recall our past and lay claim to what it contains through our memorys, we can learn from it and make plans for the future. Without our memory we would be no more conscious than a rock, let alone have the capability of self reflection, something which is a key component of higher consciusness.

Memory is just one aspect of individuated consciousness just like chocolate is one aspect of chocolate ice cream even though without it, the ice cream could not be called chocolate ice cream. What's the point?

Therfore it is a logical impossibility to physically reincarnate into some other being or body.

Yes, based on your unjustified assumption, you are correct. Perhaps. It all sounds like guesswork masquerading as logic.

It's far more than an injustified assumption, it is an Absolute Truth. Everything you say exemplifies how you worship the "self" and seek only to preserve the ego. One must come to hate the ego before he can begin to find God.

Well, not at all, Nick. All this stuff about how physical beings might or might not reincarnate is relative. Birth and death is totally in the relative. Not absolute at all. By definition there can be no absolute particular. The absolute is that which is not bound by being a particular of any sort. And furthermore, absolutes have no more solid definitive existence than relatives. They co-exist as mutual interdependents, which means also that neither exist except as mental/cognitive analogies for the purpose of analysis and contemplation by individual consciousnesses like ourselves who exist in the in-between, the inter-relationship.

This is why it is impossible for a sentient being to exist without consciousness since consciousness is the inevitable result of setting up an individuated existence in the universal continuum of infinite space and infinite (timeless) time.

Some might argue with the above, as Kevin sometimes has hinted at, by saying that rocks and flames are essentially identical to sentient beings and therefore have essentially the same consciousness. This is the same as saying that the fingernail has the same level of consciousness as the brain (since that is the main go-to consciousness organ here), even though as we all know, the nails and hair are not part of the living organism in the same way as other parts. In fact, nails and so forth are part of the physical residue of the mind-body being, and so are rocks and so forth. This is speculative and unverifiable (at least by me), but it seems to me that beings create the realms they inhabit, including necessary props of three-dimensional space in the form of various elemental 'things' used to build bodies and the ground on which they walk, the air they breath and all the rest of it. They are mutually interdependent, and so ad infinitum. But the realm in which beings live, although part of an overall awareness-based form-space, particular-universal continuum, is more like the field in which the flower of consciousness grows and blossoms, rather than the consiousness itself. Still, they all go together so ultimately there is little difference. But details are details!

[tharpa]

Some more remarks about memory and the physical organism, hopefully without getting sidetracked by medical formulations in different traditions:

The reason why memory is not purely a mental thing, nor is it simply some sort of encoded whatever stored in the brain much like bits and bytes are stored in binary language on a hard disk, is that the process of consciousness, even before memory comes into it, is a function of being an individuated being in space and time, or what I will now call a 'territorial being'.

There is energy involved in such territory akin to splitting the atom in that the universal and particular, though still all one, are also now two. This energy is essentially the same as that generated by electricity in the interplay between positive and negative. Just as one can identify that flame, heat and light are different properties of the same phenomenon (fire), so also one can identify body, mind and consciousness (mind here being that which accommodates the experience of individual consciousness in a being such as thoughts and memories which happen 'within' the 'larger' mind). Even though such distinctions can be made (also one person from another, one new birth, one new death etc.) essentially they are part of one overall dynamic.

But that dynamic involves a certain definite energy that involves the physical mechanism remaining continuous as such, so that it does not dissolve when we fall asleep or drive a car for example. Just like a river is not really a river since it is in constant change, nevertheless it functions quite beautifully and dependably as such. But there is energy involved: the water continuously flows, the river banks continously contain the water, the sky continuously allows space for movement, the atmosphere continually provides moisture in the mountains which replenish the waters flowing in the river and so forth. All these things are observable, energetic dynamics, part of the interdependent whole.

Emotion is the interplay of territory as acted out by the being in terms of how they relate to territory. Anger is the one that involves the highest amount of solidifying, or creating clear boundaries between self and other. This is why when two people argue they tend to shout louder (solidifying the voice principle) and point fingers at the other to emphasise their difference. In extreme cases one simply destroys the other by killing them. But the overall energy is that of solidification. Passion is that which joins with other, like water drops coming together to form one larger drop, or two people coming together and producing a new life. This principle is one more of melting and joining. It is warmer but not too hot; it is fluid, flexible, accommodating. Ignorance is that which tries to maintain stasis, or status quo, though in an ever-changing world, this is actually far more proactive an approach than is understood by the person applying such a territorial tactic; one is keeping track of space all around all the time whilst also pretending that none of it matters; this is why the result is ignorance. One sees the latter especially in the animal (literal) realm where extraordinary faculties exist in the basic karmic makeup without the being who possesses them having any awareness of them as such (geese navigating, dog olfactory sensitivity, ant architectural and hierarchical sophistication ec.) - and of course the same can be said of many human animals,such as those building skyscrapers, jet fighters and sophisticated new philosophical/scientific theories.

All these tactics involve certain energies, akin to the forces at play in the flowing of a river. Although everyday and ordinary, such forces are considerable, and they are managed by the internal organs of the body including, but by no means limited to, the brain. So the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach and so forth do far more than simply process fuel in order to maintain the machine which supports the brain which produces thought and memory which makes me 'me', although that is not a totally inaccurate way of describing it. Rather they are involved in the various dynamics at play in both creating and navigating through the seemingly solid realm in which we perceive ourselves to be inhabiting moment by moment.

So there is memory involved in how to walk through space, navigate our way around furniture, drive cars, memory in colour perception, taste perception, conversation, even breathing and walking and eating and digesting. There is no end of memory in volved in the process of living and by no means all such 'memory' is stored computer-like in the form of cognitive data alone. The cognitive faculties are perhaps 'higher' compared to others, but they depend on very many 'lower' functions all the time, such functions requiring continuous remembering, learning, adapting, indeed 'memory'.

The reason we feel emotions as emotional, i.e. with a 'feeling' quality is a reflection of the energies at play in the creation/maintenance of territorial being, again the difference between hostility, invitation/sharing and indifference, akin to the difference between turbulent, gently flowing and stagnant waters. So although one can intellectually boil everything down to 'unemotional' intellectual principles - which ultimately are just conceptually contrived linguistic analogies - such as that 'everything involves cause and effect mechanisms (true), this does not mean that sentient existence, when lived in an 'enlightened' fashion, is free from energy and emotion.

When the Buddha was attacked by an elephant, he hitched up his robes and ran fast! His body felt fear, no doubt about it. But such fear did not shake the confidence of enlightened view even as he sprinted out of the path of the enraged, mentally disturbed elephant!

[Kevin Solway]

I'm going to draw some graphics highlighting the difference between the false idea of reincarnation, which is like a railroad track linking serial lives, with the much more complex, and in many ways more simple, real state of affairs.

Later.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

The Dalai Lama's answer was, ". . . I don't know . . . perhaps other planets?"

Isn't the Dalai Lama supposed to be a fully enlightened buddha? If so, how could he not know the answer to something so fundamental?

I believe the answer is that he is not a fully enlightened buddha, but would buddhists believe that it was because nothing is knowable, or that one should not take a firm stand on anything, or something like that?

Perhaps they got the wrong one... (kidding)
link
Although he says he's not the Buddha, I doubt he'd give as silly of an answer as the current DL.
.

[tharpa]

E: that the DL isn't what simplistic ideas of what the DL is does not mean that the DL isn't the DL.

Or: just because some people's notions of tulku and reincarnation are false, doesn't mean that there is not such thing as a tulku or reincarnation (not necessarily the same thing at all btw).

A man should be judged by his work/manifestation, not the labels attached to him.

The DL as a public figure can rightly be criticised for what he says and does.

However, to take such speech or action as evidence that a false notion is false when that notion is not necessarily accurately portrayed and/or understood in the first place is rather a waste of time. Of course, if you agree with Kevin that all buddhists 'believe' in literal reincarnation in the over-simplified way he has characterised it (typical straw man tactic in debates), then it is very easy to be convinced that the entire thing is ridiculous.

However, along with any faults and failings he has exhibited, many who have spent far more time with him than us, and/or studied his lectures and so forth, might feel that he has offered much, and this is why he has become a Nobel Peace laureate and one of the most well-known figures in the world. If it were not for the actions/manifestations he has demonstrated during his life, it is more than likely that at this point, 50 years after his escape from Tibet almost, hardly anyone would have heard of him. Possible yes, in the sense that many people have heard of Britney Spears for essentially frivolous reasons, but not likely given his role as monk and leader of a small exile community of only about 100,000 Tibetans.

It is very easy to judge public figures, and I do it all the time as a citizen of the world. But I know myself that despite any confusions, distortions and outright idiocies surrounding the tulku tradition and so forth, that as a man the Dalai Lama demonstrates far greater discipline and wisdom than I have managed to achieve/manifest even though much of what he says and does I disagree with.

There are always pros and cons and also ALWAYS many things of which we are not aware when we do not stand in another man's shoes, or another woman's pumps for that matter!

Anyway...

[Matt Gregory]

In this case, it would go through a cycle of being heat. The literal meaning of reincarnation is to be made flesh again, so even if we limit the definition to that, it does not exclude that there are periods between when the energy was one person's thought, when it was heat,

And you think that the thought still exists in the heat so that when the heat turns into a thought again (however that is supposed to occur) it will be the same thought? That's silly.

Okay, let's take it the next step to a human baby, or a calf. At one point, there is no baby or calf, or fetus, and at another moment there is. When it was not there, it didn't have any energy in it - but after it was sufficiently there, there was energy in it. The energy didn't just poof from nowhere.

No, your thinking is totally screwed up on this one. All of the pieces of a human baby were there before they came together into the thing we call a "baby". "Baby" is just a slice of reality that we humans think is important. There's no such thing as babies other than the things we designate as babies, so there's nothing that comes into existence when a baby is created other than the concept "baby" in our minds. There's no "babyness" (however you want to think of it: life or personality or whatever) that needs to come from somewhere else to make the baby. All of the pieces of the baby put together are what make the baby. There isn't any single cause that's more important than any other.

Anyway, it seems appearant that the energy we have now is a pretty static quantity, and humans are not so special that our energy should somehow be exempt from this recycling process.

I'm not saying that we are exempt, I'm saying that when the energy that creates our life gets used up and dissipates from us, it no longer has anything to do with our life. It has no memory of it. If it turns into life again, it's just a random occurrence, not worthy of being called reincarnation because no discernible characteristics of the original life can be found in the process. Even if the energy from a life winds up landing in a similar life, there still isn't anything there in that energy causing the similarity. It would just be a blind coincidence.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

And you think that the thought still exists in the heat so that when the heat turns into a thought again (however that is supposed to occur) it will be the same thought? That's silly.

What part of sometimes did I not make clear? Pardon the bad analogy, but it's almost 2 a.m. - sometimes I sleep with my head closest to my closet, other times I sleep with my head closest to the bedroom door. These conditions are mutually exclusive as I can not sleep with my head at both ends of the bed. Similarly, sometimes thought might escape as heat, and other times it might escape as something else - mutually exclusive.

Okay, let's take it the next step to a human baby, or a calf. At one point, there is no baby or calf, or fetus, and at another moment there is. When it was not there, it didn't have any energy in it - but after it was sufficiently there, there was energy in it. The energy didn't just poof from nowhere.

No, your thinking is totally screwed up on this one. All of the pieces of a human baby were there before they came together into the thing we call a "baby".

When part of the "baby" is in the egg, and the other part of the "baby" is in the sperm, it isn't a baby. I think the rest of your statement says essentially that concept.

"Baby" is just a slice of reality that we humans think is important. There's no such thing as babies other than the things we designate as babies, so there's nothing that comes into existence when a baby is created other than the concept "baby" in our minds. There's no "babyness" (however you want to think of it: life or personality or whatever) that needs to come from somewhere else to make the baby.

Well, if it stayed in the composition of a fetilized egg without more energy being added to it in multiple forms, it wouldn't be what people refer to as a baby.

All of the pieces of the baby put together are what make the baby. There isn't any single cause that's more important than any other.

including the added energy.

Anyway, it seems appearant that the energy we have now is a pretty static quantity, and humans are not so special that our energy should somehow be exempt from this recycling process.

I'm not saying that we are exempt, I'm saying that when the energy that creates our life gets used up and dissipates from us, it no longer has anything to do with our life. It has no memory of it. If it turns into life again, it's just a random occurrence, not worthy of being called reincarnation because no discernible characteristics of the original life can be found in the process.

In that case, we simply have different definitions of reincarnation. I can live with that.

Even if the energy from a life winds up landing in a similar life, there still isn't anything there in that energy causing the similarity. It would just be a blind coincidence.

Yeah, pretty much... just a little causality thrown in as far as how where the particular energy came from got to where it went.

[Kevin Solway]

Ok, here are some illustrations as to what I'm talking about.




In the first illustration (Fig. 1) we have the common Tibetan Buddhist understanding of reincarnation. A not unrelated view is held by many Hindus.

It is characterized by a stream of consciousness, with changes happening from one moment to the next, and with more significant changes happening at the time of death. It is at the time of death that the consciousness makes its way into a new body. But with each new life the past life is forgotten, so there are only traces of the past life remaining, and which provide continuity to the process.

Of special note in this illustration are the thick black lines on either side which delineate the stream of consciousness from everything else in the Universe, including the separate streams of consciousness of other people.

These strict demarcations are necessary in this system of thinking, because when a person does something bad, like commits a violent murder, then the karmic consequences of that action must be felt by that individual, and not by some other innocent person who wasn't at all responsible.

In sharp contrast, consider the real state of affairs, as illustrated in Fig 2.



Here we see there is no delineation between one person's stream of consciousness and that of another person. Each makes inputs into the other. Some of the criminal goes into making the victim. Something of the teacher goes into the student. Something of the parent in the child, etc.

And so, when it is taught, in the language of reincarnation, that the karmic consequence of deeply ignorant acts is rebirth in hell, we can see what this means in a very real and direct sense. When a torturer tortures a victim, he is "reborn" as that suffering victim immediately, in that very act, and regardless of any other consequences. You won't hear this taught in Tibetan Buddhism, neither in the language of reincarnation nor by any other means of expression.

There is no place in the real state of affairs for a solid and persistent ego or self, not even if it is disguised as a stream of consciousness in the manner of the Tibetan Buddhists or the Hindus. Such linearity cannot be found in Nature.

[tharpa]

Kevin, great post.

If there is no linearity in nature how come:

you do not wake up as a different body/person each day? or:
how does the river Thames continue from one moment to the next, at least for a while?
how does the sky not interchange with earth, earth remaining earth, heaven remaining heaven?

Even though there is no Kevin, yet there is.

Continuity is the natural result of impermanence, which is continuous change. In terms of (development of) view:

First there is a river, then there is no river, then there is.
First there is a person, then there is no person, then there is.
First there is birth/being, then there is no birth/being, then there is.

Form is emptiness; emptiness itself is form; form is no other than emptiness; emptiness is no other than form.

'Reality' has been described as 'orderly chaos'.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

I know I'm not Kevin, but this is obvious. (I'm rather sure he'll answer you himself anyway though.)

If there is no linearity in nature how come:

Look more closely at figure 2 (BTW - good graphics Kevin)

The largest arrows ar essentially nose to tail. It is going in a flow. There are offshoots as there are feeding streams, but largely the flow has a direction.

you do not wake up as a different body/person each day?

There is continuity - it's the "glue" of cause and effect. In a way you do wake up as a new man every day, but that new man is a product of the old man that you were a moment before.

or:
how does the river Thames continue from one moment to the next, at least for a while?

The Thames flows because it was caused to flow by previous flowing activity. Nothing has occurred to change its flowing nature.

how does the sky not interchange with earth, earth remaining earth, heaven remaining heaven?

The sky and the earth do interchange with each other. Much of each molecule is made up of space, and that space is the same as the space in the sky, and there is smoke and volcanic ash, and various other particles of earth floating about in the sky. What you perceive are concentrations of where the earth is and where the sky is. There are various forces such as magnetics and gravitation that guide things to be basically where they are.

I suspect in this context, by "heaven" you mean outer space?

[tharpa]

Yes, Elizabeth, nicely said, but you still have not identified the nature of the 'glue'. What holds things together for a while? Of course one can keep repeating 'causes', but that is mainly a mechanistic or definitional (i.e. abstract) term which also explains why things fall apart at the same time.

First there is a river, i.e. mundane perception of things as solid, real, existential.

Then, through analysis of many different types, we can deconstruct it, similar to how you deconstruct the difference between sky and earth. (Actually, heaven and earth have not only literal but psychologica meaning, i.e. mind and body respectively and the latter meaning is more important than the physical-outer alone.)

Then, having deconstructed them, for example by perceiving (not just thinking) how everything is interdependently caused, as Kevin's diagram does a reasonable job depicting, one is still left with the fact that even though there is no river as such as it appears in terms of 'common sense' (literally), nevertheless there IS a river, which only a lunatic would deny.

And just as a river continues as such given certain conditions, no less does a human being wake up as more or less the same one each morning even though the very existence of human - or any other - being can be no less deconstructed than any other composite, interdependently caused person, place or thing or thought.

Maintaining that any directly progressive notion of incarnation is ipso facto false because of the deconstructibilty of all inter-related phenomena still does not explain how they hang together as such. Without such balance, deconstruction becomes a form of 'falling into the trap of nihilism', aka one of the two main extremes (view).

That is why it is fair to say that simplistic notions of incarnation are false; but it is no less false to maintain that there is no possible continuity from one moment into the next. Since the birth of a new being is the result of the moment preceeding such birth and so on and so on, how can one say that it is any different from any other moment or event? One cannot.

All the reincarnation doctrine basically says is that the birth of any being is dependent upon many causes just like anything else, but particular 'being-related' causes rather than just any old causes that happen to be floating around. There are causes that result in beings and causes that result in rocks. Although the underlying mechanism can be described to be the same, yet there is difference between various results.

Just as the same underlying causes when explained in abstract produce both plates, cups and saucers meaning they are essentially the same, neverthless a cup is not a plate, so some particular causes are involved that create such differences.

So just pointing out that everything is causes and has no inherent existence - which is true - does not explain everything about everything. Certainly it does not explain why an orange tastes the way it does, nor the vividness of its colour. So abstract analysis is only part of the experiential picture, not all.

Or to put it in buddhist jargon: it is fantastic to analyse the egolessness/non-existence of apparent phenomena; but also one needs to pick up on the suffering involved in sentient existence, the heart quality, the life journey quality, which all of us, no matter which of the various types of psychological realms we inhabit, share and which are an indispensible aspect of examining the story of life, its journey or path quality.

Ultimately speaking - at least the way I see it personally - reincarnation is just a fancy way of saying that all lives have storylines of sort, and the way these play out is meaningful and important, hence the value of contemplating the realms in this life, because understanding how inner and outer territory mirror each other, especially in terms of how they feel (i.e. how it FEELS to be in hell, not how it is defined abstractly) puts us in touch with the real story, or to use an infamous word, how this 'incarnation' is actually doing, and what sort of continuity (or realm) is being engendered moment by moment.

[Kevin Solway]

If there is no linearity in nature how come:

you do not wake up as a different body/person each day?

In a way we do wake up as a different person, but we regularly feel we are related to the previous person through our memories. For this reason we usually decide to keep the same name. However, many people, as you know, change their name, since they think their old one is no longer fitting.

[P.S. It is my contention that the "bardo" between lives, as outlined in the Tibetan book of the dead, is meant to refer to sleep and dreaming states, between each life of the new day.]

how does the river Thames continue from one moment to the next, at least for a while?
how does the sky not interchange with earth, earth remaining earth, heaven remaining heaven?

Even though there is no Kevin, yet there is.

You will notice that in the second diagram there are in fact two different kinds of linearity. Firstly, there are the arrows themselves, all being straight lines. And then there is the meandering cloud-like shape, with its forks, which looks a bit like a river, but with no well-defined banks, and which represents a kind of summary of the arrows - as if the arrows were perhaps viewed from afar - like the group of stars called the plaedies, which can appear like a ball of fuzz to the naked eye, but is individuated into many bright stars through binoculars.

Either of the two linear forms, the arrows or the river, are created by the mind establishing boundaries for the convenience of the moment.

I purposely drew the arrows in a grey colour, rather than hard black, to suggest that they are not permanent things. Rather, as I say, they are only creations of convenience, and are provisional on other representations not being more useful - ie, perhaps different arrows, or even different symbols or different styles of representation altogether.

The arrows in the second illustration are in fact quite fanciful. For example, there is one branch for "children and students", and a completely separate one for "victims". But we can be sure there would be children and students numbering among the victims, so it can be seen that these separate branches are only created for their usefulness, just the same as all things.

The most important truth represented by the second illustration is flexibility and adaptability. We can look at the individual arrows, or we can look at the general outline of the river, and switch between the two effortlessly. We are not put into a straightjacket as it were.

The free-view in Fig. 2. is contrasted with the rigidity, the tunnel-vision, and the untruth represented in Fig. 1.

Maintaining that any directly progressive notion of
incarnation is ipso facto false because of the deconstructibilty

In the second illustration there is a definite notion of progression, but the progression branches. That branching is what makes it realistic compared to the popular Buddhist and Hindu view of things. And even the branches are permeable and shared with others.

. . . does not explain how they hang together as such.

All you need to know is that things are caused to hang together. Your mind is caused to bundle things together, to distill form, to create lines in the sand, because it is a useful survival tool.

[Kevin Solway]

Further, regarding the process of simplification.

Fig. 2 contains both the detailed (the arrows) and simplified (the branching river) view.

Let's simplify the branching river view even further and represent it as "Y". This still represents quite a lot with regard to the workings of cause and effect. But if we simplify it even further, we get to a simple "|", which is starting to look a lot like Fig. 1, and it doesn't convey much of any use at all.

"The past causes the future" is about the only thing of worth we can get out of it.

Imagine a tree, with with all its complex of branches, leaves, birds and insects, etc. We can simplify a tree in our minds, reducing it down to a trunk which splits into a few branches. But when we simplify it even further we end up with just a trunk. And a trunk on its own doesn't represent a tree very well at all.

That's probably what happened historically with the teaching of reincarnation. The teaching may have been complete hundreds, or thousands of years ago - perhaps in the mind of the Buddha - but somewhere along the line it became oversimplified, and the oversimplification stuck as the overriding view, misleading all who have anything to do with it.

[tooyi]

Tharpa,

If there is no linearity in nature how come:

you do not wake up as a different body/person each day?

Also, sometimes the person finds herself in a 'junction' where they are not quite sure, who they really are, anyway. For some there is enough discontinuity present for them to be diagnosed with multiple personalities.

To draw a computer programming analogy, you are just a reference to a point in evaluation of an expression but there is no substance for the self there to speak of.

Because you don't see it, you will immediately arrive to the next hallucination of reality about the nature of what was just said, and like all hallucinations, there will be an armageddon in the end, until the world begins anew.