GENIUS FORUMS

"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 pro...

"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 ...

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....

"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 buildi...

Kevin, the reason they don't understand is because you are not discussing the specific term 'reincarnation' or 'sentient being' rather something you have invented yourself based upon generalisations derived from your contemplation of c&e. You have appropriated a term, totally changed its context...

Kellly, nice post. You wrote: "The true heart is wisdom: the understanding of Ultimate Reality - which is absolutely rational, relying not on emotion at all. " True enlightened heart* is wisdom, compassion and power. In Mahayana imagery this is exemplified as: Manjusri, Avalokiteshvara and...

Clyde, I intend to spend some time tomorrow reading through your website.

In response to your delightful poem, I offer the following in spontaneous reply:

Tonight snow is falling all around
Chattering multiplicities particularly articulating
The all-pervasive silence of alpha-purity.

"Instead, they believe that reincarnation happens at the end of life, into a fresh corpse. And only sentient beings can do it. " Like I said several times earlier, you are not discussing the incarnation of sentient beings, like cows and Kevins, on any specific level, simply saying, on an e...

Korean poet Ko Un: " A baby dragonfly perches on a bullrush tip The entire world surrounds it, watching." ..... " Compassion is Tenderness of heart. You say the Tao is possible without tenderness? With that sort of Tao, what petty larceny do you intend?" ......

K: "Firstly, duality is true, since it is a creation of consciousness. And consciousness is a creation of the rest of Nature. However, it is true that things aren't inherently existent. I have proven this to myself, and I am a being capable of creating duality, so I know your above statement is...

Cheap points, all of them. Try harder. Or stop trying so hard. Remember the recommended prescription!

Clyde: thanks for pointing out the pith issue.

"I have had exactly the same discussion I am having with tharpa with many Tibetan Buddhists. " The fact that each discussion is 'exactly the same' from your point of view is evidence of the dogmatic rigidity of your particular approach. It is hilarious in some sense that you, a proponent o...

Kevin: cow DNA is both the cause of cowness and also the result of factors that engender a cow being. All you have said, therefore, is that a cow and a human are different. That is rather obvious. However, the reincarnation issue is not so much about whether Kevins reincarnate directly into corpses ...

Kevin, in terms of the cow-human business, what I am getting at is this: because part of the topic involves 'incarnation' or the more infamous 're-incarnation' (same difference), it seems that there is more than simply cause and effect to be discussed - or perhaps less. In other words, c&e cover...

Kevin, thxs for your longer post in reply to mine above. I don't have time now to respond in bullet-fashion (but might later), however one thing: it seems clear to me from that post that really what you are talking about it cause and effect, of which various notions of reincarnation and rebirth were...

Afterthough-sidebar: Although I cannot 'prove' some of the things I have stated (usually as tangential examples and to keep things interesting with anecdotes etc.), still I think the following questions about 'evidence' or 'proof' are germane in principle. For example (Kevin or anyone else): Can you...

Next: 'if a reasonable amount, then personality.. would be constant'. No, logically there is no reason for that conclusion at all. You said that the identity or personality of the person was not transferred from one body to another. That is, "Kevin" would become "Mary". This mea...

tharpa, I'm getting bogged down here. What, specifically, is transmitted during reincarnation? What are the sufficient conditions of bodily reincarnation? Would the "superphysical" (I use this new term loosely, since I use physical in a broader sense than you) transmission of a single mem...

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...

'since there is no proof of Y therefore X must be true.' If there no proof that something exists, it is a fair use of language to say that it is true that it doesn't exist. I have qualified the statement a number of times. For example, it's true that it is not raining outside my window, since there...

Trevor, your premise that there is an equivalent to medieval angels on heads of pin is no more than a vague generalisation and furthermore, I have no desire to convince him of anything in that regard. As I said in one post back there, I have come to the conclusion that he is expressing the truth as ...

Trevor, I might be backing down, but I find most of Kevin's points non-sequiturs and thus far too tedious to refute point by point. I myself have pondered the six realms and other related topics virtually non-stop for over thirty years. This does not mean I have the ability to express my view well, ...

kevin wrote: "Imagine you are a medical doctor and someone comes to you with a disease for which you have the cure. To be consistent with your reasoning, you would think, "Well, there's fundamentally no difference between these people being alive or dead, so I'll just let them die." T...

On reviewing the thread thus far, I must say that I am sorry I (and others) seemed to have overlooked Clyde's solid, sane, gentle and very intelligent contributions. For my part, I apologise. I also apologise for the strain 'of irrational exuberance' (to use Greenspan's term in the mid 1990's), howe...