tharpa wrote:the difference between a 'mental' (your word) and 'physical' realm is not one that is recognised in the buddhist tradition.
The Buddhist tradition does recognize the difference between a human being who is a cow (mentally in the cow-realms) and a normal cow which grazes grass in the field.
That is the difference I am talking about. The human being who is a cow is a cow mentally rather than physically, since he doesn't have four stomachs.
By the way, I think your underlying point is excellent and I agree with it. But your statements about buddhists etc. that you used to bolster it are clearly ill-informed and inaccurate.
Ok, I will try to make my point clearer.
Kevin Solway wrote:Then we need to discuss this in more detail, because I am certain they are completely different.
Fine. And in that spirit I will answer a few of the many points below and hopefully at the end suggest one to continue with, otherwise it is simply too complicated in this medium.
I don't think it's too complicated. We just need to keep it simple. As far as I'm concerned, reincarnation or rebirth is as simple as cause and effect, which is extremely simple.
the intention of the previous DL carries through into the next.
Let's assume, for argument's sake, that the intention of the Dalai Lama is the survival and the spread of wisdom. Then the
best person to be a successor to a Dalai Lama would be
the wisest living person who has the same intention. This person may be much more wise than the Dalai Lama, and their intention may be vastly stronger and more pure.
This person may or may not be a student of the Dalai Lama.
This would be rational and sensible behaviour that I could respect.
But instead the Dalai Lama dies, and then they go looking for some infant child in a far-off province, to become the new Dalai Lama. This is of course madness which is designed to serve the fairy-tale dreams of lower-realm beings who believe that a person can only be reborn after they physically die.
This delusion should be nipped in the bud immediately.
The earliest 'tulkus' often 're-incarnated' in ways you describe somewhat below, namely into their closest disciples at the point of death.
Then they were closer to the truth than modern Buddhists.
But the argument could also be made that such transferences happened all the time.
Rather, it
only happens all the time. There is no other way it could happen. This is the fault of modern Buddhism, in thinking it could happen any other way. They are missing the whole point and therefore missing the boat altogether.
However, there is a difference between influence and actual rebirth, although it is quite possible that the two are part of an overall continuum ultimately.
There's no difference between influence (or cause) and rebirth. The more you cause something to happen, the more of you is in that thing. Until Buddhists understand this point there will be no Buddhism.
I believe the current situation is that true Buddhism is dead.
Equating reincarnation with influence is perhaps negating the meaning of either word. The concern is not semantics, but accuracy.
Then we need to clarify this further, for cause and effect is the very substance of reincarnation.
It is the loss of this understanding that has caused Buddhism to die.
Kevin Solway wrote:The conglomeration known as "Kevin" is able to cohere while this body is alive because the causes are in place for it to cohere.
Well, maybe you could say more about the causes and conditions that made up the matrix at the time of your conception or birth as 'Kevin'? Or what happens at the time of the death of 'Kevin'?
The primary conglomeration "Kevin" dies when my brain stops functioning sufficiently to cohere memories and thoughts. In some people this can happen years before the death of the body.
Once the brain stops functioning then memory is lost and the personality dissipates.
[For the reader, a "tulku" is a "reincarnate lama", and a lama is a certified Buddhist teacher.]
Not precise. A tulku is a 'nirmanakaya' or emanation of enlightened awareness (buddha).
If this were strictly true then all people in the world who have enlightened awareness would be regarded as tulkus. But I've never heard the term used like that before.
Whether or not they are the same person as before is somewhat irrelevant. But the karmic conditions are there - often in the form of a group of people and/or institutionally configured group of people who both need and want a bodhisattva in their midst, i.e. it is those people who comprise much of the causes and conditions for that 'tulku' to be reborn and lead/serve them as a bodhisattva.
I agree that communities try to create a "tulku" - a wise person - to the best of their ability, by creating the proper conditions of education, training, etc.
But this is simple cause and effect. There's absolutely no need to dress it up by pretending that the individual is linked to a specific lama who died years ago. It's exactly the same as when we as a community decide we want to produce more Professors of, say, physics, and so set all the mechanisms in place to produce them. We don't need to pretend that a particular Professor of physics is the reincarnation of Einstein.
Actually, it's quite a nifty karmic system, if you think about it.
It would be a lot more nifty if it were true rather than a social fiction or a fairy-tale, like Father Christmas.
my main point doctrinally is that it is not a very good characterisation of the tradition.
I agree that the modern idea of reincarnation (eg, wait till a person dies before looking for their reincarnation) is not supported by Buddhist scripture and philosophy.
Those Buddhists of whom you speak have only extremely vague and unformed thoughts. They don't really know what they are thinking. Unfortunately they don't have the clarity of thought of people in the human realm. That's why they continue to believe contradictory things.
This is just vague generalisation. You might be right. But you cite no specific examples. As such, I regard the above as no more than vague propoganda and pass on...
Many years ago I had a discussion with Geshe Legden - one of the most highly regarded of the Tibetan teachers at the time, and ex-Abbot of one of the big monasteries. I explained to him my understanding of reincarnation, and used the example of the candle flame to make my point. "With one candle flame I can light many others, even while the same candle is still burning. It is exactly the same with all things, including people", I said.
"No, people are different", he said.
But people aren't any different. Cause and effect doesn't distinguish one thing from another. It operates on all things alike.
Despite that fundamental disagreement he still tried to convince me that I should become a Buddhist teacher.
you seem to have a great Bee in your Bonnet about 'modern Buddhists'
I just think they're wasting all the good effort that went into the creation of the historical philosophy. In my view it has all been turned into pap. Intelligent people who have potential for growth in wisdom visit a modern Buddhist community, and come away from it repulsed by what they have seen.
Another example. I was once at a public lecture given by the Dalai Lama. At the end of his colourless talk, he took questions from members of the audience, which they had written on slips of paper. One question was, "The population of the world is increasing. If reincarnation is true, then where do all the extra 'souls' come from - since more people are being born than are dying."
The Dalai Lama's answer was, ". . . I don't know . . . perhaps other planets?"
What a load of crap!
The question could have been answered perfectly well with a simple explanation of cause and effect, but the opportunity went begging.
whether or not, as you keep maintaining (incorrectly), this is what 'buddhists' 'believe'.
I think it's clear that they do believe. If you put it to an ordinary Buddhist that their teacher may have already reincarnated many times, even while they are still alive, they will have no stomach for it.
For me in going through the above, I feel that one thing that one might consider contemplating rather than the issue of re-incarnation from one to another is that of
a) what incarnates from moment to moment
Whatever exists.
b) when we as humans (to keep it simple) are born, where do we come from in terms of karmic conditions
We come from our causes. Our ultimate cause is the rest of the Universe (which can be called "God").
and is it beyond the pale to consider the possibility that some of the extant causes and conditions that essentially help to fashion that new being might have come from i) things that happened before that new birth and ii) beings whose influence or karma preceeded that birth?
Yes, those things are part of the rest of the Universe.
c) What might or might not continue karmically speaking - to use buddhist jargon - after the moment of physical death?
We leave behind us the effects of our life - either wise or ignorant, depending on how we lived our life.
Wise effects dispel the illusion of life and death, gain and loss, while ignorant effects continue the illusion (samsara).
d) related/implied in the above: is our life merely materialistic/biological, i.e. we are born as physical organisms, no more nor less, and die as such, little more than highly complex leaves on the tree of cosmic life?
Yes, but no thing has a beginning or an end.
e) if there is such a thing as karma that 'exists' - so to speak - from one moment into the next, what is that 'mechanism' or 'process'?
The mechanism or process is cause and effect.
Karma is essentially ignorance in the sense that Buddhas are free of it. Specifically, it is the web of cause and effect that is composed of, and breeds, ignorance.
f) is there any value to the traditional buddhist notion/teaching of samsara as the spinning process that creates and perpetuates birth from moment to moment and life to life, along with its fundamentally ignorant/confused/selfish/flawed/individualistic basis as being the 'gravity principle' that propels the snowball of samsara downhill as it thus accumulates more 'conglomerating' causes and conditions for ever more birth/rebirth in this so-called 'samsara', which is not a thing or place, but rather a process?
See above.
[Edited for grammar]
