[Buddha-l] rebirth

[Joy Vriens]

F.K. Lehman (F.K.L. Chit Hlaing) wrote:

>      It seems to me (and Joy Vriens's comment yesterday may have been 
> intended along the same lines) that scholars of religion often fail to 
> take note of the fact that any religious teaching occurs in a cultural 
> context, and in that regard it will make all sorts of background 
> assumptions that are more or less/ secular/ in nature. It is in that 
> sense that one can say that rebirth may indeed have been not a  'part 
> of' the Buddha's teaching (doctrine).

Especially, considering the fact that these secular aspects are to be 
transcended or abandoned etc. Why would we try to intimately know, 
consciously or not, rebirth if it doesn't serve our search for an 
absolute? Otherwise, we might for the same reason as well explore the 
very depths of desire, consciously or not.

> All religions known to me 
> certainly, for instance, assume the phenomenal existence of a material 
> world, whatever transcendent value they may assign to it. Likewise, they 
> all assume that, in some sense or other human beings and other 'beings' 
> exist; and all sorts of assumptions go along with this, such as, for 
> example, ideas about how beings (I suppose, for Buddhists, I am talking 
> about/ sattva/ -- let me use the Pali I am used to).

Exactly. We could be invaded by extraterrestrians, immortality could be 
invented, rebirth could be proven or disproven etc. It wouldn't change 
the ways for *us* to get rid of our dukkha.

> in this connection, 
> then, if in ancient India everyone supposed that in some sense or other 
> life/consciousness.whatever was not utterly over-with when the body 
> dies, then no wonder Buddhism adopted the idea (incorporated, not 
> 'adopted', really). What is interesting here, though, is that He 
> radically changed the idea none the less: ' Well, it may well be that 
> 'it' returns, so to say, but not quite;, for there's no 'you/me' 
> involved at all, but only the illusion of 'you/me'. Moreover, whether by 
> the Lord Buddha Himself or by Buddhist thinkers afterwards, Buddhism (at 
> least the Theravada I know best) has struggled ever since with what this 
> might mean, especially reducing the 'it' to a mere collection of/ 
> khanda/s with the attendant argument about how, ultimately, what one 
> might call the joint trajectory (in/ samsara/) of associated/ khanda/s 
> comes apart (?/nibbana/?).

It would be a very similar experience stretched over a couple of lifes 
instead of over various stages of one life.

> On this view (which I have discussed over and 
> over with learned Burmese scholar monks at home, it is clear at least 
> that it makes little if any difference whether one imagines 'rebirth' as 
> an actual returning ('joint/ khanda/ trajectory, as above -- a rotten 
> metaphor, of course) owing to/ tanha/ and its associated illusions, or 
> as something more abstract such as, let us say provisionally, the effect 
> of my attachment in this life in the form of the generation (I use this 
> word in the computational, not the biological sense) of further 
> existences of new beings (_/sattva/_); one way or other, it results in 
> further/ dukkha/ (I detest the translation of this word as 'suffering' 
> because (a) it presupposes a whole mess of Christian moral-ethical 
> considerations, and (b) its proper range or scope includes such 
> relatively petty things as 'problems' -- in Burmese, when we want to say 
> 'No problem', as in replying to a request, we often saqy '/dukkha mahyi/ 
> ', lit. 'there's no problem'.

I used worry in my latest post, because I tried to translate it from the 
French "inquiétude" (in opposition to quiétude) and I think its 
translation doesn't need anything more or less dramatic than that. It's 
basically suffering caused by the lack or the impossibility to accept. 
One can still go through various pains, physical or psychological like 
the loss of a loved one, sickness, death etc. but without "inquiétude".

>      By the way, the same general form of argument applies, I think, to 
> the [lace of 'Gods/gods' (/deva, devata/). They are imagined, in quite a 
> secular sense, to exist, as species of beings -- in their case of great 
> power and long life. But, and this is the significant, doctrinal turn 
> for Buddhism, they are stripped conceptually of any transcendental or 
> moral value, so that, once again, in an important way, they are not 
> essential to the teaching.

Yes they are the forces that rule our lifes, the forces majeures over 
which we have no control and that we can only accept. They can cause us 
pain, but it is up to us whether we let them disturb our "quiétude".

Joy