[Buddha-l] Re: Magic

[Vicente Gonzalez]

Piya wrote:

PT> I think an important point is that one should not merely "inherit" the
PT> notions of karma and rebirth, taking them for granted, but to question and
PT> counter-question regarding them so that one understands them in a
PT> deepening way.

yes, I agree very much. And I suspect that if we would be now in a
eastern country, then probably one would stress a non-rebirth approach
to polish our understanding. But in the West it is the opposite case.
Here we had suffered and authentic brainwashing with this topic.
And despite the many comments of greatest western philosophers, still
there is a common feeling to think in non-rebirth as something
natural.
Many times there is not a logical intellectual attitude with this
topic. It is difficult to understand, because in the philosophical
side, today the DNA mechanics and physics laws can drive us to rebirth
in a better way.  However, it is not enough for many people.
Neither the philosophers of the past who remember us that non-rebirth
is the more illogical belief, with holes for logics and understanding.
There is not only one great western philosopher defending non-rebirth
in front rebirth. However, most of them defended rebirth when the
topic was touched
 
Also, we forgot the non-rebirth was imposed after a hard therapy which
started in 5th century and arriving until 18th century. First
Concilliums were not able to eradicate this, and it was quite present
in Europe like shows Catars and Albigensis heresies in 13th century.
Finally, the Inquisition blazes were the definitive tool, killing not
only heretics and philosophers but specially all the local healers in
towns. They were the real keepers of rebirth belief, shared with to
the rest of the human kind. Millions of people were killed in this
formidable holocaust of Religious purpose; from 8 to 50 million
depending authors. It is the greatest genocide of the human history,
bigger than Jewish holocaust, Pol Pot or Stalin. And the rebirth
belief was another center of this genocide. In this way, we are
collectively conditioned by non-rebirth, and today many people demands
some proof to consider the philosophical side of non-rebirth.
However, logics would point us in the reverse direction to request
proofs for non-rebirth.

As a philosopher said, most times it's not our intelligence or the
difficulty inherent in some problem, which impedes knowing the truth.
Most times are our own ideas established "a priori". So a very good
idea is looking the world as a complete new thing.


PT> Another way of approaching the two important teachings is given in the four
PT> solaces found at the end of the Kesaputtiya Sutta (better known as
PT> Kalama Sutta) (A  3.65).  This very important section of the Sutta
PT> is often overshadowed by taking the  10  points as a sort carte
PT> blanche for anything-goes vague Buddhism.

I agree again. But for some strange reason, we don't apply the Kalama
advices to check some beliefs already present among us.


best regards,