[Buddha-l] How Khushwant Singh does

[JKirkpatrick]

On Aug 8, 2011, at 0:47, Erik Hoogcarspel <jehms at xs4all.nl>
wrote:
 
> Pain for who? I guess the mother has to endure most. I wonder
if it is 
> the pain that makes thinking about death so terrible. Heidegger
called 
> death the possibility of all impossibilities. But death also
puts in 
> perspective that which one takes generally for absolute: ones
own existence.

I think birth is traumatic for everyone involved. My mother
survived the birth of her first child, sadly the child was
stillborn. For me it was "a piece of cake" apart from a slight
scarring around the ears! I think I must have got the painful end
of the deal there come to think of it - story of my life! She was
up and about the next day which was very rare in 1949 apparently.
Meanwhile it was a few years before I could get up and about.

My point is that its maybe interesting to compare our social
attitudes/perspectives about death with our social attitudes
about birth. Usually I get the idea that people think Birth is a
miracle and proof of the existence of a benevolent god in some
way. 
Usually of course its those People who don't give birth who get
terribly sentimental about it. Contrast this with the dull morbid
depression that seems to surround death and how it gives rise to
the philosophical speculation and religious beliefs that try to
cope with it.

Maybe I'll just have to console myself with the idea that, to
misquote Rab Tagore "I probably enjoyed birth so I expect I'll
enjoy death too!" But maybe all this is a little too trivial for
an academic site so just to get serious for one minute I would
like to point out that you could call birth "the possibility of
all impossibilities".

Dave Living/Aryacitta
 		 	   		  
________________________
 
Some psychological counselors say that people can recall their
birth traumas under the right techniques,  but I suspect these
views are off the mark. My guess is that our cognition cannot
recall birth because we had no thought structures by which to
recall it. 

Maybe emotion--feeling--templates existed at the time. Often I've
wondered why the idea of "light" has become such a popular and
accepted symbol for being wised-up about things. Could it be that
in the uterus we only have filtered light, if any--and so the
emergence of ourselves at birth introduces us to light.  But what
did that feel like? Loss? lack?  Didn't Freud say that the
feeling of 'spiritual' bliss was the oceanic sensation
experienced in the womb?

I suspect that Freud missed it, there.  Instead, such a feeling,
as some Buddhist texts claim, could be the result of being freed
from the thought chatter of everyday life, freed from prapanca,
freed from ruminating, freed from self vs. other-- via a
cultivated meditation practice. Nursing infants surely don't seem
to be suffering from prapanca or monkey mind. If they do suffer,
it's from colic (if they are not being starved to death by lack
of social --er--entitlements.) 
 
I don't see how fetuses could be said to 'know' anything about
meditation or 'seeing the light' as they exist in uterine
consciousness until birth.....a protected pre-survival state. We
know that they are not always at rest, judging by what happens if
we eat foods or drink drinks that disturb their peace. (Some
folks claim that they can teach their fetuses language while
unborn. I'm not convinced.)

So for me, birth is as unknown as death. Therefore, as
experiences, they don't exist. I don't refer to experience
leading up to death, or to the after-effects of birth because we
simply cannot conceive of the latter in cognitive terms. 
But birth per se, and death per se, I think we know not.  

Cognitively yours
Joanna