Being that you are banned, I suppose this reply is for the general audience. The word 'life' seems to imply a great deal: mind, body and the world. I don't believe those survive death. What the mystic might suggest is that the core of your being is timeless and eternal, which is awareness.
I think it's been mentioned before, either here or sone other place I have read, if there is life after death it sort of defeats the purpose of both Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Kind of like a sports team and their coach during practice. Every time the team stuffs up the manouver the coach says "Ok! Let's try that again one more time!".
Built in obsolescence. Perhaps if lifespan a little longer and people are a bit fitter make bit more sense to try a new model I guess Currently I think the turn over to short a time frame Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I'm 60 years old. It would be difficult to list everything I've read on the subject in my lifetime. But nothing stands out in my mind as compelling. My personal observations lead me to the conclusion that "mind" is a function of the brain. Once the mechanical/physical activity in the brain ends, so does the mind.
But if life repeats then it's like playing a game, and each time you play you have to start from first principals with no memory of what position you're playing, or the rules, or for that matter even what game. Unless there is a continued sense of having played before, and retaining something into the next turn around the board, then nothing can be gained by repeat playing. Unless it is by blind luck that your latest iteration does something that a greater power has been wanting you to do (to achieve enlightenment, or whatever) such that you can now stop playing. Unless you can remember your previous lives and learn from them, what hope development?
In short, if our game plan never changes (namely the pursuit of desires solely in relation to me or things related to me), what is the requirement of retaining anything? If I sincerely want to pursue (false) egotistical pursuits, I will be inhibited by past information, not empowered by it. How can I enjoy all that being a child offers if I am haunted by the recollections of old age? If I am a despotic leader of true intention, how can my memories of being a cockroach help me (or vice versa)? Even in this one life, our shoulders struggle under the chips upon them. To function in this way and thus avoid taking birth complete with the cumulative neurosis of more than a billion life times, we require an empowered sense of ignorance, not enlightenment .... namely I am this body and things in relation to it are mine. If all we have learnt from a life are more effective ways to hone our desires (namely the pursuit of name, fame, adoration and distinction) through the agency of a dead lump of matter (ie the body) in a lifestyle that revolves around eating, sleeping, mating and defending, we have not effectively learned anything worth retaining. In fact, if it's our desire to seek satisfaction like that, we are best served by coming to round two (or two billion and two) with a clean slate. You have it back to front. The first point lies in perceiving the nature of desire and this world (which, by and large, is a proposition technically available to a vast majority of humans for a vast majority of their life..... even if an overwhelming vast majority consistently and repeatedly fail to get it). The final point, however, lies in perceiving the nature of one's identity. Even if you just want to talk of Buddhism, the four noble truths begin with the first one. Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.
And thus one will not learn, I agree. But if one wants to learn then surely retention is the best method. Otherwise, yet another clean slate simply leads to one going round the merry-go-round until blind luck puts you in a body able and willing to dedicate to an alternative. Past memories would help in the same way that having no memories do not... it removes you from the merry-go-round of ignorance and would show you, if it were true, that there is more than simply the single life to enjoy. If we lack the memories then we simply go round and round. We only learn what we do in life because we think it is our only one. Lack of memory enslaves us in repeating with only luck giving us a way out. If we had memories we would at least understand the game we are playing. At the moment we can't even know we are playing a game. What you see as a failure to perceive is more accurately the failure to accept one particular viewpoint as being the truth. Without those memories there is nothing to support that viewpoint other than confidence and personality, and arrogance of those who have accepted that viewpoint that it is the correct one. And that is but one viewpoint. In short, without the memories of former lives we can not know the game is the subset of games that allow for life after death, or reincarnation etc. Even if we did have memories of reincarnation, all that does is remove the subset of games that don't allow for it within their rules. One would still up against the same issues, though, with trying to promote the rules of the game being as one claims.
Seeing as how you have no memory of a previous life, then you're just making stuff up that sounds nice. Even the football team remembers what they did last time so that they can improve on it.
Ok, we will run with the notion of one who wants to learn. Are you saying that one is required to know minute details of their previous lives (eg. Skill sets etc) or are you saying its sufficient to perceive the general mechanism of one self moving through different bodies? That is debatable. Given that desire is the culprit, knowledge is not necessarily the panacea for higher action. For instance most cigerette smokers are not liberated from their vice by the mere knowledge it causes cancer. If we lack the right desire, we go round and round. You are assuming that if we get "the facts", then automatically our desire will follow suit. Human nature clearly illustrates otherwise. Your statement does not make any sense ... but as far as learning goes, its part nature, part nurture .... leading horses to water and all that. Once again, its desire, not memory, that does the whole enslaving thing. To say that luck is the only tenable alternative, is to assume that any other solution is prohibited from being external to one's self. Given that the problem is essentially that of being self absorbed for all the wrong reasons, its not clear why one would unnecessarily raise the bar like that. Even in the matrix someone else had to offer the red or the blue pill. If one's desire is to sincerely play it in all its repetitive glory, that option must be not only available, but also dominant and commonplace. Its kind of difficult to be an effective soccer hooligan in the off season or in the USA. Lol You kind of jumped the gun in establishing your position as meritous ..... much less a challenge of it as instaneously arrogant and whatnot ... I thought it was relatively noncontroversial. But anyway, if you don't believe this world is built on greater principles of suffering, engineer experiments to see how much pleasure your little toe can possibly bring you and then see how much suffering it can possibly bring you.