The Dali Lama speaks at Rutgers

I think that the lesson isn't necessarily what one thinks that it is before one learns it.

 

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Of course. There is no way to know what enlightenment is until it happens.

 

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I am not trying to question your belief, but I can't figure out how you came to that belief based on the Buddha's teachings.
It runs contrary to what I have read about the concepts of samsara, karma and anata.
Maybe you can expand a bit?

 

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The Dalai Lama is the last Dalai Lama as far as Im aware. They arent different beings. The reason he was able to identify personal possessions from his previous life is because they were his in last life.

 

The Dalai Lama does eat meat, and cucumbers.

 

Interestingly, I have considered lately that perhaps rather than individuals travelling from lifetime to lifetime, the consciousness principle ( which is what the surviving element of a being a is called ) isnt a carrier of an individual and their karma necessarily. I mean buddhism teaches that the consciousness principle doesnt carry our appearance, or anything personal necessarily, but is directed by deep karmic tendencies to its next incarnation. I think its more reasonable to imagine that the world consciousness supports continuence and whenever a new being is born into it, its automatically "updated" to the current world view consciousness relative to its karmic position. This could explain the feeling so many people have of having lived a previous life. Everything that has happened in the stream of consciousness up to this point is included inhereted content upon birth... an ongoing cumulative history. I think maybe its the unbroken history that allows the cycle to cycle, more than we cycle by some fact a personal continuence idea. I dont believe that "I" that I percieve myself to be now will wake up in a new body after I die. "I" or our idea of our self isnt real, its conceptualized and is incredibly wrapped up in our memory of our history of ourselves, maintained by brain function. When the body and the brain dies, so does the conceptual maintenance of the self. what continues is an energy, cleansed of the previous consciousness's notion of itself and a new one comes to exist and develope etc. In other words, I believe when we die, we die. What continues is not us but the wave that carried the temporal surfer til the wave breaks and dissolves back into the source.

 

VossistArts,

Let me see if I have this right...
So, when you say, "when we die, we die", you are saying that your "self" is gone.
There is no soul (pick another word if you wish) to either reincarnate, nor go somewhere else.
Anatta can be taken to its fullest literal meaning, and when you die, ALL of what you now consider "you" goes with it.
The matter rots away, and whatever "prana" there may have been holding it all together is released in a last echo of your momentary self.
A strictly materialistic universe.

Essentially, after death we exist only as echoes in the akasha -photographs that future generations can look at, and nothing more.

If that's what you mean, read on...

What happens when I am born?

Do I pick up that echo and am incarnated with your last gasp echo of YOUR self as MY self?
or...
Am I born with NO self at all, and can just sort of "read" your last echo in the akasha, just as I can "read" all the other energy and waves that are in there? Sort of a simple "clean slate" to generate my own ripples and and energy fields in the akasha for the little time that I exist.

If so, as open to interpretation as Buddhism is, I think you have stepped beyond the Buddhist system of belief with that.
Do you agree?

 

First, your interpretation of what i tried to describe is what I meant to say or suggest.

I cant say whether Ive stepped beyond the beliefs of Buddhism, because altho Ive read a lot, I'm sure there is much I haven't read. Still I've never either heard anyone suggest what I'm musing on or read anything like it. The other night I was driving and the idea crossed my mind. I was considering what it is that people experience within themselves that allows for the belief of personal continuance and more specifically the feeling that they have vague memories of past life experiences that manifest in various way ie having abilities or adeptness in something they haven't learned, practiced,studied, or at least little of those to account for their abilities, or in having knowledge of things where the source for the knowledge is unaccounted for. I know so many people who have thoughts of past lives by way of these experiences. Same for me. I have lots and lots of examples of things I can do very well I haven't learned, and things I know or am aware of that have no recognizable source. Since I like to challenge normal conventions I considered alternative explanations and when I arrived at the thought that perhaps its the continuum of humans total encompassing evolution that might be given to every new life that comes into this world that account for the feeling/memories, abilities, all of a sudden it seemed far more reasonable to me to suspect that might be the case over the notion that we bring with us a personal past and personal karmas and personal evolution through the in between state into some future time.

In nature, it appears that the continuance and evolution of anything, whether it be biological life of a being, or a thought/philosophy or even a paradigm is completely dependent on the that particular evolution remaining in existence. Thats obvious of course. What isn't obvious and is almost purely speculative is that a consciousness principle being what it is, as such, processes the in between state and because of karmic factors taken from the previous life incarnates relatively in the next. Wouldn't that suggest that say for instance I died, and in the said 60 or so days its claimed we remain in the in between state, all of humanity is wiped out. The earthly plain is unattached from the in between state so it shouldn't affect it or what comes out of it. SOOO.. so wouldn't you have to incarnate as a human anyways? even if there we no people left to parent you? Sure there are limitless possibilities for speculation as to where a displaced consciousness principle might be disposed to but every bit of it is pure speculation..

at least that Im aware of.

 

In another thread regarding the nature of "The Devil", entitled, "Where's the Devil?" I posted the following last night:

The "Collective Subconscious Force" is my strictly materialistic version of how I see the Akasha.
I do, however, like to believe it goes beyond that simple materialistic view.
(please note that there is a significant difference between "believe" and "like to believe")
When trying to figure out what role the significance of self, the soul, personal continuance and the like plays in this, I invariably come to a bastardized, simplified version of the Vedic view of reincarnation and transcendence combined with the Dhamic view of annata.
What seems the best scenario (whether "best" means most likely, most romantic, most just, most comforting or most something-else-entirely I still have not figured out) in my mind is that what part of us that passes from this life to the next is what causes the instantaneous "self" prana field, not what is caused BY it.
I know that is a big convoluted mess of a description, so I will try and clarify a bit.
What is "the self"?
According to Buddha, the self is constantly changing. It can not be pinned down. You are the current sum total of your experiences on earth filtered through your physical senses and processed by your brain. Obviously the world around you is constantly changing, therefore You are constaly changing. You are constantly being bombarded with sensory stimulation (moreso now than ever). Not only is the information that makes up your past and memories changing, with each new experience how you process each coming experience will also change. You are only you in the instantaneous now, which is already gone by the time you say "now". Now, as far as I understand it, when you die, what is released from you body, according to the Buddha, is that last gasp echo in the akasha of all the information that was You in the instant that You died (admittedly, however, this aspect is where I feel the least confident in my knowledge and understanding of the Buddha's teachings, so please, anyone, feel free to correct me on these points).
This is where the syncretic bastardization comes in.
The soul.
Who or what is the core of who you are? That last gasp echo, I like to believe, is not a simple echo at all. It is your "soul" (I really wish I could come up with a better term than that... let me use "essesnce", at least for the time being). Your essence can and very well does exist outside and seperate from your body. It does not "see" the world in the same way You do, however, as it is not You rather a PART OF You. Your essence has no physical senses (as, obviously, it has no organs) and it has (again, obviously) no brain. Now, my version of Vedic reincarnation is that your essence is the very core of what makes You up. It is your most base aspect. It is what passes to a new body when you die. It is the reason some children are old and some adults are very young. Your body views, processes and collects knowledge of your physical surroundings, but your essence gathers wisdom. With each incarnation your essence gathers and retains the wisdom acquired in that lifetime to carry with it into the next life (or the next existence, if you break free from samsara). If you "sin" and do not come to terms with your transgressions then your essence will experience guilt, therefore, you will suffer in your next lifetime. When you are born, your "instincts" come from your essence. As you grow and live life in this material existence, you learn more and gather more knowledge that will help you survive here, yet that same knowledge serves to muddle your wisdom (the yin and yang balance of knowedge and wisdom). The way back to the state of pure wisdom your were born in is to strip away materialistic knowledge of the essentially illusory world around you.

I have gone on and on, and I see myself starting to get lost in my thoughts, and that usually means I am starting to get confusing to others and losing their attention. I will spare you for now, and summarize.

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Now, perhaps it is only my own ego and its inherent inability to accept the ultimate insignificance of my "self" in the broader spectrum that leads me to this worldview. That is most certainly a possibility. I don't know, and I don't know what I believe. This is just what I would like to believe if I had the convenient mindset of those people who simply decide to believe what they want to believe. For now, and likely for the rest of my life, I am an agnostic that leans this way and that, but likes some philosophies a little more and a little less than the next. Since I am agnostic, and will likely remain that way, I do, however, have the luxury of simply chosing what philosophy to live by, even if I don't necessarily "believe in it" simply because it makes the most sense to me, pragmatically, to live that way.

 

I havent been able to read your above add to this conversation, until tonight. Ive logged on and almost tried it once

but decided to save it for later. Still Ive been considering this somewhere inside me until tonight.

Before I read your above add just now this is what I had arrived at, that I planned to sign on just to add along with

an apology for adding and not reading your last post. I read it first anyways, but It didnt change any of the words I

orginally chose to write before I logged on

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I just had the thought, that our consciousness principle, the part of us that endures, is simply spiraling along, evolving

to the extent the experience(s) of have self awareness determined by the free choices the self awareness/connectedness

aspect picks, is pushing or sustaining/maintaining the whole awareness- of- the- all- of- it along at a variable rate. Variable, like a spiral allows

but on path that is as sure as any science could love to know. When we are self aware ( of our trans-personal self) we

usher it (it which is us, in that order I suspect) or serve it (our whole self). Its like our fundamental (non)self is

capable of manifesting many many kinds of (maybe) karmic relative personality types (including our current self of course), or perhaps just many kind of self

awareness potentials generally. I like the idea of thinking Im one of many like me, that we WERE and are and will be in fact ME that is here

faced with the challenge of growing my WHOLE evolution while Im current as best as possible. I believe I may have found

the answer to why we dont see our own face. Thats what started my whole line of thought up to now, and Im only now

realizing it. It started some hours ago while I was sitting with my daughter before bed talking to her. She brought up

how there ARE so many questions she didnt have the answers for yet ( poor child is barely 11) and asked me what I think

is up with us not being able to see our own face. Before mirrors, Even with water, we dont see our own face. If not for

a reflection somewhere we'D die not knowing what we looked like. I bet that serves a real purpose. Not seeing our image would make us not

hold on to an deepset image of ourselF, a severe attachment for sure. It seems like that the big concern with some of religion. Deemphasizing personal (I) self. Isnt attachment created around that the hinder us? Period?No self image, could make the whole process of letting go less complicated.

Maybe this is a necessary thing so we wouldnt believe we looked some way or another, so we could evolve.Into ANYTHING!

My answer. Throw out all of your mirrors.

Anyhow, Im not writing any more . This is a beautiful thing

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Peace,August

 

I suppose it is needless to say that I agree with your assesment.
I can almost understand now why people are drawn to religions -it's nice to know that someone not only understands you, but has a nearly identical perspective.

I just wanted to mention one thing.
Have you noticed the difference in how you "look" when you see yourself in the mirror, when you see yourself alone in a photograph and when you see yourself in a photograph with another?
Looking at someone else in person, in a photograph alone or in a photograph with another does not leave me with any distinct difference in views. Myself, however, it may as well be three different people.

 

mmph!
thats not all he does with em

 

This happened at rutgers at NB?

oh man....i should"ve been there....shit loads of "other" entertainment means too...

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