Is there "life after death"? It's better to think of it as there being life after life (after life...ad nauseum). This process of karma (deeds) bringing about their results (resultants and fruits) is unending. It can be ended, brought to a standstill, but it will not ever stop on its own. Anyone who fears ending should know ahead of time that death is not it. One will transition out of here, lose all that is loved, and reappear elsewhere -- not one place but any of countless places where those former deeds willed, carried out, and accumulated can bear their results. Death is terrible for that reason. It is not terrible for the reason we mainly fear in ignorance, that it somehow signals the end of everything. It does not signal the end of anything, except perhaps active firsthand participation in what we're used to. But there is more, much more, and endless amount of more. And this is not good. While it should allay fears of disappearing forever, it (rebirth) should not please one into thinking the game goes on for more playtime even after the screen reads "Game over." Yes, this round stops abruptly only for another one to stop. The Buddha when he awakened saw this playing out incessantly for ALL living beings, faring along according to their karma. He saw his own countless past lives in general and in their details. "Long enough have we all wandered in this samsara, long enough to be done with it," he taught. But we aren't done with. We don't want to be done with it. And why? Because we don't see it for what it really is. We do not see its three universal characteristics: It's radically impermanent, it's never going to fulfill or satisfy us, and it's impersonal. What does it mean to be "radically" impermanent? Isn't that just that our new house eventually becomes dilapidated and falls down in 100 years or so? No! That's obvious impermanence. The Buddha wasn't harping on that. What he was harping on was radical (from the root or radix) transience, flux, change from moment to moment. "Everything is hurtling toward destruction," were his final words, "so work out your liberation [from suffering] with diligence." There's no time to waste, so brief is a human life, so rare to ever hear the Buddha Dharma. There's no time to argued, the Beatles urged. We have this moment. What is the most valuable way to use it as it slip away from us? We can accrue good (skillful, useful, beneficial, profitable, wholesome, resulting in wished for and pleasant results) karma, or we can accrue the best karma -- actions that bring about the end of all action. The practice is about doing what must be done to end suffering. There is so much suffering to come, stretched out before us so much further than we can see or fathom. To make an end of it, to stop grasping at trivial things for real knowledge and vision worthy of noble (enlightened) ones, that is something in line with why the Buddha taught and what dismayed Mara who, if he had his way, would trap us in the Sensual Sphere for all time. This is no place to be. The Sensual Sphere is where the animal, human, and hells are along with Sense Sphere heavens. There is much better pleasure than sensuality, and there is freedom beyond that. Do good, and do the best good (meditate for calm and insight) to gain freedom.
Clinically dead man sees the afterlife, shown truth about our dimension (NDE)
🙏 Help get stories from around the globe 🌍 ➡️ tinyurl.com/helptheothersidende #nde #neardeathexperiences #neardeathexperience
- ⭐ Exclusive interviews on Patreon: theothersidende
The Dalai Lama on why his reincarnation is unimportant; this life is important. Future is the future's.
Buddhist karma and rebirth explained
#buddhism #buddha #philosophy #religion #spirituality #dharma #dhamma ⭐ Support this channel: seeker2seeker 💰 PayPal donations: paypal.com/donate... 📨 Subscribe to the Newsletter: mailchi.mp/a693c2c7c985/wisdo...
COMMENTARY
The impersonal process keeps rolling after our experience here, which is just one of an uncountable number of reappearances we experience, and the process, which is like a dream, does not stop until we awaken. People who go through NDEs lose their fear of death, seeing what really happens as the process cycles and cycles.
- But, c'mon, there is a "self," right? Well, there's not a self really, but there conventionally-speaking, of course there's a self. It's the one speaking now and the one being spoken to, and all that we identify with. What do we identify with? Body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness(es). Looked at closely, however, it becomes clear that none of these are actually the "self" they seem to be when integrated all together. So a much better question to ask is, If there's not a self, is there nothing, or what is there? The answer to this is very clearly, and the Buddha explained this again and again to those who could see: There is Dependent Origination, a process by which things come into being. There is not "nothing," but there is in a very deep sense no-thing. What's a "thing"? A thing is an amalgamation, something composed of constituents, like a cross. What is a cross +? It's just two lines, neither of which is a cross. But when placed together just so, what is there? Aah-aah-aah, careful. When placed together, there are just two lines, but that's not what the mind sees. The mind misinterprets reality and sees something new arise, an illusion. Yes, there's a line, two in fact, so there's not nothing. (This is also interesting, there isn't really a line, because a line itself is a "thing," an amalgamation of parts that are not a line). There comes into being a thing, and the characteristics of that thing are threefold: it is impermanent (coming into being utterly dependent on its conditions), and it is unsatisfactory (utterly incapable of fulfilling or satisfying), and most shocking of all, it is impersonal (empty, utterly dependent on constituent-things that are not it but without which there is not the illusion of it having come into being). Very intelligent and kind people would go argue with the Buddha to show he that he was crazy to claim there was no self, no soul, no ego, no atman (or personality, permanent soul or essence of the person). They were amazed that anyone, much less someone so famous and intelligent, willing to hold such a view. The Buddha kindly showed them that he was not holding a view, they were. They were clinging to sakkaya-ditthi (personality-view) and it was much to their detriment, and asked how he could possibly explain things, anything, without reference to a self, the Buddha very cogently showed that he understood the misunderstanding and alarm caused by this knowledge. He explained everything in terms of Dependent Origination without any difficulty. One might think, then as now, that the Buddha contradicted himself every time he, conventionally speaking, said "I" or "mine" or used the self-referential term "Tathagata? (Wayfarer, Thus Come One, Well Gone One), but no enlightened person is confused by the use of conventional speech: If we say to a child, "When the Boogieman comes, I'm going to tell him that you were misbehaving," who but a child would think that binds us to a belief in an actual Boogieman who cares about a kid's behavior? We say it because that is what a child will understand not because we have misunderstood nor because by saying it we suddenly become confused and lose an argument: "I say there is no self." "Aha! you just 'I' thereby proving there is a self." "Oh, gee, Bob, you got me there; there's no getting around that logic. WHAT DOES IT MATTER THAT THERE IS, ultimately speaking, NO SELF? Why even bother to say such a preposterous thing that is going to upset so many of our commonsense sensibilities, the structure of our language, the whole proposition of the world we think we are trapped in? THERE IS AT LEAST ONE GREAT REASON FOR THAT: There is no enlightened person outside the unique Teaching (Doctrine, Dharma) of the impersonality of all things. It is what must be penetrated and understood, known-and-seen, to enter upon the very first stage of enlightenment (bodhi, awakening) called stream entry. So it is of the utmost importance to have at least a conceptual understanding of what we cannot accept, don't want to accept, and may even be afraid of. It is not bad news that there is no self. There is what there is, and that is what there has been all this time we were ignorant of it. We will not turn into a piece of unsmoke when we realized the Buddha was really wise -- wise beyond all measure and comprehension, imponderably so -- when he set out what all buddhas of the past, present, and future realized and taught for the liberation of beings. "Hey, what about that +?" "What about it? There it is. Just as there are lines (even though there really aren't), there are crosses, conventionally speaking, and if it's useful to give something a name and a definition and a patent, do it. That doesn't mean it really comes into being ultimately speaking, for what would it mean if it were real? The Buddha talks in detail about that. For instance, if there really were a self, it should do as I wish it to, but it doesn't. Whatever there is, it's not under my control. I don't wish for it to grow old, sickly, then die. I wish for it to always be young, never get sick, and surely never die. But the darn thing does anyway. I wish for it to be strong, beautiful, loved, but it isn't. It's not following my dictates but some other impersonal laws or forces that are a mystery to me. So before I call it mine, or think of it as personal, I should at least be able to exercise basic control over it, right?" "Right, but you don't." "Right, yet everyone calls it mine and trains me to see it as mine and makes me to worry about it and take all responsibility..." "It seems too hard to learn this intellectually." "Right, so go have fun reading the Heart Sutra, and maybe one day it will sink in in a sudden flash of illumination. ;)
Seers in ancient India came to understand that death is not fearful because "everything ends" but because, yet again, we are cut off from loved ones, all that we cling to, all that we imagine ourselves to be, and undergo the difficulties of rebirth or relinking again and again. And it is not, as the popular conception goes, all for some higher purpose of getting better and better, learning lessons, and evolving. The Buddha clearly saw and reported that it is like rollercoaster, swirling out of control, taking us up and plunging us down. We hanker, grasp, desire, and chase pleasures wherever we can find them, getting into all kinds of karmic trouble for a long, long time, rarely meeting with a good teaching and examples that take us in the other direction. All of us are beset by "mixed" karma, some skillful, some unskillful, and what deed conditions the next rebirth is like the toss of dice, a cr*pshoot, which makes it fearful. It is very hard to be sure what the next reappearance will be because it depends on the nanosecond of passing, and even the best meditators rarely gain that much control of their thinking, emotions, and consciousness to ensure that it is something welcome and wished for awaiting us. What awaits us is NOT set but the product of our own deeds throughout this life. If we were ruled by the past, there would be no sense. If it was all fate and fixed, there would be no doing, no acting, no deeds that would matter. They do matter, and that means our thoughts, words, and deeds have tremendous sway over all we experience here and now as well as then and there. The Buddha in his day was never called a "Buddhist" but he was frequently referred to as a Karmavadin, "a teacher of the efficacy of deeds" to bring about appropriate results. So straightening up now will have exponential effects for the future, long into the future, over countless lives to come. Making an end of rebirth now limits suffering and brings it to a complete end for those wise enough to see why this is such a tremendously rare and good thing.
- Dalai Lama 2019; Bill Leston, The Other Side NDE, Dec. 28, 2022; Seeker to Seeker, March 8, 2024; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly
No comments:
Post a Comment