Here are some links:
Dhabba:
Ok, so it is the same individuality that has passed through all the various lives then?
No wonder there are eternalists and semi-eternalists in the first place!
This happens to be the whole crux of the issue regarding eternalists and semi-eternalists.
Doesn’t matter if you call it self or individuality.
How are these distinctions even made by ”the selfless khandhas” in the first place?
Can someone please explain?
One would think and hope it is the self-doer, as found in
”Attakārī Sutta: The Self-Doer (AN 6.38 ), that makes these distinctions.
Is the act of spreading metta all over the world dukkha?
How is this even painful, stressful or unsatisfactory?
Is there a self-doer spreading metta to other self-doers or is it the ”selfless khandhas” spreading metta to other ”selfless khandhas”?
Or maybe self-doers to selfless khandhas or vice versa?
I’m really curious to know.
For spreading metta, since you already accepted that impermanence means dukkha, so too the metta spreading is dukkha due to it being impermanent. And compared to Nibbāna as you pointed out at the end.
My reply:
Dhabba:
Spreading a heart full of love (metta) above, below, across, everywhere, all around, they spread a heart full of love to the whole world—abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will.
This is a path to company with Brahmā.
Baka the Brahmā had the following harmful misconception: ‘This is permanent, this is everlasting, this is eternal, this is whole, this is imperishable.
The Buddha tried to show Baka the Brahmā this was not the case in MN 49 .
No other except The Buddha has pointed out that not only ”The lifespan of the gods of Brahma’s Host is one eon” but that all the planes above in both Rupa Loka and Arupa are also impermanent.
Your reply on the metta thing is too long, I don’t get your point as well. Do note that dukkha includes not just mental suffering, of which I can agree that mental suffering doesn’t seem to exist in Brahma realm, but dukkha of change and conditionality does.
But my point is that impermanence in itself is not evident and obvious to brahmas, to devas nor to humans who who can recollect countless past lives:
So in essence anicca, dukkha and anatta are not obvious and has never been to any of the brahmas or devas, nor to the humans who can recollect their countless previous lives that span over eons.
And if you also take into account that I alredy mentioned in my first post that DO is not as simple as some might have it to be:
5 aggregates have feelings, therefore morality works. Kamma “doer” is the volitional formations, kamma “bearer/sufferer” is the other 4 aggregates.
Kamma being impersonal law still works for past kamma results happening to arahants
Dhabba:
If it the same individuailty, and this individual can access vivid memories/experiences of past lives in a completely new body and a new set of khandhas but still despite this call all those past lives ”me & mine”, and fully know that it was in fact their own past lives: how and why was these even transferred to the new khandhas?
You can’t claim it is because of kamma that one can recollect those past lives where one did evil deeds and ended up in hell, much later had an awful human rebirth and slowly but surely quit doing those deeds.
Since that kamma was extinguished and one already quit doing such things a very long time ago, how can one still remember and say ”me” and ”mine” regarding those events?
Only Dependent Origination can help here.
Then we have this part:
The following things should maybe clarify:
I showed from the suttas that The Buddha refutes partial-eternalism and eternalism like this:
”Having understood as they really are the origin and the passing away of FEELINGS, their satisfaction, their unsatisfactoriness, and the escape from them, the Tathāgata, bhikkhus, is emancipated through non-clinging.”
The point is, only dependent origination can help, nothing else.
That is why Sāti had the views he had about future lives in MN 38 and only DO can help.
You even admit yourself that:
Individuality is justified according to these observations:
Kamma is following the individual
Past lives recall is individual
Each person has their own past live chains, which are not mixed, thus they are called individuals.
And last but not least:
From SN15.1 -20, we get to understand that there’s no beginning to wandering on.
That is also why eternalists say:
The self and the world are eternal, barren, steadfast as a mountain peak, standing firm like a pillar. And though these beings roam and wander (through the round of existence), pass away and re-arise, yet the self and the world remain the same just like eternity itself.
So how can you blame eternalists when Only DO, and nothing else, can help them?
They say Self, you say Individuality.
No wonder eternalists have the view that they have when ”there’s no beginning to wandering on”, right?
And you respond:
I am still not following your idea of self.
The self and the individual are different things.
And:
Don’t confuse phenomenological findings with philosophical conclusions. The phenomenological findings are the past life recall with the characteristics of individuality. The wrong conclusion is to take them as self. The right philosophical viewpoint is to not even consider the individual as self.
Which I of course am not confusing at all since I mention DO several times.
So exactly how is impermanence a thing that is evident and obvious if we take all these factors into account? Impermanence makes it dukkha, but dukkha is not apparent to even the brahma gods. So dukkha in this context is only death and rebirth, and the brahma gods are only forced to say not-self about the experience when it has ended, and is later recollected.
But now we have another problem: eternalists being fully aware that beings roam and wander (through the round of existence), pass away and re-arise - they do not see the suffering from death and rebirth as a problem.
They have neutral feelings to the passing away and re-arising, despite the suffering involved:
If they feel a neutral feeling, they feel it attached.
They’re called an unlearned ordinary person who is attached to rebirth, old age, and death, to sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress; who is attached to suffering, I say.
When The Buddha refutes all the eternalist view he says:
Having understood as they really are the origin and the passing away of feelings , their satisfaction, their unsatisfactoriness, and the escape from them, the Tathāgata, bhikkhus, is emancipated through non-clinging.
For a very good reason.
I am a bit confused on your stance. You seem to think rebirth is reincarnation. Rebirth is without a soul. Reincarnation is with a soul. Externally, they look the same for rebirth evidences, past life recall. It’s only philosophically that we say rebirth operates via dependent origination, and not a soul. But since reincarnation operates via a soul, it’s much easier to understand and most uneducated (about the dhamma) people accepts reincarnation.
So the past lives of a buddhist were all rebirths of the same individuality?
While the past lives of a non-buddhist meditator were reincarnations of ”Self”?
It is just a play with words…
Isn’t it obvious by now why eternalists even believe in a soul in the first place?
