I’ll respond to this post No rebirth - what happens next? - #6 by Jayarava here.
Hello, I don’t know your entire view, and I haven’t read the books you’ve mentioned, which may expand it further, but from what you’ve presented, even as a summary, there are major logical fallacies, which I’ve also seen common elsewhere.
This is a semantic argument. “karma and rebirth are said to be supernatural, and whatever is supernatural can’t be real.” Let’s suppose that when we say “not secular” and “supernatural”, it is another way of saying “not real” / “doesn’t happen”. Then, how do you know what’s truly not true/real / supernatural or not? The process to knowing what’s not real should be the same process as knowing what is supernatural in this case. We know this through different methods of proper inquiry: Are they not true because other people said that those things are in the definition of supernatural? Did you decide this? We draw the lines of what is supernatural and natural ourselves, based on what inquiry? If something supernatural is natural, then nothing contradicts besides random semantics, and then what’s the point of having either of those words. Not natural does not mean supernatural. An alive woolly mammoth isn’t called supernatural, but it’s also not natural.
In more useful usages of “supernatural”, and the way it’s used in pali translations, it does not mean something that isn’t real, it’s just a way of describing certain rare or hard to explain phenomena which may or may not be real. Gods might like to eat supernatural turnips, but maybe those aren’t actually real and they like supernatural parsley which does happen to be real. I could also call someone a “god at tennis” to mean they’re really good, it’s how language goes on.
You concluded rebirth isn’t real because you didn’t have evidence? That’s not scientific nor a proper way to find truth. You have no evidence that I’m 22, but that doesn’t mean I’m not 22.
I don’t know if you were saying this, but if you don’t like an idea, that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Also, it isn’t true since you misrepresented it: for your own liking actually, karma is definitely not just about the next life. Our actions effect us here (source: the suttas, and it’s very easy to observe this). It’s also not about justice or punishment. You are making this assumption that people believe in things to justify some other value they have (justice), (therefore, their beliefs are wrong), when it’s the opposite. You can just observe that your actions have effects, therefore your actions have effects. The same is true for rebirth, it doesn’t matter if someone believes in it out of ulterior motives. In fact, I don’t want rebirth to be true, I don’t know why it’s true, but you can simply observe and see that it’s true. You can see that beings are born most similar to how they are like now, like a sorting algorithm. Although, it is not easy to see. The Buddha didn’t teach those things because it nicely fitted with the way suffering works, he taught what he saw.
Karma is not a belief. Rebirth is not a belief. In fact, your very own beliefs are subjected to the law of karma. This means that you don’t get to escape the cycle of conditionality by believing that your actions don’t effect you. It also means that anyone’s belief that there is or is not karma is utterly conditioned by their past. The harsh reality is that since secularism has been relatively trendy the last couple centuries or so, people were merely influenced by this, and their views aren’t really original even if they cling on to something they believe is the “truth away from impossible supernatural” or not. And the same is true on the opposite, views of karma and supernatural are also just conditioned views by environment. No view is special or exempt from the ways views work. Deeper seeing and development is also conditioned by experiencing and just seeing. Because of your research of the Heart Sutra, you must already have experience about the divide and odd relationship between ultimate reality and one’s understanding.
It does not contradict anything in the current models of physics or biology. And, on the inverse, nothing in science has disproved it either, just like God. Except the difference between God here is that rebirth happens to also be observable. Our current best model of particle physics easily allows for something like rebirth to happen. Actually, the structure of the standard model is begging us to ask about other generations or tiers (higgs → bosons → fermions → ?) of particles. In the past we were able to predict that certain particles may exist, then we proved that they did later on through observation (Higgs most famously, graviton next).
If you really need ideas of potential answers… I’m not scientifically convinced there’s dark matter (since all of the experiments failed), but many physicists have accepted it. Logically, the heavens and hells would be made of particles that don’t interact with our material very easily, but probably does interact with gravity (since you are reborn geographically close, and also on the same planet), which actually exactly matches dark matter (doesn’t interact with our material easily, only interacts with gravity). That doesn’t mean other worlds are exactly what we have predicted to be dark matter, it could easily be some other type of material there is yet no name for with the same properties.
Perhaps there are thousands of tiers of these different levels and types of particles that simply don’t have any interaction with our own, you would never know this. I would expect gravity to interact with them since its such a unique ‘force’, and it seems to be the case for so-called dark matter and whatever the other realms are made of.
The current discoveries in science are not at all closed to other things also being true or supporting it, and that’s not how science works. Therefore, the mind of every being has some sort of connection with this other material, probably interacting with it constantly alongside the already complex processes it does, and deep meditation (to the point of ending the earthly material senses) will leave relatively more of this other kind of material. The standard model is very open to these kinds of things, and so would (the unproven) string theory (more like theories and models) for the record.
(From a different post)
No it doesn’t. Thermodynamics is about energy, your memories aren’t made of energy. If you were referring to the law of conservation of energy, memory is just a word used to describe very complex cycles made from senses being associated with each other, which isn’t really a conserved “thing”. Your feelings are created and destroyed all the time, no law was violated, it’s just a much more complex process beneath.
Maybe you are concerned with the “shape of memories” being conserved? So, the law about entropy? Again, memories aren’t made out of energy, but the law of impermanence does apply. Our memories may get faded over time and lost and decayed, even re-written, nothing permanent here, and they are also arising phenomena when they do happen. With an extremely fine and deep seeing, one can still recall very old ones, so they must not be totally “decayed” and way harder to access.
You mean like how it already has? On the quantum level, those laws don’t apply in the same way, and quantum mechanics is also the most accurate and full description of all of physical reality. If you “average” and zoom out of quantum thermodynamics, it does add up to be thermodynamics on the outside, just like the rest of classical physics, but it’s a totally different story on that level.
My relation earlier to the standard model should already give a good enough idea of the rest of the picture within the current laws of both thermodynamics and quantum thermodynamics.
Are you sure your confidence is justified on what is supernatural or not? Because when you actually look at how the world works, it already seems “supernatural”. What about particles appearing and disappearing (bosons), splitting and combining (antimatter), existing as both particles and waves on fields, being pushed and pulled by forces with nothing in-between, or massless light being effected by gravity / space and time bending with each other, emotion, existence at all, or mass and energy not even existing on a subatomic level? Does that sound real, or does it sound totally unexplained? It’s both of those.
For example, magnets work because of magnetic force, but the truth is that no scientist and no one knows why magnetic force exists/happens. You can observe it, draw and predict equations and behavior from observation, and draw Feynman diagrams and perfectly predict magnetic interactions, but no one has the answer to why it would even happen, just that it does.
To say science is equal to reality or understands all of reality is disrespectful to the entire scientific process which functions very differently. How could that be true when scientists and scientific conclusions constantly disagree with each other, and when the scientific process involves revising. Science was never about guaranteeing a full view of the world, and it never claimed to have all the answers from the very beginning and within its design.
In fact, it answers relatively little of this world. There is no scientific proof out there that says that I made this post, that I’m in the same room as a dog as I type this, or that I’m able to experience blue the same way as you for sure. 99% of what I find important and relevant in my life is not explained at all by science, and I involve myself with science in my interests and career. Even then, science in general has had enormous immeasurable meritable effects on the quality of many people’s lives (MEDICINE). Rebirth can be found through a similar personal scientific process; observation and conclusion. Namely, remembering past lives. Until that happens, how could you say it’s not real OR that it is real for sure. Doubt isn’t something we should run towards and be convinced of, it will just take us away from the truth. Nothing says you can’t just suspend doubt and find out the answer later on.
Finally, it goes without saying, but you really don’t need these extraneous scientific justifications to know if there’s rebirth or if impermanence is true, but in theory, it should and does correlate.
Are you saying that they didn’t have a developed enough technology? Or are you using “iron age” to try to make people from that time period sound stupid, relying on the false stereotype that cavemen were stupid? That’s not a rhetorical question, I actually can’t tell. Either way, it’s an ad hom argument. Just because some specific people supposedly weren’t equipped to prove something doesn’t mean that their claim isn’t true.
Honestly, this is manipulative language to make meditation sound like delusion. You really mean temporarily stopping processes within the subjective reality of the material senses when you say “reality” which happens to also be the word for truth and ultimate reality, which is clearly quite different from subjective reality/experience. If you go to a quiet place, is it meaningful in this context to say this is “cutting yourself off from reality”? Do you really need to have sounds and sights constantly (assuming you’re in a safe location)?
Those are clearly two different definitions of reality. One is just principles about the behavior of experience and existence, and the other is the result of a physical experiment (and they certainly haven’t measured everything). You conflated several definitions of reality (such as subjective and ultimate) to make an argument. How many significant figures can you measure suffering to?
This is praise. We aren’t here to learn that light goes faster than sound, which is useless for wisdom, we’re here to learn that the experiences of sight and hearing are temporary, bring suffering, and aren’t self.
Many have explained this. Is it not easier to focus in a quieter room? Senses are distracting and hindering. They draw away focus and they bring fettering sensual desire and craving. With less sensual distraction, you can find stillness and see clearly, and therefore see/understand reality easier. I don’t see the problem with this unless you are attached to your senses. The second reason is that you won’t really learn what your senses are until you go outside of it to see what is actually even meant by the term sense, or even the term existence, like a fish leaving its water that it always took for granted. You would realize that those senses aren’t actually you, and they are merely cycles of processes that just go on. In stillness, you would notice and see that everything arising is always going away, and this seeing is never forced nor done through will. It doesn’t matter whether someone can prove any of that, you would just have to try it because personal truth is personal.