Ok. Ive decided your not a serious person and am going to stop talkimg to you.
Good luck with your journey!
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Past life as a dinosaur
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What are you talking about? Why?
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You might know that monastics are not supposed to reveal supernormal powers to unordained people. So we shouldn’t expect that it’s easy to get past life recall accounts of monastics. One way is to write in diary and then after death, others published it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pastlives/s/b5RJ8C0anE
Go to the right place to find the right things. r/pastlives in reddit has all sorts of things. I prefer the past life recall cases of children, but if you want weird, here you go.
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I’ll check it out, but I don’t know if collecting medicinal recipes or random facts about a society from the “New World”, or facts about animals such as dinosaurs qualifies as supernatural power that common people wouldn’t be aware of?
Recollection of past lives, by meditation is considered as one of the 6 higher knowledges, which are covered by the rules of conduct for monks and nuns to not reveal if we have it, and cannot lie that we have it if we don’t have it.
Do just search within that subreddit all sorts of things you want to search for. I once enjoyed reading about past life of aliens on mars or something like that. I really dunno the reliability of those past lives accounts which cannot be verified objectively. So the past life recall of children where they found real life evidences for is on much more solid footing. https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/dktouv/buddhists_should_repost_rebirth_evidences_more/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Also, do note that you might encounter Atlantis, Lemuria etc all sorts of fantastical things in that sub.
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Hi ,
It is mentioned there are eight groups of non-human entities or beings as described in Buddhist suttas or sutras namely Deva (god), Naga (dragon) , Yakkha (ugly ogre), Gandabba (musician demigod), Asura (titan), Garuda (half-human & half-eagle/bird), Kinnara (bird with a human head) , Mahoraga (greater reptilian or giant snake) .
I don’t think dinosaurs are any of these. Dinosaurs should be under animals, which has a lot of variation of them.
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I find it curious that people think rebirth happens only (and/or predominantly) on this earth.
Millions, billions of lives, countless realms between hells and heavens, a galaxy of trillions of star systems just for this universe, and you think you’d be reborn on this earth …?
I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it would be exceedingly rare. And rarer even to find someone with stark enough memories and also the willingness to share that information.
If you read some of the hell / niraya accounts, their descriptions are frighteningly close to what goes on inside for example stars, gas planets, etc (immensely hot and/or cold existence of immesurable durations, beings of metal and so on). Ajahn Puṇṇadhammo’s Cosmology book is a good place to start on that.
Vikings tell that Mjölnir is made in the heart of a dying sun, which is as we now know, how heavy metals are formed in the first ages of universe. Apparently, those ancient people somehow knew this fact.
People with past lives recollections have far more fantastic and interesting things to tell than “being a fisherman in Americas” or etc.
And vast majority of people don’t have past lives recollections and only a miniscule fraction of it would re-occur on this planet earth, an even smaller amount as a human, and even a tinier amount would share their experience (or indeed, have anything interesting and/or relevant to talk about).
More likely that human-to-human rebirth would occur on earth-like planets, but still a vastly different timeline, with varying levels of incredible events that may or may not be the same as life on earth.
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Perhaps simply personal discretion.
Consider you were an ARAHAT and had a DIVINE EYE and simply would recognize which political honk or miserious individual has revived in that certain dinosaurus or tyrannosarus rex or in that tiny sparrow - - - would you like to disrupt evolution just for some moment of a fun event? (I for my part love such discretion of our ARAHATs much more than any rumble-tumble)
\irony-off
There comes a time when, ultimately, with the passing of a long stretch of time, the eastern gate of the Great Hell opens. He runs there, rushing quickly. As he runs there, rushing quickly, his outer skin burns, his inner skin burns, his flesh burns, his tendons burn, even his bones turn to smoke. When [his foot] is lifted, he is the just same. He gets out through the gate. But right next to the Great Hell is a vast Excrement Hell. He falls into that. And in that Excrement Hell needle-mouth beings bore into his outer skin. Having bored into his outer skin, they bore into his inner skin… his flesh… his tendons… the bone. Having bored into the bone, they feed on the marrow. There he feels painful, racking, piercing feelings, yet he does not die as long as his evil kamma is not exhausted.
MN 130
One of the more weird references to strange beings.
Of course, rebirth in the animal realm is something which Buddhists believe happen. To reference a memory from the past involving dinosaurs you’d have to go back a few million life times (I’m assuming without doing the math). So, the likely hood of finding a monk who can do this is quite low. The likly hood that he wrote it down is also low.
The Buddha recalled 40 thousands eons of expansion and contraction (if I’m not mistaken). He would have been all kinds of animals. Many which we can’t even imagine.
But, as it’s already been alluded too, these are the leaves on the ground - the stuff he didn’t talk about - not conducive to ending suffering.
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Buddha was against using mystic powers to create converts, rather, he relied on the principles of the Dhamma as well as the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Four Noble Truths to bring people to Buddhism.
Many could have come for extravagant stories, shows, and spectacular knowledge. But it is Buddhism’s Wisdom and Compassion that provide the variety for an entrance to Enlightenment, which is it’s gift and it’s merit. The true aspect that gives Buddhism grace.
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Very apt. This simile from MN 63 is also apt (the whole sutta should be read for context, as needed):
Suppose someone were to say this: ‘I will not lead the spiritual life under the Buddha until the Buddha declares to me that the cosmos is eternal, or that the cosmos is not eternal … or that after death a realized one neither still exists nor no longer exists.’ That would still remain undeclared by the Realized One, and meanwhile that person would die.
Suppose a man was struck by an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends and colleagues, relatives and kin would get a surgeon to treat him. But the man would say: ‘I won’t extract this arrow as long as I don’t know whether the man who wounded me was an aristocrat, a brahmin, a peasant, or a menial.’ He’d say: ‘I won’t extract this arrow as long as I don’t know the following things about the man who wounded me: his name and clan; whether he’s tall, short, or medium; whether his skin is black, brown, or tawny; and what village, town, or city he comes from. I won’t extract this arrow as long as I don’t know whether the bow that wounded me was straight or recurved; whether the bow-string is made of swallow-wort fibre, sunn hemp fibre, sinew, sanseveria fibre, or spurge fibre; whether the shaft is made from a bush or a plantation tree; whether the shaft was fitted with feathers from a vulture, a heron, a hawk, a peacock, or a stork; whether the shaft was bound with sinews of a cow, a buffalo, a black lion, or an ape; and whether the arrowhead was spiked, razor-tipped, barbed, made of iron or a calf’s tooth, or lancet-shaped.’ That man would still not have learned these things, and meanwhile they’d die.
In the same way, suppose someone was to say: ‘I will not lead the spiritual life under the Buddha until the Buddha declares to me that the cosmos is eternal, or that the cosmos is not eternal … or that after death a realized one neither still exists nor no longer exists.’ That would still remain undeclared by the Realized One, and meanwhile that person would die.
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This discussion reminds me of some lines from the Pramāṇavārttika by Dharmakīrti:
*Some declare: Authenticity is knowledge of obscure referents, *
and there is no one who can undertake to have it because the means to accomplish it does not exist.
Those fearing disappointment in instruction delivered by the inexperienced
seek someone knowledgeable so that they may put what he teaches into practice.
Therefore, they must weigh his knowledge in light of whether it can be undertaken;
What use is it to us if he knows the number of insects?A knower of precisely what to accept and what to reject and the means to both
is one sought out as authentic knowledge itself, not a knower of everything.
It doesn’t matter whether he sees far or not, but whether he sees the sought after reality.If seeing far is a means to authentic knowledge, come, let’s devote ourselves to vultures!
Even if one were to know the entire natural history of the universe in great detail, from the Buddhist perspective, if one doesn’t understand the actual nature of things it won’t be possible to counteract and eliminate the ignorance that is the source of one’s suffering. He pokes a little fun at the idea of lining up behind teachers on the basis of some unusual clairvoyance or other to make the point that the goal of practice is to understand reality and what we should and shouldn’t do in order to relieve our own suffering and to truly be of benefit to others.
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(8) “Again, the great ocean is the abode of great beings such as timis, timiṅgalas, timirapiṅgalas, asuras, nāgas, and gandhabbas. There are in the great ocean beings with bodies one hundred yojanas long, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, and five hundred yojanas long. This is the eighth astounding and amazing quality that the asuras see in the great ocean because of which they take delight in it.
It’s when some ascetic or brahmin—by dint of keen, resolute, committed, and diligent effort, and right application of mind—experiences an immersion of the heart of such a kind that they recollect their many kinds of past lives. That is: one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths. They remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ And so they recollect their many kinds of past lives, with features and details.
Mosasaurus Feeding Show Scene - Jurassic World (2015) Movie Clip HD
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