With the recent discussions on rebirth, I thought it would be interesting to have a similar thread.
I’ve watched a number of documentaries on rebirth (although often incorrectly referred to as reincarnation). However, partly due to the nature of the topic, a lot of them are badly done or aren’t that conclusive. Similarly for written material—which needs to be even more trustworthy, since written text is much more easily tampered with compared to video.
What documentaries/videos/research on rebirth—of which you have watched/read—have you found to be very good?
Please do share them.
(I’ll post some as well as the thread progresses.)
Here is the story and recordings of a 3-year-old boy from Sri Lanka called Dhammaruwan, who would spontaneously recite Pāli chanting, for long durations of time, without speaking Pāli, and all from memory.
This the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, which is recorded quite well—and which might cause shivers to go down your spine!
Here are (I think) all the recordings of Dhammaruwan: http://www.pirith.org/ (middle of page)
Dhammaruwan’s story from the above website:
Dhammaruwan was born in a small village near Kandy, Sri Lanka in November, 1968. From the age of about two, before he could read or write, he spontaneously started to chant the ancient Buddhist scriptures in the original Pāli language, known only to a few scholar monks.
Each day, somewhere around two o’clock in the morning, after sitting in meditation with his adopted and devoted Buddhist foster father for about twenty to forty minutes, he would spontaneously start to chant Pāli suttas. On the Poya or lunar Observance day, he would sometimes chant for two hours.
Dhammaruwan’s foster father started making amateur recording of the chanting and invited prominent scholar monk to listen. The monk verified that it was indeed the ancient Pāli language and the boy were chanting it in an ancient style which no longer existed in world.
Re: Dhammaruwan, I thought it would be worth mentioning that Ven Anālayo has done a really interesting study of Dhammaruwan’s chanting in his forthcoming book. I think this has been posted elsewhere but since not everyone reads all the discussions, I thought I’d post here for those who may be interested.
