Secular Buddhists represents scientism

No self doesn’t deny individuality. The law of kamma is not that I do this, another gets the result. The attainment of nibbana is not that another walk the path, then I got the fruit. In this sense, one can discern that individuality exists, it can be seen as the chain of past lives. Those who can recall past lives, can recall this or that person at this or that period of time as their past lives. I am not aware of any experiment done in the suttas or in real life for multiple people who can recall past lives, but here’s the prediction based on the notion that individuals exist.

  1. No two people who can recall past lives, will recall that they are the same person in a past life. Or these, this means that a person can be reborn into two different future bodies.

  2. The chains of past lives is what can distinguish one individual from another. Reincarnation - Millboro Case - YouTube this video shows that there can be a whole village of people who got reborn. And it’s possible to point out who was who in the past. There is no cases where a person in a past lives is identified as two person in this life. Or two persons in the past life is identified as one in this life.

  3. Sutta evidence is clear from most Jataka stories, where similarly, the Buddha identified one person in this life to one person in the past life, for each time slice. So next jataka stories, they all are taking different bodies. So in this manner, we can form a chain of past lives from the past to the present, and each person is clearly an individual, with their kamma and ignorance (enlightened or not) as the things which propagate. Memories also pass on, with only unlocking via hypnosis regression or meditative recall.

  4. If you’re thinking that externally, it seems not much different from reincarnation where the concept of an eternal soul is underlying the many lives. Indeed, rebirth evidence wise, they look the same from the outside. It’s just a philosophical difference that we Buddhist believe that the Buddha has deeper insight into seeing that the chain of past lives, that individual defined by kamma, ignorance is also not self. Also impermanent, also subject to suffering, thus not worth to be identified as self.

This is a very clear cut understanding of rebirth and no self, which is basically that people who got confused, dunno what no self actually means, and think that no self means a certain mechanism for rebirth is impossible. Whatever the rebirth mechanism is, they are all impermanent, suffering, thus not fit to be regarded as self.

Those who really need their doubts cleared about rebirth, can try out hypnosis regression.

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