Interesting for sure Venerable, but not proof.
Over 50’000 American pilots were shot down and killed in WW2. No matter what a child says, you will always find a case that is similar.
What would you consider as proof? Also, what proof is there for materialism? There’s none at all.
Regarding rebirth, here’s another US case: Boy Says He Remembers Past Life as Hollywood Agent
It is not rebirth vs materialism. Those two are not opposites. It is about dozens of equally unprovable possibilities against each other.
What is so hard to understand about an agnostic standpoint?
The assumption that non-belief in rebirth somehow automatically results in neglect of one’s responsibilities towards others is a joke. With the same right I could argue that only caring for one’s personal Kamma does the same.
Or how sincere is an ethical practice that only acts out of interest for their own benefit?
Personal Meditation is the only thing that will convince you. Even if you watch 100 of these cases, and that though they may be interesting, they can also seem merely phantasmagorical, and dissipate until the next set of interesting worldly phenomena is bound to grip you. But if you strengthen your Buddhist practice, trust the Suttas, trust Buddha, and find full Refuge in the Three Jewels as well as an altruistic motive to save others, you may quickly realize the truths behind reincarnation or rebirth, and it will be like a second-hand concept, just like the reality that we have real memories of this life. You will get there.
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No problem at all about being agnostic! At the same time, why ignore all the evidence for rebirth – not everyone remembers their past lives, but some people do (due to some reason), and these people’s accounts regarding the previous individual who died have been verified. Since thousands of cases have been studied – this, (together with evidence from NDEs, etc.), is very strong evidence.
I agree with you Dharma!!!
Not sure. 60 Million people die annually. No matter what story you come up with, there will always be a match to somebody.
You should really read the cases. It’s not as simple as that.
Many cases have the kids remember the exact location of a house. Let’s say an average house have been in existence for 200 years. And during that time, maybe every 30 years a new family moves in. So 7 families. The kid can give the exact address of the house of their previous life, and exact names of their previous families. So the possibility is not all the people who passed away. It’s amongst those about 7 families to match almost unlimited possible names for the past life parents, brothers, sisters etc. And records which are obtained, sometimes with difficulty shows the kids are right, in that house, there was a family named so and so as claimed by the kid.
How can this be? If it is one case, then maybe coincidence. When there’s so many, it cannot be simply waved away as chance.
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I do not think that the researchers who study these cases are that ‘dumb’ to rule out the possibility of ‘randomness’! Also, if you carefully check out these cases (in books, etc), you will see that they go into great details that would not match a random person. In the case of the boy named Ryan (the link I posted earlier) – all the accounts he gave (about 54 descriptive items) regarding the previous person who died was correct. However, one item – i.e., the age at which he died in the previous life did not match the death certificate of the pervious personality. But when investigating further the researchers found that the age at death had been incorrectly entered by the hospital staff, and the correct age was the age that the boy said he was when he died!! In another case, the child found things he had hidden in his previous life (buried in his previous house yard), about which no one else in his previous family knew. Some children notice landmarks that have changed, asking questions like “where is the tree that used to be here?”
Also, below is a link where Dr. Jim Tucker talks about rebirth cases:
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I agree NgXinZhao, and thanks for the link you posted. Another point I like to add is: the researchers say that the children are very emotional when talking about their previous families, sometimes pleading with the parents to take them there. They also show a lot of emotions when meeting previous life family members.
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Hi, I see that your post is deleted – but since I had already started replying to it, I thought of sending. The Wikipedia account of karma being not talked about in the Sutta Pitaka is totally incorrect. Karma is frequently mentioned in the Sutta Pitaka. Below are some examples:
Mahathanhasankhaya sutta (MN 38)
Cula-kammavibhanga Sutta (MN: 135)
Mahaparinibbana Sutta (DN: 16)
Nibbedhika Sutta (Penetrative) (AN: 6.63)
Devadaha Sutta (SN: 42.6)
Regarding the concept of rebirth and karma, the following article (also written by a Professor, who is a notable scholar), explains various misconceptions people can have about karma:
Aggressive denial (rather than wise agnosticism) of rebirth might be because one doesn’t want to face the consequences for hedonism and/or other unskillful actions done in this life…
Why not simply accept rebirth? What good does denial of it do? Nothing good. But, according to the suttas, it has very severe consequences if one holds to fixed wrong view ( Niyata-micchāditthi) and there is rebirth.
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Because seeking pleasure through the senses does not lead to true satisfaction. We are running behind satisfaction the same way people run behind a mirage. But we run, because we don’t have what we are looking for.
So to find true satisfaction, you must make that satisfaction unconditioned. Therefore, it cannot be based upon objects of the senses. Refer to the simile of the Leper:
“Now suppose that there was a leper covered with sores & infections, devoured by worms, picking the scabs off the openings of his wounds with his nails, cauterizing his body over a pit of glowing embers. The more he cauterized his body over the pit of glowing embers, the more disgusting, foul-smelling, & putrid the openings of his wounds would become, and yet he would feel a modicum of enjoyment & satisfaction because of the itchiness of his wounds. In the same way, beings not free from passion for sensual pleasures—devoured by sensual craving, burning with sensual fever—indulge in sensual pleasures. The more they indulge in sensual pleasures, the more their sensual craving increases and the more they burn with sensual fever, and yet they feel a modicum of enjoyment & satisfaction dependent on the five strands of sensuality.
Māgaṇḍiyasutta (Majjhima Nikāya 75)
This is why I follow Buddhism. I don’t believe in Karma or Rebirth or Samsara either.
But I know, that all the suffering in this world is due to tanha (craving for sense stimulation, craving to live), tatratatrabhinandini (seeking delight here and there, via the senses), which leads to attachment, and intoxication of pleasure.
For someone who has removed desire for what comes through the senses, his satisfaction does not depend on surroundings. Therefore, his peace, his happiness, is no longer dependant on what’s going on in the world around him. This is the peace and happiness and satisfaction that every single living being is truly seeking, whether they are aware of it or not.
You don’t need to be a Buddhist to do this. All you need to know is understand how your body takes inputs from the 5 senses, and then creates vedana, sanna, sankhara based off them, and creates an ‘I’ (asmimana), and creates a ‘mine’, and tries to make things ‘mine’. This is where the whole mass of suffering starts.
Even if you think of it on a more shallow level, all the wars, killings, rapes, injustice, objectification, murders, cheatings, etc, happen, because people seek delight in what comes through the 5 senses.
SN 35.9 Paṭhamābhinanda Sutta: Delight (1)
"Bhikkhus, one who seeks delight in the eye seeks delight in suffering. One who seeks delight in suffering, I say, is not freed from suffering. One who seeks delight in the ear … in the nose … in the tongue … in the body … in the mind seeks delight in suffering. One who seeks delight in suffering, I say, is not freed from suffering. "
“One who does not seek delight in the eye … in the mind does not seek delight in suffering. One who does not seek delight in suffering, I say, is freed from suffering.”
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Correct, I agree. For many people (not you) it is easy to fall into the sense-delight (hedonism) trap if there is no acceptance of karma, rebirth, hell or some other consequences found in other religions. But for some who understand the dangers, they don’t need that.
I’m currently reading Bhante Gunaratana’s Dependent Origination in Plain English and was happy to see he agrees with my hypothesis in the OP that for many (not all) hedonism is the default. He wrote:
Nihilism causes the angst of being annihilated, conveying the notion of absolute destruction. It can also lead one to lead an immoral life, thinking there are no repercussions for one’s actions in another life. (p. 14)
I read in DN 15 wars are caused by craving (taṇhā) & claims of ownership (pariggahaṁ). Its interesting how some who inherently believe in the foundational tenant of another religion (even when this inherent religious tenant is cloaked in secular world politics) attribute wars & colonialism (pariggahaṁ) to the will of a god. I read this god view was refuted in AN 3.61.
Its interesting to read you follow Buddhism but don’t believe in rebirth. You believe in the removal of desire, which is a Buddha teaching. I think your well reasoned view may show how belief in rebirth is probably mostly connected to desire for rebirth & an inherent self-belief. I will consider your post more deeply but your post gives me the feeling believing in rebirth is connected to hedonism (craving for life & its sensual pleasures or craving for heavenly bliss). I think certain individuals may not realize family, money, property, etc, are also sensual pleasures. I recall i posted previously how there are many suttas saying certainly worldly virtues lead to realms of divine sensual pleasures (which read as though they are more refined forms of hedonism). I think you might be correct in suggesting those who believe in impermanence are dispassionate therefore would be the least hedonistic. Once upon a time, most of the world was essentially religious. Buddhists had a reputation for being traders, which is why many Buddhists converted to Islam when Islam and its Muslim traders first came to Western India. Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others had a reputation for being traders or merchants. Of course the great nations & empires, be they Pluralistic (e.g. Roman), Islamic or Christian or Judeo-Christian, sought sensual pleasures. I think both historically & Sutta, there is no correlation at all between secularism & hedonism. If religious people were not hedonistic, the Buddha, who lived in a religious society, would not have extensively taught about the dangers & futility of sensual pleasures, including teaching Brahmins to not have sexual intercourse with non-Brahmin partners. The conclusion looks to be both religionism & secularism do not inhibit hedonism; that only the perceptions (in SN 22.59; AN 10.60) founded upon the perception of impermanence can inhibit hedonism . 