SuttaCentral
Where are the humours lines in that sutta? I don’t detect any, but your knowledge of pali etc is broader than mine.
In Pali there’s also, as you might have guessed, Vinaya rules that govern inappropriate humor, so we have actual examples of things that were considered funny.
That’s interesting. Learn something new everyday. Do any of these items show in the sutta in question Bhante?
Hi Ceisiwr, Bhikkhu Thanissaro wrote a book about humor used in the early Buddhist teachings in the Pali Canon. You can find the book here:
Thank you very much 
. It’s not a topic I’ve looked into much over the years.
Ehipassiko, BTW, IMO, FWIW, WT* ? 
Sorry about that…yes, I meant the First Free Women book.
Where are my manners? 
Hello, it’s great to be among people talking about Dhamma!
Sotthi 
there is a new Netflix documentary titled “Surving Death”. The last chapter deals with some modern cases of rebirth. There is also the appearance of some scholars who are following the Stevenson investigation. Some cases are amazing.
To be fair, it’s not as broad here as in some places, eg. DN 24 Pāthikasutta, which is outright slapstick.
Again, I think it’s important to have a background in mythology; the boundaries between story, humor, play, sacrifice, are always being blurred. They get deadly serious and playfully satirical turn by turn. There’s a reason why the most famous of the Buddha’s biographies was called the Lalitavistara, the “Long Game”.
But there’s a subtle, almost snarky humor in the way the Aggaññasutta skewers the pretensions of the brahmins. As always in the suttas, such humor is employed with deftness and precision: the Buddha never punches down. He reserves satire for the brahmins, whose pretensions to status was so often belied by their behavior. He understood that taking people seriously is sometimes exactly what they want.
Against the divinity of the claimed brahmincal birth he points out the very obvious messy and organic birth that brahmins go through like everyone else. Against the brahmanical vanity of appearance (which is ultimately race-based) he shows that vanity leads to ugliness. And so on. He’s taking details point by point from brahmanical origin stories and flipping them entirely on their head. Gombrich identifies the exact passages in question.
Thank you, Javier, for your welcoming wishes.
As you say, we ought to point out how much “secular” trends depart from the Buddha Dharma, when they do.
It is complicated because as Ajahn Sujato suggests, meaning does not inhere in words. Meaning is negotiated, it is established through usage, it is not to be found exclusively in the text, it is a dependent-arising.
Skepticism has significant psychological ramification. It does something to the mind. It’s particularly humbling, for one thing.
I believe that many people misunderstand skepticism, and this misunderstanding might be an obstacle. We cannot tell a skeptic by what he believes. We can tell a skeptic by the justifications for his beliefs. He who believes that the earth is flat in dependence on invalid reasons is more of a skeptic than he who believes that the earth is round merely on hearsay.
Thank you for the reply Bhante. Some things to think over. I think I’ll go back and read Gombrich’s work again.
Many EBT’s do mention supernatural events, travel, and destinations after death. One such example from SN 22.2 that is clear about the relationship between our current practice and not only our current lives, but also what happens after we die.
If those who acquired and kept unskillful qualities were to live happily in the present life, free of anguish, distress, and fever; and if, when their body breaks up, after death, they could expect to go to a good place, the Buddha would not praise giving up unskillful qualities. But since those who acquire and keep unskillful qualities live unhappily in the present life, full of anguish, distress, and fever; and since, when their body breaks up, after death, they can expect to go to a bad place, the Buddha praises giving up unskillful qualities.
If those who embraced and kept skillful qualities were to live unhappily in the present life, full of anguish, distress, and fever; and if, when their body breaks up, after death, they could expect to go to a bad place, the Buddha would not praise embracing skillful qualities. But since those who embrace and keep skillful qualities live happily in the present life, free of anguish, distress, and fever; and since, when their body breaks up, after death, they can expect to go to a good place, the Buddha praises embracing skillful qualities.
This post retracted by author.
I personally don’t feel comfortable speaking to what someone’s intention is since we cannot ask them. I will say although I do not agree with Gil’s position on rebirth, the Insight Meditation Center is completely freely offered I benefited tremendously from daylongs held there when first learning to meditate.
Maybe! But I am right there with you sometimes if I am being honest.
I just think the Western mind is conditioned so much against the idea of rebirth. Especially the non-religionist type that sometimes finds their way to alternate (outside of Western norm) spiritual circles. I look at it this way … there are certain things you disclose on the “first date” and other things you may want to wait until things get more serious to start chatting about.
I think the real thing that people need to overcome, and I could be wrong, is their strict adherence to “scientific” principles or world views. They often don’t realize how much of a hindrance it can be in benefitting from this practice. Many Western teachers try to blend these into this pseudo-Buddhist-pop-psychology-self-help concoction that for some reason is very popular.
Fair point, Owl. I apologize for sounding too flippant.
Hi Bhante, it would be great to have your OP in a standalone essay format.
The reason I suggest this is that I would like to share it with people and noticed that whenever I present them with a link to D&D they don’t really read.
It seems to me that people don’t really enjoy reading pieces like these in a forum where dozens of comments stack up and add noise to the original message. 
i mean maybe, I don’t know. It’s pretty standard on the web. But anyone is welcome to repost it wherever they like!
Thank you, Bhante @sujato for your clear point-by-point analysis.
What was the most disheartening to me about learning about Gil’s stance: I believe there are members of such lay/secular sanghas as IMC who would really benefit and grow spiritually by learning the Buddha’s teachings more directly and allowing themselves to sit with rebirth, kamma, dependent origination and the relationship to nibbana. There are probably folks who are stuck in their development due to lack of this exposure. I certainly was one of them but not for too long thankfully (less than 6 months).
On the other hand, when I asked a couple of monastics about whether what Gil and other secular teachers are doing is 'bad" there was the "at least” those folks are getting exposed and can then come find the true teachings!
I hope for a time when our western cultures can evolve to want not just comfortable quick fixes to apply to their lives, but deep spirituality, ethics, and holding of the unknown/uncomfortable.
We aren’t there yet overall but it is a hope in my heart 
I want to note, as I did comment on Gil’s essay, that I have viewed a number of his talks on youtube, and do find him to be a very decent, thoughtful, and knowledgeable teacher. I’ve not come across at any time online a suggestion from any of his students that he was anything other than highly ethical and personally and professionally sound. My blip of a comment was only directed at his essay on rebirth, but he likely deserves credit for his longstanding role as a sound Buddhist teacher, having invested many years of teaching in good faith.
There are a lot of fools out there spouting pseudo-Dhamma, and it’s all too easy to find fault. That’s why, as a rule, I ignore them and try to address critical essays only to those who are worthy. Same with my translation studies; I occasionally mention mistakes in work by Ven Bodhi or KR Norman because they are the best and the mistakes so rare and small.
But without a rigorous culture of debate and accountability, we’ll never learn how to improve.
I do find it difficult to conceptualise rebirth without some kind of “soul” which moves from life to life.
I haven’t yet found a satisfactory answer in the suttas to that basic question: “What is reborn?”