SuttaCentral
Another way to raise the objection:
I agree that we can’t know either way. I’m thinking about the arguments like
“since we cannot prove those traditional doctrines to be mistaken, our best option is to accept the teachings as they have come down to us as a whole, and work with them.”
That re-framing has several virtues including avoiding the informal critical thinking error of assuming the worst/most unflattering interpretation of your opponents words.
Rebirth is not to be thought of through the lens of “me, mine, I, my self.” If one approaches the teaching in this way, one is already on the route into the wilderness of views.
MN 2:
“This is how he attends unwisely: ‘Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what, what did I become in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what, what shall I become in the future?’ Or else he is inwardly perplexed about the present thus: ‘Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where will it go?’
“When he attends unwisely in this way, one of six views arises in him. The view ‘self exists for me’ arises in him as true and established; or the view ‘no self exists for me’ arises in him as true and established; or the view ‘I perceive self with self’ arises in him as true and established; or the view ‘I perceive not-self with self’ arises in him as true and established; or the view ‘I perceive self with not-self’ arises in him as true and established; or else he has some such view as this: ‘It is this self of mine that speaks and feels and experiences here and there the result of good and bad actions; but this self of mine is permanent, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and it will endure as long as eternity.’ This speculative view, bhikkhus, is called the thicket of views, the wilderness of views, the contortion of views, the vacillation of views, the fetter of views. Fettered by the fetter of views, the untaught ordinary person is not freed from birth, ageing, and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair; he is not freed from suffering, I say.
Rather, one should approach the teaching through the lens of the Four Noble Truths (taught a little bit later in MN 2) and/or Dependent Origination, taught here to someone with a similar question to yours:
SN 12.17:
Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at Rajagaha in the Bamboo Grove, the Squirrel Sanctuary. Then, in the morning, the Blessed One dressed and, taking bowl and robe, entered Rajagaha for alms. The naked ascetic Kassapa saw the Blessed One coming in the distance. Having seen him, he approached the Blessed One and exchanged greetings with him. When they had concluded their greetings and cordial talk, he stood to one side and said to him: “We would like to ask Master Gotama about a certain point, if he would grant us the favour of answering our question.”
“This is not the right time for a question, Kassapa. We have entered among the houses.”
A second time and a third time the naked ascetic Kassapa said to the Blessed One: “We would like to ask Master Gotama about a certain point, if he would grant us the favour of answering our question.”
“This is not the right time for a question, Kassapa. We have entered among the houses.”
Then the naked ascetic Kassapa said to the Blessed One: “We do not wish to ask Master Gotama much.”
“Then ask what you want, Kassapa.”
“How is it, Master Gotama: is suffering created by oneself?”
“Not so, Kassapa,” the Blessed One said.
“Then, Master Gotama, is suffering created by another?”
“Not so, Kassapa,” the Blessed One said.
“How is it then, Master Gotama: is suffering created both by oneself and by another?”
“Not so, Kassapa,” the Blessed One said.
“Then, Master Gotama, has suffering arisen fortuitously, being created neither by oneself nor by another?”
“Not so, Kassapa,” the Blessed One said.
“How is it then, Master Gotama: is there no suffering?”
“It is not that there is no suffering, Kassapa; there is suffering.”
“Then is it that Master Gotama does not know and see suffering?”
“It is not that I do not know and see suffering, Kassapa. I know suffering, I see suffering.”
“Whether you are asked: ‘How is it, Master Gotama: is suffering created by oneself?’ or ‘Is it created by another?’ or ‘Is it created by both?’ or ‘Is it created by neither?’ in each case you say: ‘Not so, Kassapa.’ When you are asked: ‘How is it then, Master Gotama: is there no suffering?’ you say: ‘It is not that there is no suffering, Kassapa; there is suffering.’ When asked: ‘Then is it that Master Gotama does not know and see suffering?’ you say: ‘It is not that I do not know and see suffering, Kassapa. I know suffering, I see suffering.’ Venerable sir, let the Blessed One explain suffering to me. Let the Blessed One teach me about suffering.” “Kassapa, if one thinks, ‘The one who acts is the same as the one who experiences the result,’ then one asserts with reference to one existing from the beginning: ‘Suffering is created by oneself.’ When one asserts thus, this amounts to eternalism. But, Kassapa, if one thinks, ‘The one who acts is one, the one who experiences the result is another,’ then one asserts with reference to one stricken by feeling: ‘Suffering is created by another.’ When one asserts thus, this amounts to annihilationism. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle: ‘With ignorance as condition, volitional formations come to be; with volitional formations as condition, consciousness…. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering. But with the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance comes cessation of volitional formations; with the cessation of volitional formations, cessation of consciousness…. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.’”
When this was said, the naked ascetic Kassapa said to the Blessed One: “Magnificent, venerable sir! Magnificent, venerable sir! The Dhamma has been made clear in many ways by the Blessed One, as though he were turning upright what had been turned upside down, revealing what was hidden, showing the way to one who was lost, or holding up a lamp in the dark for those with eyesight to see forms. I go for refuge to the Blessed One, and to the Dhamma, and to the Bhikkhu Saṅgha. May I receive the going forth under the Blessed One, may I receive the higher ordination?”
“Kassapa, one formerly belonging to another sect who desires the going forth and the higher ordination in this Dhamma and Discipline lives on probation for four months. At the end of the four months, if the bhikkhus are satisfied with him, they may if they wish give him the going forth and the higher ordination to the state of a bhikkhu. But individual differences are recognized by me.”
“If, venerable sir, one formerly belonging to another sect who desires the going forth and the higher ordination in this Dhamma and Discipline lives on probation for four months, and if at the end of the four months the bhikkhus, being satisfied with him, may if they wish give him the going forth and the higher ordination to the state of a bhikkhu, then I will live on probation for four years. At the end of the four years, if the bhikkhus are satisfied with me, let them if they wish give me the going forth and the higher ordination to the state of a bhikkhu.”
Then the naked ascetic Kassapa received the going forth under the Blessed One, and he received the higher ordination. And soon, not long after his higher ordination, dwelling alone, withdrawn, diligent, ardent, and resolute, the Venerable Kassapa, by realizing it for himself with direct knowledge, in this very life entered and dwelt in that unsurpassed goal of the holy life for the sake of which clansmen rightly go forth from the household life into homelessness. He directly knew: “Destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being.” And the Venerable Kassapa became one of the arahants.
Finally, here is Venerable Nagasena illustrating to King Milindha:
Mil 3.2.1:
The king said: ‘He who is born, Nāgasena, does he remain the same or become another?’
‘Neither the same nor another.’
‘Give me an illustration.’
‘Now what do you think, O king? You were once a baby, a tender thing, and small in size, lying flat on your back. Was that the same as you who are now grown up?’
‘No. That child was one, I am another.’
‘If you are not that child, it will follow that you have had neither mother nor father, no! nor teacher. You cannot have been taught either learning, or behaviour, or wisdom. What, great king! is the mother of the embryo in the first stage different from the mother of the embryo in the second stage, or the third, or the fourth ? Is the mother of the baby a different person from the mother of the grown-up man? Is the person who goes to school one, and the same when he has finished his schooling another? Is it one who commits a crime, another who is punished by having his hands or feet cut off ?’
‘Certainly not. But what would you, Sir, say to that? ’
The Elder replied: ‘I should say that I am the same person, now I am grown up, as I was when I was a tender tiny baby, flat on my back. For all these states are included in one by means of this body.’
‘Give me an illustration.’
‘Suppose a man, O king, were to light a lamp, would it burn the night through?’
‘Yes, it might do so.’
‘Now, is it the same flame that burns in the first watch of the night, Sir, and in the second?’
‘No.’
‘Or the same that burns in the second watch and in the third?’
‘No.’
‘Then is there one lamp in the first watch, and another in the second, and another in the third?’
‘No. The light comes from the same lamp all the night through.’
‘Just so, O king, is the continuity of a person or thing maintained. One comes into being, another passes away; and the rebirth is, as it were, simultaneous. Thus neither as the same nor as another does a man go on to the last phase of his self-consciousness.’
‘Give me a further illustration.’
‘It is like milk, which when once taken from the cow, turns, after a lapse of time, first to curds, and then from curds to butter, and then from butter to ghee. Now would it be right to say that the milk was the same thing as the curds, or the butter, or the ghee?’
‘Certainly not; but they are produced out of it.’
‘Just so, O king, is the continuity of a person or thing maintained. One comes into being, another passes away; and the rebirth is, as it were, simultaneous. Thus neither as the same nor as another does a man go on to the last phase of his self-consciousness.’
‘Well put, Nāgasena!’
But I think you’ve seen all this before and remain with your views, right? Please let me know because by now, you’ve seen enough of my posts to know I answer most questions about the Buddha’s teachings with quotes from the Canon. And it wouldn’t be a good use of our time for you to ask me questions about the Buddha’s teachings while expecting quotes that you’ve already heard and discarded, would it?
Regarding the particulars of heaven and hell; I’m honestly going to say I don’t know!
However, I do know that the things we cling to via desire and aversion follow us. If we carry anger about injustice it follows us like a shadow follows the ox. So even in a 1 life scenario there is heaven and hell. We are in that heaven or hell as long as we are maintaining those mindstates. Either the Brahmaviharas or D.A.D. Unlike the concepts of heaven and hell in Christianity we have the agency to end these states (one life or multilife) by setting up new conditions.
I have cited some of those passages in the past as well - although not the Milinda Pañha, which is a later text. I think anyone who fully understands and penetrates the teachings on jati in those ways would have no fears about future states of existence, and would see no reason to think anything is “re”-jatied, so to speak. There is only jati. Every jati is the arising of a new thing, from new conditions obtaining at that time. Jati is occurring all the time, as is marana. The self, such as it appears, is an illusory construction, an alluring phantom concocted by the I-making and my-making process. There is no literal “descent” into the womb where some mental fabrication that somehow gets detached from its previous corporeal manifestation is then is somehow re-attached to a new embryo. There is no significant continuity following the breakup of the body, as most of the organized mental fabrications that make up a human personality perish and break up along with the body. Many of the kammic seeds we have planted do come to fruition after that break up, but in many different lives, according to the number of beings our actions have affected.
The Buddha, a subtle and enlightened and liberated spiritual visionary, tried to convey all this, and to actually free people, and it comes through in the oldest and most profound texts, but it is buried under a large pile of much less edifying material deposited by far less subtle and profound followers in the years to come - including rancorous arguments between Jains and Buddhist Jain converts, Brahminical nonesense about weird bodily marks, and then a whole Buddhist religion, which looks suspiciously similar to some of the early Hindu systems it displaced, and that superimpose on the Buddha’s subtleties the same primitive hell-and-heaven, reward-and-punishment, wandering migrations from life to life that the Buddha’s deepest thoughts completely deconstruct.
The Buddha mocked the whole idea of attempting to win a good future state of post-death existence by making sacrifices. And yet millions of Buddhists now do the same thing, going to “pujas” - a Hindu term - where they make offerings to Buddhist monastics, instead of Brahmin priests, and look for the same future benefits in imaginary lives to come.
So rather than a path to liberation, the Buddhist religion has become in some of its manifestations a system of authoritarian and superstitious moralism, yoked to some pretty authoritarian states as a state religion, and preaching a system of upward and downward promotion and demotion through the world systems. In other words: just another carrot-and-stick control system for keeping people on a socially desired and obedient path.
I agree completely.
Thank you for making your views clear, again. I’ll consider any future questions on this subject to be rhetorical and save us both some time. 
Indeed it is. But does that make the teachings within it less worthy of consideration by default? And I’ll be straight—that is a rhetorical question.
I’m not sure what you mean in this context by a rhetorical question. The question in my OP subject heading is a genuine question, as is my concluding question about what other people think. Your views are one answer.
Clearly my attitudes irritate you. I can get irritated by other attitudes. I guess we both have to work on that.
But what prompted my post in this case was the feeling that when the views people promote are not just a matter of private belief that, whether correct or incorrect, are relatively harmless, and instead cross over into endorsing very questionable theories that can produce avoidable psychological pain, it might no longer be acceptable to pass them over in silence and say “Well, to each his own.”
I imagine a lot of us wonder just how far down the path of inauthenticity the EBT’s went. The pressures and temptations to “reframe” the accounts must have been there for sure.
Do you think the EBT as they came down to us have much to say about the irresponsibility of validating fears? I can’t think of any passages.
Emphasis mine.
What about in non-authoritarian states? That is the context that I normally think about.
Also as the history of Buddhism in authoritarian states (China, Japan prior to WW 2, Vietnam) that I am aware of often enough has Buddhists in some considerable level of conflict or tension with the government powers.
I am assuming that you consider the Canada, US, GB, Australia, New Zealand as non-authoritarian.
Not your OP’s questions, your questions to me in post #20. It’s a waste of time for me to look for answers to questions, finding and copy-pasting suttas that are relevant, if you’re going to essentially ignore the content and instead use my answer as a springboard to give us another sermon on your views. Views that are invariably laced with cynicism and disdain for Buddhist religion and important doctrines and contain broad caricatures of people who believe in what you disagree with as hoodwinked rubes.
Your views aren’t that irritating per se. It’s the way you present them with such vitriol and disrespect that is. You’re clearly a very skillful writer and very good at writing in such a way. It’s a shame that you so often level those cannons at Buddhism.
And in this case, it’s irritating because you’re using my answers to your question as a stepping block to your soap box. That is just not fair play and is why I’ll be regarding future questions from you on this topic as rhetorical. Aminah made the smart play here and I’ll try to follow her example from now on.
IMO, the more likely prompting of your post was frankk’s thread about rebirth today and this is your “counter-thread.”
Thank you for posting this interesting topic, Dan.
I have the same feeling about science (well science journals and science media in general) these days.
For example - the issue of global warming. For some reason they have taken the evidence and decided that global warming is a really bad thing in what looks like an attempt to scare the general population (presumably into giving them more money for research).
While I do not deny the evidence that the climate is changing due to human activity, I think that the insistence that this is a bad thing that needs to be sorted out, is very non scientific. For all they know it might be a great thing, for example ushering in a new era of beings who have a better propensity to understand dhamma.
We see this fear making all the time with humans, it would be naive to think that it wouldn’t happen in religions too. I can’t remember what it is called, but I think the idea is that we’ve been conditioned by evolution to fear things more than trust them. The ones that ran away from tigers are the ones that lived to procreate; they are our ancestors.
Dan why don’t you ignore the ‘metaphysical’ threads and focus on the other threads. It’s a useful skill to develop, not only in Buddhist forums but in life. Everyone won’t share other people’s beliefs- and no one can change anything if the other person doesn’t want to change themselves. Another 1000 rebirth or a 1000 anti-rebirth threads will reap fatigue and no change. The Buddha clearly had a path for followers who didn’t believe in rebirth etc. which needs representing. Conflict, however is unacceptable- the Buddha always strives to promote a united front. This is possible if people can, as you say, work on oneself and allow other beliefs to co-exist. It says a lot for the person who can strive and do this as it isn’t the easiest attitude to strive for.
With metta
Is there not also the possibility that an individual is being supported holistically, during which time they have the space to sort out “views”?
I agree. I have posted about this.
But “secular buddhism is false” on this board. So virtually no one else here agrees. Rebirth means “real buddhist” here.
I’ve been posting here for about two years now. For most of that time, I believe, I was very deferential and respectful toward the beliefs of people who differed from me on rebirth. Basically, I treated the subject as a kind of no-go area, and avoided it, and tried to stick to the many areas of common ground.
But it increasingly occurred to me that these tacit ground rules were very much a one-way street. While the more orthodox and fundamentalist felt quite free to lambaste heterodox Buddhist belief systems, and express contemptuous attitudes about the spiritual or moral condition of heterodox practitioners, or spread all manners of irrationality and silliness, the heterodox seemed to be expected to refrain from injecting critical thinking about the intellectual foundations of these more orthodox belief systems, so as not to stir up controversy or give offense or be disrespectful.
My impression now is that there are a large number of people who visit this site, who are very interested in the EBTs and their interpretation, and would like to participate more, but who merely lurk and express an occasional “like” because they have received the message that they are persona non grata, and their participation will not be appreciated.
I confess I respond with strong aversion to all forms of cultishness: indications that people have surrendered their intellects and capacity for independent critical judgment over to authority figures in order to win the approval of a teacher or a master, and have succumbed to passive-aggressive, and deceptively coercive, mind manipulation. “Oh look, I’m finally a Good Buddhist because I have figured out how to interpret all the mental imagery swirling through my head as a narrative of past lives. The Teacher approves of me!”
I believe frankk’s post appeared after mine? Perhaps he was the one who was responding.
The first paragraph of my post first appeared as a reply in Kay’s thread about rebirth experiences. It was a response to a new participant in that thread who bravely reported that she had experienced a lot violence as a child and a teenager, and as a way of coming to peace with that violence had concluded that she might have done harm to those people in her previous lives and was suffering the results of her own karma. And yet she still finds rebirth terrifying, and now lives in dread that she may have to relive similar events over and over.
I was moved to comment, because the responses to her comment all seemed to validate the conclusions she had drawn, and accept that both her attribution of personal responsibility for her own suffering, and her dread of further lives filled with more such terrible suffering, were rational and appropriate.
I was reminded by Kay in a private message that she had set certain ground rules for her thread, and that it was to be used exclusively for believers in rebirth to share their personal experiences in connection with rebirth. So I relocated that paragraph here in a separate thread, along with a few other comments.
I think it will be very unfortunate if that visitor to Kay’s thread is never offered the solace of considering that maybe she did absolutely nothing wrong at all and is not the perpetrator of her own abuse, and that maybe there is no reason to think that there are many more lifetimes of hells, rape rooms or beatings awaiting her.
Mat, on the whole, I believe what you say is true. But the beliefs people have don’t just impact their own lives. The things we say to other people can significantly affect those other people, for good or for ill, and so in those cases I think we have a responsibility to critically examine the beliefs on which our statements are based, in order to help figure out whether the things we are telling others are helping or harming them.
I don’t believe my initial post in this thread used needlessly contentious language. But it does presuppose willingness to critically confront and discuss, and perhaps challenge, orthodox belief traditions.
This is the kind of ignorance Dan is talking about, I think. You’d endanger another’s ability to learn facts about anthropogenic climate change and the now almost irreversible catastrophes which lie in store for the planet and all life on it, because maybe happier ghosts will show up.
This is immoral; it is a decision to endanger others because one’s own views about ghosts pair up with one’s lack of understanding of climate science in order to prevent any sense of urgency about it.
This sort of willful disregard of the future suffering of billions of humans, and yet also believing in rebirth, strikes me as a double standard of the worst kind, causing demonstrable harm now for the sake of speculative future non-humans.
Wow. Just, wow.
I suppose that is a possibility, Nadine. But how is that sorting out process to move forward if only one perspective is permitted?
This is not the first time that nearly this exact same issue has come up here. I find it very difficult to accept that people are being helped in any way when they are encouraged to blame themselves for the aggressions being visited upon them by others, or to view the future beyond death as a dreadful theater of pain.
Imagine some poor Thai teenager, trafficked into Bangkok as prostitute. There she lies, wondering, “Why is this ugly, smelly and abusive drunk on top of me, using my body like a toy? What did I do to deserve this? I must be a very bad girl, who did something terrible to this man in a past life. I hope my other lives aren’t this awful. But it looks like they will be, because clearly I am a very bad girl!”
That’s appalling. Not only is such an attitude not helping that girl come to peace with her suffering. It is actually redoubling her suffering by training her to take up the very club of violence that is being used against her, and to then hit herself with it over and over for good measure.
This is not a doctrine of liberation. It is a tool for psychological oppression and domination. It makes the work of the thugs and the exploiters that much easier, by teaching fear and self-abuse.
I believe the Buddha meant to teach the liberation of forgiveness and renunciation, not the pain of self-mortification and dread.
Two things of note.
SN 36.21 demonstrates that kamma is not in fact responsible for everything in life, and that things can happen to people without any kamma being in play at all.
Consider Thanissaro’s take on this sutta:
Translator’s note: Some people have interpreted this sutta as stating that there are many experiences that cannot be explained by the principle of kamma. A casual glance of the alternative factors here — drawn from the various causes for pain that were recognized in the medical treatises of his time — would seem to support this conclusion. However, if we compare this list with his definition of old kamma in SN 35.145, we see that many of the alternative causes are actually the result of past actions. Those that aren’t are the result of new kamma.
But the summary to the sutta says:
Bile, phlegm, and also wind,
Imbalance and climate too,
Carelessness and assault,
With kamma result as the eighth.
The eighth. One of eight.
But, Thanissaro et al prefer other ideas, heavy and aggressive ideas. Consider:
But according to some people they do not agree with this, because one should pay or experience what one has sown, anti depressant doesn’t solve this.
Once again, rebirth as an idea is shown to support harm to people here and now, in this case affecting how those suffering from mental illness are treated by others.
well said. Its time to come out of the darkness and hell-fire into the daylight of reason and fruitful practice.