Distressed at a Buddhist conversation

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aruna

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Fortunately, reincarnation is not a Buddhist idea. :)
.

Rebirth! Rebirth!!!


AMC

This misunderstanding of the definitions of rebirth and reincarnation always seems to crop up in these discussions.

What the Buddhists refer to as rebirth, is what is called by Hindus reincarnation.
Reincarnation as understood by Buddhists (the same soul reappearing again and again as itself) does not exist in Hinduism.

I believe that when most non-Buddhist Westerners use the term "reincarnation" they are using it in the Hindu, not the Buddhist sense -- which is why Buddhists always cry out Rebirth! Rebirth! It's just a terminological problem.

I'm sorry to hear that, too. I was also sorry to learn there are about forty branches of Buddhism. I don't like variation - I need surity.

You'll never find surety among human institutions such as religions.
The following quote by Herman Hesse (don't worry, I'm going to translate it, but it just sounds so great in the original!) says it all, really:

„Es gibt die Wirklichkeit, ihr Knaben, und an der ist nicht zu rütteln. Wahrheiten aber, nämlich in Worten ausgedrückte Meinungen über das Wirkliche, gibt es unzählige, und jede ist ebenso richtig wie sie falsch ist.“

"Reality* exists, you monks, and it is unshakeable.
Truths, though, that is, opinions about the Real expressed in words, are innumerable, and each one is just as correct as it is false."

(
Hermann Hesse und China. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 673, S. 328 f.)

*
Reality here meaning spiritual reality, not material reality.
 
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Shweta

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The Buddha was overtly anti-faith, though his teachings require at least suspension of disbelief to make any sense of 'em at all and could be interpreted as needing a sort of faith, though it's more the "try this thought" faith than the "Believe This" faith of many forms of Hinduism and... nevermind, it's complicated

But Buddhism is a catch-all term for all philosophies and religions descended from his teachings, and it'd be really weird if they were all the same, humans being what we are.

What your friend means by Buddhism is not what you mean. Nothing to be distressed about, any more than you'd need to be distressed at UK English and American English having different word meanings :)
 

Ruv Draba

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Are you the same person who went to sleep last night?
The 'me' is a myth. A narrative construct to make sense of it all. Not in my cells nor my DNA, my memories, my behaviours, my relationships nor my knowledge does the me of (say) seven years ago exist. Only in my personal narrative.

Is this rebirth, AMC, or just the illusion of self? Perhaps the chief reason people care about rebirth/reincarnation/transmigration is that the illusion of self is nice and small while the facts of non-self and changing-self are scarily big.
 

aruna

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The 'me' is a myth. A narrative construct to make sense of it all. Not in my cells nor my DNA, my memories, my behaviours, my relationships nor my knowledge does the me of (say) seven years ago exist. Only in my personal narrative.

Is this rebirth, AMC, or just the illusion of self? Perhaps the chief reason people care about rebirth/reincarnation/transmigration is that the illusion of self is nice and small while the facts of non-self and changing-self are scarily big.

I consider the question of rebirth/reincarnation irrelevant, but I do question what you say above.

The "me" is indeed a narrative contruct, and at the same time, behind it all, is there not an awareness of your "me-ness" behind the personal narrative? A substratum to your "me-ness", a being that holds it all together?


Every thought that we have had, every experience we have gone through, good or bad, every emotion, is embedded in that consciousness and left a mark; not indelibly, but there nevertheless, as latent impressions, called "vasanas" in Sanskrit. That bundle of "vasanas" embedded in consciousness is the entity that is thought to reincarnate in Hinduism, carrying with it all the strengths and weaknesses it has gathered in this life, the rudiments of every skill and the latent memories of its aversions and preferences. Born into a new body, it gets a new name and invents a new "me" to go with that name, and continues on its course, a new journey...

It certainly explains the differences in people.

For me, the task is to separate the illusory self from the real. The question of who migrates is interesting, but not really relevant to that task.
 

AMCrenshaw

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The 'me' is a myth. A narrative construct to make sense of it all.

I couldn't agree more.

Is this rebirth, AMC, or just the illusion of self? Perhaps the chief reason people care about rebirth/reincarnation/transmigration is that the illusion of self is nice and small while the facts of non-self and changing-self are scarily big.

Change is rebirth. It was meant to answer those who people who wanted to know about death. Buddha says, "All is change. Are you different?"

AMC


ETA: The question was originally raised by a disciple of the Buddhist teacher Dogen (we know of him primarily because of D.T. Suzuki); I think the question is directed at the nature of the self, which is in constant change, so that it's inappropriate to call it rebirth only. It is, of course, death, too.
 
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indiriverflow

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My favorite quote on the subject is "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

Appropriately enough, that contrasts with my earlier statement, yet I feel no contradiction. Faith is an emotional state which one deliberately engages for psychological comfort.

This dual consciousness of reality is particularly helpful right now, as one part of me needs to believe that my WIP is the one that will finally justify all this work.

I'm aware at one level how unrealistic that is. When I think about it, I get anxious. I freeze. I don't write. I panic.

Then I find my faith, that my MC has something to universal to say, and the world will finally give him the mike.

Then I write again, until I remember reality.

The problem comes when people confuse their faith with belief.

I hope some of you can relate.
 
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Bartholomew

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The Buddha was overtly anti-faith, though his teachings require at least suspension of disbelief to make any sense of 'em at all and could be interpreted as needing a sort of faith, though it's more the "try this thought" faith than the "Believe This" faith of many forms of Hinduism and... nevermind, it's complicated

But Buddhism is a catch-all term for all philosophies and religions descended from his teachings, and it'd be really weird if they were all the same, humans being what we are.

What your friend means by Buddhism is not what you mean. Nothing to be distressed about, any more than you'd need to be distressed at UK English and American English having different word meanings :)

More distressing is that he actively seeks me out to correct me than that he actually holds beliefs I disagree with. If I cared very much what other people believed, I'd have gone wonky and climbed the top of a bell tower long, long ago. :)
 

Monkey

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Is this rebirth, AMC, or just the illusion of self? Perhaps the chief reason people care about rebirth/reincarnation/transmigration is that the illusion of self is nice and small while the facts of non-self and changing-self are scarily big.

I can see how that could be the case, but I also know that I believe in reincarnation, and it's not because I find it reassuring.

It was more that I came to believe in it through experiences, and found reassurance in it after the fact. I posted a looong post about it all and then erased it, because first, it's entirely anecdotal, and second, this thread isn't about that.

More distressing is that he actively seeks me out to correct me than that he actually holds beliefs I disagree with. If I cared very much what other people believed, I'd have gone wonky and climbed the top of a bell tower long, long ago. :)

It sounds as though your friend already knows that the two of you don't agree perfectly. Since both of you seem OK with this, I wouldn't worry about it. :)

I would talk to him about faith, though. Perhaps you could tell him that you do have faith...but that your faith has led you to slightly different conclusions...perhaps the conclusions you need to take from this lifetime.

(Of course, you'd be using "faith" in a common colloqial ussage, meaning something like "a set of religious beliefs". :D )
 

aruna

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I can see how that could be the case, but I also know that I believe in reincarnation, and it's not because I find it reassuring.

Same here. And just to be clear: for me reincarnation is not in the Buddhist sense, of the same "me" reappearring again and again. It's always a moving on; learning and growing, and each time a new "me", but with the residual tendencies from the past.

Nothing else, really could explain some of the extraordinary directions my life has taken. WHY, for instance, did just the very name of a certain mountain force me to drop everything, leave all my worldy posessions and my whole life behind,and travel half way across the world on my own with hardly a penny to my name, to find a place to which fromthe very first day I felt as if I'd been there forever?

However, it's not at all important to me, or reassuring in any way. I don't spend a thought on "past lives" or on "future lives" -- in fact, I really hope there won't be any future lives!
I am not concerned with the afterlife at all; it's all about the here and now.
 

Jerry Cornelius

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Faith doesn't have much to do with belief.

Faith can be backed by empiricism. I have faith in my mum to be there for me, because she always has. I have faith that my favourite football team won't get relegated, because I respect their abilities etc. I think "blind faith" borders on oxymoronic, but I could be wrong.

Belief is convincing yourself of something without evidence.
 

Cyia

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That isn't true, is it? We can have beliefs supported by evidence.


AMC

You can absolutely have beliefs supported by evidence, and most people have so many of them that they don't even notice it.



You can believe germs cause disease either because a teacher or doctor said so, or because you've seen magnified photographs of them. You can prove a person has symptoms, but unless you yourself physically see, smell, hear, or otherwise experience the existence of those germs/microbes with your own physical senses then you still just "believe" in their existence. You may have good and valid reasons to do so, but it's still a belief to which you hold.


Faith is what allows you to believe something for which there is no empirical evidence - whether that's belief in a scientific principle, belief that there is life sustained on other planets no instrument has been able to back-up, belief in God or a general higher power, belief in reincarnation, or anything else that you can't hand over hard evidence of.


People believed that the earth was the center of the solar system, now they know better, but it's conceivable that someone could still believe that earth was the center of the universe (point of origin for the big bang, location of eden, however you want to look at it) and unless you can go out and measure the current dimensions of the universe, there's no way to prove them wrong in their belief.
 

AMCrenshaw

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all well. in my spirituality, i try to remove most forms of faith (convictions in metaphysics, by which i mean the unprovable) and also questions most forms of belief (including my own), since neither faith nor belief are knowledge.


amc
 

AMCrenshaw

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Generally not in a religious context.

Oh I don't agree with that at all. What about meditative or yogic practices? I believe they help the spirit through the body. Shall I share my evidence or will you take it for granted (if we allow that the spirit is an emergent phenomenon of physical material, to equal individuated consciousness)?

amc
 

Cyia

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Generally not in a religious context.

Depends on the instance. There are many believers who have personal stories of first hand experiences. Just for an example, look at faith healings - you can find people who attest to a belief in such things with no reason other than faith. Then there are others who have the before and after medical records to back their claims. At point A they were sick, crippled, dying, whatever, and at point B they weren't.

There are people who have medical documentation of inoperable tumors for which there is no medical cure. Some focus on the tumor, will it to shrink, picture it shrinking, talk to it and tell it to shrink, go to "laughter" seminars or go to a church or spiritual adviser who tells them specific things to do. All are unconventional methods, and there are people who feel stupid for attempting them, but try them anyway and go in for a check-up to find the tumor has shrunk.

You can call it faith, or the release of specific hormones from the person's mood improving, but there's medical evidence that something they tried worked. The belief that makes them continue talking to the tumor or laughing their heads off for no apparent reason is based in those results. For some people, they consider it a religious experience, others say it's totally explainable by physical means - either way, they believe it.
 

Rufus Coppertop

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I believe that when most non-Buddhist Westerners use the term "reincarnation" they are using it in the Hindu, not the Buddhist sense -- which is why Buddhists always cry out Rebirth! Rebirth! It's just a terminological problem.


You're right about the different uses of the term. I'm a bit suss on the idea that we always cry out Rebirth! Rebirth!
 
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semilargeintestine

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I was deeply distressed the other day to hear a Buddhist friend of mine tell me that Buddhism required faith.

Faith is an artifact of religions that state things which one must accept blindly. Buddhism -- at least my branch of it -- has never made such a demand.

I'm not sure if you're still reading this, but I thought I would point out that Judaism requires no blind faith. Judaism is--as far as I know--the only religion where G-d revealed Himself to the entire nation at once. And so belief in Him is not based on what a single person or a small group of people said, but rather the eye-witness accounts of 3,000,000 people.
 

semilargeintestine

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This misunderstanding of the definitions of rebirth and reincarnation always seems to crop up in these discussions.

What the Buddhists refer to as rebirth, is what is called by Hindus reincarnation.
Reincarnation as understood by Buddhists (the same soul reappearing again and again as itself) does not exist in Hinduism.

I believe that when most non-Buddhist Westerners use the term "reincarnation" they are using it in the Hindu, not the Buddhist sense -- which is why Buddhists always cry out Rebirth! Rebirth! It's just a terminological problem.

What's the difference? We (Jews) believe in reincarnation, but I'm not sure if it's the same.
 

Ruv Draba

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The word 'faith' comes from the Latin fidere, to trust. Faith is also used to mean 'a religion', so here I'll just talk about trust because the word is clearer in its meaning.

Everyone trusts. We all put things that we care about into the hands of others; we all take some claims on trust. How much we trust depends on what we believe and what's at stake. We don't normally demand to see a bus-driver's license before we let him drive -- but we might if he were driving erratically. If a workmate asks to borrow $200 we might ask a lot of questions, but if she asks to borrow 50c we might just give it to her. Everyone trusts, so everyone has some faith.

But religious faith is different to secular trust. With secular trust we're free to set our own bar, make our own assessments. We can reset the bar and change our minds as much as we like. But when religions ask us to trust they'll often ask us to trust without question, and to dismiss any subsequent doubts. To my mind that's more than simply trust, and it's more than simply faith. It's actually something else, which I think is called submission.

I'm a rationalist and I reject submission. I like to question things and I think that I'm better off for doing so. That's a matter of faith, but it's well-qualified faith with plenty of evidence to back it up. People tell us that the earth is flat, but then we look and find that it's not. They tell us that the sun moves around the earth, but then we look and find that's not so either. They tell us that disease is created by immoral behaviour and then we look and discover that disease doesn't care what we did or why -- only how we did it.

I don't believe that every effect necessarily has a cause (there's no evidence that they should, or that we could find the cause or understand it), but I like looking for causes because even when we don't find them, we do challenge our ignorance and strip away our illusions. I don't believe that questioning removes trust. Rather I think that trust is independent -- we can question while trusting, if we choose.

And that leads us to the matter of doubt. The word 'doubt' comes from the Latin dubitare, which means 'to hesitate'. Religion often treats doubts as taboo -- and I think it's because hesitation opposes submission.

But it's possible to question while not hesitating. If someone dressed as a fire officer bursts into a cinema and says 'There's a fire. Everyone please leave the building' we can exit promptly while still questioning the fire.

I personally believe that questioning is a fundamental human freedom. Whether that causes us to hesitate or not is another matter. And whether hesitation is in our interests is another matter again. I strongly reject evangelists telling us to 'Have Faith' when they're not really saying 'Trust' but SUBMIT.

Separate again from faith is the matter of supersitition. Sometimes religions tell us that if we don't believe their supernatural myths then we're faithless. That's untrue. We can have trust in many things without believing superstition. And likewise, believing in superstition doesn't necessarily make us more trusting. A friend of mine is a paranoid schizophrenic. She distrusts everyone, yet she's the most superstitious person I know.

So... I have a few Buddhist friends. Some are superstitious and some are skeptical about superstition. All have faith or they'd never have any dental work or accept payment in currency and not corn. Some are questioning; some are submissive -- doing exactly as they're told. Actually, in these respects my Buddhist friends show exactly the same variety as my Christian friends, though the proportions may sometimes differ.
 
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Mac H.

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I'm not sure if you're still reading this, but I thought I would point out that Judaism requires no blind faith. Judaism is--as far as I know--the only religion where G-d revealed Himself to the entire nation at once. And so belief in Him is not based on what a single person or a small group of people said, but rather the eye-witness accounts of 3,000,000 people.
Surely that requires faith?

Even if I was one of the 3,000,000 people who saw a G-d like figure claim to be the only G-d ... that would require faith for me to believe that this G-d like figure was telling the truth. As demonstrated in that theological discussion "Star Trek V".

Just because someone appears to be G-dlike and powerful doesn't make them truthful. And if they were telling me to take a sharp rock and do some surgery on a delicate part of my anatomy ... well, let's just say that I would have caution.

Even worse, however, neither of us are one of the 3,000,000 people who witnessed it. We don't even have 3,000,000 eyewitness accounts to review and compare. Just a handful of accounts that claim extraordinary things.

Remember - accounts of extraordinary things in history are extremely common .. but they can't all be true.

1. People claim to have been visited by aliens.
2. Other people claim to have been visited by angels.
3. One person claims that they were visited by an angel who showed them a gold shield with magical writing on it.
4. Some people claim that on a certain day in Jerusalem around 30 AD, lots of dead people suddenly got up and wandered around preaching, and were seen by thousands. That's thousands of eye-witnesses !!

Do you believe all of those claims? All of the claims can be found in historical records. All of the claims could be said to be 'eyewitness accounts'.

So which of those 'eyewitness accounts' do you believe? All of them? None of them?

Is faith an element at all in your choice as to which 'eyewitness' account to believe ?

Mac
 
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Bartholomew

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I'm not sure if you're still reading this, but I thought I would point out that Judaism requires no blind faith. Judaism is--as far as I know--the only religion where G-d revealed Himself to the entire nation at once. And so belief in Him is not based on what a single person or a small group of people said, but rather the eye-witness accounts of 3,000,000 people.

That's a very interesting perspective. Thank you for sharing.
 

Ruv Draba

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belief in Him is not based on what a single person or a small group of people said, but rather the eye-witness accounts of 3,000,000 people.
Please can you supply a link to 3,000,000 independent eyewitness accounts -- or must we take it on faith that this occurred?
 

semilargeintestine

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Surely that requires faith?

Even if I was one of the 3,000,000 people who saw a G-d like figure claim to be the only G-d ... that would require faith for me to believe that this G-d like figure was telling the truth. As demonstrated in that theological discussion "Star Trek V".

Just because someone appears to be G-dlike and powerful doesn't make them truthful. And if they were telling me to take a sharp rock and do some surgery on a delicate part of my anatomy ... well, let's just say that I would have caution.

Even worse, however, neither of us are one of the 3,000,000 people who witnessed it. We don't even have 3,000,000 eyewitness accounts to review and compare. Just a handful of accounts that claim extraordinary things.

Remember - accounts of extraordinary things in history are extremely common .. but they can't all be true.

1. People claim to have been visited by aliens.
2. Other people claim to have been visited by angels.
3. One person claims that they were visited by an angel who showed them a gold shield with magical writing on it.
4. Some people claim that on a certain day in Jerusalem around 30 AD, lots of dead people suddenly got up and wandered around preaching, and were seen by thousands. That's thousands of eye-witnesses !!

Do you believe all of those claims? All of the claims can be found in historical records. All of the claims could be said to be 'eyewitness accounts'.

So which of those 'eyewitness accounts' do you believe? All of them? None of them?

Is faith an element at all in your choice as to which 'eyewitness' account to believe ?

Mac

Of course it requires faith. But when 3 million people see the same thing at the same time, it gets hard to attribute it to neurological disease or a conspiracy.

The difference between 3 million people all seeing the same alien abduction and 3 million different people seeing different abductions is that the former is a single event with multiple witnesses whereas the latter is multiple events each with one witness. They're completely different, and I would believe the first one long before I would believe the second.

Please can you supply a link to 3,000,000 independent eyewitness accounts -- or must we take it on faith that this occurred?

Point taken, but you don't find any other faith basing their belief on such a bold claim. I'd also point out that the burden is not on me to prove that it happened, but on you to prove that it didn't. Show me it never happened, and I'll become an atheist.
 

Ruv Draba

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Point taken, but you don't find any other faith basing their belief on such a bold claim. I'd also point out that the burden is not on me to prove that it happened, but on you to prove that it didn't. Show me it never happened, and I'll become an atheist.
I don't need you to become an atheist, nor do I even need you to stop believing that it occurred. But you have made a claim to try and trump other religious claims, and you also claimed that it required no faith to accept. Except now we have to trust that it occurred because you can't supply even 1% of the testimonies that you claim once existed.

I have three issues with your post, and they're not with your belief but your representation of it: weak reasoning, bad scholarship and poor ethics.
 
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