It is quite irony that this discussion appears when Venerable Dhammanando is not with us. Anyway..........
I hope you are not implying that I would use the illness of a Bhikkhu as an opurtunity to further some goal that you presume I have?
You are trying to argue that rebirth was only taught to a few groups, it just wasn't. Buddha talked about His past lives for all His disciples several times in suttas to emphasis the pain of samara and the path of Dharma. Never did He claim that rebirth was not necessary for anyone nor did He claim that it is some form of eternalism.
When the buddha discusses it is mostly to jains, brahmins etc, people who hold the view of self.
Past lives is the sense of self clinging at the aggregates and taking them up as self.
Remember the origin of identity, grasping at the aggregates, it is not about how rupa gets born and dies.
Samsara is the spining of the sense of self in the mind, it is not the physical world
Rebirth is eternalism
"passing away here HE reappears there"
The argument that you are likey to use that rebirth is not eternalism because it is a flux of becoming or a stream of consciousness was not taught by the buddha.
Rebirth is the end product of Dependent Origination and Nirvana is the end product of the reverse Dependent Origination. They are both sides of a same coin. The observation that you are taking one as the ultimate Truth while disregard another as folly is revealing a lot about your inadequate understanding on the topic.
Please show me where Dependent Orignation is stated as a model of rebirth, it isnt this was added later by the commentaries, dependent origination is about the arising and quenching of dukkha, about how self view comes to be
everytime there is contact there is feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth of Self the sense of I.
I suggest you re-evalute the buddhas dhamma and do not get all your understandings from what is written in the commentaries.
Stick with the notion that rebirth is unnecessary, you too won't see the truth of anatta. See the contradiction?
There is no contradiction my friend, i have never said it is unnecessary those are your words, i have stated that rebirth was taught by the buddha but it was mundane, a view with faults. Supermundane view does not contain a view of rebirth unless you mistake dependent origination as a rebirth model as you have done.
The realisation of Anatta is the realisation that the world is empty of a self and there can be no rebirth because there is no becoming again of "I" there is no "I" to be reborn, there is no rebirth.
If there is no rebirth, then death will be Nirvana which is simply absurd
Nibbana is empty of a self, it is dying before death my friend.
There is rebirth because you are not Arahant. That I'm certain of.
I dont claim to be.
Mundane right view is not abandoned because there is nothing to be abandoned. The arising and falling of thought is a natural process, we should put effort in observing them and they will fade away as all things. The act of abandoning is not required
It is when the mundane is taken as supermundane and clung to.
Your own interpretation of Samara, Buddha never said that. Yeah, I would love to see the original quote
Samsara is the spining of birth and death of self.
"Whatever monks or brahmans recollect their past life in its various modes, they all recollect the five aggregates affected by clinging or one or another of them."
What is the origin of identity? five aggregates effected by clinging.
Here the buddha is stating that one merely recollects the various moments of the sense of "I" or "Me" being born and that sense of self taking up the aggegates as identity.
Birth in the supermundane means the birth of self at moments this is important to remember.
The Awakened One, best of speakers,
Spoke two kinds of truths:
The conventional and the ultimate.
A third truth does not obtain.
Therein:
The speech wherewith the world converses is true
On account of its being agreed upon by the world.
The speech which describes what is ultimate is also true,
Through characterizing dhammas as they really are.
Therefore, being skilled in common usage,
False speech does not arise in the Teacher,
Who is Lord of the World,
When he speaks according to conventions.
(Mn. i. 95)