Hi CollectiveCollective wrote:Found this interesting:
"As a former Buddhist I have come upon a fundamental fallacy that no Buddhist (including several high Tibetan Lamas) have never been able to answer. There are a few facts that one has to confront first.
1. All Buddhists believe that once you have attained enlightenment--i.e. become a Buddha--you can never go back. Attaining enlightenment changes you forever, whether you are a Mayahana buddhist and return to the cycle of existence as a boddhisatva or as a Therevaden enter into Nirvana and stop the cycle of rebirth.
2. All Buddhists believe that we have lived an infinite number of prior lives. This is because of the law of dependent origination. All phenomena have a cause which precedes it in time. This gives rise to the law of cause and effect, or karma. Tibetans have a rather beautiful way of encouraging compassion in this respect. They say that every sentient being has been your mother in a prior life, not just once, but an infinite number of times.
So...if this is true then it must be impossible for me to attain enlightenment, as I haven't become enlightened yet, even though I have had an INFINITE number of lives to do so.
I have asked zen monks, Tibetan lamas (Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Lama Choden Rinpoche, Lama Ribur Rinpoche, among others, this question and they either shrug their shoulders or laugh. But nobody gives me an answer."
What do you think?
The falacy is the folowing: "if this is true then it must be impossible for me to attain enlightenment, as I haven't become enlightened yet, even though I have had an INFINITE number of lives to do so" ; Just because there's an infinite number of lives that doesn't mean that every event has happened to that person as there is an infinite number of events to happen. There could even be a finite number of events to happen that could repeat themselves infinitely.
Metta