I'd rather be reborn

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
marek
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by marek »

You enjoy life. Most people do. As I understand Buddha, if you follow the precepts and practice merit, you can expect rebirth in a good destination.

To strive for nibbana, I think the person has to be fed up with life at least to some extent.
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DNS
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by DNS »

Why not be a Mahayanist? You can take a bodhisattva vow and continually come back to help others. In the meantime you can enjoy life as you say you do. And then when you get enlightened, you can return here . . . when you have had enough of "been there, done that" :tongue:
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

You go into Nibbana every night and you donot get afraid then--in fact you enjoy it the most--then why will you be afraid when the real deal comes?


Deep dream less sleep is like Nibbana..there is neither existence, neither non-existence, no beginning, no end, no universe, no sunyata(zeroness or emptiness),
no time, no eternity, no arising, no ceasing, no perception, no non-perception, no self, no non-self------The experience of deep dreamless sleep is the experience of Nibbana



after countless rebirth and death of various mindstates everyday(like various lives) we naturally go into seclusion, become a recluse and go to deep dreamless sleep(Nibbana)......In fact after a hard day (more than fair share of mindstate rebirths) it is the most awaited thing...It is unconditioned Supreme Bliss


Our 24 hour day cycle have always provided a clue for the cycle of existence....and Just as You Yourself cannot point out when you started doing these 24 hour cycles of existence inspite remembering past several thousand days of your life (you always need your mum and dad to tell you how it started) exactly same way
Buddha could not pinpoint the beginning inspite rememebering innumerable past lives---Can you really remember the first day when you woke up and did your thing and went to sleep? No? exactly thats how Buddha could not somehow see the first life where it all started...See you are already a mini-buddha


This is why Buddhists call samsara has no head or tail

while Hindus call it "I have seen the beginning, and it can't be seen"

hope this gives you a bit of handle on things
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manas
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by manas »

Hi kmath.

If I believed that nibbana was annihilation or nothingness, I would quit Buddhism right now. But luckily, that's not what it's about, if the suttas are to be believed. Or more precisely, it ought not to be conceived of in that way.

I too still have the desire to enjoy, to become and for ' being-ness', but I must also admit, I'm curious as to what the total cessation of craving must be like, to experience. The Buddha claims that it's pretty darn good.

Metta :anjali:
To the Buddha-refuge i go; to the Dhamma-refuge i go; to the Sangha-refuge i go.
SarathW
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by SarathW »

Hi Shaswata
Deep dreamless sleep is not Nibbana according to Buddha’s teaching.
According to Abhidhamma it is called Bhawanga Citta.

Buddha is not against happiness.
Nirvana is the highest happiness and you can reach their in stages. Each stage is more subtle and happier.


Please listen to the following video: four kind of happiness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zAQU8MEHnM
:)
“As the lamp consumes oil, the path realises Nibbana”
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

SarathW wrote:Hi Shaswata
Deep dreamless sleep is not Nibbana according to Buddha’s teaching.
According to Abhidhamma it is called Bhawanga Citta.

Buddha is not against happiness.
Nirvana is the highest happiness and you can reach their in stages. Each stage is more subtle and happier.


Please listen to the following video: four kind of happiness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zAQU8MEHnM
:)

Of course deep dreamless sleep is not Nibbana but that you can say only when you are awake..I have through out the years read a huge amount of defintions for Nibbana and the experience of dreamless sleep while sleeping is the closest I can aliken Nibbana to...I am gonna see your video now..however four kinds of happiness are ..they can be felt in meditation and higher rebirth right? I am talking of Nibbana after the final death (Paranibbana) ..there is no existence but yet no non existence....go again through my definition dreamless sleep fulfills all the criteria of Nibbana..now Imagine if you never dreamt in your sleep and hypothetically it last forever from the waking standpoint of view...then explain to me how come dreamless sleep is different from Nibbana? You have broken down all the five skandhas, you have given up the view of self, you are free from all views-------------one has to come up with very very good explanation to convince me otherwise..and within sleep you never "think" that you are annihilated...dreamless sleep is not annihilationism and it is also not eternalism


I waiting for good response to shootdown my view....because I loathe to think that tsomething akin to Nibbana was there right under our nose and we missed it


Deep Dreamless sleep fulfills all the criteria set by Nibbana--ALL of course if you discount the fact that next day you eventually get up.....
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Ben
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by Ben »

SarathW wrote: Deep dreamless sleep is not Nibbana according to Buddha’s teaching.

Sadhu!
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
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Aloka
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by Aloka »

Shaswata_Panja wrote:You go into Nibbana every night and you donot get afraid then--in fact you enjoy it the most--then why will you be afraid when the real deal comes?

Deep dream less sleep is like Nibbana
No, Nibanna isn't like going to sleep or being in a coma. In my opinion its a peaceful and aware mind which is free of attachment and delusion.

This article "Nirvana Now" by Ajahn Sumedho might help....

http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/web-arch ... a-now.html


:anjali:
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Monkey Mind
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by Monkey Mind »

Because no one else has mentioned it... There is an assumption that samsara and dukkha will be similar the next time around as it was in this life's version. Even if you exclude the possibilities of rebirth into hell realms or animal realms, I think near future human generations are going to have a difficult go of things here on Earth. Environmental catastrophes of ever-increasing proportions, viruses that continue to get nastier and more difficult to beat, current governments will collapse as new ones rise up. The old argument, "Better the devil you know than the one you don't" assumes that the circumstances you know will remain the same over time. But we know nothing remains unchanged...
"As I am, so are others;
as others are, so am I."
Having thus identified self and others,
harm no one nor have them harmed.

Sutta Nipāta 3.710
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appicchato
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by appicchato »

...wake up.
That's exactly what the Buddha advised doing...
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

Aloka wrote:
Shaswata_Panja wrote:You go into Nibbana every night and you donot get afraid then--in fact you enjoy it the most--then why will you be afraid when the real deal comes?

Deep dream less sleep is like Nibbana
No, Nibanna isn't like going to sleep or being in a coma. In my opinion its a peaceful and aware mind which is free of attachment and delusion.

This article "Nirvana Now" by Ajahn Sumedho might help....

http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/web-arch ... a-now.html

:anjali:



So Buddha is a peaceful and aware mind feee of attachment and delusion now? If I meditate on the Buddha for the next 60 years of my life, is there ven the fainitest chance of making contact with Him? Thervada says no as afar as I know ---Buddha has "crossed over"..He is not accessible to the normal minds in all the realms

Is there awareness in the final Paranibbana? (I am not talking the years of the last life spent in the Nibbana state)

If so who is experiencing this "awareness"? There is no self......and all the five skandhas that produced the "apparent" self are destroyed...So who exactly is aware of paranibbana?


The article is so so way off in the perspective of traditional Theravada Buddhism as taught by most diligent western Monks where to start?
Nirvana, says Ajahn Sumedho, is not some far off goal that can only be attained through years of effort. It is a state of being you can realize at any moment once you let go of grasping.

Whom are we kidding? Wow so why did Buddha leave home? Why did he meditate on and on? Why did he enforce strict celibacy for anybody who wanted to be in the Sangha? Why one needed his karma over millions of birth to ripen at the conducive moment to reach Nibbana? As much as this article has been dumbed down for Western Consensus Buddhists, the notion has always been there in all almost all Indian spiritual traditions that if you want to achieve the ultimate attainment of the said religious path, you need to have a hero like bravery..(Virya)
Another difficulty is that many Buddhists see nibbana (Sanskrit: nirvana) as something unobtainable—as so high and so remote that we’re not worthy enough to try for it.
no its not unobtainable, but to attain it you have to forsake everything else---everything--money,cars, above all sex, good and sumptous food all the time, attachment to comfort as well as security...you can find yourself on the streets one day at the level of a beggar (which is what actually the word bhikkhu,bhikshuk,bhikshu mean) ...may be you have to run off to the foothills of the Himalayas and subsist on fruits ...but you donot despair over that, in fact you are either detached towards or rejoice at adversity and go forward in your meditation practices or dhutanga practices.....There has been dhutanga practitioner arahants or forest arahants like Ajahn Chah,Ajhan Bua,Ajahn Mun,Mahashi Sayadaw and Buddhadasa Bhikkhu..has there really ever been a householder frequent sexing arahant since the time of the Buddha?
So nibbana is looked at as something that if you work hard, keep the sila (moral precepts), meditate diligently, become a monastic, devote your life to practice, then your reward might be that eventually you attain nibbana—even though you’re not sure what it is.

So moral precepts are not required?? Meditation is not required? You enter Nibbana by sexing,drugging,killing,lying all the way while listening to heavy rock music? You can be a wordly CEO of Playboy Magazine and have the Huge Heffner life and still enter Nibbana? you donot need to be a partially withdrawn from society, heavily self-restraing monk?

Wow I must have been reading the wrong Tipitaka then!!!
In meditation classes, people often start with a basic delusion that they never challenge: the idea that “I’m someone who grasps and has a lot of desires, and I have to practice in order to get rid of these desires and stop grasping and clinging to things. I shouldn’t cling to anything.” That’s often the position we start from. So we start our practice from this basis and, many times, the result is disillusionment and disappointment, because our practice is based on the grasping of an idea.

Eventually, we realize that no matter how much we try to get rid of desire and not grasp anything, no matter what we do—become a monk, an ascetic, sit for hours and hours, attend retreats over and over again, do all the things we believe will get rid of these grasping tendencies—we end up feeling disappointed because the basic delusion has never been recognized.
Isn't meditation the killer app of Buddhism?? Don't you go into meditation specifically to realize that you have no self eventhough you might have believed in an eternal/non-eternal self even just two minutes before the meditation practice?
So the problem of self/non-self that could not have been rectified by years and decades of meditation can be by just an "attitude" change?? We just have to chant there is no permanent non-changing self 20 times before each meditation session?
Awareness is not about making value judgments about our thoughts or emotions or actions or speech. Awareness is about knowing these things fully—that they are what they are, at this moment
knowing can only be done by the knower....and as long as there is the knower , there is the self and hence no Nibbana
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mikenz66
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by mikenz66 »

Hi Shaswata_Panja,
Shaswata_Panja wrote:
Nirvana, says Ajahn Sumedho, is not some far off goal that can only be attained through years of effort. It is a state of being you can realize at any moment once you let go of grasping.
It may be worth pointing out that this is the summary put in by the Magazine. I'm not sure that Ajahn Sumedho is saying that it is easy to let go of grasping. Quite the opposite, in fact:
Sumedho wrote:Eventually, we realize that no matter how much we try to get rid of desire and not grasp anything, no matter what we do—become a monk, an ascetic, sit for hours and hours, attend retreats over and over again, do all the things we believe will get rid of these grasping tendencies—we end up feeling disappointed because the basic delusion has never been recognized.
I think you may be over-interpreting Ajahn Sumedho's statements. He's not writing a technical treatise, or a detailed practice manual. He's giving encouragement based on his understanding of typical problems that we face as practitioners.

:anjali:
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manas
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by manas »

Shaswata_Panja wrote:...
Hi Shaswata,

I can relate to wanting to know many things. But the Buddha doesn't teach whether he exists or not, or whether we will exist or not, after final parinibbana. He teaches 'stress and the cessation of stress'. I know that can be frustrating initially, but over time I have begun to understand why he did so. Our time here is limited. It is hard enough already just to realize the cessation of stress, which is our most urgent and pressing problem. But if we ponder things that cannot even be given an answer, we will just waste precious time, and might lose our precious human birth before having seen the Dhamma.

There is dukkha for us right now, and as you know, it can get much worse, too. This is where we need to put our effort, into treading the Path that leads to the cessation of dukkha. Of course no one is forcing us; the offer is there, but we can either take it or leave it...

metta
:anjali:
To the Buddha-refuge i go; to the Dhamma-refuge i go; to the Sangha-refuge i go.
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kmath
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by kmath »

I think my issue is this: if Nibbana is not a dreamless sleep, I'm just not sure what it is.

When the arahant dies, what does he or she experience? Is it something or is it nothing? If it's nothing, then we are in the dreamless sleep scenario. If it's something, then what is it?

I completely understand that this question has been asked and answered, but I've just never heard it answered well.

The Buddha says you can't think of Nibbana as existence or as non-existence. But then -- is it some third state? Like, existence but not in the way we typically think of it? Maybe existence without grasping? But I mean, I don't think there's another rebirth, is there? Maybe you're some kind of omnipresence? That's what some people seem to think. But I don't see any basis for that in the suttas.

This thing about not existence and not non-existence is absurd. For you logicians out there, it's like we're being asked to believe in the negation of a tautology.

Can someone please set me straight?

*** One more thing: some people suggest basically "don't think about it -- just keep practicing." But that's not good advice. If I don't want to go to Iowa, I'm not going to get on the highway and start driving there.
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Re: I'd rather be reborn

Post by SarathW »

Hi Kmath
Only way you can understand this (Nirvana) by understanding Anatta.

:meditate:
“As the lamp consumes oil, the path realises Nibbana”
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