meindzai wrote: We're talking about what's in the teachings. The three lifetimes model is just a logical working out of D.O. based on what the Buddha taught, which I believe is most clear in the Sammaditthi Sutta, with unambiguous definitions of Birth and Death.
I certainly did not figure it out on my own. I needed help from those much more well versed than me to get it. But now that I see it, it's clear as day.
Meindzai
The three lifetimes is not in the teachings. To infer that is clearly illogical. What makes it logical from what is in the suttas?
Buddha has declared suffering arises from contact and death occurs at contact before dukkha. Death is merely impermanence, the sense of loss. Without "death" there is no dukkha. Following your logic, there is no dukkha in this world and dukkha only exists after death.
Please read the quote belown from MN 38:
On seeing a form with the eye, he is passionate for it if it is pleasing; he is angry with it if it is displeasing. He lives with mindfulness to the body unestablished, with a limited mind, and he does not understand realistically the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom wherein those evil unwholesome states cease without remainder. Engaged as he is in favouring and opposing, whatever feeling he feels - whether pleasant or painful or neither-pleasant-nor-painful - he delights in that feeling, welcomes it, and remains holding on to it. As he does so, delight (nandi) arises in him. Now,
delight in feelings (vedanàsu nandi) is clinging (upàdàna). Becoming is conditioned by his clinging; becoming conditions birth; birth conditions ageing-&-death; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair come to be. Thus is the arising of this entire mass of suffering.
You have advised you know no arahants. Thus, whom is more versed than you? What you describe 'as clearly as day' is merely a unfounded belief.
Buddha has advised above, the mass of suffering occurs from ageing-&-death; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair.
Logic tells us there is one moment in the quote above rather than three lifetimes.
Logic tells us sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair and the whole mass of suffering occur due to ageing-&-death.
With metta
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