Sunrise wrote:
Personally I think the Buddha taught rebirth for morality mostly for the people who already believed in it and there are places that he has talked about it as subjective reasoning not as an ultimate truth. For example:
In MN 68 he seems to have said that he talked about it not to deceive people or for personal gains
I cannot help but that that you have misread the meaning of the sutta, probably due to the fact that the Buddha uses the word "birth." You quote one passage of that sutta which uses the word "birth" and completely remove it from the context it occurs, namely, that the Buddha is telling his disciples about the ariya attainments ['be born in something higher' in this life] of disciples and also telling them why he feels the need to describe the accomplishments of his disciples to others.
Nalakapana Sutta, MN 68 wrote:Anuruddha, the Thus Gone One tells the disciples, without wasting time before you die, be born in something higher. Telling them one is born there, another there. Not to deceive people, not for prattling, and not for gain honour or fame and not thinking may the people know me thus. Yet, Anuruddha, there are sons of clansmen who are born in faith and are pleased, to hear it. Hearing it they would arouse interest and direct their minds to that and it would be for their good for a long time.
Here, Anuruddha, a bhikkhu hears, the venerable bhikkhu of this name has passed away, and the Blessed One has declared that he is enlightened. Now this venerable bhikkhu happens to be a person seen by that bhikkhu, or not seen by him. He hears, these were the virtues of the venerable bhikkhu, these, his thoughts, such his wisdom, he developed these abidings and was released. So this bhikkhu recollects that faith, those virtues, his learnedness, benevolence and wisdom and directs his mind to it. Anuruddha, in this manner too there is a pleasant abiding to a bhikkhu.
The sutta opens with recognition of the fact that the Buddha encourages his disciples to "be born in something higher." It's significant that he encourages them to do this before
they die, which is a condition for rebirth. "Born of something higher" refers to ariyan attainments, which we can see in the rest of the sutta since this is what the Buddha offers as an example of "being born of something higher." "Not to deceive...not for prattling...not for gaining honor or fame...not thinking may the people know me thus" means that the Buddha does not mention the ariyan accomplishments of his disciples for his own personal gain or to brag.
The bolded, italicized part is indicative of the structure of this sutta, in which the Buddha describes the four stages of ariyan attainment, why he tells those on the path to attainment about these stages, and the result of telling people about these attainments. Namely, the arousal of interest, faith and direction on the path.
At no point, in this entire sutta (aside from describing the amount of times sotapanni, sakadagami, and anagami will be reborn) does the Buddha mention his rebirth teaching and the reasoning behind it.
Sunshine wrote:
In MN 117 he seems to have said it is the right view for morality but not the noble right view...
The difference between these two forms of "right view" has less to do with one view being more "right" than the other (although, enlightened view is obviously transcendent and ultimate) than the state of the "person" who holds right view. "Right view without effluents" refers to the transcendent, liberating insight of the enlightened which results in a "falling away" [in the sense that the nibbanized are not samsaric] of the world as it is ignorantly 'known' to the unenlightened. Enlightenment, being the end of ignorance, leads to the cessation of consciousness, namarupa, the six sense spheres, all the way through every other link in the chain of dependent origination. This right view
only occurs in one who has gained liberation. Right view without effluents is a fruition of the path. Right view with effluents is a an aspect of the Eightfold Path to awakening. It is a fundamentally different mode of 'experience.' How can an arahant/Buddha have 'right view' [with effluents] of something which is not perceived in enlightenment? I have a few excerpts which sum this up much better than I could.
http://emptyuniverse.110mb.com, Nibbana and the Cessation of Mental Effluents (Asava) wrote:It's important to emphasize that when we speak of the 'unconditioned,' it's not just in regard to phenomena being ultimately empty. For emptiness to have any soteriological value, the unconditioned must also include realizing emptiness experientially. It's this gnosis (nana) that is liberational. It's liberational because it brings to an end the cognitive and affective effluents that bind us to ongoing samsaric suffering. These mental effluents are: the outflows of sensuality, views, becoming, and ignorance itself. They are termed 'effluents' because they 'flow' out of the habitual, deluded mind, creating the metaphoric 'flood' of samsaric birth and death.
And so it's in this soteriological context that Nibbana is said to be the 'supreme emptiness,' because as transcendent gnosis it is empty of these very effluents. This liberation is beautifully and profoundly described in the Dhammapada, verse 93:
Effluents ended, independent of nutriment, their pasture — emptiness & freedom without sign: their trail, like that of birds through space, can't be traced.
Cetana Sutta, SN 12.38 wrote:When one doesn't intend, arrange, or obsess [about anything], there is no support for the stationing of consciousness. There being no support, there is no establishing of consciousness. When that consciousness doesn't land & grow, there is no production of renewed becoming in the future. When there is no production of renewed becoming in the future, there is no future birth, aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, or despair. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of suffering & stress.
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5339&start=40#p83568, Nana quoting Ven. Nanananda's Nibbana Sermons wrote:What actually happens in the attainment to the fruit of arahant-hood? The worldling discerns the world around him with the help of six narrow beams of light, namely the six sense-bases. When the superior lustre of wisdom arises, those six sense-bases go down. This cessation of the six sense bases could also be referred to as the cessation of name-and-form, nāmarūpanirodha, or the cessation of consciousness, viññāṇanirodha.
The cessation of the six sense-bases does not mean that one does not see anything. What one sees then is voidness. It is an in-‘sight’. He gives expression to it with the words suñño loko, “void is the world.” What it means is that
all the sense objects, which the worldling grasps as real and truly existing, get penetrated through with wisdom and become non-manifest.....
"All the sense objects" would be the totality of samsara, 'the All' which includes beings. Note the phrase "become non-manifest." The perception of the rebirth of beings becomes non-manifest in "right view without effluents." This is the right view of Buddhas and arahants. This does not mean that
unenlightened beings, based on ignorant cognition, are not undergoing a
mind-created samsaric process.
Samsara is not "there" for the nibbanized ("theie trail...can't be traced"). How can the nibbanized have "right view" of something 'they' aren't even 'viewing?' However, "right view with effluents" leads up to the liberating "right view without effluents." Soteriologically, "right view with effluents" is just as important as "right view without effluents" in that we cannot hope to achieve the latter without practicing the former.
However, for the unenlightened, as a basic fact of [conventional, samsaric] experience there is "this world and the next world." With ignorance as the foundation, beings arise and experience samsara. "All that we are is the result of what we have thought." While we are unenlightened, we must cultivate right view of samsaric existence
as it occurs to the ignorant mind, as opposed to the wrong views which we habitually superimpose on samsara (arbitrary notions of pleasure/ease/satisfaction, permanence, and self). Part of this right view, as you must have seen in the Maha-cattarisaka Sutta, is "this world and the next world" and "mother, father, and spontaneously reborn beings."
Sunshine wrote:Oh sorry I guess I must have misread you because you said: So I must have figured you imply that this faith is in any way relevant to Nibbana.
First of all, you are conflating two different things. Your post which garnered my response ("Have I at any point said that anussati is a crucial step in attaining Nibbana?") was "Susima sutta explicitly says that such realizations are not relevant to Nibbana." I agree that anussati is not a necessity for nibbanizing. However, right view, including "this world and the other world" and "mother, father, and spontaneously reborn beings" is absolutely relevant to the fruition of the path. That is the gist of my post which you just offered in your rebuttal to my claim that I have not "at any point said that anussati is a crucial step in attaining Nibbana."
Sunshine wrote:
How? Please provide me the instructions
I have all ready given you a sutta which details how to develop anussati. It suggests cultivating the jhanas and directing your mind to the recollection of past lives. Or you could cultivate sila, samadhi and panna until sotapatti, whenever doubt ceases. Or you could cultivate the path factors until you are enlightened.
Sunshine wrote:
OK so please explain it without using candles. When we die, there can be a continuation such as ....? What conditions cause what to be another "being" in another body? I am genuinely interested in your explanation
There is no "continuation." That would imply that there is a permanent, underlying factor which continues. Rather, conditions and causes (like ignorance, latent kamma, the union of a mother and father, the four nutriments, the "gandhabba") coalesce and an aggregated "being" (anicca, anatta, constantly subject to change, never the same from moment to moment) is the result. Rebirth is just another link in the samsaric matrix of shifting causes and conditions which ignorant beings create.
Rejection of the idea that there is some sort of kammic 'connection' between the arising of one 'being' and the arising of 'another being' (rebirth) seems to be based on the erroneous notion that rebirth implies that there is something which "possesses" kamma. This is incorrect. This would be self-view. Rather, kamma is everything we ignorantly take to be "us." There is thinking but no thinker, hearing but no hearer, intentional action but no active agent, ad infinitum. I tend to think of kamma as 'input' in to samsaric existence.. ("all that we are is the result of what we have thought"). 'We' [and samsara, 'the All'] are conascent with and the output of kamma (in the sense that we take a selfless process of action, causes and conditions to be self, performed by self, cognized/experienced by self, or independent of an assumed self). Samsara is the output of kamma and ignorance. Rebirth is a coalescence of kammic input [past action, present action (craving, ignorance..), actions of others (sexual reproduction)] which is based in beginningless ignorance. The implication of rebirth rejection is that ignorance has a beginning, as well as an end independent of Nibbana. This is false.
Anguttara Nikaya 10.61-62 wrote:"A first beginning of ignorance cannot be conceived, (of which it can be said), 'Before that, there was no ignorance and it came to be after that.' Though this is so, monks, yet a specific condition of ignorance can be conceived. Ignorance, too, has its nutriment, I declare; and it is not without a nutriment. And what is the nutriment of ignorance? 'The five hindrances,'[61] should be the answer.
"A first beginning of the craving of existence cannot be conceived, (of which it can be said), 'Before that, there was no craving for existence and it came to be after that.' Though this is so, monks, yet a specific condition for craving for existence can be conceived. Craving for existence, too, has its nutriment, I declare; and it is not without a nutriment. And what is the nutriment of craving for existence? 'Ignorance,' should be the answer. But ignorance, too, has its nutriment; it is not without a nutriment. And what is the nutriment of ignorance? 'The five hindrances,' should be the answer.
Sunshine wrote:Noone is rejecting it. I am merely asking the guys who believe in it to kindly give me (the ignorant non-believer) some explanation. That's all
So how can you explain a continuation like when I die by body obviously decays but something continues. This is not a "thing" as you say but mere conditioned result? So what are these conditions and what are the results etc? I'm all ears.
See my post above. There is nothing which 'continues.' I am not going to give you an explanation because the Buddha discouraged his disciples from trying to understand the specific, mechanical details of kamma/rebirth (apart from what he had all ready explained to them). You are the one who has implied that rebirth, to be true, must require some continuity of previous aggregates or a permanent substance which possesses kamma or exists independently of the fluxating causes and conditions which make up samsaric existence, not me. I am not going to answer a question based on a fundamentally mistaken proposition.
Also, I have no intention in engaging in this discussion any longer.
Regards,
Eric
I do not want my house to be walled in on sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.- Gandhi
With persistence aroused for the highest goal's attainment, with mind unsmeared, not lazy in action, firm in effort, with steadfastness & strength arisen, wander alone like a rhinoceros.
Not neglecting seclusion, absorption, constantly living the Dhamma in line with the Dhamma, comprehending the danger in states of becoming, wander alone like a rhinoceros.- Snp. 1.3