TheDhamma wrote:Individual wrote:
or at least swiftly refute those who would claim the Buddha did not teach rebirth? If not, then what exactly does this passage mean?
That passage and about a thousand others refute those who say the Buddha did not teach rebirth.
Looking at the sample chapter from your book, "Buddhist Lists":
The Buddha’s teachings are highly scientific and compatible to the findings of modern science. This statement does not mean that we all need to put on white laboratory coats and perform experiments. The term science is used here to refer to logic, personal observation, and scientific method. . . . The teachings are completely experiential.
Just curious, how can you contend that the Buddha's teachings are "highly scientific" when I can not through "logic, personal observation, and scientific method" show that rebirth exists? You say that the teachings are "completely experiential." From my own personal experience, I can neither remember my past births nor do I recall from a previous death me somehow inhabiting another body.
It appears that you are saying that the Buddha did teach literal rebirth in the sense of life after death where there is some form of continuation. Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but it sounds like you are saying two incompatible things.
To say that "thousand others [passages] refute those who say the Buddha did not teach rebirth," seems to say that the Buddha did teach rebirth. Well, if he did teach a literal form of rebirth then by the criteria you specified (I doubt you wrote something you felt no conviction in) the teachings on the Buddha are not scientific or at the very least some parts of it are not.
Do you believe the "The 31 Planes of Existence" can have the scientific method applied to it to show that indeed there exists a heavenly realm filled with all sorts of celestial beings? Do you think via the scientific method can show the hell realms where beings are tortured?
Let me refer to an interesting passage from the Sutta Nipata that seems to talk about no rebirth (Sutta Nipata, Jara (Decay) Sutta)
"Seen and heard are those people whose particular names are mentioned; but only the name of a person remains when he has passed away."(808)