Awareness vs Mindfulness?

[DooDoot]

I wouldn't dare to look down on his experience and wisdom, from the confort of my lay man's chair, in front of the computer screen...

Are you aware what truthful speech means?

Or perhas you just don't like any popular teachers, except of Buddhadasa, DooDoot?

Sumedho is a big fan of Buddhadasa and since Buddhadasa also taught lots of Zen Non-Duality nonsense, obviously your statement is not based in anything factual.

I compare teachers to the Sutta Teachings. You appear to ignore Suttas & worship teachers as gods.

It is very easy for meditation practitioners to gain states of liberation even though they don't comprehend the Teachings; let alone comprehend what is occurring in their own minds.

[DooDoot]

But you are considering someone talking behind a computer who doesn't believe in rebirth

Sumedho does not appear to believe in post-mortem rebirth. It appears what u posted is a contraction.

Rebirth is nothing more than desire seeking some object to absorb into, which will allow it to arise again. This is the habit of the heedless mind

http://dhammatalks.net/Books2/Ajahn_Sum ... %20REBIRTH

There will be a rude awakening at some point....

Wrong. I had a rude awakening years ago when following the false & dangerous teachings of these Theravada monks teaching Zen non-sense. Freedom from them was salvation. In short, the Suttas tell us to not follow "disciples".

[Cause_and_Effect]

But you are considering someone talking behind a computer who doesn't believe in rebirth

Sumedho does not appear to believe in post-mortem rebirth. It appears what u posted is a contraction.

Rebirth is nothing more than desire seeking some object to absorb into, which will allow it to arise again. This is the habit of the heedless mind

http://dhammatalks.net/Books2/Ajahn_Sum ... %20REBIRTH

As usual, more misrepresentation of prominant Sangha members from you...
When will it be ended.

Let us get Ajahn Sumedho's actual words on this, nowhere does he say he does not believe in post mortem rebirth. Rather he is more interested in what he sees in the here and now and practicing to see arising and passing of phenomena, so the moment by moment 'rebirth'. It does not preclude his belief in what the Buddha taught about our many last lives.

"The historical Buddha refers to previous lives in the scriptures and things like this, but for me these things are speculative. Maybe you can remember previous lives, but I have no such memory. So all I can know is from the here and now....

I quite like the idea of reincarnation, and of rebirth, on a theoretical level. I’ve no bias against it, but it is speculative and it’s conceptual. Even if I could remember a previous life or previous lives, they’d still be memories in the present....

We want to get out of the mindset or fixed view that sees rebirth in terms of ‘I was so-and-so in a previous life.’ Questions like ‘What was I in a previous life?’ or ‘What will I be reborn as?’ This is all about ‘I am.’ This is the basic delusion of self, that I really was somebody else....

When I met Master Hsuan Hua in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in California, he said we were together in a previous life and had some kind of monastic connection. I don’t mind, and I wouldn’t doubt it."

From Ch. 18, The Sound of Silence

[nirodh27]

I've read and listened to Sumedho many times, is probably the Monks I've read the most, and he speaks only abouth psychological rebirth. Calling Rebirth speculation (aka a conjecture without evidence at his support) is practically to dismiss it in the same way as Sumedho dismiss God or other methaphysical cliams and many times Sumedho points out how the doctrine of Anatta and Rebirth creates problems if we start speculating about them togheter.

But if you watch the way things operate independently of yourself, you begin to understand that rebirth is nothing more than desire seeking some object to absorb into, which will allow it to arise again. This is the habit of the heedless mind. When you become hungry, because of the way you’ve been conditioned you go out and get something to eat. That’s an actual rebirth: seeking something, being absorbed into that very thing itself. Rebirth is going on throughout the day and night, because when you grow tired of being reborn you annihilate yourself in sleep. There’s nothing more to it than that.

We aren’t trying to figure things out on a metaphysical plane. What we are doing is pointing to the experience of being a human being at this time and at this place. The Buddha’s teachings are pointing to that. They are not metaphysical but existential.

But Physical rebirth is a metaphysical claim, certainly not an existential or psychological one.

When we reach the cessation of ignorance, at that moment all the rest of the sequence ceases. It is not that one ceases and then another
ceases. When there is vijjā, suffering ceases. In any moment when there is true mindfulness and wisdom, there is no suffering. Suffering has ceased. When you contemplate the cessation of desire, the cessation of grasping (upādāna), there is the cessation of becoming, the cessation of rebirth and suffering. When things cease, when everything ceases, there is peace. There is knowing, serenity, emptiness, not-self. These are the words, the concepts describing cessation.

When you arrive to cessation in this very life, obviously for Sumedho you have already found the goal. In fact, Sumedho seems very happy and it doesn't seem agitated at all.

I am only interested in rebirth as something that you can witness with the mind. You can talk about a previous life or the next life, but then you are just dealing with speculation. The emphasis in the teaching though is always on the here and now rather than speculating about the past or imagining the future. When you understand what the Buddha was really teaching, then rebirth in those terms is really the process of becoming which is a mental process. You are becoming something all the time.

We contemplate ordinary feelings, memories and thoughts, rather than grasping hold of fantastic ideas and thoughts to understand the extremes of existence. So we don’t become involved in speculation about the ultimate purpose of life, God, the devil, heaven and hell, what happens when we die or reincarnation. In Buddhist meditation we just observe the here and now. The birth and death that are going on here and now are the beginning and ending of the most ordinary things

So the Phrase "Sumedho does not appear to believe in post-mortem rebirth" seems totally correct to me since believing is (as the dictionary say):

- accept that (something) is true, especially without proof. Sumedho clearly doesn't accept rebirth in the physical sense as true since it calls it a speculation as it calls speculation God, The Devil etc and never says that we should trust the Buddha out of sheer faith on this.
- hold (something) as an opinion; Sumedho clearly have no opinion on this, at best is agnostic and disinterested.

"It does not preclude his belief in what the Buddha taught about our many last lives". He does not entertain any belief about rebirth in one sense or another as it is clear by his words, else it would have said it somewhere and it has been pressed to do so many many times.

But some here will tell you that if your don't believe in physical rebirth you don't have right view and so the path is blocked for you. The path seems not blocked at all for Sumedho.

[Spiny Norman]

I've read and listened to Sumedho many times, is probably the Monks I've read the most, and he speaks only abouth psychological rebirth. Calling Rebirth speculation (aka a conjecture without evidence at his support) is practically to dismiss it in the same way as Sumedho dismiss God or other methaphysical cliams and many times Sumedho points out how the doctrine of Anatta and Rebirth creates problems if we start speculating about them togheter.

But if you watch the way things operate independently of yourself, you begin to understand that rebirth is nothing more than desire seeking some object to absorb into, which will allow it to arise again. This is the habit of the heedless mind. When you become hungry, because of the way you’ve been conditioned you go out and get something to eat. That’s an actual rebirth: seeking something, being absorbed into that very thing itself. Rebirth is going on throughout the day and night, because when you grow tired of being reborn you annihilate yourself in sleep. There’s nothing more to it than that.

We aren’t trying to figure things out on a metaphysical plane. What we are doing is pointing to the experience of being a human being at this time and at this place. The Buddha’s teachings are pointing to that. They are not metaphysical but existential.

But Physical rebirth is a metaphysical claim, certainly not an existential or psychological one.

When we reach the cessation of ignorance, at that moment all the rest of the sequence ceases. It is not that one ceases and then another
ceases. When there is vijjā, suffering ceases. In any moment when there is true mindfulness and wisdom, there is no suffering. Suffering has ceased. When you contemplate the cessation of desire, the cessation of grasping (upādāna), there is the cessation of becoming, the cessation of rebirth and suffering. When things cease, when everything ceases, there is peace. There is knowing, serenity, emptiness, not-self. These are the words, the concepts describing cessation.

When you arrive to cessation in this very life, obviously for Sumedho you have already found the goal. In fact, Sumedho seems very happy and it doesn't seem agitated at all.

I am only interested in rebirth as something that you can witness with the mind. You can talk about a previous life or the next life, but then you are just dealing with speculation. The emphasis in the teaching though is always on the here and now rather than speculating about the past or imagining the future. When you understand what the Buddha was really teaching, then rebirth in those terms is really the process of becoming which is a mental process. You are becoming something all the time.

We contemplate ordinary feelings, memories and thoughts, rather than grasping hold of fantastic ideas and thoughts to understand the extremes of existence. So we don’t become involved in speculation about the ultimate purpose of life, God, the devil, heaven and hell, what happens when we die or reincarnation. In Buddhist meditation we just observe the here and now. The birth and death that are going on here and now are the beginning and ending of the most ordinary things

So the Phrase "Sumedho does not appear to believe in post-mortem rebirth" seems totally correct to me since believing is (as the dictionary say):

- accept that (something) is true, especially without proof. Sumedho clearly doesn't accept rebirth in the physical sense as true since it calls it a speculation as it calls speculation God, The Devil etc and never says that we should trust the Buddha out of sheer faith on this.
- hold (something) as an opinion; Sumedho clearly have no opinion on this, at best is agnostic and disinterested.

"It does not preclude his belief in what the Buddha taught about our many last lives". He does not entertain any belief about rebirth in one sense or another as it is clear by his words, else it would have said it somewhere and it has been pressed to do so many many times.

But some here will tell you that if your don't believe in physical rebirth you don't have right view and so the path is blocked for you. The path seems not blocked at all for Sumedho.

To me Sumedho's views came across as pretty "secular" in orientation. There were some Stephen Batchelor fans in the local Thai Forest group I used to attend.

[nirodh27]

We want to get out of the mindset or fixed view that sees rebirth in terms of ‘I was so-and-so in a previous life.’ Questions like ‘What was I in a previous life?’ or ‘What will I be reborn as?’ This is all about ‘I am.’ This is the basic delusion of self, that I really was somebody else....

But the Texts says that the Buddha and the mendicants worth offerings:

They recollect many kinds of past lives. That is: one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths; many eons of the world contracting, many eons of the world expanding, many eons of the world contracting and expanding. They remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ And so they recollect their many kinds of past lives, with features and details.

https://suttacentral.net/an6.2/en/sujato

Sumedho is saying to you that the kind of thinking in AN6.2 is the basic delusion of the self. When you understand psychological birth and that the aggregates are not yours, they rise and fall and are dependantly arisen, you doubt about the fact that an6.2 is true Dhamma if you also believe that Sumedho speaks about true Dhamma.

[nirodh27]

To me Sumedho's views came across as pretty "secular" in orientation. There were some Stephen Batchelor fans in the local Thai Forest group I used to attend.

I don't think so, he is sincerely disintered about the matter thanks to his understanding of Anatta. He entertains no view about the issue, but it is also irrelevant for him because he knows how to stop birth in a psychological-existential level and he seems totally satisfied from it.

Batchelor is instead truly secular and skeptical in his approach, he tries to negate rebirth and this is clearly not the correct approach since he entertains a view, there's no self is a view for the Buddha. I remember that I've came to the conclusion that his teaching truly avoid some of the crucial parts of the Dhamma, while Sumedho of course is inline if we follow Amaro remarks in how to "translate" some of his terminology about consciousness. Actually I don't remember the details of Batchelor since I've erased all the lectures of him from my mind.

I can understand why Batchelor fans are attracted to Sumedho, but the difference in approach seems small, but is gigantic (hope is an english term ahah).

[Cause_and_Effect]

To me Sumedho's views came across as pretty "secular" in orientation. There were some Stephen Batchelor fans in the local Thai Forest group I used to attend.

I don't think so, he is sincerely disintered about the matter thanks to his understanding of Anatta. He entertains no view about the issue, but it is also irrelevant for him because he knows how to stop birth in a psychological-existential level and he seems totally satisfied from it.

Batchelor is instead truly secular and skeptical in his approach, he tries to negate rebirth and this is clearly not the correct approach since he entertains a view, there's no self is a view for the Buddha. I remember that I've came to the conclusion that his teaching truly avoid some of the crucial parts of the Dhamma, while Sumedho of course is inline if we follow Amaro remarks in how to "translate" some of his terminology about consciousness. Actually I don't remember the details of Batchelor since I've erased all the lectures of him from my mind.

I can understand why Batchelor fans are attracted to Sumedho, but the different seems little, but is gigantic (hope is an english term ahah).

Ajahn Sumedho holds the correct approach that without direct knowledge it's a speculative view based on confidence that the Buddha taught it.
He points out that holding to the view is not needed to practice, and especially that if wrongly apprehended as reincarnation it can give rise to false belief in self.

This is however not in line at all with the image the other poster tries to convey, who tries to deny that rebirth occurs, and denies that the Buddha taught rebirth, none of which Ajahn Sumedho supports.

So we can say Sumedho is not interested in the subject and thinks it's not important. Certainly his position is amenable to a secular interpretation.

However when pressed he certainly is open to the possibility and surely doesn't disbelieve in it either since he agrees the Buddha taught it.

"When I met Master Hsuan Hua in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in California, he said we were together in a previous life and had some kind of monastic connection. I don’t mind, and I wouldn’t doubt it."

It appears he does not express doubt about the right view of rebirth, while not affirming it as he has no direct knowledge himself so correctly labels it a speculative view from the perspective of his personal experience.

[bodom]

Ajahn Chah considered him to be his succesor.

Ajahn Liem was Ajahn Chah's successor not Sumedho.

[nirodh27]

He points out that holding to the view is not needed to practice

Any possible conceiving of oneself as anything at all is an obstacle to enlightenment, because you attach to an idea again, to a concept of self as being part of something.

He says way more than is not needed to practice. He says that holding a view of Rebirth or any speculative view is not useful to the goal of ending suffering, to fulfill the four noble truths, to get enlightened. Else it will be wrong from him to not mention the importance of physical rebirth as a Teacher if it was essential. At best for him serves nothing since it is totally alien to the work that you have to do since you can only deal with ordinary psychological rebirth "until revelation possibly comes" and for the goal, at worst can be dangerous since it could block your undestanding of Anatta and the abandoning of the fetter of sakkaya-ditthi. For Sumedho it is best not to have that view, not even by faith. That is why I doubt descriptions like AN6.2 being true Dhamma, those reads like a regression about a self, it is very hard to read that as conventional speech.

Kamma will cease through recognition.

[nirodh27]

I have to thank this thread, Re-reading Sumedho again was a true gift.

[Cause_and_Effect]

He points out that holding to the view is not needed to practice

Any possible conceiving of oneself as anything at all is an obstacle to enlightenment, because you attach to an idea again, to a concept of self as being part of something.

He says way more than is not needed to practice. He says that holding a view of Rebirth or any speculative view is not useful to the goal of ending suffering, to fulfill the four noble truths, to get enlightened. Else it will be wrong from him to not mention the importance of physical rebirth as a Teacher if it was essential. At best for him serves nothing since it is totally alien to the work that you have to do since you can only deal with ordinary psychological rebirth "until revelation possibly comes" and for the goal, at worst can be dangerous since it could block your undestanding of Anatta and the abandoning of the fetter of sakkaya-ditthi. For Sumedho it is best not to have that view, not even by faith. That is why I doubt descriptions like AN6.2 being true Dhamma, those reads like a regression about a self, it is very hard to read that as conventional speech.

Kamma will cease through recognition.

He says that there is a danger in the view being wrongly grasped.
I wouldn't extrapolate from that, that he says it is wrong to hold such a view.
Actually if rightly seen, the view of rebirth/rebecoming helps to attenuate concepts of self so is not a hindrance.

Perhaps where he teaches in the West where strong self importance and identity view is very apparent, he feels it better not to emphasize the view at all as per his background.

[nirodh27]

I wouldn't extrapolate from that, that he says it is wrong to hold such a view.

It is best not to have because it is not useful and can on some occasions be even dangerous (else it will teach everyone telling to have faith in metaphysical rebirth) is different to say that it is wrong to hold the view, I will not subscribe to that. This will go contrary to the Buddha with the "this is true, everything is else is wrong" and it would be still a way to be attached to a view in an absolute manner, Sumedho holds no view at all about the Metaphysical. I think no more needs to be added here from my part. If you don't like the "it is best not" start at "is is not useful".

Actually if rightly seen, the view of rebirth/rebecoming helps to attenuate concepts of self so is not a hindrance.

Supposing that you're not speaking about the psychological becoming else we certainly agree that seeing rebirth of self/identification/craving in the world helps since without seeing it you cannot even evaluate the detachment and renunciation for that process, I wonder for the "other" rebirth (that seems to me also not well defined) how it concretely helps if you want to give me an example. I would not engage in this normally following Sumedho's advice, but since you allure me saying that can help to attenuate concepts of self I cannot simply pass over it.

[DooDoot]

Batchelor is instead truly secular and skeptical in his approach, he tries to negate rebirth and this is clearly not the correct approach since he entertains a view, there's no self is a view for the Buddha...

Batchelor, similar to Doug Smith, appears to be a heretic. Batchelor does not believe the Buddha ended his defilements. Doug Smith believes the Buddha taught post-mortem rebirth (reincarnation) yet chooses to not believe it. Where as Ajahn Sumedho, similar to my good self, redefine the sloppy common translation of "rebirth". As far as i am concerned, similar to Bhikkhu Yutadhammo, I have not found any Pali word in the suttas that can be literally translated into "rebirth". Thus, Ajahn Sumedho and my good self do not ever deny the Buddha taught about a reality called "upapajjati". Yet it appears Batchelor & Doug Smith do. Many of us for a few years tried to pursuade Doug Smith to the right view but, like Batchelor, he appears choose to market himself using controversy.

[Ceisiwr]

[Sumedho holds no view at all about the Metaphysical.

Ajahn Sumedho believes in a permanent and eternal consciousness outside of the All. How is that not metaphysical?