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Chronic7

Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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Buddhism Questions?
#7982915 - 02/05/08 02:37 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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What isit that gets rebirthed again and again until Nirvana is reached?
I agree with buddhism alot but what is this state? Isit conciousness?
I found this on wiki...does anyone have any buddhist/buddha quotations that confirm this "conciousness" that lives on?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirth_%28Buddhism%29
(i dont trust wikipedia)
It ties in perfectly with being able to remember past lives (which the buddha did) yet it is forever changing and impermanent. As after one life it has grown and does not resemble what it was before. Also how does buddhism tie in with science and the big bang theory i heard buddhism explained the big bagn years before sceince but ive read nothing that suggests it?
Buddhism seems very scattered through different types and slightly different beleifs (immediate rebirth/Bardo's) I beleive in the Bardo's personally.
Im reading and reading but i only seem to find a few answers here and there, but the basic philosophy ofit i adoreso when i have more questions i need to ask them...
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civil twilight

Registered: 02/04/08
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Re: Buddhism Questions? *DELETED* [Re: Chronic7]
#7982985 - 02/05/08 03:03 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Post deleted by civil twilightReason for deletion: .
-------------------- "You dropped your pocket..."
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Chronic7

Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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that was an attempt to answer my questions?
the buddha clearly stated reincarnation is not true as it implies an individual entity, separate. which just can not be possible as we are all one.
im starting to beleive in a "conciousness" or "impermanent spirit" of sorts, (its really unamable, but conciousness bodes well with me and plenty others, this conciousness (which is without beggging or end) enters an intermediate state after death/pre rebirth (bardo) where when ready for rebirth that conciousness connects with the orgasmic energy of two beings reproducing and starts a growth process which results in rebirth. This can be any physical form of life on unimaginable universal levels.
That what im starting to beleive anyway.
I made the thread to find other peoples opinions on this as its a shaded area of buddhist philosophy...
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Lion
Decadent Flower Magnate



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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7983160 - 02/05/08 03:54 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
chronic777 said: What isit that gets rebirthed again and again until Nirvana is reached?
I agree with buddhism alot but what is this state? Isit conciousness?
In Tibetan Buddhism, what gets birthed again and again is "mind stream", which could be considered the energetic patterns of mental and emotional activity in a being. So if a being is predisposed through conditioning to being aggressive and emotionally unstable, and that being has not transcended this conditioned make-up at the time of death, that "mind stream", that frequency, is reborn in another being. This idea to my mind cannot be more than conjecture.
But the Buddhist model does provide an interesting perspective on psychological death and rebirth...i.e. the ego, the false notion of a separate self, conditioned by birth trauma and subsequent life experiences, is born again and again (on a moment-to-moment basis) until, through meditative awareness, a being transcends the trappings of the limited ego and abides in pure awareness (consciousness), enlightened mind or Bodhicitta.
-------------------- “Strengthened by contemplation and study, I will not fear my passions like a coward. My body I will give to pleasures, to diversions that I’ve dreamed of, to the most daring erotic desires, to the lustful impulses of my blood, without any fear at all, for whenever I will— and I will have the will, strengthened as I’ll be with contemplation and study— at the crucial moments I’ll recover my spirit as was before: ascetic.”
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dblaney
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7983184 - 02/05/08 04:01 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Perhaps the more relevant question is: what is it that was birthed and is reading this right now?
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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Chronic7

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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Lion]
#7983211 - 02/05/08 04:11 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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that mental stream is exactly what im reffering to i think, some form of consciousness, able to remember past lives it has been manifested into, yet impermanent as its ever changing, as everything is.
Please tell me im making sense
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Chronic7

Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: dblaney]
#7983250 - 02/05/08 04:20 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
dblaney said: Perhaps the more relevant question is: what is it that was birthed and is reading this right now?
Thats the same question to me, as its asking what that same thing is?
The experience that made me ask these questions was
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/7983164/an/0/page/0
I completely threw me off as i did not know how to explain it but i KNOW it was an after physical life death state, it felt so pure and connected to everything, it was everything, yet it cannot remain as that feeling as everything is foever changing right? So it had to be an itermediate state, shwoing me a glimpse of pure happyness, i also felt pure potential and pure awareness. On reflection it was just incredible
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Orbus
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7983254 - 02/05/08 04:21 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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You've got it basically right. What continues is simply habitual thought patterns and karmic traces. Kind of like a wave that continues over the surface of water, continually changing. No substantial or real entity is reincarnated, since it was only an illusion to begin with.
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------------------------------------------------------ Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery -- the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets -- is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together. - Alan Watts
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7983331 - 02/05/08 04:42 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Cosmic recycling of samskaras, psychic tendencies. The Eternal Consciousness is the Ground Consciousness or Clear Light of the Void. Nirvana or Liberation consists in the Realization in life or at death, that THAT is what we Really are, not the complex budle of tendencies that comprise our personality. Ignorance (Avidya) is the continuously wrong identification of our personality, and its psychic center, the ego, with what we are. 'We' do not get reborn, psychic tendencies (they say) constellate or agglutinate together because of some psychic laws of attraction. If enough of these tendencies recombine, a memory of a past personality can emerge from the new constellation. This is how reborn Lamas (tulkus) are supposedly discovered - by young children saying things that do not belong to their own experience, or by identifying objects that once belonged to a deceased Lama. Funny how this practice only seems to take place in Tibet.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Chronic7

Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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I needed this discussion to realise what i experienced, i understand we are all one and understand how we are all interconnected as one, but having experienced it and being 100% sure of what i experienced was an after death state i had to ask and discover what that state was, im now 99% sure it was a bardo, inbetween birth and death, yet pure life.
I know i shall become it again one day, i am it right now but not actualised, i think thats the point of my life in someway, to aim for that pure peace within me, whether non human or just a form of mindstream consciousness awaiting rebirth.
Thankyou, all of you, everyone of us
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dblaney
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7983568 - 02/05/08 05:38 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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If you're alive, then how could you have experienced an after-death state?
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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Cherk
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7985126 - 02/05/08 11:14 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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monks like to tie knots like boy scouts salute your shorts and paint green moss on rocks use the backdoor if people are sleeping don't let it slam
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I have considered such matters. SIKE
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7985363 - 02/06/08 12:45 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
chronic777 said: I needed this discussion to realise what i experienced, i understand we are all one and understand how we are all interconnected as one, but having experienced it and being 100% sure of what i experienced was an after death state i had to ask and discover what that state was, im now 99% sure it was a bardo, inbetween birth and death, yet pure life.
I know i shall become it again one day, i am it right now but not actualised, i think thats the point of my life in someway, to aim for that pure peace within me, whether non human or just a form of mindstream consciousness awaiting rebirth.
Thankyou, all of you, everyone of us
that's very nice, but a bit disturbing too. it seems to line up in many ways but it seems to be derived logically (by logos or words) many buddhist concepts are like zeros, placeholders. unless you are directly cognizant - experienced with them they point to nothing. they have no natural places in sentences except to remind people that they have a way to go. a person can spend 50 years refining an intellectual approach to the concepts of buddhism and still be on the outside of it. anyway i would be happier if your questions (and they are good ones) were not answered by discussion - just intensified. as if you could be better off with less certainty yet more tranquility and insight (direct vs. intellectual)
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gluke bastid
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7985874 - 02/06/08 08:49 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
chronic777 said: What isit that gets rebirthed again and again until Nirvana is reached?
Read the Katha Upanishad, which centers around the question: When a man dies, this doubt arises: Some say 'He is,' others say 'He is not.' Teach me the truth
You won't be disappointed!
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Society in every form is a blessing, but government at its best is but a necessary evil - Thomas Paine
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jonathanseagull
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7986278 - 02/06/08 11:19 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
chronic777 said: What isit that gets rebirthed again and again until Nirvana is reached?
This is a question that comes up again and again and I've yet to see a satisfactory answer (although I haven't looked very hard myself). I believe that the Buddha didn't answer this question when asked in one of the sutras. He said that the question did not apply. It was non-sensical. It's like asking "in what direction does a fire go after it is extinguished?". Makes no sense. It also gets complicated when people need to play Vedic and Buddhist atman and anatman, respectively, against each other.
Aldous Huxley gave a decent answer in the Perrenial Philosophy. He said that the anatman refers only to the personal self, not the universal self. This mix-up occurs due to translations. Atman means "Brahman Within" as in a node of the universal soul for a person. Anatman does not mean "no-soul" but "not-soul" which is a subtle but entirely different thing.
So basically it boils down to sunyata and interdependence again. Think of reality as one big field of interdependence. Karma continues in that field. A cause's effect must ripen and come to fruition. That is what rebirths... NOT reincarnates, which refers to a personal soul coming back. Anatman... there is no personal soul, no self-contained entity. But what we percieve as our soul could be rebirthed (or re-coalesced).
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Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain: Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.
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Chronic7

Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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This is a question that comes up again and again and I've yet to see a satisfactory answer (although I haven't looked very hard myself). I believe that the Buddha didn't answer this question when asked in one of the sutras. He said that the question did not apply. It was non-sensical. It's like asking "in what direction does a fire go after it is extinguished?". Makes no sense. It also gets complicated when people need to play Vedic and Buddhist atman and anatman, respectively, against each other.
Aldous Huxley gave a decent answer in the Perrenial Philosophy. He said that the anatman refers only to the personal self, not the universal self. This mix-up occurs due to translations. Atman means "Brahman Within" as in a node of the universal soul for a person. Anatman does not mean "no-soul" but "not-soul" which is a subtle but entirely different thing.
So basically it boils down to sunyata and interdependence again. Think of reality as one big field of interdependence. Karma continues in that field. A cause's effect must ripen and come to fruition. That is what rebirths... NOT reincarnates, which refers to a personal soul coming back. Anatman... there is no personal soul, no self-contained entity. But what we percieve as our soul could be rebirthed (or re-coalesced).
I think that people think of this energy as a soul because on the whole people see themselves as individuals instead of part of a huge web of interconnectedness, so they needed to feed the ego an individual afterlife. Probably the same need which made me need to make these threads, to be honest.
I beleive something is rebirthed but its not and eternal entity in the individual sense of the soul, it just is everything, formless life. And we essentially are all this formless life force, pure awareness, pure peace.
When we dont realise this pure life force we are mostly suffering for a balance, until we realise this life force, or die and see the clear light, or reach nirvana.
Thats what ive come away with anyway 
But what isit that attains Nirvana? If we are all suffering until we reach pure awareness, pure balance, then realise nirvana, what isit that realises Nirvana, it eternally becomes everything and eascapes rebirth/death but what isit, isit energy that separates from the unbalance, or theres the positive and negative fighting for balance and whenever Nirvana is attained a bit more becomes purely balanced.
Otherwise i dont see how some life force attains nirvana and the rest stays struggling for balance, cause isnt it all one anyway?
I see it is all a dance of balance, but wher does nirvana come into this, doesnt EVERYthing have to keep dancing until EVERything is one again?
How can something escape to Nirvana, it wouldnt add up?
Edited by Chronic7 (02/06/08 02:37 PM)
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dblaney
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7987807 - 02/06/08 05:32 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
But what isit that attains Nirvana?
No one and no thing attains Nirvana. Nirvana is not something that we can attain.
Quote:
How can something escape to Nirvana, it wouldnt add up?
Nothing can escape to Nirvana. Nirvana is not a place or a time.
Quote:
Otherwise i dont see how some life force attains nirvana and the rest stays struggling for balance, cause isnt it all one anyway?
No life force, no energy, no person, no soul, no being, NO ONE attains Nirvana. People waste entire lives trying to finally reach Nirvana. Nirvana cannot be gained, nor can it be lost.
All of our life, we have searched. We search for comfort, pleasure, joy, security, happiness, love, satisfaction, and fulfillment. We do that through material means (by accumulating people and things), through psychological means (by trying to change our minds and attitudes and habits, etc) and even through spiritual means (by trying to meditate ourselves to Nirvana, or trying to find Nirvana some other way, or whatever purifications or prayers we use). All of these things are like carrots dangling in front of our noses. They just distract us from the reality of this moment here, with all of its dissatisfaction, discomfort, unenlightenment, and everything else.
Don't worry about trying to find Truth or Nirvana or whatever, just practice being completely present, every moment, every day.
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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jonathanseagull
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: dblaney]
#7988220 - 02/06/08 06:48 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Another thing people don't realize is that PROGRESS is a concept that was invented. It's as equally possible that there is nothing to attain, nothing to strive for, no goal, etc. This linear thinking causes lots of suffering for lots of people.
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Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain: Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.
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Cherk
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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Chronic7]
#7989642 - 02/06/08 10:42 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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whatever it was it was really great and still is and happens still and is happening right now and will come again and be again whatever it was
I got lost in the excitement
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I have considered such matters. SIKE
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Chronic7

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Re: Buddhism Questions? [Re: Cherk]
#7990981 - 02/07/08 10:00 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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I totally beleive that inbetween lives the cosmic consciousness/interconnectedness that is the effect of the cause of your lifes energy awaits manifestation through birth after death in order to maintain a balance, very simple really.
After death & before birth this energy goes to a pure state, aware of pure life, pure awareness, "nirvana", i also beleive that we continually get born and die until we no longer feel desire for life, then Nirvana is realised for all eternity.
This means everyone and everything has felt Pure Nirvana, and is pure Nirvana, once this is realised and actualised, we then BE it forever.
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