Another New Paradigm

[Devils' Advocate]

Quick comment.

One point that came up between you and Wil struck a chord in me. Wil's assertion that Hindu's he knows do not agree with you. What interested me was your reply "I can't comment on their depth of understanding of their doctrine."

What interests me about this statement is my perception of most Christians is that they have little real understanding of their own religion. People being people, it follows that perhaps Hindu's lack the same? A shallow understanding is common?

This fits in with my perception of people in general, not just their religious views. People here in America have the most shallow understanding of how our government operates. Of the foundations behind why it is structured the way it is. Of the history and thinking of the men who brought it about and why.

Getting back to the purpose here though, popular perception by people of their faiths. Your thesis is founded on the works of theologians, philosophers and thinkers that I, for one, have at most, some knowledge of their works. Your thesis may be brilliant. It may be baloney. I'm not sure I have sufficient background to know! But I need to read it over a few more times (at least) before I will be comfortable making any comments on it at all.

More to come. I hope!

 

[Senthil]

I'm a practicing Hindu, not a scholar, and have neither the interest nor the knowledge to enter any scholarly debate on reincarnation. However, I think it pertinent to offer the practicing Hindu POV here, at least that of one practicing Hindu.

In Hinduism, reincarnation is a given, not a theory. Just as karma, moksha, etc. are givens, they're all like night and day, the earth is round, etc. its within the eastern paradigm, looking at life through a practical dharmic lens, not an Abrahamic or scholarly one. So the view I express is from that worldview, and for me personally, not subject to debate. You can try, but it won't change my mind, just as you can try to convince me there is no such thing as snow.

Why? Well, I picked up souls in their astral body waiting to reincarnate. This is purely mystical stuff, not of the intellect ... again, a separate paradigm. These souls entered the bodies of my and my wife's children, whom we created with the assistance of God. We felt their 'hovering' as clear as watching a hummigbird hovering in the backyard. It was a pure mystical sight. As each entered the womb, my spouse had flashes of light, and awoke to tell me she was pregnant. Each soul had its own unique story. One was killed in a war, another was a friend who wanted to re-try, and was killed in an accident he knew about as he bought life insurance for his parents two weeks prior to passing. Another was a relative. And so it goes. This is just the way it is. Nothing special, just operating from a different paradigm, as the thread says.

Generally humans reincarnate as humans, unless at the point of death they're confused. In that case they may 'accidentally' inhabit the body of a dog, cat, or horse. mostly by mistake, in the confused search.

This body is termed anandamaya kosha in Sanskrit. Not all Hindus will have the same POV, but the main point here is the experience that created this knowledge, not the reading of books to form a thesis.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Thomas]

Hi ACOT –

I think one important aspect of Buddhist view of reincarnation that I haven't seen mentioned in my quick read through is that 'life is suffering'.

As I understand it, the Four Noble Truths, which are in effect Buddhist dogmas, state just that:
1: The truth of suffering (Dukkha)
2: The truth of the origin of suffering (Samudāya)
3: The truth of the cessation of suffering (Nirodha)
4: The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering (Magga)
A brief overview on wiki (always dangerous) underlines the points made above – the aim is not to be reborn, birth, death and rebirth is all part of the suffering.

 

[Thomas]

What interests me about this statement is my perception of most Christians is that they have little real understanding of their own religion. People being people, it follows that perhaps Hindu's lack the same? A shallow understanding is common?

I'd say so. But then it's the heart that matters. And 'religion' makes rocket science look easy!

This fits in with my perception of people in general, not just their religious views.

Quite. The assumptions we make about science are often in the realms of 'blind faith'. Science is the new religion when it comes to where people invest their faith. It's probably a status quo thing, people rarely interrogate the status quo.

We've got an election coming up in a couple of months. All the forecasters are saying it's gonna be really, really close, potentially a new landscape ... last time round, tuition fees were introduced, which meant students had to pay to go to university. Marches, demonstrations, a little bit of a scuffle organised by the media (20 students, 200 photographers), and students still bitching about it today. They leave uni saddled with debt and join a culture where property prices are just beyond their capacity.

Education spending is one of the policy deciders in the coming elections, yet 40% of eligible students haven't even bothered to register to vote ...

Your thesis may be brilliant. It may be baloney ... More to come. I hope!

Thanks.

 

[Thomas]

Thanks for reading.

Thanks for offering.

In Hinduism, reincarnation is a given.

I am trying to establish if there is any mutual ground between the dogmas of the Hindu, the Buddhist and the Christian.

... its within the eastern paradigm ...

Same here in the west, really. As someone said, 'we need saints, not scholars'.

I realise I am asking a scholarly question, and the answer either way will not make a jot of difference to my faith any more than yours or a Buddhist's. All I am investigating is the presumption that the other is wrong. I'm suggesting we're all right, when we clarify to each other what we mean.

I certainly agree that none of this has any bearing on the faith of the man in the street, be he Christian, Hindu or Buddhist.

 

[Nick the Pilot]

Senthil,

I would add that some people, after they die, are so desperate to continue living in a physical body that they force their way into an animal body (which causes them considerable trouble later on).

 

[wil]

More what? There is no need nor necessity nor deficiency in the 'One'.

The Principle of the One, the Absolute is that it is never other than Itself. Can't add to or subtract from, increase or decrease. Can't learn anything It doesn't already know ... the idea that the One can benefit in any way from the existence of all the universes and everything in them is an anthropomorphism.

to me this would beg the question...then why create this amazing universe? star creation nebulas, everything in order like a swiss watch, galaxies and solar systems revolving in time. Tis the one experiencing itself in the macro and the micro

 

[Thomas]

to me this would beg the question...then why create this amazing universe?

From the metaphysical perspective it is in the nature of the All-Possible to realise every possibility, for no other reason than it can. That it is 'amazing' is a subjective response. I happen to think it's amazing too, but not everyone does. Some find it cold and callous.

Tis the one experiencing itself in the macro and the micro

Well that may well be your paradigm, but it's not that of Hinduism, Buddhism or Christianity. I think that's an anthropomorphic projection.

In the Traditions, the One has no need nor want of experience – The One knows Itself perfectly. It's us who seek the experience of the One.

That self-knowledge is nicely summed up in satcitananda – being, consciousness, bliss – and each can be predicated eternal, so eternal being, eternal consciousness, eternal bliss – it's not a provisional state depending on what we get up to here, or anywhere else.

There is nothing in the experience of the transient and the ephemeral worlds that can in any way affect that eternal self knowledge ...

 

[Senthil]

Thanks for offering.

I am trying to establish if there is any mutual ground between the dogmas of the Hindu, the Buddhist and the Christian.

Same here in the west, really. As someone said, 'we need saints, not scholars'.

I realise I am asking a scholarly question, and the answer either way will not make a jot of difference to my faith any more than yours or a Buddhist's. All I am investigating is the presumption that the other is wrong. I'm suggesting we're all right, when we clarify to each other what we mean.

I certainly agree that none of this has any bearing on the faith of the man in the street, be he Christian, Hindu or Buddhist.

We're operating on two different systems here, so there is little common ground. As a basic example, I have no need or desire to discover any unity amongst faith. I prefer to celebrate differences. I honestly don't understand this desire of comparative scholars. I think it does help to explain why some faiths proseltyse, while others don't.

There may be similarities, there may be differences, but my observations of the way people behave would lead me to believe there are more differences than similarities. But it matters not.

I never presume the other side is wrong. It's the same as understanding homosexuality to me. It's different. Hindus (not all, mind you) don't believe Christians are wrong, whilst Christians (not all, mind you) believe Hindus are wrong. Different paradigms, yes. We simply cannot find a lot of common ground in intellect versus intuitive understandings.

Course I could be wrong.

 

[wil]

Different paradigms, yes. We simply cannot find a lot of common ground in intellect versus intuitive understandings.

Course I could be wrong.

It all gets interesting when you put your intellect intuit.

Just as when you observe your intuition intellectually...

ya get one thing when the west enters the east and another when the east enters the west.


But back to the OP...Thomas I believe my big quandary is what I perceived as your abject rejection of all things reincarnation in the past... and the current attempt/paradigm to find a level of acceptance.

Can you help me there?

 

[Thomas]

Thomas I believe my big quandary is what I perceived as your abject rejection of all things reincarnation in the past...

There's two elements to that, I think.

The first is the idea of the reincarnation at the personal level: rebirth of the individual ego.

Put simply, as it seems put to me, is the idea that Thomas dies, and it is Thomas reborn say as Sam, or Samantha, or whoever, poses the immediate question: Who actually is it then, because Thomas and Sam are the same thing.

It seems to me an error to say 'Sam is actually Thomas reborn' because that implies that Thomas is the cause of Sam and Sam is an effect of Thomas. And the line can go on indefinitely, back to the first Adam, an on to the last Zeke.

Especially when Buddhist doctrine talks about the ephemeral and illusory nature of 'experience' and even the illusion of the 'self' as such. So the common idea of Thomas reincarnating pegs it at the level of all that chaff ...

Whereas the doctrines seem to say that what reincarnates is not this particular individual self (the erroneous self-identification of accrued chaff) but The Self, or the Principle of Selfhood, which is universal and transcends individual identity, in the same way that human nature is continually being reborn and manifests itself in the infinite variations of human beings.

It seems to me that if there is Richard and Sam and Thomas and Ursula and Victor ... then what we have is something common to them all, that is not actually entirely defined or contained by any one of them. Human nature again. Each human is totally human, but no individual human manifests the totality of human nature.

And each generation inherits the world created by its forebears, then the ancestors pass on the karmic burden of the world into which that person is born.

secondly it seems to me that karma belongs to the moral sphere. What makes an act 'good' or 'bad' is not the act, but the reason why we do it. Good and bad are moral determinations according to the intention, not according to the act.

And most proponents of karma reject grace, and yet Pallis, a Tibetan Buddhist, says quite the opposite.

I never rejected the doctrines for being non Christian, I rejected their presentation as being inherently illogical.

I have asked this question often on IO: Who or what is it that reincarnates? And I've never got an answer.

... and the current attempt/paradigm to find a level of acceptance.

Once I went back to the Sophia Perennis and their presentations of the various doctrines, which in my experience can be taken as reliable and are at least founded on an interpretation of doctrine from within the various traditions, and not simply the opinion of the author, then I saw reincarnation in a whole new light.

Then I saw, hey, there's nothing in Christianity that actually rejects or refutes this.

I'm continually exploring my own tradition, that's all, to understand it better.

 

[wil]

cool...

So again, in this vein, if we are returning to the one, and then back out again...

not ourcellves, but our higher self...why?

 

[Thomas]

So again, in this vein, if we are returning to the one ...

I think that's your paradigm again, it's not mine.

 

[farhan]

Thomas,
Have you read theosophy's view on the matter? Because their system (despite on believes it or not) is much more rational than hindu or buddhist ones.

 

[Thomas]

Thomas,
Have you read theosophy's view on the matter? Because their system (despite on believes it or not) is much more rational than hindu or buddhist ones.

You mean the modern Theosophical movements?

I don't see them as speaking for Tradition.

 

[farhan]

Yes, Balvatsky, Bessant, Leadbeater etc. Yes they dont represent any tradition, still they mainly take from the dharmic ones. And the metaphysical system makes perfect sense, regardless of if one believes them or not.

My take on this, unless one is evolved enough to actually see (all mystical traditions say its possible) the ego incarnating or reincarnating on this plane, there is never going to be an evidence of either the abrahamic or dharmic take on this matter. These are metaphysical debates that can go on for ever with no result.

 

[farhan]

IMO all the questions you have raised in this thread can be answered using their system.

 

[Thomas]

Yes, Balvatsky, Bessant, Leadbeater etc. Yes they dont represent any tradition, still they mainly take from the dharmic ones.

Sorry, but I find their metaphysics and methodology fundamentally flawed.

 

[farhan]

thats ok. to me they make much more sense then a generic hindu or buddhist stand on reincarnation.

 

[wil]

Whereas the doctrines seem to say that what reincarnates is not this particular individual self (the erroneous self-identification of accrued chaff) but The Self, or the Principle of Selfhood, which is universal and transcends individual identity, in the same way that human nature is continually being reborn and manifests itself in the infinite variations of human beings.

cool...

So again, in this vein, if we are returning to the one, and then back out again...

not ourcellves, but our higher self...why?

I think that's your paradigm again, it's not mine.

Damned confusing to me then.... was the first quote you saying what you think or giving some rendition of what others think...

Every time I try to understand and reiterate what you are saying goal posts get move...I'm confused.