Trancending life & death

[z00se]

I just had an AhHa moment looking a scripture type thing for fun. Everything is in a cycle stuff is born and gets to it's peak and withers again. This is one way life and death can be overcome, there is no beginning and no end of processes in our life, everything is middle, everything is just one long process of varying depth but similar intensity.

 

Does anybody really believe somebody could live forever?

[thelerner]

 

When i was in an ashram a lecturer talked about how in vedic/ hindu thinking the major forces were creation and destruction, not unlike yin and yan, but they also had a third force, sustaining.

 

I wonder if sustaining is kinda like the line along the figure 8/taichi symbol. A sin wave captured, and rolling into itself, and when we can draw inside the lines, but outside, we're gone??

[Nikolai1]

This is one way life and death can be overcome, there is no beginning and no end of processes in our life, everything is middle, everything is just one long process of varying depth but similar intensity.

 

It sounds to me like you've had an important realisation!

 

To transcend life and death is the purpose and aim of the spiritual life.

 

The secret to transcending life and death is in finding something that is the same despite all change. Something that remains untouched despite growth or decay.

 

The intellect can't identify what this something is. The intellect can only process things that exist. And we can see with the same intellect that all that exists shall also change and eventually not exist.

 

This 'something' has to be something that exists in the same form whether in a new born baby or a dead corpse.

 

Eventually we realise that this 'something' is awarness itself!

 

At first it seems like a con because we already know awareness and imagine that it is something that will cease with the death of our bodies.

 

Realisation is when we realise that awareness creates birth and death, not the other way round. Awareness is not dependent on the life of our body; the life of our body is just another brief moment of awareness.

 

Realisation is seeing that everything is passing before our eyes at lightning speed. Things come into existence for the merest hint of a moment, and then are gone forever.

 

The same goes for our bodies. For 99.999999999999% of our existence, our bodies are nowhere to be seen. But we feel that they exist even when our awareness is on something entirely different. this is the illusion of birth and death that must be overcome.

[LAOLONG]

when you live you live

when you die you die

[Jetsun]

I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

[GrandmasterP]

Don't sweat the small stuff.

There is no death there are no dead.

No one is born and nobody dies.

We're all immortal spirits temporarily lodged in our current flesh and bone bodies.

It's a win win world too if you've reincarnated human this time around.

Something sure went 'right' last time.

We could have come back as a sea slug or, even worse; a politician.

Edited May 16, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Andrei]

GP, I agree with you except this: why do you think we could come back as a sea slug?

[GrandmasterP]

Better to come back as a sea slug than reincarnating as a politician IMO.

:-)

 

No idea really but if sea slugs are sentient then it's a fair call I reckon.

Any sentient body is fair game, we could come back as anything sentient depending on our need to learn some lessons.

Maybe someone driven and super busy last time round needs to learn just being sluggish this time around.

So sea slug academy might be a positive turn on the wheel for such a person.

It's all about progress in the long run.

Pampered cat would suit me nicely.

Pampered cats have life sussed.

 

:-)

Edited May 16, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Andrei]

I think within your paradigm it is necessary to add the idea of "power and control".

So without power and control someone cannot have any choice, it just happens.

Like they say: Shit happens.

I believe in will, and will means choice, and choice means you have enough power and control to fulfill your will.

maybe in the next life I will be a politician in western culture (or a priest in a precolumbian culture, or a shaman in Mongolia).

Because for me it is sure many tibetans were incarnated in western world as pop icons

[GrandmasterP]

Yep there was Elvis Rinpoche and Lama Sinatra.

John ' Bon' Jovi is another , not forgetting....

Dalai Shama Lama Ding Dong.

Tons of 'em really.

 

:-)

Edited May 16, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[doc benway]

I just had an AhHa moment looking a scripture type thing for fun. Everything is in a cycle stuff is born and gets to it's peak and withers again. This is one way life and death can be overcome, there is no beginning and no end of processes in our life, everything is middle, everything is just one long process of varying depth but similar intensity.

 

Does anybody really believe somebody could live forever?

 

I lives forever and birth and death go round and round...

[Gerard]

My personal experience is the following:

Samsara is eternal. It's like a neverending dream.

Nirvana/Returning to the Source (Tao) is too but you are free from the chain of birth, death and karma.