Personality after death

[thelerner]

We don't know for certain who the ancients were, how their personalities were or how true their ideas are.

maybe one day we'll be the ancients and people living in hovels ruled by damn dirty apes will say 'According to the The BaoTums Post #26 it says... and thus it must be so' 

 

Ancients is such a fuzzy word.  They have my respect, but I know for the most part they are creatures of there culture.  There beliefs have to be filtered through the Buddhist creed- Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.  

 

 

Though I understand that is somewhat misleading in that-  http://fakebuddhaquotes.com/believe-nothing-no-matter-where-you-read-it/ Still close enough to be on my cheat sheet.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

This is a bad translation of the Kalama Sutta — so bad, in fact, that it contradicts the message of the sutta, which says that reason and common sense are not sufficient for ascertaining the truth.   And it’s very common as well.

 

Here’s the original version, from Access to Insight:

“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.

The Buddha is talking to some people who live near his home country. These people, the Kalamas, are confused by the multiplicity of teachings that they hear. Many teachers arrive, who extoll their own teachings and disparage the teachings of others. And the Kalamas want to know, “Which of these venerable brahmans and contemplatives are speaking the truth, and which ones are lying?”

 

The Buddha’s reply is very full, but it’s clear he says that “reason” (logical conjecture, inference, analogies, agreement through pondering views) and “common sense” (probability) are not sufficient bases for determining what the truth is. It’s not that these things should be discarded, but ultimately it’s experience and the opinion of the wise that is our guide.

So this brings up at least two questions:

 

1. If experience is to be our guide, does that mean we have to test out every theory and practice? No. If a teacher says something like “taking drugs is the path to happiness” you don’t have to try drugs. Your experience includes observation of other people’s experience, so that if you have seen others suffering through taking drugs you don’t have to repeat their mistakes.

 

2. Who is to say who the wise are? You are. Through your experience (see point 1, above), whom have you found to be reliable and insightful in the past? Those people are “the wise”. Now you don’t have to take everything they say as being the absolute truth. You can use your reason, your common sense, and your experience as a guide. Not all of “the wise” will agree, for example, so you’re still going to have to figure things out for yourself ultimately.

 

It’s this second criterion that is often overlooked.

 

The first instance of this version of the quote that I’ve found is in a libertarian book by the pseudonymous author, “John Galt” — Dreams Come Due. I strongly suspect that Galt’s libertarianism caused him to alter the quote in order to make it supportive of his position.

 

Incidentally, the “no matter where you read it” is an anachronism, since spiritual teachings were orally transmitted at the time of the Buddha.

[SonOfTheGods]

We're the ancients!

[Gerard]

Ancients is such a fuzzy word.  They have my respect, but I know for the most part they are creatures of there culture.  There beliefs have to be filtered through the Buddhist creed- Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.  

 

Trust me. The deeper you go in this path (and remove fetters) the less difference you see in all spiritual systems and beliefs: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Sufism, Taoism (Confucianism a spin-off of Taoism), etc.

 

The ancients are right and modern man is not going to rediscover the wheel...especially not in this post-industrial chaotic world that has broken all rules of Nature and become highly materialistic and technological as a result.

 

1. The post-industrialized society is marked by an increased valuation of knowledge.

 

2. Technology as the instrument of power.

 

Knowledge and technology (in excess especially, and today has just skyrocketed) are the biggest enemies of the spirit!!

 

Excessive thinking, greed, anger, worry and increased lust as a result of the former three harm the spirit and deplete the Jing decreasing human lifespan. The spirit is manifested via the 5 elements which reside in the zang organs (kidney, liver, heart, spleen and lung)

 

 

As above, so below and Earth-Human in the middle:

 

 

Two fingers pointing up to Heaven (Yang), two fingers pointing down to Earth (Yin) and Humanity in the middle (sphere):

 

 

 

Salvator Mundi - Leonardo da Vinci

[Marblehead]

One finger erect is a pretty good symbol too.

 

I do agree with your first paragraph Gerard.  Different paths of the same journey.

 

We non-angry Atheistic Anarchists just wonder around enjoying life our way.  But even this doesn't mean we are going to go any further than anyone else.

[sweeney]

Let's think about having a soul or a cosmic personality. If you have a soul when was it created? Before or  around the actual time your parents had sex to procreate you? Or at the time of the big bang? Is it static or dynamic? Would an ant get the urge to leave the nest because they suddenly get a flash back to being a chartered accountant from Frimley in a previous life? Do humans get the urge to herd aphids? We have personal nature inbuilt in terms of animal instincts and personality (please refer to Jungian Archetypes; especially the shadow). Our brain is made up of reptile, mammal/simian and human - but that's reductionist science. As a Daoist I would say that we have no soul, but as an emergence of the undifferentiated Dao we all have different aspects like snow flakes having a multitude of shapes. The snow flake sets on the ground and melts. Then it becomes vapour and forms clouds becoming rain or snow again. But it is a part of the cloud and the water cycle.

[sweeney]

And with Karma. Who is the judge? Brahman, Yama, The Omega point?  Why didn't Hitler get born as a lobster instead of unleashing the horrors of WW2? He must have had many evil past incarnations to get to the place of darkness he revelled in. Lots of bad people live happy lives and good people live in utter misery. Are all poor people formerly evil? Which is most of the world. To me there is no judge; are we not all the godhead or dharmakaya or the Dao? That would leave us with cause and effect which is akin to a spiritual gravity. To me that seems, well hooey. If your a psychopath you most likely come from a psychopathic family. Most people with personality disorders come from dysfunctional backgrounds, that's not karma its a sad aspect of out of kilter modern life. Good karma and the search thereof is the terrible Hell of good intentions.

[sweeney]

...And, do twins have one soul or two? What about triplets? Can you also imagine if your great great great great granddaughter had you cloned from your DNA; would your soul be dragged from its celestial abode to take up being in a body again? Your dead body living again? Life is now not afterwards. 

[Daeluin]

Just a bit of theory-crafting here.... there are the ideas of the upper hun-soul and the lower po-soul, which separate at death. And the idea that our spirit needs the cooperation of our body to fully integrate within.

 

Based on that alone, it seems reasonable to think that if part of our soul is unable to fully inhabit our body, it would be... elsewhere. Perhaps shared in another body? Perhaps off residing in a star? What makes the soul our own?

 

I hear of shamanic "soul retrievals", and figure this is related to when we cultivate a greater capacity to contain more of our upper soul. Also I hear of "people coming into their own", where they step it up and take a greater role in their life in some way, which seems similar.

 

Not sure I can say what entails a 'soul' or what makes it "mine". I hear that the soul of a great artist might wander after their death and be drawn as though with gravity to other artists that it's patterns resonate closely with.

 

Bottom line, I don't think things are as black and white as we might like to think.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Daeluin

[Marblehead]

I have been a soul survivor.

[Bearded Dragon]

So if you do not believe in reincarnation of the soul after death, what do you believe happens?

 

If you have any inclination as to who you really are then you don't particularly care.

[ilumairen]

 

Chuang Tzu, however, loved to talk about spirituality and the cycles of life and death. The Butterfly Dream is a perfect example. Some read this as an indicator of reincarnation. I don't but that doesn't matter.

 

But even in his stories he speaks of what I call "transmutation". That is, upon death, what we were will become something else. This something else would not include any of our mind realm, only our body realm. Our brain becomes worm food.

 

However, I must point out that this is only a philosophical point of view. There are other aspects of Taoism that would disagree with me, especially Religious Taoism, as it is Buddhist oriented in the most part.

Everything we see, and indeed we ourselves, are made up of stardust. Therefore, to me transmutation is a quantifiable fact - easily embraced and oddly comforting.

[Marblehead]

Everything we see, and indeed we ourselves, are made up of stardust. Therefore, to me transmutation is a quantifiable fact - easily embraced and oddly comforting.

Yep.  The first time Carl Sagan said that it was like a slap aside the head for me.