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Hello,
While reading through the post Avyākata Paticca Samuppāda for Vipāka Viññāna, I started wondering how the mind could actually forget past events from this life and previous. As all the mind does is compare the “picture taken” to what it has stored and create vinnana.
Lal has mentioned how the mind is “covered” which keeps us from seeing past lives, but does that mean the that mind is so fixated on gati and asavas that it can’t even stop for a moment to see past life results? Is it so automated to see only the cravings? Thus, purifying it would it keeping from running on high gear in asavas/gati?
With metta!
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The mind can normally recall only within a given lifetime (and even that is spotty or not consistent). In some special cases, children can recall their past life, if that life was in the current human bhava. Even then, as the child grows, the mind gets “cluttered and covered” by the increasing load of external sense inputs (i.e., the child gets pulled into various attractions and angry situations). So, normally, by the age of 8-10 years, the child would forget all about that past life.
However, when one cultivates jhanas, pancanivarana (that cover the mind) get worn out or at least suppressed, and some people who cultivate jhanas are able to recall past lives. Some can extend that to many past lives, and even births in other realms.
In any case, even though we cannot normally recall past lives, our gati and asavas have been molded by those past lives. But it is not like we have had the current gati/asavas extending too far back. During some births, one’s gati can change drastically, and one’s environment (family/friends) play a key role. This is why we all have been in all apayas, as well as in most of the higher realms too.
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Lal:
Even I was waiting for a reply. Much of it is as I was expecting.
“…. and some people who cultivate jhanas are able to recall past lives. Some can extend that to many past lives, and even births in other realms”.
What of the possibility of the memory of them (past lives) being triggered by the experience of ‘deja’ vu’ when visiting certain places or meeting certain people? (I remember reading a post where this is mentioned.) I have experienced this, and not only in childhood. Would it be that we had actually been there or known those people before, or rather, or more likely, that the feeling arises due to the similiarity of what we see now to what we had experienced in a previous life? – like when we meet somebody who reminds us of somebody else because of their similar appearance?
On some occasions I am taken by the moment, like I ‘stop in my tracks’ with the feeling: yes, I have said this before, now he/she will say this; and he/she will say exactly those words. It feels that the moment is being RE-lived.
thank you
y not
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y not said: “What of the possibility of the memory of them (past lives) being triggered by the experience of ‘deja’ vu’ when visiting certain places or meeting certain people?”
Yes. This is fairly common. Some people can go to a far away, previously not-visited, city and just walk around as if they had lived their lives there. Sometimes we meet people and make bonds with them (or in some cases dislike them) instantaneously, as if we had known them all our lives. This has happened to me several times.
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Hello.
Certain Bhavas we are born into,
Are Kammaicaly neutral,
Can we put the act of blinking itself into Avyākata PS?
If so certain people have certain gatis, which other people don’t.
For example, I shake my leg sometimes,
This itself is Jati,
I believe it is also included in Avyākata PS? Am i wrong?
The reason I ask is I’ve seen a certain Venerable monk who claims and i also believe is an Arahant shake their leg at times.
This act itself looks harmless, and when i have mindfulness of it, im like should i really catch it and stop it?
Is that forcing and unnecessary effort?
I realize it has to be from a peleema, otherwise that would never happen.
But i also think its a neutral action. -
There are two types of gati.
– One is connected to defilements. For example, the tendency to steal could become a gati. I have heard about a King who enjoyed stealing things from shops. He would visit shops as a “commoner” and steal things. The ministers were aware of that and, without the King knowing about it, followed him on such visits. They would pay off the shop owner without the King knowing about it. They did not want the King to be caught and get into trouble.
– The other type of gati is what you are describing. It is harmless and would have no kammic consequences. Such things are just innocent habits, and could even come from previous lives. For example, there is this story in the Tipitaka about a very young Arahant. He had the tendency to jump over things, even though it would be considered “unbecoming” for an Arahant. It turned out that he was born a monkey not too far back in his previous lives. -
Thankyou Lal.
This seems like a very simple obvious point. But I find this extremely important. On a previous visit to certain forest monasteries, they made it seem like the slightest involuntary action was a fault and to be corrected immediately.
I think there’s a handful of people, who have mixed up this kind of mindfulness believing it to be samma satti. -
Usitha wrote: “On a previous visit to certain forest monasteries, they made it seem like the slightest involuntary action was a fault and to be corrected immediately.”
– Yes. It is sometimes discouraging to see how people have distorted Buddha Dhamma.“I think there’s a handful of people, who have mixed up this kind of mindfulness believing it to be samma sati.”
– Yes. Samma Sati is having the right mindset (anicca, dukkha, anatta nature).
– As we know, Sammā comes from “san” + “mā” or “getting rid of defilements that may arise in the mind. “What is “San”? Meaning of Sansāra (or Saṃsāra)“
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