- This topic has 23 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 4 years ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
-
Mahendran:
As I see, a ghandhabba would enter if that material form is useful to it. Makes no difference. Same case with human or other IVF-fertilized embryos.
More importantly, you distinguish between a gandhabba and a living being, as a gandhabba enters into (an already- existing) being – which is and has been my core question: namely, what is the ultimate, non-divisible nature of a being?- that which persists throughout timeless samsara, IS now in a human gandhabba or in a being in a deva or brahma realm, and will be the essence of the ‘one’ who finally attains Nibbana? It must be necessarily one and the same , though ‘ ever-changing’in gathi or charachter, but this is only its changing personality, so to speak; the individuality, an identity, is persistent throughout, otherwise there will no connection between the one who suffers, the one who strives and the one who attains. In short, we are concerned with the ULTIMATE nature of a being. Does a being issue out of Being or Be-ness?
If beings, in their individual essence, have no beginning (as per Buddhadhamma) then not even Being or Be-ness need exist (as their source) !! This makes matters simpler. In Mahāyāna it is called the Alayavijnana, the storehouse of (primordial and UNdifferentiated) consciousness, or the repository of consciousness, out of which issue forth individual sparks, as it were, of seperate units of it which accumulate ‘charachter’ for themselves shaping their individuality, and at the same time rendering that Alayavijnana itself increasingly self-conscious.
I have had no satisfactory answer to this yet – and I have been through Vedanta, Theosophy, the Gita , the Upanishads, several so-called modern masters, and now Buddhadhamma. I can go into all that here, but I will not as that will only bring up more questions.
y not
-
-
New post: Cloning and Gandhabba
-
Hello Lal:
Thanks for the post.
As far as the gandhabba/cloning query is concerned, I myself had no questions about it at all.
Of relevance to the point I made is:
15. The main point from Buddha Dhamma is that a new life cannot be created by any means,…
All living beings in existence now have been in the rebirth process forever.
Living beings just keep switching from realm to realm……..all of which tallies with what I had at once perceived to be true
when coming across these notions in the Upanishads. There is is said: sadbhavena sarvam ajam (no need for me to translate that for you) and that is said to be the highest truth, i.e that everything is without origination, there is only a never-ending changing of forms. There is therefore not even a ‘Causeless Cause’ out of which everything arises, be it designated as Being, Be-ness, Alayavijnana, Existence, Nothingness, Sunnyata,the Plenum-Void…tena na asti vai ucchedah, therefore, again from the standpoint of the highest Reality, there can be no destruction, no ceasaing-to-be for that which ever IS.So, as I see, Buddhadhamma fits perfectly with the tenets of the Upanishads. Correct me if I am wrong there. The basic statement about Paticcasamuppada is also found in the Mandukya (the Karika, or commentary therein ,to be precise, of Gaudapada):
yavat hetuphalavesah, tavat hetuphalodhavah (tavat samsarah ayatah)
hetuphalavese ksine, na asti hetuphalodhavah (na prapadyate samsaram)Of course, this says nothing of kamma beeja created in the timeless past which could also translate into future lives and future suffering- It only says ‘how can there be effects if there are no causes? So stop creating causes, stop seeing or hoping for the result of your actions, disassiciate any idea of effect or reward, and there will be no effects’
But Buddhadhamma shows that there ARE causes present already, even if we do not create more.y not
-
“Y not” said: “So, as I see, Buddhadhamma fits perfectly with the tenets of the Upanishads.”
It is actually the other way around. All these concepts to Upanishads or Hindu Vedas ORIGINATED in the previous Buddha Sasana of the Kassapa Buddha, who was born before the Gotama Buddha.
There have been four Buddhas in this Maha Kappa, or within this life cycle of this Earth (the Solar System), including the Gotama Buddha. These Buddha Sasana (or the Ministries) last only a certain short time compared to the age of the Maha Kappa (which runs to billions of years).
Gotama Buddha Sasana will last only 5000 years (2500 years more). Then it will fade out, just like the Buddha Sasana of the Kassapa Buddha before that (which is said to have lasted 80,000 years).
What happens is that at the end of a Buddha Sasana, the true meanings of key words are lost. But the Vedas had kept the mundane meanings of the concepts revealed by the Kassapa Buddha. That is why most of these terminologies were already there when the Gotama Buddha (Prince Siddhartha) was born. But they had lost the true meanings.
For example, Anapana bhavana was there as breath meditation. Saptha Bojjanga, five or eight precepts, metta bhavana, etc etc were all there just with mundane interpretations when the Prince Siddhartha was born. Of course the concept of kamma/kamma vipaka were there too in the Vedas. The Buddha has mentioned this in several suttas. At some point, when I have time, I will write more. But it would be nice if someone can post such suttas here for others to see. I simply do not have time to look for them at this time.
-
Lal:
..’ All these concepts to Upanishads or Hindu Vedas ORIGINATED in the previous Buddha Sasana of the Kassapa Buddha, who was born before the Gotama Buddha’
Ah, I see.
And of course, by implication, the Teaching of Kassapa Buddha was in essence the same one as that of the Buddha before him, and so going back maha-kalpa before maha-kalpa to all the Buddhas in all the universes without beginning – for the Teaching can only be one and the same throughout all time. Reality does not change, so neither can the Teaching.
Thank you
y not
-
Yes. That is why Dhamma is “akaliko“. Those truths are valid anywhere in the universe at any time.
All Buddhas teach the same Four Noble Truths, Noble Eightfold Path, Paticca Samuppada, Saptha Bojjanga, etc etc.
But their true meanings are permanently lost after the end of a given Buddha Sasana, even if mundane interpretations may survive.
-
-
Lal, thank you for the post, I have few more queries.
If the gandhabba enters at the time of the application of the electric shock, then, as the percentage of success is low, do we assume that as in the natural process, some gandhabbas will not survive to be a full animal and exit in the womb itself? Now when we say that when a gandhabba finds a matching zygote, is it a selective process? What will be the matching criteria? In addition to bhava, is it proportional to the karmic energy in the gandhabba? When the unsuccessful embryo dies, for some reason such as the effects of the environment on the epigenome etc, will the gandhabba has spent some amount of karmic energy as a result of the shot life in the embryo? Or would it start all over again with the same amount of energy as before, because it hasn’t started life as a full grown living being.? I have another burning question on gandhabba, which I will ask later, once we have dealt with this one.
Thanks -
Hi Mahendran,
I think I can answer a few questions:
If the conditions are not good enough the gandhabba does not enter or will leave the womb.
The matching criterion is the matching gathi of both parents.
Bhava means there is kammic energy for a certain existence, e.g. as an animal. The bhava lasts until that energy is spent.
The gandhabba contains the kammic or bhava energy, wether the gandhabba is inside a physical body or not. Thus kammic energy is always needed to sustain the bhava. Even if the gandhabba cannot find a womb and has to stay in paralowa the kammic energy would run out within a certain time span.
-
Mahendran asked: “If the gandhabba enters at the time of the application of the electric shock, then, as the percentage of success is low, do we assume that as in the natural process, some gandhabbas will not survive to be a full animal and exit in the womb itself?”
It is not a matter of just gandhabba surviving. It is a matter of getting the conditions right for a gandhabba to be able to use that zygote. Since it is an artificial way of triggering cell division, they may not have it exactly right. For example, the failure rate was much higher initially. It took 720 trials to have success with Dolly.
“Now when we say that when a gandhabba finds a matching zygote, is it a selective process? What will be the matching criteria?”
I already mentioned that it is a gati matching process that happens automatically. No one doing a “selection process”. Gandhabba itself also does not have any control. It is just pulled into the right womb, when a matching womb appears.
“In addition to bhava, is it proportional to the karmic energy in the gandhabba? When the unsuccessful embryo dies, for some reason such as the effects of the environment on the epigenome etc, will the gandhabba has spent some amount of karmic energy as a result of the shot life in the embryo? Or would it start all over again with the same amount of energy as before, because it hasn’t started life as a full grown living being.?”
Unsuccessful embryo may die due to many reasons. We can only guess. As I mentioned, in the other post that I referred to on birth control, selection of the gandhabba depends to the state of the mind of mother at that moment too. So, a good mother may have bad state of mind when the gandhabba is pulled in. If the gandhabba turns out to be very different, it may come out of the womb after days/weeks. This is one reason for some unsuccessful pregnancies. It is not possible to micro-analyze each case. But we can get the basic idea.
A gadnhabba would normally have many hundreds if not thousands of years of kammic energy for that bhava at the beginning of the bhava. But, we don’t know whether a given conception is towards the beginning or the end of that time.P.S. I see that Tobias had answered at the same time, and glad to see the similarity of our answers.
-
There is a question regarding artificial fertilization: The egg and/or the sperm of a donor can be some days old (or older if frozen years before) when the union of the both take place outside the womb. How can the gatis of the parents get matched in that case? Where is the “mind-component” stored all this time?
-
I do not see how this makes a difference, Tobias.
A few days after the zygote is formed, inside or outside the womb, the gandhabba enters. The gatis of the donor or donors are there in the spermatozoa and in the ovum in either case.
I of course stand to be corrected.
P.S It is of more concern what the state of a frozen EMBRYO is , that is, once the gandhabba has entered. Will the ‘mind-component’, as you have it, that is, the gandhabba ,frozen for all that time?
Metta
-
Tobias said: ” How can the gatis of the parents get matched in that case? Where is the “mind-component” stored all this time?”
Those gatis were frozen in the sperm and the egg, just like the “properties of a plant to be arisen” are encoded in a seed. Of course, the gati would be mainly those that the mother and father had at that time.
However, the gati of the mother and father at the current time may have an effect too, especially if they are very different. Everything in this world is inter-connected in a subtle way:”Quantum Entanglement – We Are All Connected“.
y not said: ” It is of more concern what the state of a frozen EMBRYO is , that is, once the gandhabba has entered. Will the ‘mind-component’, as you have it, that is, the gandhabba ,frozen for all that time?”
Gandhabba would enter the zygote created by the union of the egg and sperm after the egg and sperm are unfrozen and combined. I think they are kept frozen separately. I am not sure.
– If they are combined before freezing, but right after combining, there may or may not have enough time for the gandhabba to “take possession” of the zygote created.
– If there is indeed a “frozen gandhabba”, it could come out or stay frozen. But that is getting into speculation. -
-
-
-
Lal,
you said: “Two apple seeds are not the same. They both will yield apple trees. …”
That applies to plants, OK. But how can the gati (the nama component) be stored in rupa (e.g. nucleus)? Is the gati somehow linked to rupa?
Normally when a sense input comes in, the gati gets triggered and creates citta contaminated with cetasika, thus vinanna will arise. But in the case of artificial fertilization the vinnana are long gone when the fertilization takes place. -
Tobias: I did not want to get into details, but there is a deep “interconnectedness” in Nature that is just now being discussed in quantum mechanics regarding the “connectedness” of even inert particles. I mentioned it briefly in my earlier post:
“However, the gati of the mother and father at the current time may have an effect too, especially if they are very different. Everything in this world is inter-connected in a subtle way:”Quantum Entanglement – We Are All Connected“.”
Let me try to give the gist of it: Two electrons can be created simultaneously with two opposing spins (say A with spin up and B with spin down). Then they can be sent to two opposite ends even across the universe, and they remain “entangled”. That means if the spin A is flipped, then the spin of B will flip AT THE SAME TIME. It is as if they can interact with each other across the universe instantaneously.
Together with a friend of mind, I wrote a paper proposing a new interpretation of quantum theory based on nonlocality (I perceived the basic idea from Prof. Feynman’s work in quantum electrodynamics). But it got rejected from several journals, because physicists refuse to believe that the “light speed barrier” can be broken: Einstein’s relativity theory says nothing can propagate faster than light.
But here nothing actually “travels” between the two “connected electrons”. They are intrinsically connected.
Anyway, where I want to go with this is that kammic energy has instantaneous influence across the universe.
In the case of the sperm and egg, those “gathi” remain “attached” to the parents. So, it is very likely that the gathi that influence the gandhabba are the gathi of the parents at the time of gandhabba “taking possession” of the zygote created by the sperm and egg.
Anyway, that is what the new section on quantum mechanics is about:
“Quantum Mechanics and Dhamma“ -
-
In nature, usually majority of zygotes (fertilized eggs by a sperm) are in fact aborted and miscarried in the menstruation process or in a new separate event called miscarriage. The genetic cause for these are chromosomal disorders: incorrect chromosome number due to deletions, duplications and many other abnormal results of cell divisions in the sex cells (egg or sperm) or in the newly created zygote.
I think in these states, the Gandhabba is unsuccessful in gettin into the “zygote” as the zygote does not provide a suitable environment to create a viable human being. -
But even when the gandhabba is successful in getting into a zygote, sometimes it leaves that zygote after maybe several weeks or within a couple of months. Barring, of course, the mother having an accident of some sort – a fall, for instance – it may well be that the gandhabba ‘found out’ that there was or would be something defective in the development of that zygote, well beyond its power to ‘rectify’, so it departs. For I cannot see how the gandhabba could have made a ‘wrong choice’ of zygote in the first place.
-
Comments by KNDS and y not:
Yes. There are many complex issues at play.
– In some cases, the mother is unable to conceive due to a bad kamma vipaka.
– Of course, it could be a kamma vipaka for the father too. In that case, the mother is able to conceive using sperm from a donor (Artificial insemination.) That is being done a lot these days.
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.