Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Thank you Lal,
“When we need to recall the memory…” But exactly WHAT triggers the memory, what prompts that need, what it is ABOUT the other person (in the example I gave) that triggers the recall, that causes the transmitter to sense the need to send a signal to the nama loka – since the body is different. A case in point: the reference I made elsewhere of that brahmin and his wife who recognized the Buddha as their ‘son’.
Or – it is ‘in the nature of things’ (Dhammata) that in such instances the initial trigger happens. Connection ever registered in nama loka, condition arising, signal to the brain, transfer to hadaya vatthu, onto vinnana (and awareness of the fact). In this way, neither the senses, nor the faculties give rise to the ‘recognition’.
As to the rest of it, all is clear.
I look forward to the upcoming posts. Please do not bother answering here. It is not meant as a question, just sharing my thought sequence as it arose, especially the second para.
May you attain eternal Bliss soon.
Bhikkhu Samahita addresses the question ‘Where is the knowledge of past lives stored in the being’ (starting 1′.04″ – 20′) in YouTube video Dhamma on Air #5 =NuPMZKGT3yM and the site: what-buddha-said.net/questions-and-answers ,27 Dec 2015: Q1: Where is the past life remembrance stored?”
He makes mention of the hadaya vatthu, the brain that is different from life to life, vinnana and nonlocality in QM.
Now, in the time of the Buddha one bhikkhu was admonished by both his fellow bhikkhus and by the Buddha for ‘having the harmful misconception’ that vinnana travels from life to life. From that it would appear that those memories would be in the ‘outer consciousness’ (vide nonlocality), i.e, in the ‘akashic records’ in New Age terminology (just to get the idea across). And here is where the question of gati comes in:
Since those connected to one another in recent lives would have affected, to one degree or another, one another’s gati, those ‘interactions-come-affinities’ would figure in the memories of those past lives. But “– As you can probably see, one’s memories (in a beginningless rebirth process) is in the five aggregates” – and vinnana is one of the five aggregates. The whole point being that the Buddha says that vinnana does not travel from life to life.
By the way, Bhikkhu Samahita passed away in 2019. I found his discourse interesting, to say the very least. His other discourses on ‘what-buddha-said.net/questions-and-answers’ are equally so.
I would be pleased to have links to other discourses on the subject by different bhikkhus.Thank you all in advance.
Go the long way, Lair:
Suttas, Minor, Khuddakanikaya, TherAgata, 7 Sattakanipata, Thag 7.4 Sopaka (2nd).
I am sorry I cannot do better.
May you attain the eternal Bliss
Thank you Lal,
I would love to provide the links myself, sparing you the trouble, among other things. But I am unable. And this has been on-going. Only once did I succeed and I do not know what it was that I did differently that time. I DID read the instructions….still.
So, thanks.
Thanks Lal,
1.”Five aggregates (pañcakkhandha) represent ANY given living-being”.
4 “…. at any given time, there is a “person” with a set of gati (habits/character) responsible for the actions done at that time.
And: “– Then based on one’s gati (and also based on who was seen), one will respond to that “seeing event” in the above example.” Now, “a living-being together with his/her all experiences can be described ENTIRELY in terms of those five aggregates.” Precisely THERE is the connection between the 5 khandhas and gati that I saw.
I see you already have made an addition or alteration to # 4 (the third-listed point).
Thank you. I will wait. This topic promises to draw quite some interest.
Yes. Yes.
That leaves no room for any ambiguity whatsoever. Others are much less likely to have a hard time grasping it now.
Thank you ever so much Lal. I had been grappling with this, on and off, for months.
May you attain the Deathless in this life.
So the sequence of progress is:
(cultivation of) the Path = Stage Anugami = magga + phala.
This reconciles both facts:
– there is a time lag between the Path and the (magga and phala).
– there is no time lag between the magga and the phala (or, practically none).It is only now that I get it. And it took me some time as well. I must have been taking the cultivation of the Path for the magga. And a desana like this only serves to support the misapprehension.
Now, that aside, in the post: sotapanna-stage-of-nibbana/sotapanna-anugami-and-sotapanna:
“1. In the salutation to the sangha, they are referred to as “attha purisa puggalā..Thus there are eight types of people belonging to the sangha. Who are the eight?…There are four who have fulfilled the conditions for the four stages of Nibbāna: Sōtapanna, Sakadāgāmi, Anāgāmi, and Arahant. They are said to be in the magga stage for the respective stage. And there are four who have received the fruits (phala)…Thus when one gets into the Sōtapanna magga citta, for example, one receives the Sōtapanna phala in the very next citta. Thus one becomes a Sōtapanna in two consecutive thought-moments.” In the salutation to the Sangha, are the four who exist for only a billionth of second also taken into consideration? ! I am not being impudent.
“3. Thus it is clear that “attha purisa puggalā” consists of the eight Ariyā (Noble Persons). They are Sōtapanna Anugāmi, Sōtapanna, Sakadāgāmi Anugāmi, Sakadāgāmi, Anāgāmi Anugāmi, Anāgāmi, Arahant Anugāmi, and Arahant.
– “attha purisa puggalā” refers to the 4 who have fulfilled the conditions and the 4 who have received the fruits. Moreover, how are there eight when the distinction lasts for only a billionth of a second? And…
– “attha purisa puggalā” refers to the 8 Ariya.
Can you please resolve this?
Thank you very much, Lal
I had listened to this desana some time back.
Starting at 17:50 up to 20:23 be brings up the point that the Suttas say that from Magga to Phala citta takes some time, while elsewhere (in the Abhidhamma) it is stated that the transition from one to the other happens in the very next citta; in short, there is no one to be found to be on the Path and without the Fruit. Also, he seems to question (not to say dismiss) the validity of the Abhidhamma as also of any suttas that were not existent at the time of king Asoka. “If it agrees with the Suttas and the Vinaya, then you know it is the Buddha’s words….if not…then you can throw it away” (23:39….)
It is easy to see that there are 8 types of Ariyas: the Anugami and the Stage: Sotapanna Anugani and Sotapanna, Sakadagami Anugami ..etc. The questions come when those 8 are said to refer to the Magga and the Phala of a particular Stage, for then we would have to admit to 12 types not just 8.
These and other related points are discussed in the Abhidhamma forum: ‘difference-between-magga-and-phala-citta’ started by Akvan back on 25.09.’18.
May the Blessings of the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha be with us all always.
Hello Lvalio,
I had missed this. Or it may also be I had read it but forgot. Anyway,
I was struck by “when I closed my eyes, I always saw a flashing signal, a black point flashing, a different thing, and then an intense anguish inexplicable…(still now, sometimes I see it…” because there is a connection there to what I experience, though not all that often lately.
In my case I see bright lights, like stars, sparkling, of different colours coming out of my eyes and darting out in different directions around me, but staying around me at the same time. They keep darting ,as it appears to me, out of my eyes at the start, then around the room, but always in different directions away from me. It happens when I have a powerful dream, but not always. I also have the feeling that it was the lights that opened my eyes to bring an end to the dream. No experience of anguish though. Marvel, wonder, rather. There also is a slight strain felt in the eyeballs.
“The debt of gratitude that we all have with you, Mr. Ven. Lal, is inestimable” I keep repeating that over and over again.
may you attain the Deathless.
A case from my own personal experience, Axel. It has to do with your point # 6: “Proof of Devas, ghosts and spirits: Flying lights (most UFOs are devas), beings, miracles”.
This will sound unbelievable. Do not worry about that, please, because, even now, to me it is IMPOSSIBLE, even though no one is relating it to me, so I do not have to believe anybody. Yet I still say it is impossible. It is a true case of ‘ I couldn’t believe my eyes’. And I still don’t.
One night in the late 80’s I was up on the roof with my telescope. Waiting for the optics to adapt to the outside temperature, I glimpsed a bright point of light moving in a southerly direction. I ‘caught it’ some way south of the constellation Gemini. I followed the point of light fixedly. Naked eye. I did not want to ‘lose’ it. That had happened before any number of times. I could tell straightaway what it was NOT (I had gotten good at this) -it was not an aircraft. No meteor showers at that time of year in that region of the sky that I knew of. And the light was steady, like a planet’s (i.e. it did not flicker or twinkle).
From this point on all figures and values are my approximations. The apparent magnitude was between 1st and 2nd. It moved steadily south, with no change in direction or brightness, for what, I would say , were 10 to 12 degrees of arc in about 20 seconds. It then came to a stop. At once it started moving in the opposite direction, towards the north, at the same apparent speed, and, as far as I could tell, on precisely the same trajectory , but now backwards. Then it came to stop.
When I looked around that region of the sky, I was baffled to see that it was one of the ‘twins’ that give the constellation Gemini its name. I was so bewildered that I did not even observe which one of the two it was, whether Castor or Pollux. I just stopped looking, trying to make some sense of what I had just witnessed. I went downstairs to have a look at the star catalogue. These stars…the first is in reality a six-star system (3 binaries) 51 l.y away, the second an orange giant 34 l.y. away. Now what is astonishing about all this is:
For a star to show such a transverse velocity…I made some calculations..the nearer one , Pollux, would have to be moving at a speed of about 320,000 c (times the speed of light) !! Plain ludicrous!! Even for me, who never accepted the theory that the speed of light constitutes an absolute limit to speed.
The only possible explanation I can see – and that only now – is that the light, whatever it was, came to a stop directly in my (our) line of sight squarely with the star, precisely to bewilder me in this way! If now you should tell me: ‘You were seeing things. It was an illusion’ , I am ready to accept that. But if you were to say: ‘ Come off it. You have made this up. You are lying’.
No, that no, I do not lie.So what was it? I read somewhere years ago that ‘ Stars are living beings’! I do not remember the details of that article. You say most UFO’s are devas. I am not sure about that. For one thing, most devas do not need spacecraft to travel. The lower ones may come in their vimanas , granted. We will have to come up with a new acronym: UFB’s, Unidentified Flying Beings!
And there surely must be beings in human form from other stellar systems throughout the Milky Way and even beyond who will be technologically more advanced than us here. They will have ‘got around’ the speed of light ‘limit.’ The chances of us being the most advanced out of all the ‘humanities’ out there is an insignificant fraction, 1 / billions.
Apology accepted Lvalio, but it was hardly necessary. For this got me thinking about when I myself think that something said by someone else was wrong.
I often listen to Dharmayai Obai sermons. The content accords with true Dhamma, there is no question. The English of the Bhikkhu is next to perfect (he comes from Sri Lanka, but was educated in the UK)… but he speaks fast, very fast. So it is that at some point in a discourse I say to myself: ‘ What? No, not so’. ‘But hang on, up to now, all the 6 or 8 sermons I have listened to accord with true Dhamma, so it is I who must have HEARD wrong’ Because it cannot be for one who is teaching true Dhamma to say something which is false Dhamma’ So I play back the video and reduce the audio speed until I hear what was said clearly.
There are others discourses of other Bhikkhus online(as you will of course know) but I have found that most of them are CONSISTENTLY faulty on a number of major points of Dhamma.
So, yes, as you say, we must be very careful what sources we trust.
may you attain the Deathless.
We must be careful here not to judge too easily. True, on the face of it such a claim sounds outrageous.
But: did this bhikku say this in his native language? (Brazilian Portuguese). Are the words ‘mundane’ and ‘sacred’ fair equivalents to the words he used?
The Buddha said that Buddhadhamma is like a raft, to be used for the attainment of the goal and then discarded. “So, even Buddha Dhamma is of value only until one reaches Nibbāna” (Post: difference-between-dhamma-and-sankhara revised 11 Jan 2020). It is therefore certainly NOT Nibbana, which alone is asankata,(‘sacred’) and, in the strictest sense, alone not ‘of this world’ (‘mundane’).
This COULD well be what the bhikkhu meant. I am not saying it is. I cannot tell. Lvalio is certainly in a better position for that.
In Mrs. Lambert’s case, she was 37 when this happened, and her grandfather had passed away when she was 9. 28 years is a long time in paraloka. It is possible, of course, but in the verified cases of children recalling their previous lives, the gap is much shorter. Those ‘ghosts’ who hang around for even hundreds of years had been killed or died in violent circumstances, where death happened unexpectedly.
“Mrs. Williams’s gandhabba’s imagination of what Jesus would look like, correct?” It is interesting to observe that only Christians see Jesus, they never see Krishna or Shiva. Hindus never see Jesus. 2 people die every second, and a fourth of the world’s population is Christian. That means Jesus must stand there waiting to welcome somebody entering heaven every other second! So this is all subjective, all imagination. But the question then comes: what if ALL OF IT is imagination? But we know that there is such a state as paraloka, and such a state of being as gandhabba. While what is ‘seen’ while floating above your dead body cannot be contested, it seems the same cannot be said for when you are ‘out there’, beyond.
Nature’s way to deal with the dramatic growth in the older population?
Thank you Lal. The media here broadcast these preventive measures all the time. Up to about two weeks ago, many people (not most) were still taking this lightly. Not now.
While taking care to observe these guidelines, we must not let it take too much of our time worrying about it. There are people spending hours following the latest developments. Psychologists are even giving advice how to handle that. The prime focus remains one, the Path. Virus or no virus, death will come. If anything, this should bring it home all the more.
