Buddhist Beliefs

[Platinum Soul]

They dont believe in souls, they believe that our karma will bounce back to an awating being, i dont get it so basically we dont live again?, why do they call it reincarnation then if it isnt "me" who is going to live in the next life it will be some other bundle of sensation, etc

[Rastislav]

Whoever told you that, has no idea what Buddhists believe.

[Platinum Soul]

i got it from a site but this really wise person when it comes to everything is telling my something similiar to it, that there is no "soul" just a bundle of sensations, feelings, etc. i dont quite get it because it seems like they are saying the same thing as a soul but only this "false self" is impermanent and a soul is permanent

[Rastislav]

The problem is when you take words from another language spoken 2500 years ago in another part of the world and then just translate them into a modern Western language where the words may be comsidered a translation but are really describing a completely different concept.

Yes, your wise man is correct. But you and he are thinking of different things but using the same word ("soul"). In ancient Hindusim (and modern, too, but we are talking about something that happened 2500 years ago) they had the concept of atman, which is normally translated as soul into English but it does not describe the same idea as the modern Western concept of soul. The Buddha disagreed with the ancient Hindu understanding of atman and offered a different understanding. And he played with words and called it anatman, which they just translate literally as non-soul, from which people get the idea that the Buddha denied the existence of a soul, which is just not true. He denied a specific concept, an idea of what soul was believed to be by ancient Hindus and he offered a different concept, a different understanding of the nature of the soul.

Sorry, it is coming up to midnight and I am too tired to get into details. Just think of it as him saying, "No soul is not what you believe it to be, it is something entirely different." And to emphasize it he gave it a different name, not atman, but anatman. To translate it as non-soul is actually silly, rather it should be translated as "not what the ancient Hindus believed soul to be." A big difference!

Essentially, he used a pun when he called it anatman. And the problem with puns is that you cannot just translate puns to another language by literally translating the words. But that is exactly what people are doing.

[Platinum Soul]

i agree with the whole non-soul thing, i think buddha found out that the soul is so much different from what we think it is, for example the impermanence, can you tell me more, i will message my wise man the stuff you will type

[Platinum Soul]

what do you think of this quote by the wise buddhist man

"The citation does reflect the essential idea of Buddhism (but do not attach to it or you'll personally understand the point of Buddhism). There is no unchanging thing in reality. Perhaps the totality is unchanging, because it is not relative to anything else. But there is no essential you, neither in the form of ego nor soul. You are not a being; you are a process or a continous becoming. I can't even say that YOU are always becoming. I can only say there is becoming. You ask "does everything just get mixed up with everything else [upon dying]. I would suggest that everything is mixed up with everything else right now, before dying.
I like to think that my true nature is my atman and that this atman is also yours. I like the Vedantic notion (from the later Upanishads) that my atman is the "ultimate atman" or Brahma(n). That is, of course, a metaphor for human intuitions, not an actual description of the Cosmos. Your signature line says you are a firm believer in UNIVERSAL reincarnation. So am I, in the sense that I've been describing. But you have been arguing for a kind PARTICULARISTIC reincarnation, a rebirth of individual souls, not a continuing reproduction of the entire Cosmic Process."

[Nat]

Hey Plat,why you automatically expect that when someone is "buddhist" that then is too "wise"? First of all,isn't "buddhism" too kind of category?;) Just an idea to think about.

But to continue a question-yes,that man seem that he thought about larger terms of reincarnation. Such as it isn't just the evolution of individual-in fact individuality doesn't exist at all-but an evolution of larger kind.

That person too written about something that isn't actuall description of the cosmos. I would try to explain it more.
Is kind of meta-reality that function on rules what can't be understood in a beta state of mind. And it divide on many sub-models and sub-models of sub-models of reality we usually experience. I can compare it to a puzzle-when you have some little pieces but at the beginning you haven't the whole picture to which you need to go to.

With personality-concept it is the same. One can re-programme own personality,change the reality in pieces or choose other reality. It just depends on what "puzzle" you want to take "pieces" of.

I recommend you to read something about quantum physics and the nature of reality,psychedelic drugs and programming personality( I think that especially works of Timothy Leary and his followers can be helpfull),shamanic traditions of various cultures (I think that when you live in America it will be easiest to connect with indian's traditions and mythology) and multipersonality concept(you can also search for Disintegrative disorder,DID or MPD multiple personality disorder). I know that all these are avaible on today's internet web,just want to look at it. It's just start,but can explain a lot to a freshman in this area;)

"Buddha was etcetc and thought things what WE don't think"-can I ask you what led you to such assumption? For which "we" you are speaking of?

[Platinum Soul]

so did Buddha really believe in reincarnation like past lives and all of that?

i found out that not all buddhists believe in reincarnation, but the majority do, zen buddhism doesnt really believe in reincarnation but kinds of do somewhat because they believe in rebirth of energy and since we are energy....maybe?

[Nat]

so did Buddha really believe in reincarnation like past lives and all of that?

i found out that not all buddhists believe in reincarnation, but the majority do, zen buddhism doesnt really believe in reincarnation but kinds of do somewhat because they believe in rebirth of energy and since we are energy....maybe?

It depends of how you understand the term "reincarnation". Usually it is understood just as mass/mind exchange. But it doesn't include much more aspects of it.Reincarnation by dictionary means literally: "rebirth to the body". Okay. But there nobody told that the term "body" has to mean just plain "physical body". Did you hear something about energy/subtle bodies etc.?;) It is too shape in which energy can "hide" or inhabit r animate.

BTW
Reincarnation also means the "circulation of energy",not matter on which basis. When you're non-ego (some people reffer to it as "clear" consciousness,but it is just a term,as everything else),you're still EXISTING because it is something that can't be easily shutted down. It is okay to do this exchange on other basis than just to enter a mass. Maybe some buddhists you met think by non-reincarnation being actually the concept of non-reincarnation to 4D place/spacetime,in which human bodies are.

In fact there isn't "rebirth" or "death",it is the same process from various angles.

Define "belief". It is such a term with many meanings. One can "believe" or "know",or at the same time "know" and "believe" without separation each other.Or you can have it both and still nothing of it.

I can't speak for Buddha,even I knew him. I can't speak for him for one reason for example: because he has his OWN set of emotions&of understanding. Do you actually think someone can say what others are FEELING? We can compare emotions to one particular word. When you say "I'm sad" everyone can imagine what it is like to be,but nobody can feel the EXACTLY same sadness as you do. Even in telepathy you can't understand each other so clearly that you could speak for him. You can say "he thought" or" he felt",but it isn't what was exactly to the detail feeling other person;nor what you just "felt of him"...You can be at the same wave,but at the same time doesn't understand each other. Better word can be "he said",because it is matching just the spoken and it link to uncomplexity of words.

Savvy it? I know I'm sayin' many things at one time. But I just wanted to express how all of it is relative .............

Nat

[Platinum Soul]

rastislav i agree with you because i read some of buddha's quotes and it sounds like he didnt completely believe in the "no-self" doctrine because he wrote he saw beings passing away then reappearing, passing away reappearing, beautiful one life ugly the next, thousands of them, and he saw his past lives and other peoples past lives......i think the zen way kind of corrupted it, buddha was a strong believer in rebirth but zen buddhism doesnt even care about it? i dont know man, all i know is that there has to be something being passed on from life to life and not including karma

[Rastislav]

The Buddha did indeed believe in past lives and he remembered all of his. Zen Buddhism is one of the many schools of Buddhism. It believes all that the Buddha taught. Its main emphasis is on meditation.

As Buddhism has spread to different countries, it has always been very flexible. Every culture, every country, every civilization has different needs, and Buddhism has always adapted to those needs.

Take, for example, that debate over anatman. The Hindu believed that atman was a divine spark, completely perfect, that went from one body to another in reincarnation. The atman, as they believed (and possibly still do, I do not know), never changed because it was completely perfect. It was like a diamond set in a metal ring. When the metal of the ring wore out, the diamond was set in a new ring, and when that wore out in yet a new ring, and so on, and so on. The diamond never changed, the rings did. So, in their idea of reincarnation a perfect soul is in a body and when the body wears out and dies, it then is reincarnated in a different body, but the soul itself never changes. The Buddha disagreed with that. The Theravada Buddhists who live in the Indic countries emphasize the idea of anatman very strongly because their Hindu neighbors believed and perhaps still do believe in this immutable soul.

In the West, the concept of an immutable soul does not exist. For one, in the early history of the Western civilization Heraclitus said that everything flows, everything changes, nothing stays the same. This is an important part of the Western philosophical tradition. Everything changes. A Latin proverb says tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis, that is, times change and we change in them.

Now, when Theravada Buddhists came to the West, they continued to emphasize the teaching of anatman. And to many Westerners that sounded like they were saying that we did not have a soul. What they actually were/are saying is that we do not have an immutable soul. And a proper reaction for any Westerner should be: "What's an immutable soul?" And then we get to a rather paradoxical situation where the Theravada teachers introduce Westerners to an idea that is totally foreign to them (the immutable soul) and when the Westerners finallty get it, the teachers then say that the idea is false. It would be like if some Eskimos moved to Central Africa and started teaching the locals how to preserve heat in the winter. The Africans would not know what winters is for starters and would most likely not quite get it. Similarly, many Westerners do not quite get the teaching of anatman and misinterpret it as if the Buddha had taught that we have no soul.

Now, Zen Buddhism comes from China. It is actually called Ch'an there but the Westerners learned about it from the Japanese who learned about it from the Chinese. And in Japanese they use the same Chinese character for it but they pronounce it Zen. Additionally, Zen also spread from China to Korea. None of those cultures are Indic. They've had Buddhism for many, many centuries. And they are not terribly concerned with explaining to their students the differences between Hinduism and Buddhism. After all, there are no Hindus in China, Korea, or Japan (except for tourists and business people from India, of course). Of course, the Zen monks are aware of the doctrine of anatman, but it is just not terribly important to them.

Buddhism is relatively new to the West. And it has come here from different sources. So, particularly in the US, which has large immigrant communities from different parts of the world, you have temples and teachers of all schools of Buddhism. Their main goal was to cater to the immigrants from their own countries but as Buddhists are always willing to explain Buddhism to those who ask, they have also been teaching different Westerners. And as a result, many Westerners are completely confused. You will find Westerners who claim with authority that Buddhism teaches this and Buddhism teaches that, and many of them have no clue what they are talking about.

And, of course, there also are Westerners who do understand Buddhism. Eventually Buddhism will adapt to the West and a uniquely Western school of Buddhism will develop. I had a teacher who is an American and who studied under a Chinese master and was ordained monk by a Japanese master. His students were almost exclusively Westerners, mostly Americans (but I was his student, too, and I am grew up in Europe). He never talked about anatman to his students. I had learned about it from Theravada Buddhist monks in Washington, DC, and yes I had to first learn the totally strange idea of an immutable soul, just to be told that the idea is false. But my American teacher told us such things as "There is salvation but there is no Savior." The Sri-Lankan Theravada monks never said any such thing because to them the concept of a Savior is totally foreign. Yet, we here in the US are constantly bombarded by people telling us to accept Jesus as our personal Savior. It does not matter what your religion is (or even if you don't have one), we are still bombarded by it, and to me the concept of salvation without a savior was much more enlightening than the falsity of the concept of an immutable soul.

[Platinum Soul]

i agree 100% but whenever i say the same thing you just said to buddhist people, they answer with "no that is wrong, there is no-self"

[Rastislav]

Ask them to explain what they mean by "self."

[Platinum Soul]

okay i will next time, but i doubt they believe in an impermanent self, they believe in 100% NO self, my only question is why do they call it re-birth, if nothing is re'd

[Rastislav]

Impermanent. Of course it is impermanent. That means it changes. Immutable, permanent, same thing.

Even during one life. Are you the same you were when you were ten? How about three? Will you be the same ten years from now? Twenty, thirty? How about ten life times from now? Thousand? Inasmuch as you keep changing, you are not permanent.

Everything flows, everything changes, nothing lasts forever.