Buddhism and Survival of Death

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Buddhism and Survival of Death
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The Four Noble Truths
Although Buddhism refers to a varied set of
religious beliefs and practices, there are four
important truths or doctrines (dharma) expressed
in all the streams of Buddhist thought.
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Suffering Dukkha
Life is suffering. Broadly understood in the
Pali canon to include physical and psychological
pain. Lack of satisfaction. Disappointment.
Suffering is inevitable. It is a general claim
about all human life, not a claim that every
moment is suffering.
Attachment
The origin of suffering is attachment to or the
desire for transient or impermanent things.
Desire impermanence suffering. Desire is
closely connected to individuality, for desire
presupposes a subject-object duality. No
individual can be free from desire.
The third noble truth of Buddhism teaches the
cessation of craving or desire as the means of
overcoming suffering. If desire is the cause of
suffering, remove desire and you remove
suffering. Absolute cessation of desire is called
Nirvana (to be blown out). This is roughly
equivalent to Moksha in Hinduism.
Dispassion
The Path
The path to Nirvana is in actions and thoughts
that lie in between excessive indulgence and
excessive self-denial. This is expressed in the
eightfold path toward enlightenment.
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Nirvana
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Nirvana The Ultimate State
Nirvana means literally to be blown out.
What is blown out?
A man comes to believe in his essential nature,
to know that what exists is the erroneous
activity of the mind and that the world of
objects in front of him is non-existent. . .this
is called gaining nirvana. Asvaghosa (2nd
century CE Buddhist philosopher)
Nirvana is an indefinable state, independent of
all worldly ties, beyond all earthly passion,
freedom from all egotistical, false ideas, - in
short, it is the exact opposite of everything
known to the conditioned, individual existence
between birth and death. Von Glasenapp,
modern Buddhist commentator
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Nirvana does not mean unqualified cessation of
existence, annihilation, or extinction.
Nirvana is best interpreted as the annihilation
of ego-consciousness, the death of the cravings
that define myself as an individual and that
tether it to the world sense experience.
Nirvana, then, means the blowing out of self
only in this specific sense, a blowing out of the
desires that constitute ego-consciousness.
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Nirvana or Rebirth
If at death a person does not enter Nirvana, then
there is rebirth as a human or as some other life
form, either on earth or in some other realm of
conditioned, finite existence.
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Buddhist Conception of Reality
The Buddhist conception of rebirth presupposes
the Buddhist conception of reality.
In Buddhism, reality is conceived of as a flow of
multiple momentary, impersonal mutually
conditioned events called dharmas.
Buddhist metaphysics may be characterized as
anti- or non-substantialist. It does not
conceptualize reality as consisting of substances
(things with properties), but as a flow of
dharmic events or as dynamic processes.
Not even nirvana the ultimate state - can be
thought of as a thing, for it can only be spoken
of by way of negation, by denying of it what is
true of finite, conditioned reality.
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Personhood in Buddhism
Buddhism maintains that a person is a dynamic
aggregation of five different elements
(skandhas), together called Nama-Rupa
Vinnana or Cita
Consciousness
Sankhara
Dispositions or Tendencies
Sana
Perception or recognition of sensation
Vadana
Feelings or Sensations
Rupa
The Physical Body
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The Five Elements (skandhas) constitute the
individual person, though not in any substantial
sense. Self is simply a name given to the
aggregate of skandhas. There is no soul or
permanent self residing in or behind the
skandhas. There is no Hindu atman or jiva
soul.
Buddhaghosa, 5th century CE Buddhist Philosopher
The words living entity or ego are but a
mode of expression for the presence of the five
aggregates, but when we come to examine the
elements one by one, we discover that, in the
absolute sense, there is no living entity there
to form the basis for such figments as I am or
I in other words, that in the absolute sense,
there is only Nama and Rupa. Buddhaghosa
Buddhaghosa considers it a confusion to suppose
that rebirth involves a beings transmigration
to another incarnation. . . .a lasting beings
manifestation in a new body. (Buddhaghosa,
Visuddhimagga 17.113-114)
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Physical Death
The skandhas, which together constitute an
individual personality, are severally and
collectively impermanent. Hence, they cannot
survive death, individually or collectively.
At the time of death, the nama-rupa
disintegrates. The individual psycho-physical
person that once existed, no longer exists.
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What Survives Death?
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First Approximation Ones individual karma
survives the death of the self, and provides the
basis for the emergence of a new personality.
What is reborn is a cluster of dispositions or
tendencies that constituted the character of the
formerly living person. The person has ceased to
exist with death, but his or her character
persists and becomes integrated with a new
psycho-physical person.
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"There is rebirth of character, but no
transmigration of a self. Thy thought-forms
reappear, but there is no ego-entity transferred.
The stanza uttered by a teacher is reborn in the
scholar who repeats the words Buddha, The
Gospel
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Refining the Buddhist Concept of Rebirth
Karma is not a substance or thing that
transmigrates from life to life. Karma passes
from one life to another only in a figurative
sense.
Karma conditions dispositions and consciousness
in subsequent sets of skandhas.
G. Karma
B. Karma
A. Karma
Mohandas Gandhis life b. 1869, d. 1948
John Bonhams Life b. 1948, d. 1980
Christina Aguileras Life b. 1980 present
There is no identity between sets of skandhas.
There is only causal continuity between sets of
skandhas.
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Rebirth Analogy. . .
cause
effect
As one fire lights another fire, so one set of
skandhas conditions another, but nothing passes
between them.
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Consciousness and Rebirth. . . .
The Buddha called that which is reborn vinnana
(consciousness), but he was explicit that what is
reborn is neither the same as nor different from
the person who died in a former existence.
Resolution. . . .
Buddhaghosa spoke of a rebirth-linking
consciousness (patisandhi vinnana), the first
stirring of consciousness in a fetus contingent
on the karmic deposit of a former life and
conditioned by a persons last moment of
consciousness before death.
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Past Life Memories and Rebirth. . . .
The Buddha claimed to have remembered many past
lives.
Does this not imply that memories pass from a
prior life to a subsequent life?
No
Just as consciousness from one life may condition
the consciousness of a subsequent life, memorial
states (a form of consciousness) may be
conditioned by past consciousness. Memories as
well as dispositions may be effects caused by the
karmic deposit of a particular life and its
skandhas, rather than things passed on from one
life to the next.
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The Force Behind the Process
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The Process of Rebirth
Ignorance
Desires
Unsatisfied Desires
Rebirth
Unsatisfied desires produce rebirth in accordance
with the flow of ones built up karmic energy.
Karma is like the field, craving like the
moisture, and the stream of consciousness like
the seed. When beings are blinded by delusion
and fettered with craving, the stream of
consciousness becomes established, and rebirth of
a new seed (consciousness) takes place. Buddha
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The Range of Rebirth Worlds
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Rebirth Realms
As in Hinduism, Buddhism does not confine rebirth
to earth or the human species. Rebirth may take
place in different realms and in different
species.
Heavenly Realm
Human Realm
Animal Realm
World of Shades
Purgatory
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All realms are temporary.
Only the human and heavenly realms are desirable.
The rest are unhappy and undesirable.
Karma can only be accumulated or altered in the
human realm.
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Substantialist Tendencies in Buddhism
Nikaya Buddhists regarded vinnana (consciousness)
as a substratum that wonders from one existence
to another.
Puggalavadin Buddhists posited a transmigrating
person or agent of action (puggala) in order to
account for continuity between lives. The puggala
is neither identical with nor different from the
skandhas.
Theravadin Buddhists were strongly critical of
the Puggalavadan conception of rebirth. They
believed it was indistinguishable from the Hindu
atman or soul doctrine and thus incompatible with
the Buddhist an-atta teaching.
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Buddhism and Hinduism Comparison
Like Hinduism, Buddhism accepts the related ideas
of karma and samsara.
However, Buddhism denies the existence of atman,
a substantial, unchanging, self.
There is no deeper or higher self behind the
changing empirical self that can be reborn.
In Hinduism the finite self (jiva) is the
infinite self (atman) enveloped in various finite
sheaths or bodies. In Buddhism, the finite self
(nama-rupa) is simply another one in a changing
cluster of states of consciousness connected by
karma.
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Rebirth Contrasts Hinduism and Buddhism
Although some streams of Buddhism present a view
of rebirth very similar to the more sophisticated
view of rebirth in Hinduism, where they diverge
it tends to be along the following lines
Hinduism Some substance transmigrates, whether
atman, jiva, or subtle body. So there is some
thing that grounds the continuity between
distinct lives.
Buddhism Nothing transmigrates. There is only a
continuity of a causal sequence of dharmic
events, a series of modifications to distinct
skandhas.
In both Buddhism and Hinduism, karmic
conditioning of subsequent lives is recognized.
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Anti-Substance Metaphysics
Substance Metaphysics
What Persists? No Thing Persists Causal
Continuity Only Person A shapes the skandhas of
Person B Classical Buddhist View
What Persists? Mental Dispositions or Aspects of
the Unconscious Mind Vedanta Hinduism
What Persists? Complete Conscious, Character and
Memory Bearing Self Vulgar Conception In
eastern and western religion and philosophy
Soul Immaterial Substance Substratum for
Consciousness or Mental Life
No Soul