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Re: Question about Hinduism
nnyxsi@ny.ubs.com (Kunal Singh) wrote:
> In article <4l8qte$ad6@babbage.ece.uc.edu> M Suresh <msuresh@india.ti.com> writes:
>
> christine.mucke@mch.sni.de (Christine Mucke) wrote:
>
> .. stuff deleted ..
>
> > >Rebirth is a fact of life, unfortunately, some people do not choose to
> > >accept it. Yes, there are many people who can remember their past lives,
> > >and these people are called 'jAtismara'.
> >
> > In my view (an ignorant one) rebirth is a great and plausible
> > idea of the indian religions. But a fact ? Are other religions
> > then wrong ?
>
> You have to be careful what you consider rebirth ? As the Buddha
> said, Hinduism supports rebirth but quite a different kind than what
> most people expect. Rebirth has been described as a flame being
> transferred to a different candle. Buddha actually warned his
> followers against ever believing that his person was somehow
> transferred to another, quite as the Tibetans believe today.
The hindu concept of rebirth is based on the assumption that the essence
of each individual life is its soul which is independent of matter ( its
body ) and is eternal.
I do not know how the buddhist view differs from this. Can someone who
knows more about buddhism help here?
>
> .. stuff deleted ..
>
> Moreover I feel it is not strictly correct to say "I will be reborn".
> Sri Krishna in SBG says that just as a person discards old clothes and
> wears new ones the soul discards a body and acquires a new one. For most
> of us when we say "I" it pertains to the body and the brain which will
> perish on death and not be reborn. Thus "I will be reborn" will be an
> incorrect statement.
>
> Interesting question. Krishna says that there was never a time when
> he or Arjuna were not and there will never be a time when they will
> not be. Materially, this is quite true. As our experience tells us
Krishna was referring to Himself and Arjuna as souls and not as a
collection of matter. He clearly differentiates between the material
body and the soul in the analogy of discarding old clothes and wearing
new ones.
Krishna was referring to the eternal nature of the soul and not the law
of conservation of mass and energy.
> that the material body is simply absorbed into other material cycles
> and continues to assume other forms. Your body decomposes, and its
> various entities unravel, and many of the individual souls continue
> their journey as either flesh or atoms etc. However, what happens to
> your sense of soul or YOUR consciousness ? The answer to this depends
> on your view of the soul. The materialist would answer that the soul
> being a result of material motion, then either ceases to exist or is
> transformed into an altogether different soul, quite continuously, as
> matter itself transforms.
The materialist need not rename the law of conservation of mass and
energy with the hindu philosophy of "rebirth". The former name makes the
concept much more clear.
Also I doubt if any materialist would attribute consciousness to flesh
atoms etc. Attributing life to matter is done by some hindu
philosophers. The dvaitins again distinguish between living and dead
entities. A materialist definitely would not attribute the
characteristic of a soul to flesh and atoms.
The ( latest ) materialistic view of consciousness is that the electrical
signals in the brain due to the functioning of it as a controlling
computer and as an agent of voluntary actions and thought creates a
feeling of consciousness. It is NOT that a chunk of flesh creates
consciousness.
> But those who believe in a supreme
> consciousness would say that the supreme consciousness has itself
> caused the material transformation. In short both would acknowledge
For a person who grants absolute status to matter and the laws associated
with ( As implied by the term "material transformation" ) it there is no
need for him to attribute a cause for these to a supreme consciousness,
for how can one be sure that the supreme consciousness itself may not be
some phenomenon like gravity or magnetism?
A person who believes in a supreme being would be somebody who believes
he is a living being, someone who seeks the life in him that is beyond
matter and energy and which will not change despite the "material
transformation" of his body.
> the continual change, but would not agree on the driving force. But
> in either case, continuity is assured. And it is not at all certain
> that a man gets up one day and finds out that he was another man in a
> previous life, though certainly it is not declared an impossibility.
>
> What are reborn are the habits and tendencies called samskaras which we
> acquire over the births and which are stored in the soul. Heredity
> provides the appropriate circumstances for the expression of these
> tendencies of previous births through the medium of a new body.
>
> This seems highly controversial.
I do not know why. I have heard of it many times and it must be in the
hindu scriptures somewhere. Dhruba Charavarthi and someone else had
mentioned something quite similar to the above in the same thread.
>
> > As far as I understood right, there are a few high spiritual
> > persons who can remember their previous life. What about
> > the lot of other people ? Maybe the aspect of remembering is
> > not so an important aspect of Hinduism.
> > Really, I just wish to learn!
>
> If we have to remember something, it must come from the brain. The
> memory of previous lives are in deeper recesses of the person than his
> exterior mind and brain. Though it might be possible for some people to
> bring these memories to the brain, it is the exception rather than the
> rule.
>
> But then again, it could just be a trick played by the consciousness.
I do not know if you are referring to a hallucination or some kind of an
imagination. However I have heard that there have been concrete proofs
for rebirth such as a person recollecting his previous birth and his
stories tallying with fact.
> It could just be more maya.
If you talk about maya then everything is maya and the only thing you can
talk about is that which is beyond maya, which is God. However a
discussion of rebirth is not a discussion about the absolute truth.
> It is said that the soul usually spends hundreds of years in other worlds
> before being reborn. So the time elapsed from death to another birth is
> quite high, which would make it difficult to remember previous births.
> This could be another explanation of why we do not remember previous
> births. Maybe in some rare cases if the soul takes a birth soon after
> death the person may remember his past life.
>
> Interesting theory of memory.
>
> Swami Vivekananda has given an example of why our inability to remember
> past lives is not a proof against rebirth. Most of us do not remember
> anything about our existence before the time when we were 3 or 4 years
> old. That does not mean we did not exist at that time. Similarly it
> does not mean that we did not have a previous life just because we cannot
> remember it.
>
> True, particularly in light of the fact that you may have been a rock
> in your previous life which was not capable of memory quite like human
> beings are.
The evolution of consciousness proceeds in stages pretty much like the
evolution of man as a species. So a human in his previous birth would
likely have been a human or an advanced animal. He would not have been a
rock.
> In general, I think these issues require a more detailed examination,
> and that it is important that this examination be free from wishful
> thinking.
I think these science should not be brought into these things. Maybe
logic, but not science. One should not be imprisoned by the laws of
science, but seek the person who created these laws. This can be done
only by a strong belief in religion. After all many great scientists
were strong believers too.
One may argue that science and religion should meet. I do not think this
is possible because science is a study of the relative whereas religion
is an attempt to reach the absolute.
-Suresh.
