- echo630
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That's right. My plumage is brighter than yours.
Posted by: EvilBad6666
Posted by: echo630
EvilBad: I agree that the "function" that is us dies when our body dies, but karma still dictates that we ripple in space-time. Think of the people who remember you at death, who come to your funeral, who keep photos of you and talk about you as if you were alive, who see your face long after death in the face of a child, who rename their own children after you, who aspire to be like you. Think of the children you may have who survive you, and their children, and their children. This doesn't quite get to the Buddhist idea of reincarnation, but it is a part of it; so this is the evidential part of the Buddhist reincarnation argument. Besides that, they believe in reincarnation because of reason and, most importantly, realization. It is a realized thing more than a known thing. Reincarnation is an extension of the ideas of karma, interdependent origination, emptiness, and anatman, all of which are directly realized through Buddhist practice. But ask a Buddhist abut the afterlife, and they will still probably just say, "I don't know." Because they (their "functions", to be specific) have no died yet. And thus they will never "know" so much as they will realize it.
Well I'm talking about the function solely, I don't care if I'm remembered and if I kinda exist that way. So back to my question, are you saying that what the Buddhist have is evidence? I get that you're saying that it's realization but that makes no sense at all. How can you just realize it?
EDIT: Also, if they don't have evidence, then why say that you don't know if there is an after-life or not? Sorry that I'm asking the same questions again but I don't think I'm really getting what I want.
EDIT #2: I'm going to bed now.
"Realization" basically means living an experience. So, for instance, a big part of Buddhism is the belief that attachment, craving, and clinging all lead to dissatisfaction in life. So, it is one thing to have a rote intellectual understanding of that idea, but it is another thing to have realized it by having experienced such attachment, craving, clinging, and the ensuing dissatisfaction directly.
So apply this to reincarnation. You enter into Buddhist studies hearing about rebirth and you tend to have the intellectual understanding that it exists due to the laws of karma, interdependent origination, and so on, but it is another thing to have experiences what those words mean in your daily life. It isn't until you have that realization that you can really understand what the word "reincarnation" in Buddhism means.
So here we have to deal on the intellectual level, which is fine, but it is going to be very difficult and ultimately unfulfilling. You have to realize it.
As I have said, Buddhism does not believe that "you" as a "function" continues to exist after death. In fact, they believe we die and are reborn every second, every millisecond. This makes sense. Our world is constantly in flux; we are faced with new experiences, new thoughts, new actions, new surroundings, and they all change us, consciously or unconsciously. The way someone looks into your eyes can have an unconscious effect on you. So, you are never the same from one moment to the next. Yet, there is a continuity to our lives--it is a conditioned continuity. We are subject to karma, which means we remember the names given to us, we remember how we have been treated by others, we remember our family and their expectations for us, we remember our obligations as citizens or husbands or wives. This is what is meant by a conditioned continuity. Our mistake is clinging to tightly to any of those conditions and saying, "This is me, irreducibly."
So even after death, there is a continuity, in the ways I described in my last post, even though the "function" (that is our personal clinging to such a continuity) ends. Our energy and our effects on the universe linger on and continue to transform the universe far after our bodily, functional deaths.
This is the closest thing Buddhists have to "evidence"--they can point to science with the conservation of mass and energy, or to psychoanalysis with its consciousness and unconsciousness, but ultimately these are just its best ways to paint a picture, so no, I don't think they would call it "hard" evidence. "Fortifying examples" might be a good way to describe it.
When you realize karma interdependent origination and the emptiness of things and the impermanence of everything and the lack of fixed self, then at the same time you realize how such a form of rebirth is possible, but it is a very heady thing to try and convey at the intellectual level. I haven't had that grand realization in my life yet. I've only had, like, a tiny, puny kind of realization. I'm still pursuing that blue bird.
As for why they say, "I don't know," it's because they have no idea what their karmic impulses may compel them to continually become. It may be dirt. It may be grass. Stones. Humans. Deer. So they don't know in that sense. There is also the sense that, frankly, it is still an act of faith. Realization of karma and emptiness and anatman fortify that faith, but it does not give them the power to foresee the future. They just can't know. It's not within our powers, you know? We just cannot know. Show me anyone man who knows for sure about his life after death, and I will show you a dead man.
As for not getting what you want from these answers: rebirth is by far one of the most abstruse ideas in Buddhism to comprehend, and I myself have just barely been able to comprehend it, so it would make sense if I am not conveying it well enough for your own comprehension. It's heady stuff, indeed.