Time is a big loaf of bread. Brian Greene said so.

Want to be further confused, eh? The Buddha once gave a "flower sermon", in which he held up a flower and said nothing. A lot more clear than anything I could say.

SO my take-away is roughly that if re-incarnation is taken as the self entering into a new life, then Buddhism does not hold to reincarnation. — Banno

That is true, and technically Buddhism doesn't teach reincarnation - but that should be interpreted carefully.

The Buddha once gave a "flower sermon", in which he held up a flower and said nothing. A lot more clear than anything I could say. — Wosret

The Flower Sermon is a story of the origin of Zen Buddhism in which Śākyamuni Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) transmits direct prajñā (wisdom) to the disciple Mahākāśyapa. In the original Chinese, the story is Niān huá wéi xiào (拈華微笑, literally "Pick up flower, subtle smile").

The earliest known version of the tale appeared in 1036, in China.

↪Thanatos Sand Time is a big loaf of bread. Brian Greene said so.

Souls, by their nature, are outside of time and space. And even Greene doesn't deny that Entropy pushes time forward beyond any breading. Not even his strings change that.

I used a couple Indian terms, and now just referenced something the Buddha said, but not as an authority, but just an example. I'm no scholar, I'm not that interested in perfectly repeating anyone. Just using the tools at my disposal in order to fail to communicate, lol.

I'm sure that Wayz is a wayz better Buddhist, he has nothing to compete with me about. I'm more of a yogi, anyhow. That's been my path.

Just using the tools at my disposal in order to fail to communicate, lol. — Wosret

No sweat Woz. I mainly agree with the gist of what you say, I'm just trying to relate it back to the fine print.

We're the authorities. We're drawn into, and by things because they resonate with us, make some kind of sense to us. When we turn it around, and quote the a source to someone else, it's because we've judged it as praise worthy, and upright (hopefully). Not because of where it originates, or who said it. Like a halo effect, when someone says one good or true things, it increases their overall credibility. Just as when someone says a bad or false thing, it undercuts their overall credibility.

I liked that thing that you quoted about behaving as if everyone else are the enlightened ones, and we're the only ones that aren't. Jung said that people nowadays can't find God because people can no longer bow low enough.

SO my take-away is roughly that if re-incarnation is taken as the self entering into a new life, then Buddhism does not hold to reincarnation. — Banno

I would be careful with this takeaway. There are as many interpretations of reincarnation as there are Buddhist teachers. This is not the Catholic Church with a hierarchy. I tried to warn you.

But I'm not interested in an explanation of Buddhism. Studied it myself years ago form an historic perspective - enjoyed it.

I'm interested in if reincarnation is a coherent notion.

Yeah, but it's not too far off topic, since the intricacies of his form of Buddhism was what Wallace was expounding.

I was responding to your conclusion:

"SO my take-away is roughly that if re-incarnation is taken as the self entering into a new life, then Buddhism does not hold to reincarnation."

There are many, many variations on this theme under the umbrella of Buddhism.

On the more general topic of reincarnation - I have previously mentioned up the subject of the research of the late Ian Stevenson, a very sober-looking psychiatrist who devoted the last decades of his life to researching children with past-life memories.

His work was met with the predictable opprobrium and most sceptics have convinced themselves that his research was irrevocably flawed by sloppy methodology and confirmation bias. Myself, I am not entirely convinced by his research, but I also don't believe it can be dismissed so easily, as he documented many thousands of cases. But one of the interesting features is that amongst children who said they recalled their previous lives, those lives were invariably mundane - mechanics, clerks, farmers, and so on. It's a far cry from the mythologised 'I lived before as Julius Caesar' trope (or tripe) which is associated with 'belief in reincarnation' in popular culture.

A typical case:

In Sri Lanka, a toddler one day overheard her mother mentioning the name of an obscure town (“Kataragama”) that the girl had never been to. The girl informed the mother that she drowned there when her “dumb” (mentally challenged) brother pushed her in the river, that she had a bald father named “Herath” who sold flowers in a market near the Buddhist stupa, that she lived in a house that had a glass window in the roof (a skylight), dogs in the backyard that were tied up and fed meat, that the house was next door to a big Hindu temple, outside of which people smashed coconuts on the ground. Stevenson was able to confirm that there was, indeed, a flower vendor in Kataragama who ran a stall near the Buddhist stupa whose two-year-old daughter had drowned in the river while the girl played with her mentally challenged brother. The man lived in a house where the neighbors threw meat to dogs tied up in their backyard, and it was adjacent to the main temple where devotees practiced a religious ritual of smashing coconuts on the ground. The little girl did get a few items wrong, however. For instance, the dead girl’s dad wasn’t bald (but her grandfather and uncle were) and his name wasn’t “Herath”—that was the name, rather, of the dead girl’s cousin. Otherwise, 27 of the 30 idiosyncratic, verifiable statements she made panned out.

Source

There are quite a few such cases, and overall they're rather difficult to dismiss, although that doesn't stop the critics from doing just that.

The difficulty is, that the subject is a cultural taboo in the West. Belief in reincarnation was ubiquitous in ancient cultures - there's pretty good reason to believe that Plato accepted it - but was anathematised by the Church in the 4th century AD. It is also anathema to scientific materialism, as it proposes some unknown medium by which memories (at the least) appear to be transmitted. Ergo, a touchy subject.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, of course. Interesting cases, but confirmation bias is a very powerful thing.

The point of the 'extraordinary evidence' argument is that it is infinitely flexible; no matter what evidence is found, you can dismiss it as being 'not extraordinary enough'.

Just so.

Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, of course. — Banno

I imagine it's pretty ordinary in a community of Hindus. You still haven't shown that it's incoherent. I think you just don't like the notion.

I think you just don't like the notion. — Mongrel

Good for you.

Stevenson'd toddler is a good case to take. In what sense is the toddler also the drowned girl?

I'm not familiar. Was the drowned girl supposed to be reincarnated?

Is there a contradiction in transmigration of the soul?

See above.

Surprised that you're entertaining this at all Banno.

X-)

I'm a surprising fellow.

It's a good thing to challenge one's prejudices, no?

Where's the contradiction?

To show a contradiction, one needs a series of assumptions.

Any set of assumptions I put forward would be uninformed.

So I am looking for someone to put forward an account that is coherent.

Care to help?

Why "reincarnation", not "incarnation"? — Banno

As the principle of actuality of a living body, the soul is necessarily prior to the actual living body.

The problem with reincarnation, as it is commonly apprehended, is that we think of the soul as a property of the body, rather than the proper conception which is the inverse of this, the body is the property of the soul. So you ask questions like how is it possible that myself was formerly someone else's self. This just displays that misconception of assuming the soul as a property of the body.

In what sense is the toddler also the drowned girl? — Banno

Only in the sense that she appeared to remember the previous life. (Stevenson himself, as noted, documented many such cases, but never claim that they 'proved reincarnation' - only that they are suggestive of it.)

Didn't you say there's a confused concept of the self on the scene? I'm reading about Lacan's views so I wondered what you meant.

Then there's the Tibetan reincarnated Lamas... it seems to be a central tenet in their system. The child having memories of their supposed past life makes it seem more of a "personal soul" reincarnation than the strictly annata non-self karmic-energy view of reincarnation (if that makes any sense. Probably not. I can see why Buddha found metaphysical topics distracting. Probably best to have some humor and flexibility about this).

Not that it keeps me awake at night... but i have not resolved the reincarnation/heaven (or Buddha realms) question. This is probably Catholic upbringing about heaven being the final destination is lodged in my brain. Maybe it is a vacation before returning? Why would anyone want to come back? Is perfection boring? To learn more or help others possibly. Couldn't one simply watch a tutorial in heaven if they wanted to learn? They must have the technology. It's heaven! O:)

Yes. So is reincarnation were someone has the memories of someone else?

No transmigration?

Tibetan reincarnated Lamas — 0 thru 9

They tend to be benevolent and happy when it suits them; but on other occasions they can be quite nasty.