Welcome to Gaia! ::

Everything I am or could be as an individual.

I think the part from the book I was referring to is the part where it describes your individuality dissolving, and becomming one with everything.


Is my fear doing so?


My own personal belief is that all religions are just different interpretations of the same basic facts - each one is a different path to the same result.
What's to say that your understanding of the world is not mistaken?

However, what the Buddha taught and what Harry is trying to say is that there is nothing beyond our realm of perception.
You're absoluely right, Tomodachi Kiko, we'll never know what is beyond our realm of perception, because we can't percieve it. Therefore, we can only safely assume that it is nothing without being disappointed.

Granted, if we do end up in nothingness after life, we wouldn't exist to realize that we were right to begin with.

Anyway, by assuming that we will die, we realize that we are already marked for death. After looking around, we realize that we are no different than the entire universe (physics proves it) and eventually, everything will cease. From this, it is very easy to see the plight of our comrades and be compassionate to them.

Humbly submitted...

One with everything is, in a very real sense, nothing.

We can only delineate “existence” through boundaries that are put on ourselves that distinguish us from another. This is why “existence”, as Buddhism states, is illusory. Existing as a universal consciousness means you still exist...and so is a paradoxical statement. If you’re conscious, you’re not universal. If you’re universal, you’re not conscious.



See quote below.





Consider what Akanishi is stating in response to Kiko, that latter of which expanded on this statement.

On what basis are you appealing to the idea that there’s “something out there” when said something has no solid evidence to support it, but plenty circumstantial evidence that it does not?

For example, let’s assume for granted that a separate realm exists…you’d still have to logically explain how these two dual realms manage to affect one another while remaining discrete.

If they do affect one another, then we’re still effectively in one realm…and that realm still obeys the rules governing impermanence and entropy. This is the problem Indian Buddhist Philosopher Nagarjuna first touched upon in 200 C.E. with his Examination of Conditions in the “Muladmadhyamakakarika” (Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle-Way, or “Madhyamaka”), the problem that Descartes fails to properly account for in his Meditations over 1,400 years later, and a problem that present day philosophers and theologians still cannot, by any means, explicate rationally.

On a purely psychological level, why do you take this state that there might be another realm when there isn’t evidence to support it? Never mind the idea that, “there is just as likely to be a universal something as a universal nothing.” Why would you assume a positive rather than a negative?

According to Buddhism it's because that’s the way our fallible minds work. We don’t see impermanence but discrete, arbitrary stages. Film, photographs, and art are both evidence of and a reinforcer to this illusory concept of essence and permanence. We see child, adult, and senior, not the continuing flow of life from birth to death. We see second, minute, hour, not the fact that time is relative to the point of non-existence as other creatures feel "time" moving at different speeds. We give these arbitrary stages a fixed quality, a quality that survives all, something we view as separate from the changing forms.

But those qualities are illusions, and this line of questioning, to quote Buddha, “does not lead to edification”. So when you press to assume positive over the negative, you can only do so out of a hard-wired hope of life-eternal and fear of non-existence.

Forgive me for being somewhat blunt and direct in my statements, but I’m not going to coddle you in these discussions if you continue to bring up previously explained points when we’ve moved some distance away from them as if you’re trying to win an argument via tireless single-to-double-line reiteration and refutation.

I’m here to answer questions. If you want to engage in sophistry and eristics…that’s a politician’s arena, not mine.



Let’s not use the word “soul”. It carries too much baggage from Western Ideologies, mostly because we can’t help but view it as a “thing”. Hindu’s tend to call it the “subtle body”, but reincarnation isn’t the transmigration of a “thing” because all things are simply illusory forms. It’s the movement of energy…and reincarnation, in a microcosm, is something we see happen a lot more often that we think.

Every few months you’re made of entirely different materials at an atomic level.

You don’t remember many events in your life from five years ago…the person you were five years ago is effectively dead and gone, but you still believe you’re that person.

So if you travel by, say, train and believe you’re the same person who got on the train when you get off, that’s pretty much the same as reincarnation…strange memories that link us from who we are to who we were and who we will be, and strange sensations and emotions that we think have absolutely no connection to our experiences…such as attraction to certain people, aversion to others, déjà vu when an event happens, sudden dread in certain places, all that stuff.

I remember hearing a story about, I believe the Buddha, who was talking about meditating over a river. Now, he said that it would not be the same river when he finished, because none of the original river would be there. The water would be new, the riverbed would have changed, along with the life in that river and its banks.

To look at the universe, we must understand how all of the aggregates work. Everything is a mixture of different things. You can't call a chair a chair, because it has a back, seat, legs, some have wheels, arms, etc. And each individual piece makes up the whole "chair", but the chair doesn't really exist... it's only a culmination of many things.

This is how our mind is. We are, deep down inside, a product of everything that we have experienced. All of our past events in our life are layered on top of one another, and seem to be fluid. One must realize that we are not a fluid being. If we meditate, we deaden the senses, effectively becoming dead, or one with our breath. This way, we can realize how mind works, by constantly attempting to "experience".

About rebirth, well, that's a different story. A lot of people seem to think that it involves physically dying. In a sense, yes, and in a sense, no; it doesn't. One can be reborn at any point during their life. It's not a state of the physical, it's a state of mind. Are you the same person you were in High School? Was that person different from you in your past?

The Buddha was reborn, but his body didn't die. He "woke up" to the nature of the universe, and was reborn enlightened. Understand?

That's why I put it in quotes. I couldn't think of a better word to express it, sorry.



Good point. I think I understand now.



To me, it seems an egoistical statement to assume that humans are the be all and end all most aware beings in the universe. Therefore I take the side that there are things humans simply can't understand, implying said other realm. That's a personal opinion and could easily be wrong. I do understand what you're saying. I just wanted to explain where I'm coming from here. (i.e. I'm not challenging anything you already said and I understood what you've already said, so no need to repeat or rephrase. I'm not here for an argument either.)

However, you're looking at enlightenment as a destination, which it definitely is not. Enligthenment is the journey you take to get there...

Interesting I never thought of that before.
I'll be sure to look into that. 3nodding