Re: Reincarnation Inquiry


"Deja Fu" <chanfu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote
Mayura wrote:

...I'll have to do
a bit of research. What I'm looking for is a good UK ISP that does
pay-as-you-go that also has a good newsreader service, preferably of its
own, not on line but into the standard Outlook format. My father just
changed to British Telecom but that seems to farm out internet searching
to
Yahoo (which has a grotesque format) and he seems to have to go on line
to
find his mail (and likely news if he used ngs). I'll ask Jan if she
reappears.

Umm... the days of "pay as you go" seem to have "gone".
The day of "sign up for a year and we'll try to ignore
you unless you gather up a bunch of irate anti-cartoonists
and plague our corporate HQ" is here.

I hope that hasn't become true here in Merrye Olde Englande. I don't want
some kind of monthly or yearly 'deal' because I use the net etc. for so few
minutes a day when I'm on it and e.g. I've been off it for about the last
ten months. My Usenet usage has always alternated between months on and
months off and I never know when the next months off period will start.

The way I read things, e.g. from reading the sequence of fruits of the
contemplative life in DN.2; within the internal logic of the thing, the
attainment of samadhi / any of the jhanas already puts one way beyond
stream-entry (where liberation had become inevitable) and on the final
short
'path to arahantship' (as summarized to Bahiya). People represent the
teachings of his previous teachers (as per MN.36) as being some kind of
redundant dead-end but I don't see it that way. The states attained with
them are simply not quite there yet and he 'arrives' on his own very
shortly
afterwards (as, according to his subsequent model, anyone inevitably
must)
and includes the states he attained with them in his own teaching at a
very
late stage on the final run-in to liberation.

Aren't we taking this (elevator/train/maitre d') thing a car
too far? I mean, just how often does one jostle you and
whisper, "Next stop's yours"?

I pulled out of experimenting with yoga for a couple of reasons but up to
the point where I pulled out, it always did exactly what it said on the tin
and I have no good reason to believe that it wouldn't have continued to do
so. One reason I pulled out was that it said you shouldn't attempt pranayama
without expert instruction. So anyway, after giving myself a twisted
testicle...... :) The other thing was that I was concentrating on one of our
farm cats maybe 100 yards away and just as I had the sensation of us
starting to 'merge', I had this ethical twinge about using sentient
creatures as an 'object' (since at that moment the cat suddenly turned round
looking disturbed) and pulled out. (And thereafter kind of went 'sideways'
with my own 'special methods').

With regard to three other kinds of 'altered states', 1) I'm joining the
dots between psychosis and the use of psychotomimetics like ergot as we
speak. 2) Looking at the Buddha's ramblings with his 'mind-made body',
'astral travelling' and 'lucid dreaming' (and to a lesser extent 'near-death
experiences') although they all share (as in normal dreams) the same sense
of being a human shaped thing in a landscape shaped landscape and travelling
around various realms and meeting various anthropomorphic denizens, they're
somewhat *divergent*. Christians meet Christ and his angels. Alaskans meet
caribou or whatever, South Americans meet jaguars and the Buddha meets
pink-footed nymphs and hungry ghosts. 3) With the other types of meditation
I see described around these parts (e.g. mindfulness or those of the 'haiku
snorters') there again seems to be a lot of 'divergence' in experience.

But with yoga, it's more 'convergent'. And since I was referring to the
stage from where one first 'merges' subject and object, it seems highly
likely to me that the succeeding sequence of experiences (however far along
it one went each time) would be the same. There's nothing to make them any
different. And since the way they're described in the literature of
different schools is the same (as is the end result), I have no good reason
to disbelieve that that's just how it is (experientially). The only
differences are in the inferences subsequently made about the experiences.

According to a sutta on the jhanas (a discourse by a senior nun) that we
looked at a while back (which I've mislaid) one can't 'push' within the
jhanas. The 'level' one reaches each time depends on the general level
that
one was at before entering it (in terms of the degree of attachment to
the
rupa and arupa worlds) - which are the first two fetters to be overcome
on
the path to arahantship - and this applies throughout so that whether or
not
nibbana is attained at the end depends on the degree of attachment to
the
final stage (MN.106) But that attachment is inevitably falling off. The
only
question is when (but it must be very soon because the person is already
a
non-returner).

Well, of course not. :)
That would be like trying to take over the conductor's job
and there'd be all kinds of union trouble, not to mention
shipping unripe mangoes to all parts of cristendom and having
to reply to all those irate letters about "unripe fruit".

"That's actually not a very serious question...Eeek!", said Alice
as gravity suddenly grabbed her little ankles and gave a hefty tug.

:)

So although the fancy schmancy description of the stages and suchlike
(and
analogously in Patanjali) has the appearance of a 'method', it's more
like a
description of a 'path' along which one inevitably travels (having
reached
the start of it). Likewise with the parallel 'insight', the later fruit
of
mindfulness. All of the 'oof-strain' effortful methodical stuff was done
way
back over the hill prior to stream-entry. I'm sure there was a point
here
but I've forgotten what it was :)

That's quite what my photo-album has in it as well,
so I'm sure it's correct (there are also a few sort of nasty
videos, but I'm trying to sell those, so I can't post them).

"It's a bit like constipation", said the Red Queen, "Once you get
started, it's much easier."

"Constitution?" asked the president, "What about it?"

:) They were discussing the erosion of civil liberties on TV tonight and had
a phone line for suggestions of what one liberty you would like added. One
bloke wanted the liberty to go and crap in his neighbour's cat-litter tray
and say "There! That's where it should go!" :)

Jonathan



.

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