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Originally Posted by Radical  I'm sorry, but I can't agree with any of this new age/pseudoscience bunk.
PS I don't have an unfortunate life or anything, I just want to make people realise the flaws of LoA. |
Fair enough Radical, I think we're all old enough to choose our own beliefs
Does this mean though, that no matter what we say you won't be open to it?
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Originally Posted by Radical So you believe that all our misfortunes in this life are caused by wrong doings in past lives?
Even if this were true, which I highly doubt, then the Universe/God/Whatever is an extremely evil and cruel being.
Even if we did have past lives, they weren't us, they were a totally different person who had very different experiences. We have no memories of existence before our birth in this life, and so this life is all that we are. |
This is where it gets interesting. Assuming that we do have past lives, it's true that these past 'us-es' weren't the 'us-es' we know now, specifically, not the
ego-self that we currently identify ourselves with.
Rather, they and us are the higher selves of ourselves, the 'spark' or 'pure soul' if you will, of us without the ego-selves attached. It's this pure soul that journeys from life to life picking up the lessons learnt from each ego-self during each lifetime and improving ourselves towards a higher state of being; Buddhahood, enlightenment, Nirvana, whatnot.
It's an often quoted concept that someone who's born unlucky this time round (with AIDS for example) is responsible because of the karmic debt he incurred; he did something bad so he gets something bad.
But another way of looking at karma is that everything that happens is not the result of reward or punishment, but the result of a cause and effect process designed to help push you towards enlightenment.
Some even say that at the moment of reincarnation, our higher selves have choice, that key elements of our present lives like sex, environment, key events, have been chosen by yourself to help you learn and become a better being.
And another overarching point of view is that to a Buddha, all life trapped within this cycle of birth and rebirth is suffering (one of the four noble truths is that life is suffering), no matter if you're a multi-billionaire or the poor person who starves on the street (I'm not trivializing this if that's what you're thinking).
But to a Buddha who enjoys enlightenment, our state of being is pretty poor indeed!
In the end, you are right in one respite Radical, I can't prove any of this. If I've died and been reborn, I don't remember any of it although there are people who do. Reading the literature on those who have (like Godot, I recommend Dr Brian Weiss), and the thousand years old teachings of the east like Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism, and considering that even early Christian sects also had these beliefs and other pagan religions had also, this reincarnation thing seems to make more sense to me than the idea of living once, and to a Day of Judgment.
We do seem to have strayed a bit from the LoA
