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Permalink Reply by DarkBlack on October 21, 2012 at 5:35am

A related observation; when I de-converted I noticed that the vast majority of the fear I had of "death" was actually fear of going to hell.

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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on October 21, 2012 at 11:57am

Excellent point.  I think true for me too.  By the fundamentalist definitions, I was clearly headed down the road to hell.  Being freed of that, now all I need to think about is living the best life possible, and what kind of legacy I will leave when gone.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Allan H. Clark on October 20, 2012 at 10:28am

Here is a Philip Larkin Poem  Aubade on the subject of the fear of death. The title is ironic—an aubade is a morning song, a happy song for awakening, but this is not joyous at all.

Aubade
     
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

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Permalink Reply by michele ricketts on October 20, 2012 at 5:04pm

That gambit propagating re-incarnation. It is worse because on a personal level it makes mortality and God less important. Born for the purpose to metephorphosise to a higher veibration but you'll be turned into a cock-roach rather than your carnate beingness being squished off the face of the earth forever for bad deeds. That makes people feel like a mini-god than worry about God. Was it Bhudda's way to reward good ethics and make for a creative self-will of sorts.To be recognised.Bhudda was not an expounder of theism but he put something else in its place as a more tangible crutch. Unforgiveable. The time was ripe for the plucking. He should have had the courage of his convictions since he was well down the atheist road meditation wise.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Allan H. Clark on October 20, 2012 at 6:01pm

That's not the way I understand the Buddhist notion of rebirth. (The term rebirth better describes the idea than reincarnation.) The personality does not carry over from one existence to the next because there is no individual self linking them. Eventually released from all desires and impurities, the mind or soul permanently escapes the long cycle of rebirths into eternal peace. Birth as a human being offers an opportunity to advance toward this state by casting off the fetters of desire and attachment to material things. Buddhism has no notion of sin or punishment for unskillful living.

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Permalink Reply by michele ricketts on October 20, 2012 at 8:57pm

Maybe in theory. The Bhudda said don't worship me but they do. What is the difference when soul is an axiom for individual self? That is how it is thought of in practise. My very own despite chameleon rebirths.
I suppose what I'm harping on about is rebirth/reincarnation as practised in India where a distinction is made twixt dacoits and brahims for example. The higher caste are further along the spiritual evolution path unto The Great Bliss. That is why they are rich and have a happier life on the material plane and dacoits are seen as sinners from past lives. Even in Tibet I am sure the lamas said the same thing whilst taking all the counties riches into the monasteries. Although once inside as a monk it was more metaphysical to original teachings as you point out.
It's an insidious crutch this rebirth idea essentially propagating the parable of the monkey who cannot get his fist out of the peanut jar when if he did let go he would be in peanut land and it keeps the poor content with their lot much as the idea of heaven does.
I read that in the golden age of India all the snobbery about rebirth came about later through controlling overpopulation with the caste system .

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Allan H. Clark on October 20, 2012 at 9:56pm

Perhaps you are better informed about eastern religions than I am. I can only go by what I have read—I have never practiced any of them. Here you will find the explanation I have encountered:

http://www.buddhanet.net/nutshell09.htm

Buddhism does not totally deny the existence of a personality in an empirical sense. It only attempts to show that it does not exist in an ultimate sense. The Buddhist philosophical term for an individual is santana, i.e., a flux or a continuity. It includes the mental and physical elements as well. The kammic force of each individual binds the elements together. This uninterrupted flux or continuity of psycho-physical phenomenon, which is conditioned by kamma, and not limited only to the present life, but having its source in the beginningless past and its continuation in the future — is the Buddhist substitute for the permanent ego or the immortal soul of other religions.

The notion of rebirth is common to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, but it takes different forms in each and within each religion there are different sects or schools holding various beliefs.

I suppose what I'm harping on about is rebirth/reincarnation as practised in India where a distinction is made twixt dacoits and brahims for example. The higher caste are further along the spiritual evolution path unto The Great Bliss.

Here you've lost me completely and I cannot connect what you say with the notions of Buddhism at all. Here is what the Buddha is recorded as saying in one of the sutras:

In this Teaching that is so well proclaimed by me and is plain, open, explicit and free of patchwork; for those who are arahants, free of taints, who have accomplished and completed their task, have laid down the burden, achieved their aim, severed the fetters binding to existence, who are liberated by full knowledge, there is no (future) round of existence that can be ascribed to them.

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Permalink Reply by michele ricketts on October 20, 2012 at 10:41pm

In the mundane world bhuddists are not purists or as scholarly as the bhuddism laid out in your source.

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Permalink Reply by James M. Martin on October 21, 2012 at 9:42am

Comports to what I have read, Dr. Clark.  Buddhists differ from Hindus mainly in refuting the notion of an individual soul.  What reincarnates, if anything (and, yes, they do believe in a form of reincarnation) is "skandas," aspects of personality carried over from former lives.  Gautama is said to have died telling his followers to doubt everything and everyone; examine things for yourself, make your own mind up about everything.  As we know, most members of the monotheistic religions doubt nothing and are thus stuck in the quagmire of belief.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Allan H. Clark on October 21, 2012 at 9:52am

Some of this is expressed in the Buddha's Sermon to the Kalamas:

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

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Permalink Reply by James M. Martin on October 21, 2012 at 9:54am

That's it, Dr. Clark.  Thanks for giving me the entire quotation.  Words to live by!

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Permalink Reply by michele ricketts on October 21, 2012 at 5:36pm

Thanks for clearing up the difference.

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