Does anyone out there know what happens when you die? I really wish I did

First topic message reminder :

Mokuan asked this in a recent thread. No one answered.

It is a question I have asked a lot...

It is for me a rather important question..

What are your experiences of this?

thank you

Precisely
These teachers clearly did not want us to find the river, because we would not need them, my question is: did we want to find it ourselves?

Spot on Mike. We all have mixed motives. What we need to ask ourselves is what are we seeking. Is it: a warm cuddly feeling, self-validation, blis, peace, or myriad of other distractions, or is it the truth we are after? If it's the latter then we need to beware peddlers, however magnificent, selling snares by the river, dressed up as bright, shiny and beguiling trinkets. We need to hold fast to our hearts, not our heads, and seek openly and diligently for the truth.

Well this seems to be the basis of Zen Buddhism,
How on earth do we know what we are searching for, With great pleasure I will leave out the words "in the beginning",because the journey is hindered by arrival and with guts and faith we dont know,  I remember Bill Picard only too clearly saying "zazen is just done"
I believe with this spirit we can sit together we can reconize the path and maybe the next step in other people and maybe ourselves but I dont believe it can be taught by you nor understood by me

Thank you for all your replies.

To sum up as I read it:

Experiences:
Isan mentioning her mum dying, thank you for that, Isan.

Michael's cat dying. Thank you for sharing that, Michael, and your feelings. I felt I could relate to your feeling of inadequacy faced with your cat dying. And thank you for your posts that make me laugh.

Mokuan: Many deaths over the past 7 years, for which I think you say you have no answers, only the question I re-iterated. So much loss in such a short time! Thank you for explaining your question more.

Isan: “Love exists; infinite boundless love.  I did not create it.  Did it create me?  I can ponder and speculate, but in the end it is enough to face and affirm it”. Some may see this as theory, but I'm feeling it as direct experience. Is this so? I am seeing it this way because my big opening beyond the thinking mind revealed this as direct irrefutable truth. It is still true for me today, 29 years later, and for me reveals all our minds as mostly spouting intellectual mind-rubbish about reality.

Lise. Thank you for sharing your fears of death, and how they have eases, and you now rely on believing something comforting.

Howard. You said to me: “Wanna see what death offers...just seriously meditate. Wanna see what continues beyond deaths doorway...just seriously meditate.”

Then later you said: “I have no idea what happens after death”. I do not understand you giving strong advice for something you profess to know nothing about. Your later admission actually says your experience of meditation has not worked for you in finding out what happens after death.

Tusoft. You said “When you die all your debts become un-collectable”. How do you know this? The buddha very clearly said he knew exact opposite of this to be true. He called it Karma, Rebirth, Dukkha, and Samsara. I think the basis premiss of your poetry useless in giving answers to the truth of death, but I still find your poetry to be remarkable and beautiful. For me you seem to capture something of the subconscious terror and questioning re death that is ever-present in our subconscious. Thank you for this.

Jack. I tend to like what you write. You said that we are only biological, and do not live after death. Then you said “What I wrote is based on my experience”. But you have not told us any experience.

Otherwise all I read is intellectual mind-stuff, theories posited as fact, etc etc. No experience. (sorry if I've missed any)

2 more experiences of mine. First one.

When my mum died I was alone with her holding her hand. It was extremely emotionally painful for me for various reasons, 2 of which were she weighed less than 5 stone and raw heroin was being pumped straight into her veins every 15 seconds. During each 15 seconds she had 5 seconds of being more lucidly conscious, and she used those 5 seconds to fight for her life in pure terror before being smashed by another wave of heroin. A few minutes before she died I “knew” that she was terrified of meeting my dad, so told her who would be meeting her, and reassured her that my dad would not be there. Then in the last minute or so I “knew” it was time for her to stop breathing, so I told her out loud that it was ok now to drop the body, that it was time for her to stop breathing that I would be with her, and that it was ok and safe. I said all these things from a “knowing them to be true place” that I am and was very familiar with. And so I placed my consciousness in with hers, and I gently held her in the spaciousness as she squeezed my hand and for the first time in her life, let go into death.

For 30 years she had cared for and loved countless disadvantaged children, had loved them when everyone else in society had turned their backs, yet she had been too scared to let the child inside her out, she had never learned to let go into death while alive. So when she approached the moment of death her letting go was full of terror, a horrific clenching of mind body and soul, and then at the instant of death a scream that I opened to and allowed through me like all your worst nightmares come true. Then the death rattle. Then the corpse, the irrevocable, impossible finality of death.

Then a strange thing happened. As I sat there holding her dead hand I felt and “saw” her consciousness rise out of her body and float above it. And as she floated above her body I felt my consciousness still with her as she looked down and in astonishment said “oh, was that it?”. With tears in my eyes I smiled and said to her “yes that's all it is mum. Its ok to go now.” and then watched as she floated up into the light, and “saw” her go to meet people she shared a love connection with, who were at the end of the light waiting for her.

Then I was able to leave her, and come back into my body, and allow myself to grieve. To grieve for a mother who I have no memory of coming towards me and touching me ever in my life, until 5 or 10 minutes before her death, when she let me hold her hand, and she squeezed it desperately in terror.

Part of me still feels as if I am her son, sitting next to her dead body, grieving, stunned.

And part of me is still that which seems to know that the moment of death for her was totally safe.

At the moment I am more the former than the latter, if I am honest.

For those of you who in this thread have said we cannot know what happens when we die, here is a 2nd experience of mine:

When I was 16, I had a dream. Then six months later the whole dream came true, over a period of about 9 hours or so. It happened while with 10 friends on holiday in a place I had never been before. What I dreamed happened in real life like watching a movie twice. Once I realised what was happening, which took me about an hour, I told the 10 friends I was with what was happening, and told them all for the next 6-7 hours what was going to happen next. I also tried to stop them doing certain things, and told them what would happen if they did those things. One thing in particular I spent a good hour trying to stop them doing. I failed, for obvious reasons. How can you change a movie once its on film and done? They were all 16 years old, and used to my “weird ways” so while they were vaguely interested in what I was doing, were strangely more interested in being in the movie I was re-watching.

I remember sitting in a pub in the evening and watching three locals who I had never seen before stand up. I intentionally recalled from the dream their next move, a walk to the jukebox and how they crowded around it. Then I watched them intently, saying to myself that I owed it to free-will to catch one of them doing the tiniest movement with a finger, or hair, or changing his walk to the jukebox in any way at all. Instead, they all re-enacted the movie perfectly. Not a single finger did it any differently than I had lived in my dream. 6 months to show some kind of free-will and none to be found.

Some of my friends still remember the day when I told them what was going to happen, and tried to get them to change stuff I'd dreamed they were going to do. None of them sees it as important, just David being his usual weird self.

So for those of you who say we cannot know the future, from my experience I think you are jumping to conclusions.


Obviously my experience questions how we perceive time, and thus free will. It also makes me more open to other people who say they have had similar experiences, of which there are 1000's.

Ha ha. That made me laugh, thank you for that. You're one of those people who like to give advice for something they know nothing about.... oh oh.

One thing i know, in the battle between the conscious and the subconscious, the subconscious always wins. So whatever advice you give, you'll always lose

Hi David last week as I arrived home my cat bounced out to greet my van,I waited for her to get out the way and reversed into whare I park up,I go inside and my cat does not follow me, I have an awful feeling so go back out and look under the van and there she is unable to walk as I had run over her legs,I pick her up and my sons girl friend and I put her in a box,and comfort her,she is going to die,and I am not sure if I should let her die at home or take her to the vets.I phoned the vet and they said to bring her in which we did. After exaamination the vet gave her an injection and she died.
We brought her back home and my youngest son dug a hole under the bird bath and we buried her.
We miss her, she spent the last 6 months maybe longer weeing on the floor and we loooked after her as she was pat of our family,she chose to live with us and I repect that and have tried to always look after her. I dont know what happens when you die but I think she would like to know  that I miss her  when I walk overthe floor she used to wee on, and I feel she is still a part of us when I walk past the bird bath to feed the birds

When I was a child I used to spend all my holidays in North Wales surrounded by small sheep farms. The farmers kept, typically, a hundred or so sheep and they could graze in a field or they could be let out to graze on the mountain if the farmer had a couple of well-trained dogs, but one thing they were never allowed to do was to float off and graze in outer space, because if you let them do that, then no matter how good your dogs were you would never get them back.

Hi Michael. Just read what you said for about the 4th time, and only this time did i read that you were careful to make sure that she was out of the way, then somehow ran over her legs. What a terrible shock! My natural instinct is to want to hang out with you in that awful moment, and ask how you feel.

Also, while vets in my experience are caring in giving those injections, it can also be a very fast wirlwind experience, with not much time to think even. When our rabbit was given a lethal injection, he screamed at the moment of death. That scream is still with me 40 years later. How was it for you and your cat?

Our rabbit was part of our family. He lived indoors with us. You talking about your cat takes me back to him, to his last days with mixamatosis, and the moment he died, and the rip inside me when he screamed and died. And I find the child in me misses him. I loved him so of course me inside misses him.

And yet there is more. Like you said, that you feel she is still part of you when you walk past the birdbath. I experience it often as a door that opens in space, and allows the dead person to come and visit and be with us. Also, like my dream suggests, it allows us open to the place that transcends time, where they are always with us, no matter how far away. This is a place in consciousness that our reasoning minds dismiss as 'just' imagination, but feels real for me. Like your cat comes back and visits you at the birdbath, or she is somehow still really there, at the birdbath.

Also, for me there is something about opening my heart that seems to be connected with all this. The more I open my heart, the more I am able to open to these 'other' spaces.

When I'm around death, I find it knocks me and other people open to their subconscious, their child inside, more. And also somehow out of ourselves, so we experience connections and planes of reality we don't normally experience as there. 

And then after a time most people close back down again, and somehow those openness experiences become just memories, and "not real", as our normal "real" world comes back in and takes over again.

I am lucky in a way, that in my work I am with other peoples death zones weekly, often daily. So I never fully leave this openness around death state. It has helped make these experiences much more solid for me, and part of my normal reality. 

It has also shown me how scared people are of opening their hearts and allowing their inner world to to be here. It requires a willingness to let go of control. Which means a willingness to let go of their mind as they know it.

As Stephen Levine has said, we are so conditioned, so locked in by fear put there as small children, to obeying our subconscious, that it seems to take a major experience, like the death of a loved one, to allow us to let our world fall apart.

David wrote:

Also, for me there is something about opening my heart that seems to be connected with all this. The more I open my heart, the more I am able to open to these 'other' spaces.

But when you open your heart do you open to this space and see it more cleary? If not is not just another dream?

Ah the dream of Buddhism.
You have to be very careful, people who feel that Buddhism has given them a privilged position get a little annoyed and try their hardest to control their enviroment at the mere mention of the word dream

Whoops
Yesterday has vanished
We are all equal

Chisanmichaelhughes, your poems are awesome. I had to share that one on my facebook. Hope you don't mind.

​
Use wisely
We cant carry it with us
and we cant throw it away

At the risk of sounding overly certain - for me the engagement of non duality is such that even the fear of death (and i find that as we train we open up to all this is and what it is rooted in - so can be quite intense) is shown to be but a wave in the ocean - that is to say that it isn't even the activity of the precepts but rather another arising condition which when i look at it only points back to sitting still..........but more than this the non dual nature of the moment shows me that when i die, the universe dies - just as before i was born there was nothing for this being - such it is when i die - because all that i am dies, and that which is set in motion by my existence moves on without the continuity that i understand as 'me', just as it was before such karmic inheritance informed my very existence......even the parts of me that struggle with this fall into clinging conditions rather than intention/activity of practice and as such, actually, don't really matter.....

Kimberley, wonderful thoughts and insight, as always.

And of course you do matter...as do we all...although perhaps not in the ways we imagine...

I would propose that when "we" die--our awareness itself simply opens back up into Awareness Itself--that which we are and have always been.

(By the way, good to see you posting here again, Kimberley!)

Life and Death
We all jumped in
Aha!

mstrathern wrote:

David wrote:

Also, for me there is something about opening my heart that seems to be connected with all this. The more I open my heart, the more I am able to open to these 'other' spaces.

But when you open your heart do you open to this space and see it more cleary? If not is not just another dream?

Hi Mark. The point of my opening this thread was to ask for everyone's experiences with death, especially with what happens after we die. After all, in my experience in the face of death, our conscious philosophy and mind games get us no-where.

For me, the experience of opening my heart is a core part of my spiritual practice, and it feels more like I see clearly what is important, and see more clearly things as they are.

I would love to hear what is your experience is of you opening your heart? You seem to be saying that for you it feels like just a dream...

It seems to me there are no buddhists answering this thread, which i find fascinating.

After all the buddha was clear that he knew that rebirth, his version of reincarnation, is true. He based his whole philosophy on it, you know samsara, the wheel, stuck in life time after life time of being reborn, one life after another... 

thats the thing he said he knows how to escape from...

that he said we can all know to, through our experience rather than listening with our mind games...

kimberley, you said 

"when i die, the universe dies - just as before i was born there was nothing for this being... because all that i am dies"


Do you actually believe this? My experience of zazen says the very opposite. What I find in my practice is the deathless, that which doesn't die, who i truly am. 


In order to find this I had to let go totally of who I think I am, which meant for me being willing to open up to the layers of who i think i am that are buried in my subconcious. The opening up was/is a very frightening experience, but for me the only way to the truth of who I am, and something that i call beginners compassion class. After all if we cannot love a child, who can we love? And we all have children buried inside..

Life and death
We all jumped in
But did we really?
AAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!

Life and death
If we all jumped in
Where from?

Hey David....nice to see you around...... :-)

david. wrote:

Hi Kozan


'when "we" die--our awareness itself simply opens back up into Awareness Itself--that which we are and have always been'


That sounds very interesting. Do you have any experience of this? 

Yes.


As do you, david.

David
I have not experienced death, who has. As I  uundestand it the Buddhist teaching of no self means that at death whaever one may call the self disolves, which would imply that no  one has exprienced death. But of course, as with all other religions, this is only a teaching.

However I have had experince of death. I have sat with someone  as they died and when they had they were gone, they were gone, there was only the corpse left. In one of Charles Luk's books (Ch'an and Zen teaching series 1 I think) Hsu Yun talks of taking a stick and beating a recent corpse and asks how does the deceased respond and tells people to carefully think on this.

Also I volunteer with a UK organisation, the Samaritans, which offers support to those in disress, particularly those contemplating suicide. So I have some experience of talking to people about what they think of dying and what death is. Interestingly there are two short films which have won Oscars this year that explore two quite different approaches to this. The first, 'The Phone Call' (on the Vimeo 2015 Oscars shorts stream), is very much based on the Samaritans approach of complete  confidential support,  whilst the second is an HBO documentary, 'Crisis Line: Veterans Press 1', which  shows a much more interventionist approach used by the US authorities.  Both are excellent and show caring people dealing with the death of others but, as I said using very different  approaches with the hope of the same outcome. One based on support and self-determination, and the other based on saving using more intervenionist action. I know which I prefer, but then I am biased!

So David, back to your original points. I don't know what happens when when we die, nor do I believe anyone else does. I think that the evidence of what happens to the body, and the brain in particular, is fairly clear. My belief is the same will happen to the self, but this is just my belief and every philosophy, religiion and crackpot cult has their own particular experiences and take on death. So that's why I conclude that no one knows.

Hi Stan! :-)

Hi Mark! Thank you for your long and honest reply. Samaratins have helped me a lot when I needed someone to be there.

Hi Kozan! You've found me out! Don't tell anyone....

Someone in the know once told me the answer to all Rinzai koans is the same....

'I am!'

Sorry if I've spoilt it for all you rinzaiites out there...

Death of my mum
I am her
OH NO!

Chatted with a dead person (ha ha)
Just last week
What am I?

A Shoji Freak!

The enlightened man is supposed to leave no trace, but we have Gautama's tooth and even his footprint, let alone the myriad of sutras describing his life, thoughts and works, so where is it is it the enlightened man leaves no trace?

Rilke was once talking to a woman and she said, "you have such a tough life, so many health problems, always moving house, a broken marriage etc, why don't you write about those things?" to which Rilke replied "See that tree? I would like to write about that tree so that only the tree is seen and nothing of Rilke."

Which is why when you read a Rilke poem, although you immediately know it's by Rilke, you find nothing of him in it.

@mistrathern
    
I really only see a wake attributed to the Buddha from his followers 26 hundred years later pointing back in time
and
from many of the actions of his present followers, I think it is more realistic to start calling that wake theirs, rather than the Buddha's.

Howard , what is your view of the Buddhas teaching would you say thet was wake or not?

@chisanmichaelhughes
Interesting question.

The usual expression of the enlightened being leaving no wake...in my mind.... is talking about leaving no wake that causes ignorance,
so... no I don't think of the Buddha's Dharma as wake.

The main problem I have about this expression is where I've heard it used to dissuade anyone from challenging the status quo.

Yes a very fine line area Howard  maybe by wake we mean negative wake , and maybe the expression is used as a form of control.
Which brings in another 2 questions is Budddhism 'passed on' by realization  as part of the wake or by discusion and points of views...or indeed both? Can realization skip a few generations,and the path in some way held together by formal practice?

Any genuinely creative person tries as far as possible to be objective and not to let their personality intrude into their work. In the case of a scientist it's obvious how this is done, by adhering to the rigours of the scientific method. But it's equally possible that an artist, psychologist, or religionist (to use DT Suzuki's terminology) can work entirely objectively,  which would mean to be entirely true to their experience and not to allow their personality to intrude.

So when people say Gautama left no trace, to my mind that just means that in the opinion of people who have studied his work and his sayings is that they find his work objective and devoid of an intrusive personal agenda. I don't have a view on whether or not they are right, but obviously since he died a long time ago a massive amount of garbage has been attached to his name and his teachings. But this isn't the trace of Gautama.

I think this koan expresses it very well.

Shih-tou once said, “Whatever talk you have about it,however you conduct yourself, such things have no concern with it.  To which Wei-yen answered, “Even when you do no talk about it, even when you do not conduct yourself in any way, such things have no concern with it.”

Shih-tou said “Here I have no room even for a needle’s point"
Wei-yen said "Here it is like planting flowers on a rock".

@chisanmichaelhughes

 Hmmm

Just to keep up my heretic's membership, I think in lew of one or the other or both..I'd say neither.

I think that the Buddha's teaching is better "passed on" by manifestation than realization..

As for realizations skipping generations.(or the continuity of a linage) to later re emerge,
I think it just speaks of when zazen is sincerely practiced, when it is not and when it is sincerely practiced again.

Howard  great answers and I have to say your heretics membership made me chuckle so much I burnt my toast for breakfast

Tufsoft lovely sayings but I am pleased someone recorded them

tufsoft wrote:

So when people say Gautama left no trace, to my mind that just means that in the opinion of people who have studied his work and his sayings is that they find his work objective and devoid of an intrusive personal agenda. I don't have a view on whether or not they are right, but obviously since he died a long time ago a massive amount of garbage has been attached to his name and his teachings. But this isn't the trace of Gautama.

I like this thank you.  For me an important example of Guatama's freedom from personal agenda is the stress he laid on people proving the teachings true for themselves.  It is hard to teach anything without it becoming a belief that other people accept without question.  The more exalted the teacher the more taboo it can be to question.  We see in the world that religion for the most part is about adherence to belief and not about challenging and testing for personal understanding.  At least in Buddhism the notion of personal practice and enlightenment survives.

If the buddha taught anything he taught that there is life after death and reincarnation. 

You know, the wheel of samsara, the cycle if rebirth and dukkha that enlightenment and nirvana is supposed to free us from... he went into this in great detail... chatted about his past lives saying "i was... i was ..." even saying how many rebirths left at this or that stage.....

Has anyone figured this out for themselves yet?

After all, if we are just biology, like the bugs and the weeds, all this mindstuff is just biology, with no real meaning at all in a universe the size of ours

Oh, and in science when we get down to it the experimenter is part of the experiment.... 

when we really get down to it we have shrodingers cat, the observer effect, entanglement and all that...

And Josh's posts of whats been found on transmission of late make it pretty much all hogwosh, and were a shock to me. So much so that i now think finding any genuine transmission would be pretty much impossible for me.

The Tibetans playing nasty games, the Japanese transmission a bit of a human mess really, and as for the heart sutra, what fool (joke) made that up in the 7th century...... when the Buddha was long gone....

And as for American transmission, the internet was my friend.. when I did the research 3 years ago and since, what i read from the 'mouths-of-those-that-were-there' was for me shocking, and to the outside observer, i guess frankly laughable.... it took me back to my days chanting all those names at Throssel.. yes I was indoctrinated for sure...

It all begs the question for me, if the zen church can screw up to such an extent for so long, what was it that they have been teaching that they call zazen?

@david

Zazen is simply one name for learning how not to corrupt sense data.
Often taught by tribal members drawing lines in the sand to define themselves.
No different than us, in any moment that we are unwilling to be less than that,
or trample over compassion & love while searching for wisdom.

Hi David...still having fun with the reincarnation thing ?  I reckon you should have been a politician .
No offence intended !

" If the buddha taught anything he taught that there is life after death and reincarnation. "

I thought that he said that after his death, he would not appear in any world at any time.
If so, for whom would there be "life after death" as you say, and why ?
You have said several times that your primary identity is Awareness, and not the body/mind complex.
O.k, so why the concern with reincarnation ?  what has it got to do with you ?  What is it that gets
reincarnated ?  The body and mind certainly die and don`t return so It must be only the Vasanas
that transmigrate ? ...the karmic momentum of your unconscious conditioning ?

If you`re identified with an individual/ Doer, how do you get free ...regardless of how many rebirths ?

I know you said that you have had the good fortune to receive your share of disillusionment and
have been opened up to what is "Hogwash" but where does it end ?
Do you really believe that the Buddha could see his previous lives as a progression belonging to
himself ?  Better yet, foretell the future lives of other people and be able to tell when they will be
enlightened ?  He would have to have been the creator of the Universe to be able to do that and
be privy to the karma of the total / creation.
Why is the reincarnation story necessary or relevant to liberation from suffering anyway ?

I see your mate Thich Nhat Hanh has just reinterpreted the Heart Sutra because he said they got
the original translation wrong 2000 years ago.  That should cause a bit of a fuss !  Is there anything
that hasn`t been interpreted and reinterpreted in the Buddha teachings ?   makes you wonder.

http://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/

David wrote:

Oh, and in science when we get down to it the experimenter is part of the experiment.... 

when we really get down to it we have shrodingers cat, the observer effect, entanglement and all that...

So in the quantum world the experimenter cannot but leave a trace, but the commentary to ox-herding eight says:
Whip, rope, person, and Ox -
all merge in No Thing.
This heaven is so vast,
no message can stain it.
How may a snowflake exist
in a raging fire.
Here are the footprints of
the Ancestors.

Trungpa`s concluding commentary on the ten ox herding pictures......

"
11. The Concluding Song
In the beginning there was nothing, nor was anything lacking.
The paper was blank. We pick up the paint brush and create the scene...
The landscape, the wind whipping water into waves.
Everything depends upon the stroke of our brush.
Our Ox lets the good earth lead it,
Just as our brush allows our hand to move it.
Take any direction, roam the world to its farthest edge.
All comes back to where it started... to blessed Emptiness "

Full Circle....Non Duality.  Emptiness seemingly deluded into thinking it wasn`t
Empty was always a dream only.

There can only be `Wake` in the Dream and it is for Dreamers only.
Awakening from the Dream, karma no longer applies because the `person` is
now known to be a Projection only and a Projection can only have Projected
karma.

However, if a `person` believes that he is outside the law of karma and is so
called `enlightened`,  then he has only awoken to a dream within a dream.  There
is no such thing as an enlightened `person`.

True freedom is freedom FROM the person and not FOR the person.  When that is
accomplished, the `person`we thought we were also lives freely and happily in the
world because he/she knows she is Non Separate from the knower of the Dream.
The knower of the dream is by nature separate from the dream and is free.

Personally, I don`t like the term `Emptiness` because it implies that it is a `thing` and
was not always translated this way historically. I much prefer the term Awareness which
is gaining much more traction nowadays.  Emptiness is touted as the ultimate reality of
self but, Emptiness can only be known via Awareness or it could not be known.
That Emptiness word has caused more misery and heartbreak for seekers than probably
any other poorly chosen word.

Worse still, it tends to get co-opted by teachers and gurus as an indication of being
enlightened.  ..... Oh, I`m so `Not Here`.....unlike you.  Yuk.
I think i`m rambling now...or was that ranting ?

Hi Howard!

For me sense data is just beginners zazen. Its awareness data where the fun and games start. After all the subconscious is is not found in awareness through the senses. And the expansion of awareness both inwards and outwards is not really just 'senses', it is far more than that..... and unless we are willing to go in to where we hold in our subconcious we are never going to let go of who we think we are...  are we? 

beginners compassion class.

Hi Mark. I dont know who wrote that, but I like it! It reverberates..

Hi Stan! Thank you for your kind words... I'm counting on your vote..

I agree re awareness. True I have an identity that is the awareness. The thing is, that identity doesnt do or say anything, due to its unconditional nature. So the identity that says all this rubbish is, if I am really honest, just little ol' me, clinging on in terror, scared of dying, scared of being alone, scared when all these people who have done zazen for 20, 30, 40 years are unable to come up with one experience of their own that shows any understanding whatsoever of transcending death. am I the only one who's had loads... 

'Do you believe the buddha could see his previous lives as a progresssion?'

Of course!!! I have experienced 52 of my own as exactly that. All the 100's i have personally witnessed in others, and the thousands now recorded were felt the same way.. clue.. and this is my real experience, not some theory in the head. 

And when I had my opening at 23 years old, the quote of the Buddha's above is extremely similar to what I experienced. As i let go I had a 'mystical' experience and 'saw' my past lives as a tiny part of a light filament that went back eons in time, and i saw the whole filament dissolve into the uncondiotional. What i dont understand is that none of you lot seem to have experienced anything like this, cos for me for the last 30 years it hasnt gone away and it is part of the core of my life. I wasnt a monk, i was just a terrified boy who was willing to open my awareness outwards, and inwards into my subconscious, to open to and scream out where i held for 4 years, until i found where i was most terrified of dying and finally let go, screaming... for real screaming... then the light filament of 'me' dissolved away... for ever, never to be reborn. I know this, because I experienced it profoundly and totally. 

'foretell the future lives of others'  of course! I relived a dream for 6 hours 6 months later, and told others what they would be doing in an hour with total accuracy. My brother has in my presence foretold the time of death (many months later) of some one and how they would die with total accuracy. He has done similar things for others. Not as a trick, but as part of his work. Mediums in my direct experience have foretold a families future with total accuracy. If we can do that now think what party tricks we will be able to do when we are buddhas....

'why is the liberation story necessary or relevant to liberation from suffering anyway?'

For me, because if one person has escaped then so can I. We need that belief to to walk the razer's edge and finally leap off. The path into where we hold, is full of childhood and past life terror, and fierce conditioning by our parents, based on their terror. I know this because I have vividly experienced it in my opening.  And we will likely walk it alone, for years. Few are really willing to go there. I've not personally met one person who has done this all the way down, and through. Buddhist teachers done it... i think not... google is your friend

Tihc nit hahn, naughty boy! Oh dear!

As for Trumpa, drunken, violent, nasty piece of work. Dont believe anything he said.. i did til i did the research, and I have a friend who trumpa lived with when he first arrived in the west. Shame that his whole life he was too scared to be honest about where he held. Like just about every other buddhist teacher out there... google is your friend...

I really like everything you say about emptiness and awareness!!! That is definitely my experience. A huge mistake in Buddhism has been to spout emptiness. My experience of the spacious awareness is that it is full of unconditional love and wisdom, as the Buddha i think said. So it is not empty at all, in fact. 

I believed in the Buddhist Way. I have gotten to the place, after discovering the mess of lies that Buddhism is, where I just do not give much credence to anyone who spouts theory without saying what it is they have personally experienced.

After all, the only reason not to say what actually happened to you to open, realise, etc is because you are too scared to be found out for who you really think you are.

'Do you believe the buddha could see his previous lives as a progresssion?'

This question raises a fundamental issue.. Is the pali canon, the tipitaka, what the buddha said? If only partially, then which bits are true?  

The thing is, he talked LOADS in the pali canon about sequential progressive rebirth. He made it a basis for his teaching. I would suggest to anyone here unsure of this to just google it and find the many authoritative scholars, and the many quotes like the one above I have posted. I intentionally quoted from the Sutta Pitaka, because it is one of the 2 'baskets' generally regarded as most authentically from the Buddha.

Well, if he said anything at all, he said about progressive, sequential rebirth. He said clearly that he had experienced the truth of it, and described how he experienced the truth of it. 

Now here's the thing. If you cant go with what he said about rebirth, what can you go with? His whole philosophy hinges on it. Either he's lying, in which case the whole things a lie.. or...

And he said "find out for yourselves, experience it for yourselves".....

Hence my starting this thread...

What have you experienced for yourselves about the Buddha's 'truth' of rebirth?

I am disinclined to believe in re-incarnation on two counts.

Firstly, on the intellectual count, that I see no evidence whatsoever that it occurs.

Secondly, on the tempramental count, that if it does occur, I have committed so many errors in my brief existence that I am undoubtedly doomed to be reborn as a maggot quaking under some sheep's dung-laden tail lest the shears of the shepherd find him out.

Indeed the footsteps Mark and
Now, before me, the dead trees
become alive

David's quote!
For me sense data is just beginners zazen. Its awareness data where the fun and games start. After all the subconscious is is not found in awareness through the senses. And the expansion of awareness both inwards and outwards is not really just 'senses', it is far more than that..... and unless we are willing to go in to where we hold in our subconcious we are never going to let go of who we think we are...  are we?

My first thought in  reading your response was  "This guy's challenging my right to be the most pompus OBCC er ever" but then calmer delusions re asserted themselves.

You had a 50/50 chance of either interpreting sense data as  pertaining to only one of the five skandha's
or
to the sense gates themselves which is eye, ear, nose, tongue, body & mind.

Your choice of interpreting it in the most limited way possible as opposed to it's wider option does not bode well for you finding the answers that you seek.
Such a mentality actually supports one of the reasons why OBC members discourage doubt as a practice.

Doubt as the means of questioning what we might otherwise take for granted, is healthy.
but...
Doubt, when it imparts it's own color onto what ever one sees, is delusional.

Personally I think the answers you seek, like just about any Dharmic answer that any of us have ever found, was always staring us straight in the face.
The real answer is always more about why we were unable to see it.

Hi again David.....

" Hi Stan! Thank you for your kind words... I'm counting on your vote.."

No problem. kind words are my preference.  glad to hear that you`re my local UKIP candidate !
consider my vote to be in the bag....

 
"when all these people who have done zazen for 20, 30, 40 years are unable to come up with one experience of their own that shows any understanding whatsoever of transcending death. am I the only one who's had loads... "

Nope.  loads of us have had non dual experiences..epiphanies, satoris etc.  Nothing unusual there at all.  many people have had loads of such experiences.  Unfortunately , that`s where it ends for most...experiences.
All experiences are temporary by definition and by nature. They do not stay.  They are worth no more than the understanding they impart.  There is no such thing as a permanent experience but, most seekers think that enlightenment will be just such a thing and pant after it....the big one that ends it all.
They are so wonderful and fulfilling in the moment that, when they happen, the mind switches off and all attention is placed on the experiential pleasure of the moment....as in any sensual peak experience. when the experience ends, knowledge or understanding is missing as the mind had been switched off.  It needs to be kept on and inquiring through the experience.
Chances are you`ll have "loads" more of such experiences Dave but, have they freed you so far ?

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" 'Do you believe the buddha could see his previous lives as a progresssion?'

Of course!!! I have experienced 52 of my own as exactly that. All the 100's i have personally witnessed in others, and the thousands now recorded were felt the same way.. clue.. and this is my real experience, not some theory in the head. "

Your `OWN` past lives ?  what makes them your own ?  Your supposed previous body didn`t make your present body and your present body can`t make your next body.  The body dies and so does the mind.  Where in any of this is anything that can be said to be your own ?
and "real experience" is no more reliable than "some theory in the head".  Experience is only what you interpret it to be.
I would say that this is pretty common knowledge.  Experience is interpreted by your conditioning/ Vasanas and becomes your own personal reality only. Your own `reality` bubble.
The whole issue revolves around the world , beings present and past,  being actually Real.  From the standpoint of Awareness as your true identity, they are seen to be a projection of Ignorance . Not Real but an appearance which seems Real.
You said that the past lives were "felt" the same way.   Again, feelings are not reliable either.  they are subjective. 

If you think past lives are real then Death has to be Real too.  If Death is real,  how can you transcend it ?  It would not be Death if you could...which is o.k but,  you can`t have it both ways.  If you do, it shows that you see yourself as the `wrong`you`.  the small limited you.  It is identity confusion...a confidence issue really as all doubts havn`t been resolved.

I`m not denying that one can have past life experiences and I have too. many people have had them.  there are people who are sensitive to this sort of thing and pick up bits and pieces of the whole story without following any spiritual path.  there are people in India who seem to have a passed down method of being able to know intimate facts about yourself that nobody else could have known.   But so what ?   It hasn`t freed them and they are usually as dumb as a potato.  However, there is no one `person` who has full knowledge of all the karmas of all things.  there is no access to that total knowledge for the individual as the individual is inert and a piece of the total...an effect of Ignorance.  An effect can never control a cause.
Knowing bits of past lives  is just a sort of tiny chicken [banned term] knowledge compared to the intelligence of the total field.

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" And when I had my opening at 23 years old, the quote of the Buddha's above is extremely similar to what I experienced. As i let go I had a 'mystical' experience and 'saw' my past lives as a tiny part of a light filament that went back eons in time, and i saw the whole filament dissolve into the uncondiotional. What i dont understand is that none of you lot seem to have experienced anything like this, cos for me for the last 30 years it hasnt gone away and it is part of the core of my life."

Well, the experience has gone away Dave...all experiences without exception do.  What has stayed, I will venture to say is, the degree of understanding that you assimilated from that experience.  that understanding is what ..stands under you and provides a foundation of your being, whether complete or not.  If not, then the understanding is still indirect.  There is you and there is the understanding seen as something separate.  The whole work, if it can be called that, is in actualising the
knowledge and living it totally as your being .  It is being able to say `I am Awareness` and knowing what that means without any doubt....to the extent that all sense of being a Doer is gone and the Vasanas/ conditioning being rendered non binding.
The proof is in the pudding.  It`s all right talking the talk as per Trungpa, but you have to be able to walk the walk....and people are not fooled for very long.

I think you`ll find that  lots of people have experienced things like this but have little or no inclination to talk about it.  It`s usually just water under the bridge after a while.

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" why is the liberation story necessary or relevant to liberation from suffering anyway?'

I did say "reincarnation" story and not liberation story earlier on Dave.  I still don`t see how the reincarnation story impacts on liberation from suffering though.

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" For me, because if one person has escaped then so can I. We need that belief to to walk the razer's edge and finally leap off. The path into where we hold, is full of childhood and past life terror, and fierce conditioning by our parents, based on their terror."

Finally "leap off" ?   Who`s going to do the leaping ?  from what and to where ?   If you are Awareness then Reality is seen as Non Dual...a partless whole.  It`s just another enlightenment myth we get stuck with.  usually from reading too many`spiritual`  books.
Admittedly, much suffering is often initiated in childhood years and that needs dealing with but sooner or later, that `inner child` has to be left behind so as to let the `inner adult` get a look in.

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" My experience of the spacious awareness is that it is full of unconditional love and wisdom, as the Buddha i think said. So it is not empty at all, in fact. "

I like it our Dave...bang on the money !  I would just leave out "it is full of".  That is indirect knowledge.  perhaps saying  "is nothing but"  would be better ?

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" After all, the only reason not to say what actually happened to you to open, realise, etc is because you are too scared to be found out for who you really think you are."

Two ways of looking at this.  hard to be sure what you mean..... plus, there can be many reasons for not wanting to say "what actually happened to you to open, realize etc ".  There`s no compulsion for anyone to say anything about their realizations really, is there ?  Who actually in the wider scheme of things cares one way or the other.

The false teachers/ gurus will always open their big mouths and sooner or later be seen for who they are.
That part of ourselves defined as who we `think` we are is the Ego.  It`s never going to go away because it believes it is the Doer who acts in the world so as to enjoy the result of it`s actions.  It will never do anything to endanger it`s existence.
When the Doer performs actions/karma and gets a desired result, it sees it`self as an enjoyer.  there is no joy in removing itself so, it will again, never do so. The Ego will twist anything to it`s own ends including false enlightenment, humility,mindfulness, surrender and try to co-opt it.   The rebirth story is particularly juicy for it as being reborn after death fits in perfectly with it`s chief desire.  Can you be sure that following the reincarnation `path` will not just keep you in an endless quest for endless past births ?
I don`t recall the Buddha ever saying anywhere that having a `mystical` experience was a prerequisite for Liberation.
Nor having past life experiences.
If he followed his past lives to their origin, what was his first one ?  What would have been the cause for it if there were no previous Vasanas/ conditioning ?         Most of all, what was his identity before his first life ?

As a final answer to your question I would say, for the person who has found peace, why would he/she want to talk about it particularly ?  That person would be fulness , peace and love personified.  whole and complete with no sense of lacking.  Who would that person want to talk to about his true identity when he sees all others as Non Separate from himself ?

Hey Howard.....

I like your " The real answer is always more about why we were unable to see it."

It`s the same as `the answer`s in the question`.   Clarify the question and you have your answer.
Trouble is, we live in the twilight world of Duality where nothing is ever distinct, definite or finite.
Always another question following a previous answer.
Questions,  Answers.    Chicken,  Egg....

Hey Stan
I thought your answers were commendably compassionate.

I like your " The real answer is always more about why we were unable to see it."

It`s the same as `the answer`s in the question`.   Clarify the question and you have your answer.
Trouble is, we live in the twilight world of Duality where nothing is ever distinct, definite or finite.
Always another question following a previous answer.
Questions,  Answers.    Chicken,  Egg....

An epiphanot, an unlightening or another nonversation to snack upon.

If the question exists as the questioner and the questioner exists as that question,
who really wants the answer to show up and obliterate everything.
or...
as you are really pointing out, the question only gets resolved along with our own duality.
or
Duality/Smuality..just call a dream a dream.
or
your Questions/Answers/Chicken or Egg......always going on, always becoming.
or