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**osteoftex** · 05-14-2010, 10:30 AM

from post #4

Jack, you asked a question and I answered it,and gave the reasons for it.

Now you are asking me to speculate upon irrelevant conjectural matters, and in doing so proselytizing the "re-birth" superstition to me, which now appears to be the reason for starting the thread in the first place.

The point is the quenching of suffering. The Buddha was clear on that, and so was I. Brahmavamso's "without 're-birth' we might as well die and be done with it" fallacy is a circular argument that only appears to make sense from its own perspective, that of its own assumptions. From any other angle it's nonsense.

In the context of his own teachings, the Buddha spoke of "jati", "birth", which carries the same sort of meanings as it does in English, including the "birth" if ideas, and the "birth" of self-view. He spoke of the nidanas of the paticcasamuppada as "arising and taking birth" depending upon each other. The Buddha never taught reincarnative "re-birth" of a "non-atta", or especially of any kind of "consciousness" -- and the latter of the two he humiliated a monk for claiming he taught, in MN 38.

Samsara for the Buddha was the misery of habitual patterns of thought that produce suffering in the here-and-now.

05-14-2010, 10:30 AM	#15
osteoftex Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 542 Senior Member	from post #4 Jack, you asked a question and I answered it,and gave the reasons for it. Now you are asking me to speculate upon irrelevant conjectural matters, and in doing so proselytizing the "re-birth" superstition to me, which now appears to be the reason for starting the thread in the first place. The point is the quenching of suffering. The Buddha was clear on that, and so was I. Brahmavamso's "without 're-birth' we might as well die and be done with it" fallacy is a circular argument that only appears to make sense from its own perspective, that of its own assumptions. From any other angle it's nonsense. In the context of his own teachings, the Buddha spoke of "jati", "birth", which carries the same sort of meanings as it does in English, including the "birth" if ideas, and the "birth" of self-view. He spoke of the nidanas of the paticcasamuppada as "arising and taking birth" depending upon each other. The Buddha never taught reincarnative "re-birth" of a "non-atta", or especially of any kind of "consciousness" -- and the latter of the two he humiliated a monk for claiming he taught, in MN 38. Samsara for the Buddha was the misery of habitual patterns of thought that produce suffering in the here-and-now.
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