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The Bardo Thodol (49 days in between)

#1
Magical Realist Offline
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bardo-Thodol

"Bardo Thödol, (Tibetan: “Liberation in the Intermediate State Through Hearing”) also called Tibetan Book of the Dead, in Tibetan Buddhism, a funerary text that is recited to ease the consciousness of a recently deceased person through death and assist it into a favourable rebirth.

A central tenet of all schools of Buddhism is that attachment to and craving for worldly things spurs suffering and unease (dukkha), which influence actions whose accumulated effects, or karma, bind individuals to the process of death and rebirth (samsara). Those who have attained enlightenment (bodhi) are thereby released from this process, attaining liberation (moksha). Those who remain unenlightened are drawn by karma, whether good or bad, into a new life in one of six modes of existence: as a sufferer in hell (enduring horrible torture), as a wandering ghost (driven by insatiable craving), as an animal (ruled by instinct), as a demigod (lustful for power), as a human being (balanced in instinct and reason), or as a god (deluded by their long lives into believing they are immortal).

The Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism that emerged in Central Asia and particularly in Tibet developed the concept of the bardos, the intermediate or transitional states that mark an individual’s life from birth to death and rebirth. The period between death and rebirth lasts 49 days and involves three bardos. The first is the moment of death itself. The consciousness of the newly deceased becomes aware of and accepts the fact that it has recently died, and it reflects upon its past life. In the second bardo, it encounters frightening apparitions. Without an understanding that these apparitions are unreal, the consciousness becomes confused and, depending upon its karma, may be drawn into a rebirth that impedes its liberation. The third bardo is the transition into a new body.

While in the bardo between life and death, the consciousness of the deceased can still apprehend words and prayers spoken on its behalf, which can help it to navigate through its confusion and be reborn into a new existence that offers a greater chance of attaining enlightenment. Reciting of the Bardo Thödol, usually performed by a lama (religious teacher), begins shortly before death (if possible) and continues throughout the 49-day period leading to rebirth.

Although tradition attributes the Bardo Thödol to Padmasambhava, the Indian Tantric guru (spiritual guide) who is credited with introducing Buddhism to Tibet in the 7th century, the book was likely composed in the 14th century. Since the early 20th century it has been translated into English and other Western languages many times. The first English-language translation was made by Walter Evans-Wentz (1927), who titled the work “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” because of certain similarities he claimed to detect between it and the Egyptian Book of the Dead—for example, the existence of stages through which the deceased must travel before rebirth."


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[Image: 3113984-NIUSQHBI-7.jpg]

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#2
C C Offline
Switching to pre-Buddhist Indian philosophy, I tend to feel that literal transmigration is just something they let the laity believe because it's more practical or easier for the latter to apprehend. Or customized "to suit the particular beliefs" as somebody put it in one of the quotes further below.

If Atman pervades all embodied instances of consciousness (perhaps akin to generic subjectivity), then that more fundamental and static identity of who everyone is, is "already there" with respect to other bodies (both fetal and post-natal). There's no traveling essence hopping from one life to the next. It would be the recorded events stored in a specific brain/body that provide the contingent ego or self superlying on a universal, generic, ultimate identity.

The "gurus" of certain belief schools might go that route for the same reason (an easier idea to grasp) that Hermann Weyl and others figuratively portrayed consciousness as moving spirit-like through the 4D worm-like depiction of different brain states in block-time, so as to explain the illusion of temporal flow, or change. [See footnote at very bottom.] But each incremental sequence of brain states corresponding to a single interval of cognition actually always has the latter -- each is not "waiting" for a spirit-like essence to catch up to it and thereby "light it up with manifestation", or alternatively has already had that happen and fallen back into dormant status.

Each embodied life-history, just as with each distinct interval of brain consciousness of one of those, internally presents itself as an island rather than part of a whole, due to the isolated nature of the memory that is providing the conceptual understanding of the information held by the organism. Each island moment of cognition is solipsist-ically restricted to only verification of itself as real, but the relational coordination with the rest forces those to be acknowledged as well. With the over-arching memory organization and interconnections making it seem as if they are replacing each other in turns rather than simultaneously existing slash experiencing themselves.

Just quasi-randomly exploring some of those schools of thought in terms of what they believe...
- - - - - -

https://happinessofbeing.blogspot.com/20...ce-or.html

Therefore it is not quite correct to say as you did, ‘According to Ramana Maharshi, there is no reincarnation’. According to him neither birth nor rebirth (or reincarnation) is real, because the ego itself is not real, but so long as the ego seems to exist, the oft-repeated cycle of birth, death and rebirth will also seem to occur. Therefore we cannot attain liberation from this cycle of birth and death merely by killing our present body.

The real culprit is not this or any other body, because they are all just a creation of our own mind, like any body that we experience as ourself in a dream. The real culprit is only our ego, which gives rise to the illusion of mind, body and world, so what we need to kill is not our present body or any other body, but only our ego. And since our ego is only mistaken experience of ourself, the only way to kill it is to experience ourself as we really are — and the only way to experience ourself as we really are is to investigate ourself by trying to be exclusively and clearly self-attentive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80tman_(Hinduism)

In Hinduism, Atman refers to the self-existent essence of human beings, the observing pure consciousness or witness-consciousness as exemplified by the Purusha of Samkhya. It is distinct from the ever-evolving embodied individual being (jivanatman) embedded in material reality, exemplified by the prakriti of Samkhya, and characterized by Ahamkara (ego, non-spiritual psychological I-ness Me-ness), mind (citta, manas), and all the defiling kleshas (habits, prejudices, desires, impulses, delusions, fads, behaviors, pleasures, sufferings and fears). Embodied personality and Ahamkara shift, evolve or change with time, while Atman doesn't. It is "pure, undifferentiated, self-shining consciousness."

As such, it is different from non-Hindu notions of soul, which includes consciousness but also the mental abilities of a living being, such as reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception and thinking. In Hinduism, these are all included in embodied reality, the counterpart of Atman.

Atman, in Hinduism, is considered as eternal, imperishable, beyond time, "not the same as body or mind or consciousness, but... something beyond which permeates all these". Atman is the unchanging, eternal, innermost radiant Self that is unaffected by personality, unaffected by ego; Atman is that which is ever-free, never-bound, the realized purpose, meaning, liberation in life. As Puchalski states, "the ultimate goal of Hindu religious life is to transcend individually, to realize one's own true nature", the inner essence of oneself, which is divine and pure.

https://www.eaglespace.com/spirit/gita_r...nation.php

The so described aatman cannot be harmed by weapons - and since it is formless and shapeless - it cannot be cut into pieces by any instrument. In the same way, fire cannot burn it or destroy it. Water cannot wet it because water can only act on elements which have a physical description or dimension. For the same reason, wind cannot dry it or exert any force on it. Thus the aatman is beyond the influence of all the three primary forces (fire, water and wind) which can affect entities having physical form and description.

The aatman cannot be cut, burnt, suffer any decay or be dried out. The five forces of nature which are capable of destroying physical elements by their combined actions have no influence on the aatman. That is why it is referred to as nitya or permanent or unchangeable. This permanence gives it the powers of omnipresence, omniscience and stability. It is this stability that gives it the quality of immovability and the aatman is called sanatana (hinduism is also referred to as sanatana dharma). Sanatana literally means - that which is not created or destroyed - it belongs to time immemorial.

The aatman cannot be known or understood by purely using the brain and its mental powers. Hence it is known as ‘avyakta’ or indescribable - that which defies description. It cannot be known purely by meditating or thinking upon it (’chintan’) - hence it is known as ‘achintya’. Only those entities that can be perceived by our five senses can be understood by ‘chintan’.

Since the aatman cannot be described by any elements known to man, it is without shape or ‘vikaar’ and is known as ‘avikaari’ or immutable. It is beyond the range of form or thought and the changes that affect the mind, life and body do not touch him. Forms may change; things may come and go but that which remains behind them all is for ever.

https://happinessofbeing.blogspot.com/20...m-and.html

Siddheswarananda also quotes Sankara’s commentary on Māṇḍukya Kārikā 3.29: ‘How is it possible for Reality to pass into birth through Maya? It is thus replied; as the snake imagined in the rope is identical with the being of the rope when seen as the rope, so also the mind from the standpoint of knowledge of the ultimate reality is seen to be identical with Atman. […]’ (p. 70). However, this does not imply it is the mind as ātman that has created the world, because from ‘the standpoint of knowledge of the ultimate reality’ in which the mind is seen to be nothing other than ātman, there is no world.

The rope causes fear only when it is mistaken to be a snake and not when it is recognised to be only a rope, so what causes fear is not actually the rope itself but only the illusion that it is a snake. Likewise, the world is not created or projected by ātman itself, but only by the illusion that we (ātman) are this mind. In other words, when (in a state of self-ignorance) we experience ourself as a mind, we thereby create the illusory appearance of this world, but when (in the state of true self-knowledge) we experience ourself as we really are, we experience nothing other than ourself, so there is then no world or anything else other than ourself (ātman).

When the mind rises from ourself (ātman) the world appears, and when it subsides back into ourself the world disappears, so the world seems to exist only so long as the mind is active, and according to Sri Ramana it does not exist at all in the absence of the mind...

[...] Since ātman alone actually exists, what seems to be a mind is in fact only ātman, so if we carefully examine the essential form of this mind (our ego or primal thought called ‘I’) we will find that what it actually is is only ātman.

[...] If we read Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi and other such books that record (more or less accurately) conversations with Sri Ramana, it is clear that he expressed and discussed a wide diversity of philosophical views or doctrines, but we should not mistake everything that he said to be an expression of his real teachings, because as Sri Muruganar indicated in verse 100 of Guru Vācaka Kōvai many of the ideas he expressed were only intended to suit the particular beliefs, aspirations and needs of whichever person he was then speaking to. Therefore to understand what his real teachings are, we need to think carefully and critically (that is, with keen intellectual discrimination and discernment) about everything that he wrote and is recorded to have said, and should not blindly accept that whatever he said is his actual teaching.


- - - footnote - - -

Hermann Weyl: "The objective world simply IS, it does not HAPPEN. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line [4D worm] of my body, does a certain section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time." --Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science

Robert Geroch: "There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as 'moving through' space-time, or as 'following along' their world-lines. Rather, particles are just 'in' space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle." --General Relativity from A to B

Paul Davies: "Peter Lynds's reasonable and widely accepted assertion that the flow of time is an illusion (25 October, p 33) does not imply that time itself is an illusion. It is perfectly meaningful to state that two events may be separated by a certain duration, while denying that time mysteriously flows from one event to the other. Crick compares our perception of time to that of space. Quite right. Space does not flow either, but it's still 'there'." --New Scientist, 6 December 2003, Sec. Letters
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#3
Magical Realist Offline
Much to ponder on this issue of the atman or soul. How do we plumb its nature or divine its ways? Is it inside the body, like the mind? Or is it beyond it, enshrined in its own ineffable and dimensionless state? I like to think the soul evolves and transmogrifies from the mundane experiences of our lives, in keeping with the poem "The Ship of Death" by D H Lawrence. Only the deepest and most moving experiences reach the soul in its voyage to infinity, fortifying it for the stormy adversities to come. Maybe our dreams are when our souls are processing and cogitating the stress and turmoil of our worldly lives. I quote the poem at length because of its profound and relevant implications:

"The Ship of Death (1933)

By D.H. Lawrence

I

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one’s own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.

II

Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.

The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.

And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can’t you smell it?

And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.

III

And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?

With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?

Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?

IV

O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!

How can we this, our own quietus, make?

V

Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.

And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.

Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise.

Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
already the flood is upon us.

Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.

VI

Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.

We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.

We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying
and our strength leaves us,
and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.

VII

We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.

A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.

Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,
upon the flood’s black waste
upon the waters of the end
upon the sea of death, where still we sail
darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.

There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening black darkening still
blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness at one with darkness, up and down
and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more
and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!

VIII

And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
between them the little ship
is gone
she is gone.

It is the end, it is oblivion.

IX

And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.

Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait, for there’s the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion.

Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
of a flood-dawn.

Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.

A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.

X

The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.

Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.

Oh build your ship of death, oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you."
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