But I don't want to believe in reincarnation

[Zinjanthropos]

You are right about the need to accept there will be difficult days.  The Aztecs planned for them.  Actually, put difficult spells in their calendar.  I think there could be an advantage to this?  

A friend is speaking with me about the need of being more accepting and going with the flow.  I thought I was very good at that, and then I thought intentional living is a better way to go?      Perhaps you have some words of wisdom?  I am feeling totally confused.   To what degree should I attempt to plan my days and set my boundaries, or should I even do that?  

First thing I would do is to improve things is lessen my reliance on 20 & 31 year old cars. They have BDKRMA as licence plates. Buy a new car with a warranty. Very low interest (even 0%) rates plus the satisfaction of knowing mechanical issues are warrantied for as long as you desire(up to a max). 

To stay on topic: For some reason the old TV sitcom 'My Mother the Car' comes to mind.

[Carol]

You are right about the need to accept there will be difficult days.  The Aztecs planned for them.  Actually, put difficult spells in their calendar.  I think there could be an advantage to this?  

A friend is speaking with me about the need of being more accepting and going with the flow.  I thought I was very good at that, and then I thought intentional living is a better way to go?      Perhaps you have some words of wisdom?  I am feeling totally confused.   To what degree should I attempt to plan my days and set my boundaries, or should I even do that?  

First thing I would do is to improve things is lessen my reliance on 20 & 31 year old cars. They have BDKRMA as licence plates. Buy a new car with a warranty. Very low interest (even 0%) rates plus the satisfaction of knowing mechanical issues are warrantied for as long as you desire(up to a max). 

To stay on topic: For some reason the old TV sitcom 'My Mother the Car' comes to mind.

Well, I would buy a new car, but  I think I would rather pay rent and live in a nice apartment than live in my car.   Perhaps we have different realities?    Evidently, you can have both a nice home and a nice car and you probably even have the best insurance reducing your risk and increasing your security.    I hope you don't think people who do not make the same decisions are stupid or drug addicts?  

Would discussion of the mentality of affluence fit in this thread?     Or this would fit in this thread- I believe I mentioned I may have been an outlaw in a past incarnation.   What seems perfectly obvious to everyone, is not obvious to everyone because our circumstances are different.  I can totally understand justifying criminal behavior because I have a memory (?) of coming from that frame of mind, but my circumstances in this life give me a different point of view, and therefore, different judgment.   Understanding this, I don't believe there is a God judging us, nor a system of punishment in reincarnation.   

A friend has been talking to me about the oneness and we are all part of it.  If we do harm to another, we harm ourselves, because self and the other are only illusion.  There is no separation, only the oneness.   

A parasite, virus, bacteria that kills the host, is bringing on itself its own extinction because it can not live without the host.  I suppose finding another host can be like a reincarnation?  What do you think?

[Zinjanthropos]

A parasite, virus, bacteria that kills the host, is bringing on itself its own extinction because it can not live without the host.  I suppose finding another host can be like a reincarnation?  What do you think?

But just think how much stronger the bug is that can survive the host's death. How it adapted, evolved. 

I don't concern myself with any past life. This one's tough enough. As life evolves old genes are switched off, so nature is telling us something there. Move forward. I also abstain from doomsday talk, we all die in the end regardless.  What does a new life need from an old life that hasn't been passed on?

[Carol]

A parasite, virus, bacteria that kills the host, is bringing on itself its own extinction because it can not live without the host.  I suppose finding another host can be like a reincarnation?  What do you think?

But just think how much stronger the bug is that can survive the host's death. How it adapted, evolved. 

I don't concern myself with any past life. This one's tough enough. As life evolves old genes are switched off, so nature is telling us something there. Move forward. I also abstain from doomsday talk, we all die in the end regardless.  What does a new life need from an old life that hasn't been passed on?

That is an excellent question.  Compassion is stressed in Buddhism.  But there is also awareness of greater reality.  One Buddhist explained our dreams and hallucinogenic drugs give us glimpses of the greater reality, or through meditation, we can expand our consciousness.    Also as we age we can become increasingly aware of our personal dramas and that our thoughts about our reality are our personal thoughts and not exactly the whole reality.  In fact, our thoughts about our lives probably are based on many thinking errors.  Clearing our mind of those thinking errors is good for this life and if we are reincarnated we surely want to drop our karma unless we want to repeat it.

We can avoid painful karma by clearing ourselves of karma and expanding our consciousness so we carry with us a greater awareness and life skills for avoiding painful karma.   

If I were an outlaw in my past incarnation, I must have done something right because my karma this time is pretty good.  It was not so good when I was married to a man whom I may have known in the previous incarnation.  Hopefully, if there is a karma tie there, it is broken.

[Yazata]

But I don't want to believe in reincarnation.

You don't have to. Nobody's forcing you. (I don't really believe in it myself.)

The way I see it, reincarnation is basically an ethical doctrine, associated in the Indian tradition with the idea of karma. That basically means 'actions have consequences', particularly moral consequences.

It's similar to the Christian and Islamic idea of post-mortem judgement.

Imagine a thriving sinner, somebody who is deeply and fundamentally evil but nevertheless lives a prosperous and comfortable life. Now imagine a suffering saint, somebody who is absolutely blameless but lives a short and exceedingly painful life.

We have all seen those kind of things happen.

So how do we respond? Do we accept that the universe is a fundamentally unfair place? Do we deny moral values entirely? Or what?

To answer that, the 'Abrahamic' religions imagined that God judges everyone after they die and gives them whatever they truly deserve. The thriving sinner gets the punishment he/she deserves after death, while the suffering saint gets his/her just reward.

But there are a couple of problems with that. One of them is things like birth-defects. What accounts for that, since these infants haven't had time to do anything that they need to be punished so severely for? Is it a test of some kind? Does God have an extremely twisted sense of humor? Reincarnation addresses this by imagining that these babies did something in a previous existence that warrants their sad fate in this one.

Another problem with the Middle-Eastern postmortem judgement model is that once people are supposedly in heaven eternally, they can be as shitty as they want up there, without any fear of any additional repercussions. Gods in particular are imagined as laws unto themselves, immune from facing any consequences for their actions. The Indian version of reincarnation address this by imagining that all sentient beings are mortal and accrue karma. Gods are just very long-lived, powerful and live in an exceedingly luxurious heavenly realm. But even gods grow old and die eventually. They managed to become gods by accruing vast amounts of 'good karma' in earlier lives, but can fall out of heaven again if their subsequent actions deserve it. So even gods are on the wheel of rebirth and have future lives to think about.

And equally, hell-demons can rise up out of hell if they deserve it and their behavior warrants it. That addresses a third problem. If hell is eternal and there's no chance of escape, what about sinners who reform and becomes absolutely saintly down there in hell? Shouldn't that count for something?

So far this is an account of reincarnation as it was widely conceived by the Vedic tradition at the time of the early Upanishads and which was adopted by Buddhism and Jainism as their default ethical view.

In Buddhism things get much more complicated, philosophically speaking, when the no-self doctrine is added. If there isn't any substantial 'me', then what is it what transmigrates? In Buddhism it's basically a causal stream in which states at time A cause states at time B, which cause... It sounds a little like modern science, except that traditional Buddhism is phenomenalist instead of physicalist. These aren't physical states, they are states of awareness. But there isn't any substantial self that possesses the awareness, no mysterious 'atman' or Cartesian-style mind-substance that persists from life to life or even from moment to moment within a life. There's just awareness states causing awareness states causing awareness states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma

[Carol]

Nice to find a serious post. May I add Hinduism and Yoga existed together and out of this came Buddhism.

http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questi...m-and-yoga

One of the main difference is:

Buddhism doesn't speak about God but speak about "life and how to live" or better how to stop to suffer. ( so it is basically the oldest psychoanalytic method known )
Personally I believe that the reason behind this (non speaking about God) is because Buddha is like saying "Before speaking about God, you need to be ready and stable and find your self" or better "you don't need to speak about God, you have to find it and the shorter and safer path is inside you."

And I want to support you statement with this-

http://www.lionsroar.com/christof-ko...l-nature-mind/
Quote:
In 2013, Koch, one of the world’s leading experts on consciousness, went to a monastery in India to discuss that question with a group of Buddhist monks. He and the Dalai Lama debated neuroscience and mind for a full day.

They had different approaches. Koch offered contemporary scientific theories on the subject, and His Holiness countered with ancient Buddhist teachings. Yet, at the end of their discussion, the two thinkers agreed on almost every point.

[C C]

In Buddhism things get much more complicated, philosophically speaking, when the no-self doctrine is added. If there isn't any substantial 'me', then what is it what transmigrates? In Buddhism it's basically a causal stream in which states at time A cause states at time B, which cause... It sounds a little like modern science, except that traditional Buddhism is phenomenalist instead of physicalist. These aren't physical states, they are states of awareness.

Or the physical states are there, but abide within the "showings" of awareness. Materialist speculations arguably just extract those mechanistic and spatial properties from experience and then proclaim they are a manner of existence prior in rank to the sequence of manifestations slash phenomenal continuum.