The people who brought us the theory of genetic determinism have been proven wrong. These are also the people who believe that our brain produces consciousness, a theory that cuts against Buddhism, insofar as Buddhism teaches that consciousness is the transmigrant from one life to the next. This takes us to the subject of NDEs (Near Death Experiences) where some scientists believe NDEs are bunk—being the hallucinations of an oxygen starved brain. Despite their protests NDEs still continue with no mechanism being yet found in the brain to account for such experiences. It is important to point out that only with the heart and the brain both flatlined that an NDE begins and then not in everyone. Those who try to induce an NDE by magnetic induction or by ketamine while the heart is beating and the brain active cannot induce a real NDE. Time and time again NDEs occur only when the heart and brain are flatlined for a period of time.
What is remarkable is that during these NDE experiences, language and cognitive functions still work although our conventional concept of time and space are much different. Many other extraordinary things occur like meeting with former relatives and teachers who have died. Some, during an NDE rise out of their lifeless body after which they are able to watch the medical staff below as they try to resuscitate their body. None of this should be surprising for a Buddhist except for Western Buddhists who still cling to materialism; who somehow imagine that the Buddha taught a doctrine of materialism. These kinds of critics, who believe they are just being skeptical, hide the fact that they have a counter-claim which is materialism. But this is not real skepticism—it is pseudoskepticism. The real skeptic suspends judgement because of a lack of evidence but is still open to the possibility.
Buddhism is premised on ending rebirth by realizing what does not transmigrate which is truly who we are and have always been. By this awakening, seeing true reality, the world then begins to become more illusory such that desire for it becomes, over time, much less. As transmigrants or conscious agents, all of us have constructed a world by means of discrimination which is only Mind because Mind, itself, as the absolute, is not seen. We are only able to see Mind through its constructions. As a result, we have also deeply invested in our fabricated, constructed illusions, trying to make them concrete. But this only deepens and intensifies the problem of rebirth.
Susan: If you have the some change buy Annie Kagan's book, The Afterlife of Billy Fingers.
Posted by: thezennist | March 31, 2016 at 10:18 PM
Thank you for writing something about transmigration. My father passed from this life (age almost 93)early on the 25th.
Posted by: Susan | March 31, 2016 at 02:40 AM