Bhikkhu Bodhi came through the SiliconValley area a couple of weeks ago, giving a couple of talks. One dealt with the current Buddhisms / mindfulness tower-of-Babel issue, outlining "Dhamma's Five Important Aspects", or, as he put it, 5 "parameters" central to Theravada.

Here's the complete talk (and followingQ/A) in video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFGscLbctSk&feature=youtu.be

or just the audio:
http://www.mahabodhi.org/MP3/2015/151025bodhi.mp3

Interesting perhaps to some here, whether in the pro- and contra- camp.

Edit a spelling, 20151117 18:04

thanks chris,
an excellent talk, especially the Q&A where he emphatically defends the buddhist teachings of karma and the persistrence of the "stream of conciousness" extending over lifetimes.

i think he is perfoming a task which has been invaluable to buddhism over its lifespan, namely: to try to keep the theravada dharma pure and truo to the original teachings.  he walks the thin line between being dogmatic yet giveing credit where it is due to "non-doctrinal" usages of the buddhist technologies.

i haven't yet made it through his abbidhamma series but what i've heard so far it is pure gold.

thanks for the post.

That answer to the question (that I asked there) was also remarkable in that it was exactly the same as the answer Thanissaro Bhikkhu gave when I asked him the same question a couple of years ago.

Understanding it requires deep understanding and vision, but I believe it's possible.

wow! so now we cann connect a voice with the image and postings? :-)

this view is also supported by all tibetan teachings, from tulkus, bardo thodal, and and and, as well as the pureland views of other traditions. 

that there are no ( as far as i know ) direct sutta based statements to this effect is disconcerting. there is plenty of inferential evidence, talking of past lives etc, but what is missing for me is the sutta based description of the mechanism for a transference of karmic / intentional traces to the "next life".

do you know of any such teaching outside of mahayana vajrayana?

unusual post since the original Pali suttas attributible to the Buddha never mention a stream of consciousness extending over lifetimes 

hi nicky,
that's what i mean!  conciousness is dependent.  what is the mechanism by which past or future lives are possible in either a mundane or supramundane view?

"stream of conciousness" is, in this case, my own citation although bikkhu bodhi does use it too i believe.

how do YOU square this lack of sutta support for such a mechanism and the mention of past lives and the supposition of future ones, or do you?

thanks

tom

there is no such things as a 'YOU' (apart from delusion)

there are only a few (obviously dodgy) suttas that mention literal past lives, such as when the Buddha allegedly said he was a chariot maker (AN 3.15) 

as for those suttas that use the words 'pubbenivesa', this does not mean 'past lives' 

the Pali language is not necessarily as the materialists consider it to be 

regards 

hi nicky, thanks for the sutta citations.

by "YOU", i meant your personal mundane take on the lack of a description for that mechanism by which karmic tendencies are transmitted to the "next life".

Just reviewing another recent talk – Thanissaro Bhikkhu on "The true dharma has disappeared" (Sept 20 2015 at IMC) – it seems worth mentioning here also, as it deals with the same general area as Bhikkhu Bodhi's talk:

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/5999.html

I love me some pali cannon, but this true dhamma thing is a bit lame imho. As if there's one exact, perfect interpretation to be gleamed from thousands of pages written in an ancient language from which there is no perfect way to translate. 

There have been so many schools of buddhism, and egaging in this my buddhism is better than yours is a waste of time. I think different intepretations, innovations and debate are good things. 

I also think it's not healthy to treat the pali cannon like an unfalible bible, which is a tendency I myself am guitly of.

Hi Tom, Greetings Everyone, 

Here is a Bhikku Bodhi Link on Rebirth to add to the discussion.

http://www.budsas.org/ebud/ebdha058.htm

But, also , I wanted to add to the discussion, a way of looking at this phenomenon.  Say, consciousness arises, and conciousness falls away.  So too, do waves arise and fall away.  Say, even futher, like in an ocean, a vast ocean, waves arise and fall, many waves, waves intersecting, waves forming together, splitting apart.  Each wave does, even in some minute way have a cause and effect upon each and every other wave.  Every wave being dependent upon causes and conditions.  Say each wave is like a consciousness arising and passing away.  So, of each wave is as a consiousness arising and passing away, indeed, there is no YOU moving along through each wave, No life jumping from one wave to another, yet paradoxically there are impressions passed along from one wave to another.  But, again, there is no YOU that had these impressions before, though they may be impressions passed along from other lives, i.e. consciousness events, passed along from one wave to another, until in forms and combine with the present moment, only to be carried along and to pass away, rippling out along into some future, influencing some possible future consciousness, for a period of time.

So, I am not trying to allude this to an actual separate consciousness that jumps along the waves, either, no.

Nicky is expressing this best with not just Sutta Citations, but the Undersatnding of Sutta Citations.  Though , I do admit, my understanding at this point is rather limited , at this time.  So, I want to contemplate again, not just the words, but the Wisdom the words are conveying.
I think also that it may be considered this way, It is not so much that one is recollecting their memory from a past life, but rather to say that one is recollecting a memory from a past life.

Or rather, and perhaps better phrased, it is not my phenomenon being recollected, but just phenomenon being recollected.

But, it seems that what all this really points to is that the current standard human concept of Time may be in error.  i.e. How can a conscious event from the past reoccur in the present?  Or, paranormally speaking, how can an event from the future be remembered in the present?

Psi

Psi,
VERY much appreciated.  Thanks all.

re: Jeff Nieves (11/18/15 4:42 PM as a reply to Chris J Macie)

"… this true dhamma thing is a bit lame imho. As if there's one exact, perfect interpretation to be gleamed from thousands of pages written in an ancient language from which there is no perfect way to translate."

True – everything we read and think, and those who wrote those 1000's of pages, commented on them, etc. are all interpretations. There's something worthwhile, however, in the attitude and dedication of people like Bhikkhu Bodhi, who dedicatet heir lives to embodying, in precise detail, a long tradition (one of many, each being an interpretation), so that that information (interpretation), that has been rewarding for so many over the ages, can be preserved for us (who are interested) and for generations going forward. Without this kind of anchoring, things dissolve quickly (within a few generations) into interpretations more conditioned by personal variation – a tangle of views.

Bhikkhu Bodhi does state clearly (in the originally cited talk) that he acknowledges the skilful, beneficial effects that can arise from other viewpoints and interpretations other than his / his tradition. He just stands firm that representing views as "Therevadan Buddhism" which don’t hold to some kind of standard, (like the 5 criteria hepresents – tho others in the same tradition may see the critical criteria s/w differently), which substantially diverge from traditional standards, can damage the preservation of a tradition. If someone wants to reformulate "Buddhism" differently, then name it as a different kind of Buddhism, rather than try to hijack well-established tradition.

"There have been so many schools of buddhism, and egaging in this my buddhism is better than yours is a waste of time. I think different intepretations, innovations and debate are good things."

I think the really earnest followers of different classical Buddhist traditions (e.g. the different monastic traditions), and, for that matter, followers of newer, modern traditions (possibly yet in formation) believe in their own, as it pragmatically works for them, but would tend to not necessarily say theirs is better, or the best, truest in any absolute sense – i.e. that the others are "wrong". And new interpretations, innovative views that come with evolving human mental, cultural lived experience, etc. are definitely "good things".

"I also think it's not healthy to treat the pali cannon like an unfalible bible…"

Also a reasonable position. In fact, many of the classical traditions remain heavily rooted in oral tradition, for which the written texts are a kind of mnemonic aid.The understanding, interpretations of the texts are passed down, person to person, in decade-long teaching-learning relationships in which not just reading / study, but also, primarily, practice and the rewards thereof are the most important.

People who come along and take the texts themselves as absolute, and in particular their own "new", "finally discovering the REAL truth" interpretations of the texts, very often result in attitudes like fundamentalist Biblical sects – radically idiosyncratic, and usually dogmatic and intolerant.

re: Psi (11/18/15 10:35 PM as a reply to tom moylan)

"Here is a Bhikku Bodhi Link on Rebirth to add to the discussion…."

Thanks for that. B. Bodhi does a good job there too, trying to organize the points of belief and various discussions around them. Knotty issues -- rebirth, kamma, the paticca-samuppada ("links of co-dependent arising"),etc.; as the Buddha (purportedly) said, very difficult to understand.

I, for one, am interested in continuing to try to understand, observing that long-term practice, study, etc. (aka "the gradual path") does get to deeper insight and knowledge of things that initially might seem outlandish.

Others who assert that what the Buddha did or didn't say and mean is to be critically determined by our modern "scientific" or whatever viewpoints – it's fine for them to form their viewpoints of understanding "dharma".

Too often one sees them then denigrate traditional views as "outdated", or foreign, foolish beliefs, etc., often clearly based in unconscious biases, and with polemic intent and language – that betrays, IMO, an underlying vulnerability, defensiveness. If one truly has profound, direct inner knowledge, as an accomplished Taoist teacher of mine often said, there is no need to defend it; and no need to offensively attack other viewpoints.

I, too, am interested in continuing to try to understand, observing that long-term practice, study, etc. (aka "the gradual path") does get to deeper insight and knowledge of things that initially might seem outlandish.

Well worded, Chris.  I can only agree.

I like to think of myself as a simile to a Caterpillar, and if someone were to tell me, as a Caterpillar, how vast was the Universe, tell me about Black Holes, Colors, Ranges of sounds, Musical Notes, Mathematics, That Flight was possible, I would not understand all this , as a Caterpillar.  But, if I could, as a Caterpillar , recognize that I had limits, by being a Caterpillar, that there could always be more to Understand.  So, in this way , I try to keep an Open Mind, because, who knows?

Ironically and metaphorically related, Caterpillars turn into a virtual liquid, before they change....  

Psi