originally posted by: ChesterJohn
a reply to: DayAfterTomorrow
yeah why stop there, go ahead and become a Buddhist or a Hindu who believe in reincarnation that you live a different life as a person, after your
first life, second life and onward until you reach godhood (a true and unreachable dream). some digress and become a new life as a bug or cow or
lizard. This is why in India and in many Buddhist countries they are vegetarians and don't kill snakes, cows or rats and roaches, for fear it is a
relative who was not a good person during this particular reincarnation.
Christians are not reincarnated they are resurrected and their corruptible flesh and mortal flesh puts on Incorruptible and immortality. It is the
same body just made up of new holy material. It is a new body in a sense but it is the same body as Christ. He was recognized after his resurrection
so shall we after ours, just we will be holy before him in love. The new body is only new in materials not in fashion or Person.
Seems the OP is confusing Resurrection and Reincarnation.
It would really help a great deal if you did not put forward your own interpretation of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, as they are misleading.
The issue of reincarnation is one of great subtlety and though I have been a practicing Buddhist for 5 years and an interested onlooker for much
longer I still dont fully understand it.
However one thing is very clear- when we do not carry our old personality in to a new body. We cannot as our personality is a fusion of our substrate
consciousness (prob the equivalent of the Christian Soul as best as I can see) with our current body and its own peculiarities in function. New
body=new personality. One Buddhist formulation I have heard is that that what is reincarnated is the mix of our accrued virtues (compassionate action)
with our accrued wisdom (wisdom meaning realisation of Sunyata- or emptiness).
The end point of the reincarnation cycle is NOT becoming a god, it is reaching the end of compulsive, conditioned action which is focussed on a narrow
view of one's well being. It is becoming a buddha.
Bad karma is accrued by actions designed to hurt others for ones own good.
Good karma is accrued through actions designed to help others and thereby gain from it (status or popularity as a fine or noble person).
Any action that has karmic consequences binds one to further rebirths, and all the aggrevation that entails. Old age, sickness and death are
inevitable concomitants of re-birth, no matter how wealthy you are.
Sunyata (emptiness) is a very difficult term to grasp too. However there are many accounts of the Siddhis that advanced meditation masters can
achieve, and they are quite similar to the miracles that many of the apostles could accomplish after Christ's death. I am starting to think that
realising emptiness means gaining a full experiential knowledge of the quantum nature of the universe (even the laptop I am using now consists mostly
of empty space with the material part being tiny pinpricks of mass in the nuclei of the atoms, nuclei and atoms that all exist in a state of quantum
entanglement with other atoms elsewhere).
So these stories of telepathy, of being able to pass unimpeded through solid walls, of faith healing, etc may well be completely plausible.
But then-- I think that Christ thought it would be normal for his followers to be able to do this sort of thing as well.
-- but not if you read too much. It is really rather bad for us all- all that sitting and reading, harnessing most of our brain to the task of
repeated stereotyped eye movements.