It seems clear to me that existence (i.e. "the universe") has a complex, awesome and wonderful disposition to yield humans. When one considers the number of things that have to just happen to interact with one another in the way that yields us, it is mind boggling. But the indisputable (I think) fact is, it does. The main evidence: we are here. This planet swarming with people and other "life" is just what happens in a universe made of the stuff this universe is made of (e.g. what we currently understand as matter and energy behaving the the strange ways they do).
When you remove anthropomorphic notions from statements of how things happen, such as white blood cells "seek out" viruses, or natural "selection", the magnitude of the improbability of our existence is astounding... and yet, here we are.
Consciousness is a description we use for this experience we have of "I." But consciousness is seated in the interaction of particularly joined, accumulated, aggregated matter. That is, a brain. When the brain is gone, de-aggregated, non-functional, I think consciousness is gone. There remains in the universe the potential for aggregation into a new consciousness (a baby), and the matter that was aggregated as the old consciousness returns to the universe, but a specific, identifiable link between the old and the new is not suggested.
The stuff of one wave is falling is the same as the stuff of a new wave arising, but they are not the same waves.
The Last Post
4 years ago
1 comment:
Well said Lauren, coincidentally this is the topic I was musing on before I left for vacation. The fact that one wave is not the same as the other is what distinguishes Buddhism from other sects that believe in rebirth. It is the lack of a permanent self or entity going through rebirth that enables one to get detached. For all that I know, my energy could become a tree or a rock after this current self decomposes..so, no point in getting too hung up on next birth!!
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