Re-incarnation - anyone told you yours ?

Nei Jia: the Qigong and Taijiquan Forum Qigong and Meditation
21

HHHhhmm

someone mentioned earlier in this thread that re-incarnation was a tenent of Oriental philosophy. Well it isn’t considered to be the case of Taoist philosophy. Sure traditionally Taoists culitvated spiritual and energetic Longevity and immortality, but they didn’t actually hold the idea of reincarnation up very high at all. Reincarnation, comes from the Buddhist and before that Indian religions primarily, and im sure a whole host other faiths too (im no expert in this field). Taoist however didn’t dwell on the past that much or indeed the future, at the expense of missing present Tao itself.

I do find it amusing that everyone (well ok most people) have done something Karmically wrong in their past lives, to of been relegated downwards from their lofty positions in the past to their present normal conditions. If I have had a past incarnation it does not matter to me in the slightest, as I find my present condition within these times that we are all living in today problematic enough to get a grip on.

Still I don’t want to sound too cynical here, just that I find great volumes of hope in the life story of Jetsun Milarepa, Tibets greatest Saint and meditation master, who after committing many murders in his earlier part of his life managed to purify himself in one lifetime to ascend from the Karmic wheel and never to reincarnate. I urge all and any to get a decent copy of his life story and absorb its sentiments.

OM MANI PADME HUM.

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Jetsun Milarepa was truly the living proof of the benefits of inner fire.

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Saint Paul was also a murderer before he was called by God.

Sincerely,

Scott

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Prana

Yes too true. The first time I ever heard of Milarepa was in the perfected writings of “Illumious Mind” by the Late great and very Venerable Kalu Rinpoche. Something very deeply nourished me in reading the stories in it about the events in Milarepa’s . I am not a Buddhist by nature, but the story of Jetsun Milarepa had an effect upon me to which it helped me to not specifically dwell on the difference of faiths, but on pure teachings of compassion, awareness, dedication and the nature of the mind.

This of course lead me on to read backwards from Milarepa to each Master beforehand: Marpa the Translator, Naropa, Tilopa and Nagarjuna. I find
the story of Milarepa inspiring, and encouraging regardless of faith or creed. I only wish more people have heard of him!

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Repulsive Monkey - did you read this line from the chapter I posted from Lao Tzu’s Hua Hu Ching?

“If you attach yourself to gross energies - loving this person, hating that clan, rejecting one experience or habitually indulging in another - then you will lead a series of heavy, attached lives.”

Sure sounds like an explicit reference to reincarnation from the “founder” of Taoism himself to me…

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I had an extremely strange (and familiar) dream once… different from anything I really ever had before.

Remind me to tell the story. :slight_smile:

Ryu

“One who takes pride in shallow knowledge or understanding is like a monkey who delights in adorning itself with garbage.”

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Ryu, please do tell :slight_smile:

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I experoienced deja vu once, but it was just a glitch in the matrix.

I am a big beleiver in luck. The more I work, the more luck I have.

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Did you make the jump? :smiley:

cxxx:::::::::::>
You’re fu(king up my chi

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hi guys its nice to wonder over here and and see some good conversation for once,

Prana in many of my past lives i have seen they are quite spectacular and quite weird to see how they connect with my present life. In most of my lifes in fact allmost all that i can remember i am in some sort of military group, 2 of my lifes i wont detail i was killed in battle but we dont care about those especially since in one of them i was a peasant in the fields and had my head cut of by bandits/invading army ???

anyway back to the ones i am happier to remember,

i have been a soldier in sparta, but remember little of that lifetime except for a sense of honour, It was a long long time ago prolly one of the oldest i can remember, And ironically i have come back again and i am greek in this lifetime.

Anyhow from the ones i remember most i am oriental , I have been a samurai a martial monk a normal martial artist , and in what i believe to be one of my most recent lives i was initiated in india , but i cannot remember much of that either it is blocked for somereason like someone is saying DONT even try to think about it.

When i was a samurai i first started getting glimpses and remembering this when we i was doing aikido , i would do this specific technique where the whole body is rotating and i would look down and i could see grass on the floor and a hakama flowing around me , this was weird since i was wearing a tracksuit inside a small “house”. Anyhow i remember training on top of a mountain with a sword wearing something like a hakama but not exactly it was more skirt like and also remember riding into battle, the weird thing is it was dark when we were riding into battle and it was raining, what i find weird about this is that it was me in front of about 20 maybe 50 horse riders going into battle with another so many people , but why at night , and then it intensifies and ther are hundreads of thousands of people on each side, by now i am really old im like 50 odd and am wearing a weird helmet very unlike what you actually see in the movies.

Anyhow, from my 2 lives i remember in china , on i was a monk and i can hardly remember any of this life , ive just had 2 different friends say to me you were in the temple with me and it was destroyed the other one is like , you were in the temple with me and there is a huge fire and everyone is running away.

Lastly my favorite life time is i believe more recent around the era of wong fei hung etc etc, i was a martial artis and a herbalist/ acupuncturist and what i remember vividly is me holding a needle about to insert it into my patient and i have these really dirty long yellowy black fingernails yuuuuuck.

anyhow this is some of the stuff, but at the end of the day it doesnt matter who you were where you are but mostly what matters is what you are doing to make sure you dont come back again.

what do bin laden and general custer have in common???
They’re both wondering where the fu(k all of those tomahawks are coming from. - donated by mojo

31

Wongsifu,

I am just curious, you do remember all of these quite vividly. I wonder how you are able to do so ? For me, I have just been told it by a couple of people, otherwise, I really have not seen my past.

Though I get the feeling I was some sort of hellbeing in my immediate past. I felt much ‘hellish’ energies when younger, and hence I want to make best use of this one.

Nut’n’Hunny -

With regards to your question, well in Buddhist thinking, rebirth and death is determined mostly by what you thought of last. What you experience at the end of each life is the collection of the grosest energies of that life. Most laypeople (and even more so, just beings) don’t think too much about how to die, so they fall helplessly without choice, their rebirth. Hence Buddhist collect selfless thoughts in their lifes, to collect good wholesome karma.

About why there are increasingly more people in this world, I asked this question before and after I became a Buddhist, I still have no answer.
But I do have a question, why are humans so prideful to think they and animals are the only two forms of sentioent beings ? And hence, I keep my mind open.

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Are you saying prana that you live this life and are a good person so in your rebirth you will gain benefits from that? Basically adding up the good karma so you get a payout?

  • Nexus
33

Nexus

Its two-fold. You gain now, incredible bliss when helping someone else, but you also gain during the bardo (between dieing and rebirth). Of course, one can just as well accumulate bad and not understand how to die.

Though my usage of words may not be accurate, I hope you see past it.

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Prana, perhaps you should consider this if you have not already, although you are intelligent and I would imagine you probably have.

If not though, consider the following: If all you knew of karma and the return for doing good was farce, and was not actually how you saw it, and in death you actually received nothing for doing good at all, would you continue doing so, and if you would, what would your justification/reason for doing so be?

There is no reason to respond to that message here on the forum, but rather one that a person should consider themselves.

  • Nexus
35

Nexus

absolutely :slight_smile: I am sure you have felt the joys of giving. It is great in its own rights. Forget the future.

What is clear though, we perceive karma entirely differently.

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fish of fury , You know the joke you made about remembering your animal lives, i had when i was a kid really weird flashbacks of being an animal a cat or something similar, i was watching tv and suddenly everything i could see went a funny orange-brown khakhi colour and it was distorted, it was like a camera out of focus , and sharper images. Any how it happened 3 or 4 times and i was like wow i only realised later that it was from a previous life. Because when i recollected this i could see the animal with all grass/dirt/dry twigs/weeds around it but i cant remember the animal itself.

Prana

I am just curious, you do remember all of these quite vividly. I wonder how you are able to do so ? For me, I have just been told it by a couple of people, otherwise, I really have not seen my past.

The scenes that i actually remember i remember them very vividly , you see it in your minds eye , but i dont remember the whole of the life just maybe various parts of it significant or not significant, but those parts are vivid , from there on i can try and fast forward slowly slowly and see what else happened before or after that point in time and where my surroundings are.

But there is no need to do so , knowing what you were in your past life is nothign special.

To do so all you need to do is meditate on it , at first with me it just started as flashes during the day, but if you close your eyes and fcus on the 3rd eye , provided that your 3rd eye is open you ask to see what you were in your past life and from there on it is like a story.

But it is much better to ask to be one with the most high at that point rather than to see what you were in your past lifes, so after a while when you are curious you will be able to see it as a gift from the higher power. He sees that you wish to know and because you dont ask him for it constantly he will give it to you without asking.

Though I get the feeling I was some sort of hellbeing in my immediate past. I felt much ‘hellish’ energies when younger, and hence I want to make best use of this one.

Everybody who is in a path of meditation etc etc has been an evil person in one of his past lives. I dont know why it is just like that.

I remember very vividly 2 of my past lives that i was very evil, In one of them i used to practise black magic very powerful black magic i was very ugly and deformed i looked like a hunchback and my face was very in human , i remember that i was in the underground of a big place maybe a castle i dont know , and the walls were big and black made of something liek granite, i remember seeing my self standing in front of a large river of blood flowing in front of me it was from one side of the room to the other and it was coming in from the wall, i cant describe it otherwise.
Behind me is a large symbol on the floor, and i summon this beast from out of it , it is very weird icannot describe it , all very discusting.

The other life i remeber that is also evil is similar but different.

So anyway this is how it is, when i was young also , could hear something like the voice of the devil in my mind a very slow slooooooow voice very weird and scary, also before i used to try and sleep i would close my eyes and see hellish beings from nowhere all the time in my head after that the beings started to go away and it was just many many many different colours of negative enerrgy flowing in my head…

Luckily nothing of that sort nowadays…

what do bin laden and general custer have in common???
They’re both wondering where the fu(k all of those tomahawks are coming from. - donated by mojo

37

OrigenX

You said:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=“-1”>quote:</font><HR> PS - Interesting trivia - And nevermind the fact that certain ancient Christian sects also believed in
reincarnation, until they were branded heretical and killed. [/quote]

This is interesting. I studied Christian Patristics for years. I would love some detail behind that trivia since I am unaware of it specifically. In Irenaus’ ‘Against Heresies’ (150AD)he describes so many beliefs of off-shoot groups claiming to be Christian that just about every Platonic, Greek, and every possible belief is described. The main problem with all of the groups he describes is that they did not originate from Christ’s Apostles. That is when the term Apostolic Succession became an issue. When the stories and teaching tradtions started to vary from the one passed down, that term gained significance.

Many other splinter groups also taught that the body was evil, and to sin more meant getting closer to God in spirit. Sounds like they were selling something. That is the surface.

The killing part is what I find interesting. If you do have that information I would be interested sincerely. Otherwise, I have heard a million unsubstantiated stories before. That is how I got into Patristic studies. Cheers

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CDLee,

Technically speaking St. Paul did not originate from from Christ’s Apostles and he is credited with basically making the church.

Sincerely,
Scott

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Scott

I understand your point. However, St. Paul presented himself before Peter after 15 years. If you read the text, Paul admits to being nervous lest his work had been in vain. St. Paul was picked by Jesus Himself in person to be an Apostle on the road to Damascus if you recall in Acts. All this just to say, Peter and Paul were in total agreement. They had the same Gospel, the same story. St. Paul is not credited by the Catholic Church or the Protestant Evangelicals (where I come from, came from for 20 yrs) as having practically created the Church. The Church was persucuted by Paul long before Paul (Saul) came into the Church.

So, picked by Christ as an Apostle…is pretty certainly originating from Christ’s Apostles. As far as anybody ‘Creating’ the early Church, the Church was created by Jesus himself. Paul was a great evangelist who worked within the Church.

What I am talking about is those groups that split from the teachings of churches that had bishops with an apostolic lineage. Paul and Peter are from that same lingeage. Not sure what the point is, as history show no differences in their followers teachings really? Do you think the two Apostles had not met, and concurred their Gospels?

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CD Lee,

My point is that Paul was an Apostle by appointment and not an actual Apostle of Christ. Peter was in a bit of a position when he accepted Paul as a bona fide Apostle. By this time Paul had influence over the majority of the church. As you recall there was some disaggreement over whether gentiles would even be accepted into the church.

While you can indeed argue that Christ started the church, it is clear that Paul’s words are the most influential of the New Testament. Therefore, it can also be argued that Paul is the one that created the foundational principals of the church. It is Paul’s words not Christ’s that are most frequently quoted in church services. It is Paul’s interpretation of what he belived Christ teachings were that have influenced the church for 2,000 years.

I understand the view that it was the Christ Spirit/Holy Spirit motivating and guiding Paul, however that is a matter of faith and not necessarily truth.

It was Paul who stated he was appointed by Christ. If I said that same thing, would I be accepted as the authority for what Christ really meant to say?

Sincerely,
Scott