We hope and like to think so, anyway George!

Another very old Zen teaching has a student asking a realised master about what happens after death. The master answers (or words to the same effect) 'how the f*** should I know, better ask a dead guy'.

Buddhism nevertheless teaches a definite view on the cycle of rebirth and death, it's the underlying reality that informs the entire tradition.

I think the point  though is that despite our perhaps having a broad (but rather kindergarten) view of what happens that it's by no means predictable what happens after death.

Death seems likely to be pretty incomprehensible from the perspective of an ego based mind (look at the problems we repeatedly experience here in trying to reach any agreement on what it is that survives and how), and is not to be underestimated. Nor is it wise to become too hung up on a particular view of what happens given the propensity of mind to bring whatever we believe into existence...

Perhaps we'll be greeted by a reality that matches all of our expectations ( we probably will, but whether that's actually anything more than a mind made reality is quite another question), but as ever what's required of us seems to be to get on with the knitting - to live each day in love as it comes to the best of our ability.

I suppose given the swings and roundabouts of life that if we had certainty on this many of us would head off to commit suicide....

well we sure do make things complicated...maybe it's all much simpler than we think, like first you're here, then you're there. just like in any new town you move into, there's some new ropes to learn in any new place. people who go out of body enough know that there's this other location that the mind is in and taking a form there, like here, is natural, possibly optional. my two cents.

I think this way because of the obes and the ability to think and make decisions while obe.
I know I'm not in my physical body, but yet I know I do have a physical vehicle in some other location which I'm attached to invisibly and drawn back into.

I don't remember the moment of birth of myself George. we would all like some details on what the big bang is got to do with us. all I know is I had more than one life.
sure do hate having the memory wiped out, but there's a reason for that.
if one of us goes first, we should come back here and fool with somebody's puter..
ok, I'll volunteer! I'll just type out laff at the rain.

This is indeed a very special group of people!

Errrrmmm. But to be a bit mischievous, and a lot less rose tinted.

Does any of us actually know what happens when we die, or are we all clinging to a belief system??? Beyond inferring that certain experience in altered states during life amounts to the same thing that is?

It's a lot to do with mood and perspective all right Blink!! And for sure there's lots that comes through our lives that if we've even a whisker of openness screams that reality is a lot more complicated than objective physical selves strolling around in a physical reality governed by no more than Netwon's laws.

That there's this something constant (the watcher?) that's always around.

But then there's these moments of doubt that sneak in too. It's like uncertainty is one of ground rules in the set up of the whole dream that is our existence.

PS  why is it almost always the case that the spiritual path entails being broke???

Hi R. I guess there's lots of reasons to think our existence does not have to come to an end, specifically the sort of experience you refer to. But there's equally a lot of conditioning we have to overcome that suggests that life is physically based and so ends with death.

I'm at one level being a little mischievious, but at another I'm pointing towards what I suspect is the reality for most of us. That despite experience, we can't absolutely be sure that for example there is not some aspect of that experience rooted in the physical. Nor can we be sure as to the nature of any survival - of what aspect of existence it is that survives.

I'd not want to overplay this, as on balance i'm for example relatively comfortable about the whole thing. But I suspect as before that it's not by accident that we tend to find ourselves in a place where we can never from an ego point of view be wholly relaxed about death.

That in a sense we only become able to transcend death when we transcend ego....

Quote:



Hello!

I agree with you 100%, I have taken some glimpses of the afterlife, and the truth is that although I am very happy and grateful to creator for my present life and my present family, I have visions of the spirit world that are so wonderful, I am surprised for the wonderful feeling that I fell, I see people (souls) which I have never known in this life, I fell that they are waiting for me, I'm fell in a very positive state when I had these visions, as if he knew something even more wonderful that I expected, I cant' explain this feeling…..I know intuitively that this is only a small time, an small lesson, I also see a home that I never see in this life (like a Japanese home), and I know, I feel that it is my home, I know sound weird but this is the vision that I have.

Best

juan