4 ms·
Did Buddha teach rebirth from life to life, or from moment to moment? Given the context of the Teaching, the latter seems a better fit.
by eurasiantiger 5y ago
Did Buddha teach rebirth from life to life, or from moment to moment? Given the context of the Teaching, the latter seems a better fit.
- denton-scratch 5y agoBuddha didn't teach rebirth. He didn't teach any metaphysics at all. Karma and rebirth were simply the sea in which The Buddha and his followers were swimming. Having said that, it's hard to make sense of a lot of Buddhist teaching without karma and rebirth. In the tradition that I followed, they said that experience was momentary (like, atomic); and the moments were separated by 'gaps'. Realisation was to be found in these gaps. In a way, that is like dying after every moment. This was a tradition that venerated Padmasambhava, the composer of the Tibetan Book of the Dead; which highlights the opportunities for realisation in the gap between two lives. Interestingly, these gaps also contain extreme terror, which you experience without the stabilising influence of a body. The TBOTD describes these terrors in a lot of detail. The Dream Yoga is another way of exploring these gaps.