See this question on "What is Reborn?" http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Pesala/Milinda/Journey/journey.html#6 (http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Pesala/Milinda/Journey/journey.html#6) in the Debate of King Milinda, and Other Aspects of Dependent Origination http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Mahasi/Dependent/Other_Aspects/other_aspects.html (http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Mahasi/Dependent/Other_Aspects/other_aspects.html) (and the preceding chapter http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Mahasi/Dependent/3_Periods/3_periods.html (http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Mahasi/Dependent/3_Periods/3_periods.html)).
There is no self, just a process of cause and effect that we mistake to be a permanent person or being, a self or a soul. "Oneself is one's own refuge, what other refuge could there be?" "All beings are the owners of their own kamma, and inherit its results." In such statements, self should be understood as a conventional truth. Ultimately, nothing at all remains static for a moment, and no "thing" continues from one life to the next, yet life in samsāra continues as long as ignorance and craving remain.
by Bhante Pesala - http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Pesala/BioPesala/biopesala.html (http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Pesala/BioPesala/biopesala.html)
Anatta or soul-lessness
This Buddhist doctrine of rebirth should be distinguished from the theory of reincarnation which implies the transmigration of a soul and its invariable material rebirth. Buddhism denies the existence of an unchanging or eternal soul created by a God or emanating from a Divine Essence (Paramatma).
If the immortal soul, which is supposed to be the essence of man, is eternal, there cannot be either a rise or a fall. Besides one cannot understand why "different souls are so variously constituted at the outset."
To prove the existence of endless felicity in an eternal heaven and unending torments in an eternal hell, an immortal soul is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, what is it that is punished in hell or rewarded in heaven?
"It should be said," writes Bertrand Russell, "that the old distinction between soul and body has evaporated quite as much because 'matter' has lost its solidity as mind has lost its spirituality. Psychology is just beginning to be scientific. In the present state of psychology belief in immortality can at any rate claim no support from science."
Buddhists do agree with Russell when he says "there is obviously some reason in which I am the same person as I was yesterday, and, to take an even more obvious example if I simultaneously see a man and hear him speaking, there is some sense in which the 'I' that sees is the same as the 'I' that hears."
Till recently scientists believed in an indivisible and indestructible atom. "For sufficient reasons physicists have reduced this atom to a series of events. For equally good reasons psychologists find that mind has not the identity of a single continuing thing but is a series of occurrences bound together by certain intimate relations. The question of immortality, therefore, has become the question whether these intimate relations exist between occurrences connected with a living body and other occurrence which take place after that body is dead."
As C.E.M. Joad says in "The Meaning of Life," matter has since disintegrated under our very eyes. It is no longer solid; it is no longer enduring; it is no longer determined by compulsive causal laws; and more important than all, it is no longer known.
The so-called atoms, it seems, are both "divisible and destructible." The electrons and protons that compose atoms "can meet and annihilate one another while their persistence, such as it is, is rather that of a wave lacking fixed boundaries, and in process of continual change both as regards shape and position than that of a thing."[11]
Bishop Berkeley who showed that this so-called atom is a metaphysical fiction held that there exists a spiritual substance called the soul.
Hume, for instance, looked into consciousness and perceived that there was nothing except fleeting mental states and concluded that the supposed "permanent ego" is non-existent.
"There are some philosophers," he says, "who imagine we are every moment conscious of what we call 'ourself,' that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence and so we are certain, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call 'myself' I always stumble on some particular perception or other -- of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself... and never can observe anything but the perception... nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect non-entity."
Bergson says, "All consciousness is time existence; and a conscious state is not a state that endures without changing. It is a change without ceasing, when change ceases it ceases; it is itself nothing but change."
Dealing with this question of soul Prof. James says -- "The soul-theory is a complete superfluity, so far as accounting for the actually verified facts of conscious experience goes. So far no one can be compelled to subscribe to it for definite scientific reasons." In concluding his interesting chapter on the soul he says: "And in this book the provisional solution which we have reached must be the final word: the thoughts themselves are the thinkers."
Watson, a distinguished psychologist, states: "No one has ever touched a soul or has seen one in a test tube or has in any way come into relationship with it as he has with the other objects of his daily experience. Nevertheless to doubt its existence is to become a heretic and once might possibly even had led to the loss of one's head. Even today a man holding a public position dare not question it."
The Buddha anticipated these facts some 2500 years ago.
According to Buddhism mind is nothing but a complex compound of fleeting mental states. One unit of consciousness consists of three phases -- arising or genesis (uppada) static or development (thiti), and cessation or dissolution (bhanga). Immediately after the cessation stage of a thought moment there occurs the genesis stage of the subsequent thought-moment. Each momentary consciousness of this ever-changing life-process, on passing away, transmits its whole energy, all the indelibly recorded impressions to its successor. Every fresh consciousness consists of the potentialities of its predecessors together with something more. There is therefore, a continuous flow of consciousness like a stream without any interruption. The subsequent thought moment is neither absolutely the same as its predecessor -- since that which goes to make it up is not identical -- nor entirely another -- being the same continuity of kamma energy. Here there is no identical being but there is an identity in process.
Every moment there is birth, every moment there is death. The arising of one thought-moment means the passing away of another thought-moment and vice versa. In the course of one life-time there is momentary rebirth without a soul.
It must not be understood that a consciousness is chopped up in bits and joined together like a train or a chain. But, on the contrary, "it persistently flows on like a river receiving from the tributary streams of sense constant accretions to its flood, and ever dispensing to the world without the thought-stuff it has gathered by the way."[12] It has birth for its source and death for its mouth. The rapidity of the flow is such that hardly is there any standard whereby it can be measured even approximately. However, it pleases the commentators to say that the time duration of one thought-moment is even less than one-billionth part of the time occupied by a flash of lightning.
Here we find a juxtaposition of such fleeting mental states of consciousness opposed to a superposition of such states as some appear to believe. No state once gone ever recurs nor is identical with what goes before. But we worldlings, veiled by the web of illusion, mistake this apparent continuity to be something eternal and go to the extent of introducing an unchanging soul, an atta, the supposed doer and receptacle of all actions to this ever-changing consciousness.
"The so-called being is like a flash of lightning that is resolved into a succession of sparks that follow upon one another with such rapidity that the human retina cannot perceive them separately, nor can the uninstructed conceive of such succession of separate sparks."[13] As the wheel of a cart rests on the ground at one point, so does the being live only for one thought-moment. It is always in the present, and is ever slipping into the irrevocable past. What we shall become is determined by this present thought-moment.
If there is no soul, what is it that is reborn, one might ask.
Well, there is nothing to be reborn.
When life ceases the kammic energy re-materializes itself in another form. As Bhikkhu Silacara says: "Unseen it passes whithersoever the conditions appropriate to its visible manifestation are present. Here showing itself as a tiny gnat or worm, there making its presence known in the dazzling magnificence of a Deva or an Archangel's existence. When one mode of its manifestation ceases it merely passes on, and where suitable circumstances offer, reveals itself afresh in another name or form."
Birth is the arising of the psycho-physical phenomena. Death is merely the temporary end of a temporary phenomenon.
Just as the arising of a physical state is conditioned by a preceding state as its cause, so the appearance of psycho-physical phenomena is conditioned by cause anterior to its birth. As the process of one life-span is possible without a permanent entity passing from one thought-moment to another, so a series of life-processes is possible without an immortal soul to transmigrate from one existence to another.
Buddhism does not totally deny the existence of a personality in an empirical sense. It only attempts to show that it does not exist in an ultimate sense. The Buddhist philosophical term for an individual is santana, i.e., a flux or a continuity. It includes the mental and physical elements as well. The kammic force of each individual binds the elements together. This uninterrupted flux or continuity of psycho-physical phenomenon, which is conditioned by kamma, and not limited only to the present life, but having its source in the beginningless past and its continuation in the future — is the Buddhist substitute for the permanent ego or the immortal soul of other religions.
By Narada Mahathera http://www.buddhanet.net/nutshell09.htm (http://www.buddhanet.net/nutshell09.htm)
http://www.buddhistonline.com/tanya/td156.shtml (http://www.buddhistonline.com/tanya/td156.shtml)
Hubungan Anatta dan Kamma
Tanya:
Namo Buddhaya,
Saya ingin menanyakan hubungan anatta dengan kamma dan perbedaannya dengan reinkarnasi. Demikian pertanyaan saya. Semoga semua mahluk hidup berbahagia.
Melfa, Makassar
Jawaban dari Samaggi Phala (Y.M. Uttamo Thera) dan Dhamma Study Group Bogor (Sdr. Selamat Rodjali):
Namo Buddhaya,
Dalam Buddha Dhamma diajarkan bahwa segala sesuatu adalah anatta, yang artinya tidak ada yang disebut sebagai diri, hal ini bisa terjadi karena segala sesuatu selalu berubah. Kita yang saat ini, telah berbeda dengan kita yang satu menit yang lalu, juga berbeda dengan kita di satu menit yang akan datang. Perbedaan paling pokok adalah adanya perbedaan usia, ada beda satu menit yang lalu dan satu menit yang akan datang. Karena adanya perbedaan waktu, maka otomatis, kita juga berbeda dimensi tempatnya, karena secara alamiah, bumi berputar sekitar 33 Km per detik, jadi, dalam satu menit, kita sudah berpindah tempat sekitar 1800 Km, dengan demikian, kalau dimensi waktu dan ruang sudah berbeda, bagaimana kita bisa disebut sebagai mahluk yang sama...? Inilah yang disebut sebagai anatta.
Namun, dalam kehidupan kita ini, dalam keseharian, sering kita merasakan suka dan duka. Hal ini bisa muncul justru karena pikiran kita menganggap diri kita kekal, dan memiliki atta. Artinya, kita akan merasa bahagia kalau kita membandingkan keinginan kita yang lalu dengan pencapaian kita yang sekarang. Sebaliknya, jika kita merasakan bahwa keinginan kita yang lalu tidak tercapai di saat yang sekarang, maka kita akan menjadi sedih. Padahal, dengan menyadari anatta, maka kita akan selalu hidup saat ini, tidak ada lagi suka dan duka, karena mengetahui bahwa itu semua hanyalah permainan pikiran kita. Dengan demikian, pikiran kita menjadi netral, terbebas dari ketamakan, kebencian dan kegelapan batin, sehingga dalam tahap ini, manusia kemudian disebut melakukan KIRIYA, bukan kamma lagi.
Apabila orang sudah mencapai kesucian dan hanya melaksanakan kiriya, maka dia akan terbebas dari perbuatan berdasarkan ketamakan, kebencian dan kegelapan batin, yang akhirnya membebaskannya dari kelahiran kembali.
Sdri. Melfa yang baik, Anatta, Kamma, dan Reinkarnasi sangat berbeda. Anatta merupakan sifat segala sesuatu yang tanpa kepemilikan, tanpa inti. Kamma merupakan keselarasan sebab akibat perbuatan moralitas. Reinkarnasi merupakan istilah Brahmanisme atas kelahiran kembali yang sangat berbeda dengan tumimbal lahir di dalam Buddha Dhamma. Agar lebih jelas, kami sarankan Saudari mempelajari Buddha Dhamma secara bertahap dan sistematik. Silakan Saudari masuk ke website Access to Insight yang ada di rubrik Link. Di sana Saudari akan menjumpai cara belajar Buddhisme dari awal dan The Pure Buddhism.
Semoga bermanfaat.
Semoga semua mahluk berbahagia.
Sāti: "As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, it is this same consciousness that runs and wanders through the round of rebirths, not another."
The Buddha: "What is that consciousness, Sāti?"
Sāti: "Venerable sir, it is that which speaks and feels and experiences here and there the results of good and bad kammas."
The Buddha: "Misguided man, to whom have you ever known me to teach the Dhamma in that way? Misguided man, in many discourses have I not stated consciousness to be dependently arisen, since without a condition there is no origination of consciousness? But you, misguided man, have misrepresented us by your wrong grasp and injured yourself and stored up much demerit; for this will lead to your harm and suffering for a long time. [....] Bhikkhus, what do you think? Has this bhikkhu Sāti, son of a fisherman, kindled even one spark of wisdom in this Dhamma and Vinaya?"
(Mahātaṇhāsaṅkhaya Sutta, MN 38)
Tidak ada "kesadaran", "nama as in nama rupa", "esense" yang berpindah dari satu kehidupan ke kehidupan lain.
I still dun believe it..karena gk make sense...
bagaimana mungkin biji bisa tumbuh tanpa tanah? bagaimana Avijja bisa tumbuh tanpa Nama(batin)?
sebenarnya avijja dan nama seperti lingkaran setan,utk jelasinnya akan masuk ke anatta dan berhubungan lagi dengan anicca. ribet abis.. :))
Tapi pertanyaan ente sangat mendasar , dan juga bisa bikin puyeng kepala, tapi pertanyaan yg bagus. _/\_
ANATTA
Anatta itu'lah sesuatu
Tanpa aku serta tanpa inti
Dalam Kesunyataan akhir
Tiada makhluk jiwapun pribadi
Tiada sesuatu kesatuan
Benda yang disebut diri
Nan tinggal kekal s'panjang masa
Namun berobah s'lalu nan abadi
Reff:
Hanya batin dan materi
Tiada suatu lainnya
Bukan makhluk bukan jiwa
Bukan suatu pribadi
Yang disebut manusia
Hanya suatu hayal
kosong belaka tanpa inti
Bagi yang melihat
Kebenaran sejati
Serta sadar diri
Baginya lenyaplah avijja
Roda Samsara dapat di atasi
_/\_
^ itu lagu meditasi samaggiphala khan ? :hammer:
mush yang nyanyi yach ... hehehe ... :P
sorry OOT ^:)^ _/\_
Quote from: Felix Thioris on 17 January 2008, 11:58:46 PM
^ itu lagu meditasi samaggiphala khan ? :hammer:
mush yang nyanyi yach ... hehehe ... :P
sorry OOT ^:)^ _/\_
bukan mush yank nyanyi [-X
semoga az bisa membantu sol :>-
felix :hammer:
_/\_
Hmm..
Dukkha, Anicca, Anatta dan Tanha
Ini topik2 berat yang butuh pemahaman mendalam...
Jadi emang gak mudah mencernanya...
Karena kalau mampu mencernanya, memahaminya, lalu mengatasinya/melenyapkannya...
Maka tercapailah nibbana...
karuna makasih banyak atas posnya ini
sangat membantu saya memahami dhamma
saya baru tau ada anatta
dan saya sedikit tersadarkan
sangat membantu perkembangan batin saya...
mengerti saya segala sesuatu itu tidak ada yang kekal
dan segala sesuatu itu berubah
:)
Quotemengerti saya segala sesuatu itu tidak ada yang kekal
dan segala sesuatu itu berubah
ada yang kekal dan tidak berubah
Sang Buddha bilang "Sabbe sankhara anicca"
Yang berkondisi tidak kekal
tapi ada yang tidak berkondisi ...