Please Log in to Vote.

4 out of 6 members found this useful.

The Resurrection and Reincarnation

Posted August 21st, 2010 by Greg Mayers

"When you meet the Buddha, you kill the Buddha." Why? Any buddha out there, or in here, is a faux Buddha. Wherever you meet Buddha, or Christ, you are meeting a fake. All images, all thinking is mistaken thinking. And because it is mistaken thinking, we can embrace all thinking, right and wrong, wise and foolish, deep and shallow. We are just this, and in Christianity this is the new creation, unfolding inexorably on it's way to the Resurrection, from glory to glory says St. Gregory of Nyssa, even when it is from bloody glory to bloody glory.

 
One problem in Buddhism is: what reincarnates? And doesn't that in the end leave a subtle duality unresolved between "what reincarnate" and as Zen has it, "the ten thousand things," which means everything, everywhere all at once? One Tibetian llama said that what reincarnates are our worse traits. This answer just adds problems to the question. Our characteristics are somehow more permanent that our sense of self or our animating spirit? This simply doesn't make sense. Nor can Buddhism side step the issue by denigrating the intellectual process, asserting that it is all illusion. That simply begs the question. This is a problem for Integral theory as well, since it assumes a Vedantic/Buddhist anthropology. All protestations to the contrary, Integral theory is fundamentally dualistic - the two truths claim, one absolute (read: spirit) the other relative (read: matter), religion and science. Something with such an impenetrable barrier cannot be basically non-dual.
 
The Resurrection solves this irreducible duality. Each individual, and everyone altogether, are now in Christ resurrecting and will be resurrected, body and spirit. There is fundamentally no division between body and soul. When the body dies, I die. When the body rises, I rise. The human reality is a seamless one from the Christian perspective. (The Christian perspective shot through all altitudes is right at the heart of the Integral Cross, where all four quadrants touch and dissolve in unmentionable union). There is now and will be no unresolved subtle duality left over between "body" and "spirit," the absolute and the relative. All of creation participates in the Resurrection and is now and will be redeemed. The last scene of the last act is already known and enacted in Christ. It is the back story that is being told and written now. There is a Russian Orthodox hymn sung at Eastertide describing the archangels and angels adoring the Trinity and glazing with amazement at the eternal unchanging Divine saying in effect: what is this? we have never seen this before! what could it be? They are gazing upon the newly Resurrected Body of Christ in the heart of the Trinity - the final union of the Divine and the human, to the astonishment of angels and all humankind as well.
 
Does this make sense? Nope. Not to me. But then, why trap myself in the "make-sense" box. As post modernism shows us so devastatingly, making sense actually makes no sense at all. It is just a game with mirror. All Buddhas, especially the modern "Buddha as a making sense machine," the interior "god" of my meaning seeking, are faux Buddhas. Make sense as you will, it is all beyond any sense that any of us can make.
 
 
 

 

Please Log in to Vote.

3 out of 3 members found this useful.

Room for All

Posted August 23rd, 2010 by Jennifer Grove

One of my favorite Teachers has many teaching videos on YouTube. One day I watched several of a series that was teaching about birth and death and rebirth. He was speaking very seriously about reincarnation and going into great detail about how to understand it and work out all the wrinkles. Then a few days later, I saw him in another video teaching that the reincarnation story doesn't "make sense" for the modern person and so is not useful. He then proceeded to teach what was useful for them - which ended up being more like "coaching". LOL

I was impressed. He totally grokked that it was useful for some and not others and he knew how to help people at both altitudes and authentically and skillfully embody the system that they would be helped by. In both cases, deep Love and care pervaded. 

I get the feeling that Jesus did the same, but we're not used to seeing it that way. We're used to seeing everything in the Gospels as one flat garment that we must somehow understand how to wear. For some, this will still be necessary and they will labor long and hard to understand it. I've done such work. It's a pious and Holy endeavor. 

And wow, am I glad I don't have to do that anymore. 

In Matthew 24, I now see something wholly different than what I saw when I first read it some 32 years ago. When He sais, 

"23 At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Messiah!' or, 'There he is!' do not believe it. "

I hear Him saying essentially the same thing as is said in the Buddha story. And when He sais, 

"30b They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other...   40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left."

I'm hearing Him speak about a new higher level of consciousness that will emerge which will draw us up somehow into a new whole or holon. No one will actually go anywhere, but will be connected cognitively and emotionally to all the others "in Jesus" or in His pattern of consciousness. The way things are going lately, this is actually more likely than the traditional interpretations. 

And right now, this interpretation is far more useful than others I've heard. 

 

--

For just $14.95 a month, YOU TOO can reduce your Karma Footprint by becoming a Member of Integral Life!

[has that already been done?]

Please Log in to Vote.

2 out of 2 members found this useful.

reincarnation & resurrection?

Posted August 27th, 2010 by Radus Lungu

  I'm so sorry to say that is confusing from beginning to end.

This ammalgam of Christianity and Buddhism is not an answer, but merely a confusion. First of all because the buddhism is NOT a religion, but a philosophy, a way of life as The Buddha Himself was teaching us, just that. To mix the two, is completely wrong, Christianity is focused on dogmas, not people, real people and their own opinions and visions.

However, reincarnation is very buddhist when the resurrection is very christian (Jesus-Messiah), again wrongly mixed together, but it's just another point of view.

Thank you

Radus