Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

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32 Rebirth and the Western Buddhist born blind. These, it seems, mature often after thousands of years. It is quite clear that the power of perceiving karma is distinct from that of perceiving past lives, as the Buddha's account in Chapter Two implies. Cayce himself said he drew the information on past lives not only from the individual's "unconscious" mind, but from the "Akashic records" (Skt. iikiisa: space) or "Universal Memory ofNature". Conceivably a normal hypnotised subject has access only to the former. In any case, Cayce may well be the first person since the Buddha to give so much information on karma, and as we know that the readings refer to real people of our own time and they are much less of a strain on one's credulity than many of the Buddha's, they are of absorbing interest to any Buddhist.
4 Logical "Proofs": the Theory of Rebirth When they seek to persuade students of the truth of rebirth, Tibetan lamas do not lean heavily on the observational evidence summarised above, but rely mainly on supposed proofs by logical reasoning. We may instance the widely read books by His Holiness the Dalai Lama 67 and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. 68 On encountering such concise presentations of the standard Buddhist arguments for rebirth, Western students often react with incredulity that intelligent men could expect them to accept such manifest illogic as some of the arguments contain. It is worthwhile to look into the reasons for this failure of communication. Close study of the arguments does not make them much more convincing by Western standards, but can give us some appreciation of why they are put forward. · We are fortunate that a prominent Tibetan logician, the Venerable Losang Gyatso (LG), principal of the Buddhist School of Dialectics at Dharamsala, has recently published an unusually full account 69 of the logical arguments in favour of rebirth. Having been checked by the Dalai Lama, it may be taken as authoritative. I have translated the relevant chapter, and here pick out the important points from its hundred pages of argument, adding my own critical comments, mainly from a scientific viewpoint. In the succeeding chapter, I shall enlarge on the reasons why Westerners find the arguments hard to accept. 33
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References and Notes 85 57 Wambach,
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Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

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