Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

Logical 'Proofs': the Theory of Rebirth 45
and lack any attempt to show that they actually do follow
from the opponents' positions, or that the predicted effect
would be large enough to detect. Losang Gyatso is so
unsure what actually follows that he draws two mutually
contradictory consequences. Furthermore the consequences
are not particularly unacceptable, considering
that (1) development of children's intelligence as they
grow, and senility, are widely observed; (2) even if one
discounts the many Tibetan stories of corpses rising,
the're are Western reports of people resuscitated after
clinical death; and (3) both Lord Buddha and Jetsun
Milarepa found nourishing food strengthened their
minds for meditation after long fasting.
It is also argued that nothing material can be substantial
cause of the mind because mind is formless, and
what is form cannot become formless or vice versa. 67 , 68
This generalisation of assertion (2) (that the causes of any
mind cannot be wholly material, but must include an
earlier mind of the same type in the same personal
continuum) is likely to be greeted still more suspiciously
by those of other schools, who will be justifiably wary of
what interpretation the Buddhist might put on the
words, and to whom it looks like an arbitrary dogma.
Physicists have shown light is a form of energy interconvertible
with others, including matter, so why should
not mind, which the Buddhists themselves say is "clear
light," be interconvertible with matter too? Cannot a
yogin create a new body mentally, and manifest all
manner of material objects.purely by power of the mind?
Ultimately, are not all dharmas of the same nature,
Voidness? What do "form" and "formless" mean in relation
to Einstein's demonstration that matter itself can
be regarded as moving, curved space? There would seem
to be room for doubt.
(c) Against the remaining Lokayata position, that
mind is a quality of the body, none of our authors offers