In his excellent book "The Reluctant Buddhist", writer and TV presenter, William Woollard, clearly explains the difficult concepts of identity, death and rebirth in Buddhism:
"Memory is clearly crucially important to our sense of self. It represents the accumulation of experience and knowledge that defines us. It describes to us the route we have followed and explains why we are at this point in our life journey....
Put simply, it is memory that ensures that no matter how radical the physical and mental changes that take place in our lives as we make the transition from nine to ninety, we continue to know that we are the same person....
We must try to understand the distinction between life entity on the one hand, which Buddhism teaches is eternal, and individual identity on the other, which Buddhism teaches is short lived...
Put at its simplest, this mean that William's unique and essential identity, my appearance and my character, are temporary. The person whom I know myself to be, no matter what changes take place in my appearance and personality as I journey through three score years and ten, is attached to this unique individual. It is built up of the memories and the experiences, the causes and effects, that I have accumulated through this life. It is as temporary as this life itself is. It dies with William at the point of death.
The life entity on the other hand, or the parcel of universal life energy that now informs William's life, sometimes called the innate self, lying below self knowledge, will, when William's unique identity comes to an end, pass into a period of "neither existence nor non existence" Then, at some time in the future, when the conditions are right, it will become manifest again in another unique individual identity. That individual identity will also develop his or her own unique and essential sense of self, which again will be purely temporary, and die when that individual identity comes to the end of his or her life. It will not be WIlliam 2.
In this sense then, the raw life force, goes on from lifetime to lifetime. It is neither created not destroyed. It exists before each birth, and continues to exist after each death. In each period of existence, Buddhism teaches, it gathers a new accumulation of causes and effects.
That accumulated cargo of causes and effects carried within the eighth consciousness (nine consciousnesses), lies below the level of the waking mind, so that each successive life form involve, each identity if you wish, will have no conscious awareness and no memory of it. Nonetheless, Buddhism teaches that those accumulated causes and effects lying in the alaya consciousness, will have a profound effect on the actions, the thoughts and words and deeds of the life entity in the next period of existence. This is the basis, in Buddhist teachings for so many differences in circumstances between individuals, and for many of the inexplicable effects that occue during our lives. They are effects related to distant causes attaching to the life entity.
However, within the span of each lifetime the change of identity is complete and total. Each one is totally different from the previous one, and crucially, each one has no memory of what went before. ...
A metaphor
that one might hang on to is that of waves formed on the great face of the
ocean. Picture a vast army of waves
lifting and surging across the face of the ocean as far as the eye can see and
beyond. Each wave may resemble its
neighbour, but close to, each one is going to be subtly different and unique,
with its own individual features and contours.
Although it may seem to be just one of a vast army, each wave has been formed
around its own unique parcel of energy that has lifted it up and brought it
into existence. The wave travels for a
time and then slowly collapses and sinks back into the ocean from which it
came. The unique identity of the wave
has gone. The parcel of energy that
formed it however, has sunk back into the vast body of energy… within the ocean. It will remain there, unchanged, in a state
that we might call latency. And then,
when the conditions are right, it will combine again with the components of the
sea water to lift another wave, which will have its own unique shape and form
and characteristics. And on and on, through all eternity. The parcel of energy, the life entity, the
innate self, remains the same from existence to existence. Each successive wave, or form that it
energises, is a different and wholly temporary identity.
...
Buddhism places our individual human lives right at the centre of the unending universal cycle that encompasses everything, the cycle of birth and growth and decline and death. We acknowledge that all physical existence is temporary. We accept that all energy in the universe, including the life energy that informs living things is eternal. Buddhism places our cycles of birth and death firmly within that context."
(William Woollard, The Reluctant Buddhist p238-241)
William Woollard was initially very sceptical about Buddhism, especially its relevance to today's western society. This book is a fascinating read and I would strongly recommend it to people wanted to understand Buddhism, especially Nichiren Buddhism, in more detail. Here's a link for Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Reluctant-Buddhist-Personal-Buddhism/dp/1906210357/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341631017&sr=1-3
Saturday, 7 July 2012
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
Mentor-Disciple Day
Today is
Mentor-Disciple Day in the SGI. July 3rd was the day that the SGI's second president, Josei Toda was released from prison in 1945.
The mentor-disciple relationship has its
basis in the Emerging from the Earth chapter of the Lotus Sutra when the Bodhisattvas of the Earth (the disciples) rise up and vow
to Shakyamuni (the mentor) to spread the teachings of the Lotus Sutra. It was also copied by the disciples of Nichiren Daishonin who travelled across Japan telling others about Nichiren Buddhism.
The mentor-disciple relationship can sometimes cause confusion for some members and non-members who think of this kind of relationship as similar to an apprentice/master or a cult leader expecting devotion, but it’s basically just a matter of embracing the inspirational role-model of faith, and the vision of kosen-rufu, embodied by our spiritual leader President Ikeda based on his thoughts, words and actions as a Nichiren Buddhist.
President
Ikeda is not our God or an object of worship, but a lay-believer of Nichiren
Buddhism and a Bodhisattva of the Earth.
He does his best to support and guide us, helping us to understand the wisdom of the Lotus Sutra and the humanity of the Gosho, but he also wants us to do our
best to go beyond his efforts and achievements in bringing about the happiness
of all humanity and teaching others about Nichiren Buddhism.
** In July 2015 I posted an entry about the origins of the mentor/disciple relationship with Shakyamuni: http://nichirenbuddhist.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/mentor-disciple-origins-shakyamuni.html
** I wrote another piece about the mentor/disciple relationship in August 2012. It's part (iv) on the following page http://nichirenbuddhist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/14-leaders-of-pack.html
** Explained more about WHY and HOW we celebrate Mentor - Disciple day on July 1st 2013: http://nichirenbuddhist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/why-mentor-disciple-day.html
** And more information on the ONENESS of Mentor-Disciple here: http://nichirenbuddhist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/oneness-of-mentor-and-disciple.html
** And 2014's update on the spirit of July 3rd - Mentor-Disciple day:
http://nichirenbuddhist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/building-our-own-future.html
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