Gandharvas, Souls, and Stem Cells

DharmaTroll

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Jul 23, 2001, 12:16:10 PM7/23/01

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In article <230720010947067193%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net>, punnadhammo says...

> You often crow about how you base your ideas on evidence and research.

Yep. Now I have a question for you, Bhante. (And everyone else.)

The Pope just told George W. that stem cell research on human embryos is
immoral. I thinks that the Pope is a bit superstitious, and while I am in
general against abortions, I don't have a problem with either aborting
fertilised eggs with the "Morning After" pill, nor in using fertilised eggs in
research, and the idea that a few cells is a person sounds laughable to me, and
is grounded in superstition. I see a fertilised egg as a "person-building kit"
which has the potential to grow a person from it.

You, Bhante, have in the past claimed that fertilisation of the egg required
three components, the egg, sperm, and a spookie from someone else's past life,
which you called the gandharva.

Tang even quoted a passage about spookies from a sutra:
<< MA, 201, 769b, MN, I, 265-266 (38), Dietz, Dharma-skandha, 34-35: "Monks, it
is on the conjunction of three things that there is conception. If there is here
a coitus of the parents, but it is not the mother’s season and the gandharva is
not present, there is not conception. If there is here a coitus of the parents,
and it is the mother’s season, but the gandharva is not present, there is not
conception. But, monks, if there is here a coitus of the parents, and it is the
mother’s season, and the gandharva is present, it is on the conjunction of these
three things that there is conception." >>

So do you think that fertilised eggs have these souls or bundle of
energies or whatever (sankhara-puñjo) called the gandharvas, and therefore do
you agree with the pope? Or do you agree with DT who backs King George W II who
stresses "the need to balance value and respect for life with the promise of
science in the hope of saving life"?

What do you think? Below is the NY Times article on the subject.

--DT

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bush-Pope.html

<<
Pope Urges Bush to Reject Embryo Research
JULY 23, 2001

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (AP) -- Pope John Paul II urged President Bush to bar
using human embryos for medical research, saying Monday that America has a moral
responsibility to reject actions that ``devalue and violate human life.''

Bush said later that he was not surprised by the pope's admonition and will take
it into consideration as he makes his decision on whether to allow federal
funding for such research.

``He's sent a consistent word throughout the (Catholic) church and society that
we ought to take into account the preciousness of life,'' Bush said.

He said his decision revolves around ``the need to balance value and respect for
life with the promise of science in the hope of saving life.''

Bush made his comments at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi.

The 81-year-old pontiff and Bush met behind closed doors at the papal summer
residence Castel Gandolfo in the foothills south of Rome. Bush said John Paul
did not raise the subject of stem cell research during their private session,
but focused on foreign policy and Bush's meeting Sunday with Russian President
Vladimir Putin.

While contemplating his decision, Bush also has been actively courting the
United States' 44 million Catholic voters. He said he would listen to all sides
of the debate but added that the stem cell matter is not a political decision
for him.

``I frankly do not care what the political polls say,'' Bush said. ``I do care
about the opinions of people, particularly someone as profound as the Holy
Father.''

Bush also said he admires the Catholic Church because ``it's a church that
stands on consistent and solid principle.''

John Paul, stooped and frail in his chair, read a statement to Bush and his
entourage after their private meeting.

``Experience is already showing how a tragic coarsening of consciences
accompanies the assault on innocent human life in the world, leading to
accommodation and acquiescence in the face of other related evils such as
euthanasia, infanticide, and, most recently, proposals for the creation for
research purposes of human embryos destined to destruction in the process.

``A free and virtuous society, which America aspires to be, must reject
practices that devalue and violate human life at any stage from conception to
natural death,'' the pope added.

The pope opposes any stem cell research specifically using embryos, Vatican
spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said. Such research destroys the embryo. Other
sources of stem cells -- such as umbilical cord blood -- are less controversial,
however, and were not condemned by the pope.

The pope's admonition raises the political stakes for Bush as he considers
federal funding for stem cell research. Allowing the funding to continue could
alienate America's 44 million Catholic voters. If he blocks or restricts
funding, Bush risks estranging political moderates and millions of disease
sufferers who are forcefully mobilizing behind the research.

Bush waved away a question on the matter earlier Monday as he took a stroll with
Berlusconi. The president has promised a decision soon on federal funding for
stem cell research, but aides say no announcement is imminent.
>>

punnadhammo

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Jul 24, 2001, 10:53:49 AM7/24/01

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In article <e5Y67.4096$ar1....@www.newsranger.com>, DharmaTroll
<nos...@newsranger.com> wrote:

> The Pope just told George W. that stem cell research on human embryos is
> immoral. I thinks that the Pope is a bit superstitious,

The Pope is a deeply courageous man of high moral principle. George
Bush is, well, Dubya. No need to mention that John Paul, at least, was
fairly elected.

The question of stem-cell research is very difficult one. It poses
serious ethical dilemmas and so far there seems to be nothing so much
as confusion around the whole question. The Pope is to be applauded for
taking a stand on the moral high-ground, whether or not one agrees with
his conclusions.

What I am afraid of is that religious people of all stripes are not
keeping themselves informed of the breakthroughs in life science and
are abdicating the field to the secularists. In this particular case,
we are seeing an unholy alliance of the pro-abortion lobby and the
medical/pharmaceutical industry to push this research ahead. Between
these two lobbies, they have an awful amount of clout at the
governmental level in most countries.

The pro-abortion crowd, of course, are delighted that there may be a
medical use for fetuses killed in the abortion mills. Even a
hypothetical one. They can accuse the anti-abortionists of being the
cruel and callous ones, denying the suffering a chance at a cure. But
the pro-abortionists also have a weak spot. They must fight to prevent
any regulation of the use of human fetuses, because if the principle is
once established that the unborn have some right to protection, then
the whole dubious case for abortion falls apart like a house of cards.

The problem for Buddhists is complex. In the first place, Buddhism is
first and foremost for the alleviation of suffering. We ought to be
extremely cautious about putting the brakes on any research that might
show promise of helping people with such tragic afflicitions as
Parkinson's disease. However, everyone would agree that this does not
mean a blanket allowance for any research. Only a monster would approve
of vivisecting live babies, for instance, no matter what the potential
medical and scientific gains.

So we need to ask the tough question that is at the core of a lot of
medical ethics, when does the developing embryo become a sentient being
deserving of First Precept consideration. The answer of the extremists
among the pro-abortion side, that it becomes human only at birth, is
monstrous in its implications, allowing a baby to have its brains
sucked out minutes before birth in a partial-birth abortion. This is
tantamount to infanticide.

The Buddhist answer has traditionally been the same as the Catholic, if
for somewhat different reasons. Buddhist analysis of the rebirth
process has consciousness arising in the womb at conception. This
"rebirth-linking consciousness" is then instrumental in guiding in the
development of the unfolding being. This is clearly taught in the
traditional reading of the Dependent Origination where body-and-mind is
said to be conditioned by consciousness. It should be noted that
medical science as yet has no explanation for the process of
morphogenesis. The role of DNA in protein synthesis is understood in
detail, but no one has a clue how the proteins are able to group
themselves into cells, much less tissues and organs. It appears
something else must be involved, hence the Buddhist explanation may be
a scientifically correct one when all is said and done.

On the other hand, all the scriptural descriptions deal with the
arising of life and consciousness in the womb of the mother. The case
of a zygote being fertilized under glass was not even thought of in the
Buddha's time. It seems to me a very fair question to ask if a
gandabbha would even arise in such a zygote. How could we ever know?
One indicator may be whether such unnatural growths ever reach the
stage of developing form, that is cell differentiation into shape and
organs. Even that would be highly inconclusive, as it depends on a
dubious theoretical model.

The strange thing is that the mainstream ethicists seem to be tending
towards a guideline that would allow the use of aborted fetuses, or
"left-overs" from fertility clinics but not custom-grown lab embryos.

A last thought, it has been suggested by some anti-abortion
commentators that embryonic stem-cell research is being pushed over the
alternative, which is stem-cells taken from adult bone-marrow. This is,
they allege, because it suits the agenda of the abortion lobby. This
sounds a bit paranoid, but there may be some truth to it. In any case,
if society took the ethical problem of defending the unborn seriously
then more resources would be put into marrow cell research. This is the
ethically neutral alternative, and may be preferable even if there are
additional technical barriers to overcome.

--
Punnadhammo Bhikkhu
Arrow River Community Center
Thunder Bay, Ontario
http://www.baynet.net/~arcc

DharmaTroll

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Jul 24, 2001, 11:30:50 AM7/24/01

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In article <240720011053495262%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net>, punnadhammo says...

>> The Pope just told George W. that stem cell research on human
>> embryos is immoral. I thinks that the Pope is a bit superstitious,
>
> The Pope is a deeply courageous man of high moral principle.

> The question of stem-cell research is very difficult one.
> It poses serious ethical dilemmas and so far there seems to be
> nothing so much as confusion around the whole question.
> The Pope is to be applauded for taking a stand on the moral
> high-ground, whether or not one agrees with his conclusions.

Yes, I agree with that. Thanks for the good well-thought-out post, Bhante. I
hope others will add to this and discuss some of the points you mention.

> What I am afraid of is that religious people of all stripes are not
> keeping themselves informed of the breakthroughs in life science and
> are abdicating the field to the secularists. In this particular case,
> we are seeing an unholy alliance of the pro-abortion lobby and the
> medical/pharmaceutical industry to push this research ahead. Between
> these two lobbies, they have an awful amount of clout at the
> governmental level in most countries.
>
> The pro-abortion crowd, of course, are delighted that there may be a
> medical use for fetuses killed in the abortion mills.

Yes, that is a good point. I have the same aversion to abortion 'mills' as I do
to the animal slaughterhouses for pigs and cows. I also think that if research
can be advanced with stem cells, then to halt it on superstitious grounds would
be silly. Yet I don't like the idea of encouraging abortions for any reason. If
abortions aren't encouraged, then I'm for the research.

> They can accuse the anti-abortionists of being the
> cruel and callous ones, denying the suffering a chance at a cure.
> But the pro-abortionists also have a weak spot. They must fight to
> prevent any regulation of the use of human fetuses, because if the
> principle is once established that the unborn have some right to
> protection, then the whole dubious case for abortion falls apart
> like a house of cards.

As you know, I have a problem with abortion, once the fetus starts to develop a
nervous system. I don't have a problem with the "Morning After" pill, and I'm
mixed with the RU486, which promises to have the earliest abortions. If this is
shown to be effective, then I'd like to see no abortions performed after the
point where this can be used. Ideally, a "Week or two After" pill and nothing
after than would solve the ethical problems for me.

> The problem for Buddhists is complex. In the first place, Buddhism is
> first and foremost for the alleviation of suffering. We ought to be
> extremely cautious about putting the brakes on any research that might
> show promise of helping people with such tragic afflicitions as
> Parkinson's disease.

Agreed.

> However, everyone would agree that this does not mean a blanket
> allowance for any research. Only a monster would approve of
> vivisecting live babies, for instance, no matter what the potential
> medical and scientific gains.

Agreed.

> So we need to ask the tough question that is at the core of a lot of
> medical ethics, when does the developing embryo become a sentient
> being deserving of First Precept consideration.

Yes, and this is where the controversy arises.

> The answer of the extremists among the pro-abortion side, that it
> becomes human only at birth, is monstrous in its implications,
> allowing a baby to have its brains sucked out minutes before birth
> in a partial-birth abortion. This is tantamount to infanticide.

Agreed.

> The Buddhist answer has traditionally been the same as the Catholic,
> if for somewhat different reasons. Buddhist analysis of the rebirth
> process has consciousness arising in the womb at conception.

This seems to me to be equally extreme and absurd, as there is no nervous system
and a bunch of cells doesn't even have the neural structure of the wimpiest of
insects. While this is taking life, it doesn't seem to me to be any worse than
swatting a mosquito -- in fact, the mosquito has much more of a nervous system,
as well as fully developed senses.

> This "rebirth-linking consciousness"

What I would call a "soul"

> is then instrumental in guiding in the development of the unfolding
> being. This is clearly taught in the traditional reading of the
> Dependent Origination where body-and-mind is said to be conditioned
> by consciousness. It should be noted that medical science as yet
> has no explanation for the process of morphogenesis. The role of DNA
> in protein synthesis is understood in detail, but no one has a clue
> how the proteins are able to group themselves into cells, much less
> tissues and organs. It appears something else must be involved,

No, I don't think that our science not being omniscient is an argument for the
supernatural or the ineffable, just as our not understanding the workings of the
brain is not a reason to go for souls or non-physical spooks or whatever. There
isn't some incredible gap that seems to only be explained by a soul coming in
and making it work. Biology does pretty well on its own.

> On the other hand, all the scriptural descriptions deal with the
> arising of life and consciousness in the womb of the mother.
> The case of a zygote being fertilized under glass was not even
> thought of in the Buddha's time. It seems to me a very fair question
> to ask if a gandabbha would even arise in such a zygote.

I wouldn't put it that way, but I never thought of it like that.

You could 'update' the superstition (and similarly the Christian superstitions
as well) by simply claiming that when formed outside the womb, the conditions
aren't met for the spook to enter the zygote, and hence it is ok for testing.

No wait -- that won't work. If you take the zygote formed in the dish and then
implant it in a womb, a baby will grow. That's been done several times, I think.
So it doesn't get away from the point that this is still a 'potential' life.

> One indicator may be whether such unnatural growths ever reach the
> stage of developing form, that is cell differentiation into shape
> and organs.

Well of course it will, if you can simulate the conditions in a womb.
(Btw, remember that soul or gandharva claims are unfalsifiable, so that your
thinking here really isn't a way to tell anything: if the zygote develops into a
baby outside the womb, you simply would backwardly claim that there was a soul
or whatever in it afterall. No evidence would ever falsify a soul claim, and
lead you to say "there isn't any further fact after all". That's pretty much why
I think that all gandharva or soul talk is silly, and that we should look at
real things like nervous system structure, etc.)

> The strange thing is that the mainstream ethicists seem to be tending
> towards a guideline that would allow the use of aborted fetuses, or
> "left-overs" from fertility clinics but not custom-grown lab embryos.

That is strange. I guess the idea is that the "left-overs" are not specifically
killed for the experiment, whereas the custom-grown ones are. In fact, that is
much like the Buddhist monk precept about not eating meat: that you can't eat
meat from an animal specifically killed for you, but you can take whatever is
given. So the ethics here is that you can use what is "left-over" but not killed
or grown for your experiments. So it does make sense, but it may not be
practical, and can easily be used to promote more abortions, which I agree is
harmful.

> A last thought, it has been suggested by some anti-abortion
> commentators that embryonic stem-cell research is being pushed over
> the alternative, which is stem-cells taken from adult bone-marrow.
> This is, they allege, because it suits the agenda of the abortion
> lobby. This sounds a bit paranoid, but there may be some truth to it.

I haven't heard this argument before.

> In any case, if society took the ethical problem of defending the
> unborn seriously then more resources would be put into marrow cell
> research. This is the ethically neutral alternative, and may be
> preferable even if there are additional technical barriers to overcome.
>
> --
> Punnadhammo Bhikkhu
> Arrow River Community Center
> Thunder Bay, Ontario
> http://www.baynet.net/~arcc

--DT

Dirk Bruere

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Jul 24, 2001, 12:05:08 PM7/24/01

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"punnadhammo" <arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net> wrote in message
news:240720011053495262%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net...

> The question of stem-cell research is very difficult one. It poses
> serious ethical dilemmas and so far there seems to be nothing so much

I don't see it as posing any ethical dilemmas, other than how they are
sourced.
And if its from umbilical cords, none whatsoever.

Gassho
Dirk

punnadhammo

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Jul 24, 2001, 6:32:53 PM7/24/01

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In article <iYg77.16473$Iz3.4...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
Dirk Bruere <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:

> I don't see it as posing any ethical dilemmas, other than how they are
> sourced.
> And if its from umbilical cords, none whatsoever.

Yes, obviously. But they are coming from aborted fetuses, leftovers
from fetility clinics and now one lab in the States is using
custom-grown embryos. These are all highly problematic.

Tang Huyen

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Jul 24, 2001, 7:47:53 PM7/24/01

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punnadhammo wrote: <<It seems to me a very fair question to ask if a gandabbha

would even arise in such a zygote. How could we ever know?>>

We may or may not know, now and forever, but technically, a gandharva does not
*arise* in a zygote, it *joins* the act of copulation of the parents in the
right circumstances. To say that it arises in a zygote implies that it does
not exist before that and is created in the very act of fertilisation, which
is the materialist view.

Even then the description of a gandharva joining the locus of copulation of
the parents need not be taken literally. It may have been taken over from folk
tale to lead in to the Buddha's teaching of detachment in the two paragraphs:

"[When the boy grows up], having seen a form with his eye, he feels attraction
(sarajjati) to agreeable forms, he feels repugnance (byapajjati) for
disagreeable forms, and he dwells without mindfulness as regards the body,
with a mind that is limited. And he does comprehend that freedom of mind, and
that freedom through wisdom as they really are, whereby those evil, unskilful
states of his are stopped without remainders. Possessed of compliance
(anurodha) and antipathy (virodha), whatever feeling he feels, pleasant,
unpleasant, or neither, he delights in it, welcomes it, persists in cleaving
to it. From delighting in that feeling of his, from welcoming it, from
persisting in cleaving to it, delight (nandi) arises. Whatever delight amid
those feelings, that is grasping. Dependent on grasping is becoming, dependent
on becoming is birth, dependent on birth, are old age, death, grief, sorrow,
lamentations, and despair. Such is the arising of this entire mass of
suffering.

Now, monks, a Tathagata arises in the world. When he has seen a form with his
eyes, he does not feel attraction for agreeable forms, he does not feel
repugnance for disagreable forms, and he dwells in mindfuness to the body,
with a mind that is immeasurable; and he comprehends that freedom of mind and
that freedom through wisdom as they really are, whereby those evil, unskilful
states of his are stopped without remainders. He who has thus got rid of
compliance and antipathy, whatever feeling he feels, pleasant, unpleasant, or
neither, he does not delight in that feeling, does not welcome it, does not
persist in cleaving to it. From not delighting in that feeling of his, from
not welcoming it, from not persisting in cleaving to it, whatever delight in
those feelings is stopped. From the stopping of his delight is the stopping of
his grasping; from the stopping of grasping is the stopping of becoming; from
the stopping of becoming is the stopping of birth; from the stopping of birth
is the stopping of old age, death, grief, sorrow, suffering, lamentation, and
despair. Such is the stopping of this entire mass of suffering."

The sutta MN 38 that contains those passages is borrowed below (with
modifications) from the PTS translation.

A pernicious view like this had accrued to the monk called Sati, a fisherman's
son: "In so far as I understand the dhamma taught by the Lord, it is that this
consciousness itself runs on, fares on, not another".

"What is this consciousness, Sati?"

"It is this, Lord, that speaks, that feels, that experiences now here, now
there, the fruition of deeds that are lovey and that are depraved."

"But to whom, foolish man, do you understand that dhamma was taught by me
thus? Foolish man, has not consciousness generated by conditions been spoken
of in many a figure by me, saying: apart from condition there is no
origination of consciousness? It is because, monks, an appropriate condition
arises that consciousness is known by this or that name: if consciousness
arises because of eyes and forms, it is known as visual consciousness; if
consciousness arises because of mind and objects-of-minds, it is known as
mental consciousness. Monks, as a fire burns because of this or that
appropriate condition, by that it is known: if a fire burns because of sticks,
it is known as a stick-fire; ... and if a fire burns because of rubbish, it is
known as a rubbish-fire. Even so, monks, when because of a condition
appropriate to it, consciousness arises, it is known by this or that name:
when consciousness arises because of eyes and forms, it is known as visual
consciousness, ... Do you see, monks, that this has come to be?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Do you see, monks, the origination of this nutriment?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Do you see, monks, that from the stopping of this nutriment, that which has
come to be is liable to stopping?"

"Yes, Lord."

"From doubt, monks, the perplexity arises: This that has come to be, might it
not be?"

"Yes, Lord."

"From doubt, the perplexity arises: night there not be an origination of that
nutriment?"

"Yes, Lord."

"From doubt, the perplexity arises: By the stopping of that nutriment, might
that which has come to be not be liable to stopping?"

"Yes, Lord."

"By seeing as it really is by means of wisdom, monks, that, This has come to
be -- is that which is perplexity got rid of?"

"Yes, Lord."

"By seeing as it really is by means of wisdom, monks, that, This is the
origination of nutriment -- is that which is perplexity got rid of?"

"Yes, Lord."

"By seeing as it really is by means of wisdom, monks, that, From the stopping
of that nutriment, that which has come to be is liable to stopping -- is that
which is perplexity got rid of?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Thinking, 'This has come to be', is there for you, monks, as to this, absence
of perplexity?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Thinking, 'This is the origination of nutriment', is there for you, monks, as
to this, absence of perplexity?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Thinking, 'From the stopping of that nutriment, that which has come to be is
liable to stopping', is there for you, monks, as to this, absence of
perplexity?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Thinking, 'This has come to be', -- is it properly seen by wisdom as it
really is?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Thinking, 'This is the origination of nutriment', -- is it properly seen by
wisdom as it really is?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Thinking, 'From the stopping of that nutriment, that which has come to be is
liable to stopping', -- is it properly seen by wisdom as it really is?"

"Yes, Lord."

"If you, monks, treasure, cling to, cherish, foster this view, thus purified,
thus cleansed, would you understand that the parable of the raft is dhamma
taught for crossing over, not for retaining?"

"Yes, Lord."

"But if you do not treasure, cling to, cherish, foster this view, thus
purified, thus cleansed, would you understand that the parable of the raft is
dhamma taught for crossing over, not for retaining?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Monks, these four nutriments are for the maintenance of creatures that have
come to be or for those seeking rebirth. What are the four? Morsel food,
coarse or fine, sensory impingement, mental striving, consciousness. And of
these four, what is the provenance, the source, the birth, the origin? The
four have craving as the provenance, etc. And monks, what is the provenance of
this craving? Feeling is the provenance. And what is the provenance of
feeling? Sensory impingement is the provenance. And what is the provenance of
sensory inpingement? The six sense-spheres are the provenance. And what is the
provenance of the six sense-spheres? Name-and-form is the provenance. And what
is the provenance of name-and-form? Consciousness is the provenance. And what
is the provenance of consciousness? The compositions are the provenance. And
what is the provenance of the compositions? Ignorance is the provenance.

So, it is, monks, that dependent on ignorance are the compositions, dependent
on the compositions is consciousness, ... name-and-form ... the six
sense-spheres ... sensory impingement ... feeling ... craving ... grasping ...
becoming ... birth ... aging, death, grief, sorrow, suffering, lamentation,
and despair. Such is the arising of this entire mass of suffering.

This being, that becomes; this arising, that arises. This not being, that does
not become; this ceasing, that ceases. Namely, dependent on ignorance are the
compositions, etc. But from the utter fading away of ignorance, the
compositions stop, from the stopping of the compositions, consciousness stops,
etc. Such is the stopping of the entire mass of suffering.

Now would you, monks, knowing thus, seeing thus, either run back to the past,
thinking: 'Now, were we in the past, were we not in the past, what were we in
the past, how were we in the past, having been what, what did we become in the
past'?"

"No, Lord."

"Or would you, monks, knowing thus, seeing thus, run forward into the future,
thinking, 'Will we come to be in the future, will we not come to be in the
future, what will we come to be in the future, how will we come to be in the
future, having been what, what will we come to be in the future'?"

"No, Lord."

"Or would you, monks, knowing thus, seeing thus, come to be doubtful about the
present, thinking: 'Am I, am I not, what am I, how am I, whence has this being
come, wheregoing will it come to be'?"

"No, Lord."

"Monks, it is on the conjunction of three things that there is conception. If
there is here a coitus of the parents, but it is not the mother’s season and
the gandharva is not present, there is not conception. If there is here a
coitus of the parents, and it is the mother’s season, but the gandharva is not
present, there is not conception. But, monks, if there is here a coitus of the
parents, and it is the mother’s season, and the gandharva is present, it is on
the conjunction of these three things that there is conception.

[When the boy grows up], having seen a form with his eye, he feels attraction
(sarajjati) to agreeable forms, he feels repugnance (byapajjati) for
disagreeable forms, and he dwells without mindfulness as regards the body,
with a mind that is limited. And he does comprehend that freedom of mind, and
that freedom through wisdom as they really are, whereby those evil, unskilful
states of his are stopped without remainders. Possessed of compliance
(anurodha) and antipathy (virodha), whatever feeling he feels, pleasant,
unpleasant, or neither, he delights in it, welcomes it, persists in cleaving
to it. From delighting in that feeling of his, from welcoming it, from
persisting in cleaving to it, delight (nandi) arises. Whatever delight amid
those feelings, that is grasping. Dependent on grasping is becoming, dependent
on becoming is birth, dependent on birth, are old age, death, grief, sorrow,
lamentations, and despair. Such is the arising of this entire mass of
suffering.

Now, monks, a Tathagata arises in the world. When he has seen a form with his
eyes, he does not feel attraction for agreeable forms, he does not feel
repugnance for disagreable forms, and he dwells in mindfuness to the body,
with a mind that is immeasurable; and he comprehends that freedom of mind and
that freedom through wisdom as they really are, whereby those evil, unskilful
states of his are stopped without remainders. He who has thus got rid of
compliance and antipathy, whatever feeling he feels, pleasant, unpleasant, or
neither, he does not delight in that feeling, does not welcome it, does not
persist in cleaving to it. From not delighting in that feeling of his, from
not welcoming it, from not persisting in cleaving to it, whatever delight in
those feelings is stopped. From the stopping of his delight is the stopping of
his grasping; from the stopping of grasping is the stopping of becoming; from
the stopping of becoming is the stopping of birth; from the stopping of birth
is the stopping of old age, death, grief, sorrow, suffering, lamentation, and
despair. Such is the stopping of this entire mass of suffering."

Notice that the Buddha talks of "creatures that have come to be or for those
seeking rebirth". He also says that the awakened has dropped all views about
the past, the present and the future, especially the "I am", in any tense
(grammatical or philosophical) of that verb. The awakened has no "I am" and no
self (atta), period.

Tang Huyen

dharmatroll

unread,

Jul 25, 2001, 1:34:49 AM7/25/01

to

Tang Huyen <tang_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<3B5E0929...@yahoo.com>...

> punnadhammo wrote: <<It seems to me a very fair question to ask if a
> gandabbha would even arise in such a zygote. How could we ever know?>>

Tang:

> We may or may not know, now and forever, but technically, a gandharva
> does not *arise* in a zygote, it *joins* the act of copulation

Aha! Then the gandharva *is* truly a soul. The only thing tolerable
about the rebirth belief is the claim that there is no self or soul
which transmigrates, but rather that patterns or dharmas recur. But
now Tang is revealing that at least this version of rebirth is an
all-out soul spook view.

> To say that it arises in a zygote implies that it does not exist
> before that and is created in the very act of fertilisation,
> which is the materialist view.

And the one which makes more sense. Even better that consciousness
arises in a matter of degree as the fetus develops and there is
increasingly more of a nervous system.

> Even then the description of a gandharva joining the locus of
> copulation of the parents need not be taken literally.

Yee haw! I sure hope not, as the story is rather laughable.

> It may have been taken over from folk tale to lead in to the

> Buddha's teaching of detachment ...

So the gandharva is a metaphor used to teach detachment?
Makes sense to me.

So what do you think of the issue of stem cell research, Tang?

--DT

to

So what are you against you cretin ?

Tang Huyen

unread,

Jul 25, 2001, 3:04:30 PM7/25/01

to

Jonathan wrote: <<How dare he quote the Buddha on a Tibetan Tantrist newsgroup ?

I mean - how are you going be able to keep screwing the Buddha over and making
it up as you go along if people just keep quoting the Buddha on your newsgroup
?>>

How big a stooge cheque do you want, luv?

Tang Huyen

GeirSmith

unread,

Jul 25, 2001, 3:54:06 PM7/25/01

to

Hey PRC got the Olympics ! They going to have to have 6000 reporters asking
questions. You think Mao, Marx and Engels are going to survive ? What's it now
50 million victims ? 100 million with the USSR ?

GeirSmith

unread,

Jul 25, 2001, 4:26:31 PM7/25/01

to

Hey people ! Let's get out of this ! We're really rolling in mud here ! Look at
this post. The title is very unrespectful of the Buddha. These guys are
laughing about Communism that's killed millions. I'm being attacked all over
this NG for revealing an author, Taranatha that's been banned for 400 years and
more. Like Sodom and Gommorah of the Bible, let's flee this pestilential place
and seek purity. I'm at geir...@aol.com and I'll send you the research-papers
for Buddha Maitreya or down-load them from here (I'm not going to repeat the
names of the posts). Then we can send these back and forth to whoever asks for
them. Let's free ourselves from this infested den of sin.

Jonathan

unread,

Jul 25, 2001, 9:06:42 PM7/25/01

to

Tang Huyen <tang_...@yahoo.com> wrote

Huge ! Although I want to make it clear that this was to a specific post by
Geir Smith where he was hurling abuse at you when you were quoting the Pali
Canon (presumably). It's not a general accusation towards Tibetan Buddhists.
Geir repeatedly subordinates the Buddha's teaching as portrayed by the Pali
Canon to his own preferred later texts (e.g. on the subjects of 'Maitreya'
and homosexuality). I'm going to be the world's first non-Buddhist
Buddhist-Fundamentalist :)

Jonathan

DharmaTroll

unread,

Jul 25, 2001, 11:02:54 PM7/25/01

to

In article <eFy77.3$jh3....@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net>, Namdrool says...

>> Tang:
>> > We may or may not know, now and forever, but technically, a gandharva
>> > does not *arise* in a zygote, it *joins* the act of copulation
>>
>> Aha! Then the gandharva *is* truly a soul. The only thing tolerable
>> about the rebirth belief is the claim that there is no self or soul
>> which transmigrates, but rather that patterns or dharmas recur. But
>> now Tang is revealing that at least this version of rebirth is an
>> all-out soul spook view.

Namdrool:

>No-- sigh-- the Gandharva also has five skandhas just we do and is an
>impermanent transitional stage from one life to the next. No soul needed.

Oh -- noooo! Not only a soul, but an entire astral body as well, and it
participates in an erotic three-some and somehow pops into that little eggy with
the spermy and *poof* it turns into a conscious sentient critter!

I have a better story. That there is this stuff called DNA that is in these
things called genes that are passed on in the eggy and the spermy from the mommy
and the daddy and that they provide all the information needed to grow the new
person, and there is no need for a kinky three-some with your spookie gandharva.

I like my story better, but to each his own. If you get into manage-a-trois,
well, whatever turns you on...

Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!

--DT

GeirSmith

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 6:05:27 AM7/26/01

to

These two are out to destroy tibetan tantric Buddhism. Homosexuality is
condemned by Buddhism and blasphemy such as displayed by the title of this
post. I've changed it here and want to see if it has dissappeared when I send
it. If it still appears with the blashemy in the title I won't post further on
it to not accumulate bad karma. But I'll fight these sinful guys from other
posts. They are ignorant of tibetan tantric Buddhism because they haven't read
anything about it. How can one speak to people who refuse to study ? How can
you talk to someone who doesn't know how to speak ? Why are we always talking
from the position of superiority and these debates are eternally the process of
stooping down to the level of the scum in the gutter ? I mean, they're not
stooping down to me, their's is the asking situation (this is tibetan.com not
hindu.com for english moron or hinayana.com for vietnam cretin). Why can't one
just say "this and this is written in the book and it means this and this"?
Here it's : "You haven't read this and this so you don't have this and this as
a reflection-object. So that leaves me with this and this in mine and nobody at
the other end of the telephone line...just beep, beep, beep. So why the hell
did you call (come to arbt) in the first place ? Just to raise hell because
you're just a trouble-maker ? Well you're making trouble for Buddhism and I'm a
buddhist and you'll make trouble for Buddhism only over my dead body. Whenever
you try to open your God-damned mouth on arbt I'll be there, you scum." These
are the gurus of the future ? Plus, these messiahs (J. wants to be it "seeing
he's got so much jewish blood to be able to..." Oh ! Aren't we all jealous of
J. ! You idiot ! T. wants to, too. Eh ! Hasn't he got it all prepared with his
book ?) are all fighting together : Ev and T.; well no comment. Everybody knows
about them ! T. and J., well they're all so 'brilliant' thaat they're all ready
to outshine each other whenever they get a chance. Neo and the three others;
well whenever he gets the chance he says :" no matter what the others say I can
always come afterwards. I get out my drums, play my riff andthat blows them
all away". He's the messiah too..These guys are hopeless because there's just
an empty space where the brain should be. What to do ? Some people are just
morons like Evelyn, Jonathan (sorry about the order I know you all want to be
first. Hey ! You guys are lucky ! Merrit was complaining that he hadn't made it
to this Riders list !) Tang and Neo. O.K. Neo third, Tang fourth. Kids these
guys are, kids ! We've got to move away from these kind of people. Leave this
kind of Sodom; and people this is serious : these guys are vicious. Just look
at the blasphemy in the title they post under. Seriously, don't look back :
walk away from sin such as these people's if you're really into Buddhism and
dislike sin like these guys indulge in. And don't look back when they whine
that they're "not as bad as all that". Just look at the sin of the title of
their post and leave. Walk away from these people and don't look back. Keep
virtue in your minds and keep your eyes forward to a new future. Leave all this
sin behind. These are evil people who are trying to destroy Buddhism day after
day. These are people who have sin clinging to every moment of their thoughts.
Forget them. Leave arbt and we'll use the mail and other sites to spread the
news of a virtuous new doctrine. All the best to you all outside of these
horrible heretics who are trying to destroy us buddhists. These people have a
mid-west preacher kind of talking-style where the hell-fire is going to
overtake us if we follow Lord Buddha and tibetan tantric Buddhism. These guys
come across as insane. I mean, how can come on a buddhist NG and write a post
title like the one above their posts ? That's it I'm out of here. You guys got
what I just said. Leave this place before it's too late and you get glued down.
Scat ! Pray to Lord Buddha and he will protect you.

Tang Huyen

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 7:41:52 AM7/26/01

to

Evelyn Ruut wrote: <<Another example of Geir Smith, in case anyone is
interested. (Some have expressed curiosity on who he is)>>

So you cross-post two of Geir's posts from ARBT to TRB and AZ. Quit bitching
about cross-posting, then.

And then the "some". Quit bitching about the anonymous "some", "somebody" and
"some people", then.

Tang Huyen

pangolin

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 8:36:28 AM7/26/01

to

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 07:41:52 -0400, Tang Huyen <tang_...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

<snip

>
>And then the "some". Quit bitching about the anonymous "some", "somebody" and
>"some people", then.
>
>Tang Huyen

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 06:34:05 -0400, Tang Huyen <tang_...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

<snip>

>There are some people on these boards, just as in real life, who only pass
>judgements without arguing substantively.
>
>Tang Huyen

seems to be something wrong in the above...

Evelyn Ruut

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 9:27:10 AM7/26/01

to

"pangolin" <pangolin@chelloREMOVE_THIS.nl> wrote in message
news:qh30mtgd21aou1lau...@4ax.com...

True.

Tang Huyen

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 9:27:10 AM7/26/01

to

Mike Austin wrote: "Both of you complain yet perpetuate the cause of your
complaints! As I was quoted by Tang:

Mike Austin wrote: <<How bizarre that we conspire to undermine whatever fragile
peace of mind we have."

I don't know where you got what you wrote, but I do *not* complain about
cross-posting and the use of "some", "somebody" and "some people". I do both.

It is Ev who complains about both, and then does both.

As to peace of mind, Ev herself wrote yesterday: <<I only have the power you give
me in your own mind.>>

However, it seems that the mere use of "some", "somebody" and "some people" gets
her paranoia going. So apparently she gives power to others in her own mind to get
her upset and paranoid when they merely use certain *common words that she herself
uses constantly*. Just yesterday, she wrote to Lee in "Re: Buddist Perspective on
developing weapons":

<<Thank you again for a clear point well made without any aggression in making it
as some have shown.>>

Both Arn and dar have laughed at that.

Arn: <<Tang has not said one thing in these related threads and yet you see
aggression!

;-)>>

dar to Ev: <<You didnt get the joke, you mentioned seeing agression without Tang
having been in the post, meaning you still managed to blame without Tang being
involved.>>

Tang Huyen

Evelyn Ruut

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 9:31:18 AM7/26/01

to

"Tang Huyen" <tang_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:3B600200...@yahoo.com...

Ah yes....my most devoted fan, Tang Hyena, who, catching the faint scent of
blood, goes even to the hinterlands of alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan, where
the "tibetan religion" he hates so much is discussed, for the purpose of
finding a bit of carrion or dung to dine upon. When finding, he devours,
and licks his lips with delight! Then he he cross posts his "Nyah, na-na
NAH nah" for all to see.

Namdrol

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 10:30:39 AM7/26/01

to

"DharmaTroll" <nos...@newsranger.com> wrote in message
news:yLL77.7234$ar1....@www.newsranger.com...

> In article <eFy77.3$jh3....@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net>, Namdrool says...
>
> >> Tang:
> >> > We may or may not know, now and forever, but technically, a gandharva
> >> > does not *arise* in a zygote, it *joins* the act of copulation
> >>
> >> Aha! Then the gandharva *is* truly a soul. The only thing tolerable
> >> about the rebirth belief is the claim that there is no self or soul
> >> which transmigrates, but rather that patterns or dharmas recur. But
> >> now Tang is revealing that at least this version of rebirth is an
> >> all-out soul spook view.
>
> Namdrool:
> >No-- sigh-- the Gandharva also has five skandhas just we do and is an
> >impermanent transitional stage from one life to the next. No soul needed.
>
> Oh -- noooo! Not only a soul, but an entire astral body as well, and it
> participates in an erotic three-some and somehow pops into that little
eggy with
> the spermy and *poof* it turns into a conscious sentient critter!

Right-- so now you are incorrectly attributing to the Buddha a theory of a
soul. Sigh.

Namdrol

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 10:52:08 AM7/26/01

to

"Jonathan" <grf...@lineone.net> wrote in message
news:tluv68g...@corp.supernews.co.uk...

Well Maitreya does appear in the Pali Canon-- Digha Nikaya.

Namdrol

DharmaTroll

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 1:00:40 PM7/26/01

to

In article <jQV77.4$4f4....@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net>, Namdrol says...

>
>"DharmaTroll" <nos...@newsranger.com> wrote in message
>news:yLL77.7234$ar1....@www.newsranger.com...
>>

>> Oh -- noooo! Not only a soul, but an entire astral body as well,
>> and it participates in an erotic three-some and somehow pops into
>> that little eggy with the spermy and *poof* it turns into a
>> conscious sentient critter!
>>

>> I have a better story. That there is this stuff called DNA
>> that is in these things called genes that are passed on in
>> the eggy and the spermy from the mommy and the daddy and
>> that they provide all the information needed to grow the
>> new person, and there is no need for a kinky three-some
>> with your spookie gandharva.

> Right-- so now you are incorrectly attributing to the Buddha

> a theory of a soul. Sigh.
>
> Namdrol

No, just you. A soul, which is defined standardly as "a non-physical component
that is necessary in addition to a physical body to render the body conscious",
is exactly what you claimed, when you said a 'gandharva' 'enters' the eggy along
with the spermy. That is a sould claim. (And I don't care about properties:
whether your soul has 5 parts or whether it is temporary or eternal or any other
crap, as it's still a non-physical further fact allegedly needed for a body to
be conscious.)

So admit you believe in souls and spare me the eel-wriggling please. It's not so
bad: after all, you believe in deities, devas, and goblins, and you claim that
when I see the bicycle on the road in front of me there really is no
corresponding real bicycle there, so I don't need to worry about runnin'im off
the road; what's the big deal about admitting you believe in souls too?

Again, I have a better story. That there is this stuff called DNA that is in

these things called genes that are passed on in the eggy and the spermy from the
mommy and the daddy and that they provide all the information needed to grow the
new person, and there is no need for a kinky three-some with your spookie
gandharva.

--DT

Namdrol

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 1:14:45 PM7/26/01

to

"DharmaTroll" <nos...@newsranger.com> wrote in message

news:Y0Y77.7847$ar1....@www.newsranger.com...

Webster's gives this:

Main Entry: 1soul
Pronunciation: 'sOl
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English soule, from Old English sAwol; akin to Old High
German sEula soul
Date: before 12th century

1 : the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an
individual life
2 a : the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and
spiritual beings, or the universe
3 : a person's total self
Etc.

The conciousness aggregate is not an essence; nor is it an animating
principle, nor is it the actuating cause of an individual life. It is not
the "spiritual principle emobodied in human beings. It is not a person's
total self.

Therefor, the Buddha's gandharava teaching is not a theory of a soul, i.e.,
an atman in anyway.

And your definition, Mr. Dumpty, is apparently not standard.

Namdrol

Dirk Bruere

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 1:52:52 PM7/26/01

to

"Namdrol" <malcolm.smith@...genuity.com> wrote in message
news:8eY77.12$4f4....@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net...
>
>
> Webster's gives this:

>
> 1 : the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an
> individual life
> 2 a : the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and
> spiritual beings, or the universe
> 3 : a person's total self
> Etc.

OK.
We have it.
Before conception, its the information stored in DNA.
After, it is the total information content of an individual.

Gassho
Dirk

DharmaTroll

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 1:55:00 PM7/26/01

to

In article <8eY77.12$4f4....@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net>, Namdrol says...

> The conciousness aggregate is not an essence; nor is it an animating
> principle, nor is it the actuating cause of an individual life.
> It is not the "spiritual principle emobodied in human beings.
> It is not a person's total self.

Look, you still claim a soul -- that is, something non-physical -- enters the
egg from some spook-world or whatever, and I'm saying that such a claim is
obsolete and absurd. I don't care about how many stripes your spookie has.

You are still presenting a Toothfairy or Flying Reindeer story, and you are a
grown man. Calling your spookie a "conscious aggregate" and then claiming that
fertilised eggs can think and feel like we can is laughable. You might as well
claim that rocks and coathangers are conscious as well.

> And your definition, Mr. Dumpty, is apparently not standard.

Sure it is. When you are full of deva-dung, Namdrool, why don't you own up to it
and admit, "yes I think that something non-physical pops into the eggy and makes
it conscious just like you and I" instead of quibbling over whether your spookie
fits with the Catholic definition of a soul or not. Zheesh. You're still a wacko
telling ghost stories. Doesn't matter what kind of ineffable material you claim
your spookie's sheet is made out of.

--DT

Namdrol

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 2:16:52 PM7/26/01

to

"DharmaTroll" <nos...@newsranger.com> wrote in message

news:UPY77.7923$ar1....@www.newsranger.com...

> In article <8eY77.12$4f4....@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net>, Namdrol says...
>
> > The conciousness aggregate is not an essence; nor is it an animating
> > principle, nor is it the actuating cause of an individual life.
> > It is not the "spiritual principle emobodied in human beings.
> > It is not a person's total self.
>

> Look, you still claim a soul...<snip>

By your unique definition; but not by the Buddha's nor any Buddhist master--
and that in final analysis, is all that matters. I am not interested in
being consistent with how you [idiosyncratically] define things, but rather,
with how the Buddha defined things.

Namdrol

Jonathan

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 2:55:09 PM7/26/01

to

Namdrol <malcolm.smith@...genuity.com> wrote
> "Jonathan" <grf...@lineone.net> wrote

Namdrol - Quite but Geir went 'ballistic' when Evelyn posted the entire
relevant text because it showed the prophecied Maitreya's arrival to be
incompatible with either the present time or conditions. He then repeatedly
explained at length that it should be ignored and subordinated to his
studies of and interpretations of this Taranatha and suchlike late Tibetan
sources.

Jonathan

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 6:49:45 PM7/26/01

to

"Namdrol" <malcolm.smith@...genuity.com> wrote in message

news:cA%77.24$4f4.1...@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net...

Dear Namdrol,

Do you remember Kent Sandvik? He had a website with all the various
prophesies about Maitreya. The stuff I posted came from there. At any
rate, it doesn't take a heckofalot to send Geir ballistic anyway :-)

Regards,
Evelyn

Namdrol

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 6:57:30 PM7/26/01

to

"DharmaTroll" <nos...@newsranger.com> wrote in message

news:cZ087.8254$ar1....@www.newsranger.com...

> The Buddha's teaching of anattaa gets lost with your spookie, and you come
off
> with almost the same transmigration of a gandharva found in Hinduism. The
whole

The Gandhrava teaching is not found in Hinduism at all.

Namdrol

DharmaTroll

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 7:55:18 PM7/26/01

to

In article <cA%77.24$4f4.1...@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net>, Namdrol says...

> In Mahayana Buddhism, tenth stage bodhisattvas can have 10 to tenth power
> number of emanation bodies.
>
> But even so, there is no chance that Maitreya as a supreme Nirmanakaya
> will appear in this world system in this age no matter what Geir Smith says

I think we oughta lock Namdrool and Geir in the same padded cell and let them
fight over the comic book...

--DT

DharmaTroll

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 8:00:46 PM7/26/01

to

In article <uf187.30$4f4.2...@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net>, Namdrol says...

> The Gandhrava teaching is not found in Hinduism at all.
>
> Namdrol

Actually, transmigration of a soul is found in Hinduism. Close enough.
Both of them are very similar spooks stories with no basis in reality.

--DT

punnadhammo

unread,

Jul 26, 2001, 9:16:15 PM7/26/01

to

In article <3B5E0929...@yahoo.com>, Tang Huyen
<tang_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> We may or may not know, now and forever, but technically, a gandharva does not

> *arise* in a zygote, it *joins* the act of copulation of the parents in the
> right circumstances. To say that it arises in a zygote implies that it does
> not exist before that and is created in the very act of fertilisation, which
> is the materialist view.

This raises the thorny question of an antarabhava in the Theravada.
Whether or not there is such has no bearing on the issue here under
discussion.

I see your point, but I would still defend the use of the word "arise"
whether or not there is an antarabhava, because consciousness in fact
arises afresh each moment, including the moment of conception.

fo...@pipeline.com

unread,

Jul 27, 2001, 12:59:11 AM7/27/01

to

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 03:02:54 GMT, DharmaTroll <nos...@newsranger.com>
wrote:

>In article <eFy77.3$jh3....@paloalto-snr2.gtei.net>, Namdrool says...
>
>>> Tang:
>>> > We may or may not know, now and forever, but technically, a gandharva
>>> > does not *arise* in a zygote, it *joins* the act of copulation
>>>
>>> Aha! Then the gandharva *is* truly a soul. The only thing tolerable
>>> about the rebirth belief is the claim that there is no self or soul
>>> which transmigrates, but rather that patterns or dharmas recur. But
>>> now Tang is revealing that at least this version of rebirth is an
>>> all-out soul spook view.
>
>Namdrool:
>>No-- sigh-- the Gandharva also has five skandhas just we do and is an
>>impermanent transitional stage from one life to the next. No soul needed.
>
>Oh -- noooo! Not only a soul, but an entire astral body as well, and it
>participates in an erotic three-some and somehow pops into that little eggy with
>the spermy and *poof* it turns into a conscious sentient critter!

That's you DT. The majority of your own identity is linguistically
created, constantly reinforced via language, and only deceptively
exists at best.

>
>I have a better story. That there is this stuff called DNA that is in these
>things called genes that are passed on in the eggy and the spermy from the mommy
>and the daddy and that they provide all the information needed to grow the new
>person, and there is no need for a kinky three-some with your spookie gandharva.

And by saying a pot is a pot you think you've plummetted the depths of
philosophy that the great thinkers before you dove into and wrestled
with. You say a pot is a pot and the birth of a baby is
scientifically understood and that's enough for you?

>
>I like my story better, but to each his own. If you get into manage-a-trois,
>well, whatever turns you on...
>
>Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!
>
>--DT

You're a silly high school boy DT, but to each his own.

GeirSmith

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Jul 28, 2001, 1:23:10 AM7/28/01

to

In article <270720012141112573%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net>, punnadhammo says...

>> Aha! Then the gandharva *is* truly a soul. The only thing tolerable
>> about the rebirth belief is the claim that there is no self or soul
>> which transmigrates, but rather that patterns or dharmas recur. But
>> now Tang is revealing that at least this version of rebirth is an
>> all-out soul spook view.

> Not at all. The Theravada orthodoxy (ie. Buddhaghosa) takes the view
> that rebirth consciousness follows immediately after death
> consciousness. All moments of consciousness are discrete and void
> (anatta/sunya.) The gandhabba is taken as a poetic expression of this
> impersonal process.

I can go for that. (I mean as a good metaphor, thought I don't think there is
evidence for anything happening literally to real fertilised eggs.)

> There is a contrary view that the gandhabba refers to a real entity,
> or a state of being, that is an indetermediate form of existence.

That's where I claim there is a very standard soul view.

> Even if this view is taken, however, it still doesn't imply any
> continuation of substance or person.

It is if you claim that this spook is *necessary* for a fertilised egg to become
conscious. Basically, the Catholic Church's prejudice against animals comes from
a belief that God creates a gandharva and sticks it in fertilised human eggs but
not fertilised eggs of other animals. The basic difference is simply that the
temporal absense is flip-flopped: in Buddhism, you have countless past-lives and
after awakening no more lives; in Catholicism, you have no past-lives but a
countless future with God in Heaven. Same thing in a mathematical way just with
a reversed polarity.

> A technically precise way of expressing this view would not say that
> the gandhabba enters into the womb. Rather, the gandhabba ceases to
> exist and because of karma a causally dependent consciousness
> subsequently arises in the womb.

Again, I like that. It sounds less like a soul view. More like a stack of
dominoes, where the last domino that fell caused the next one to fall, but there
is nothing that passes from one domino to the next. That is what I like about
the rebirth idea. It is a wonderful intuitive model of how we are empty of any
self or soul, and that what we call 'me' is not any permanent thing going
through time, but rather simply a matter of continuity, that some future
experiences will be related to these present experiences in strong ways, with no
further facts added other than that continuity. In that sense I think it is
correct to say that we are reborn every moment, and that has profound
implications.

What I don't like about the rebirth idea is the action at a space-time distance,
which is like saying that the last domino on the stack of dominos on your table
causes the first domino of a stack of dominos in the future on some table a
thousand miles away. That sounds nuts to me. That's why I go for rebirth from
moment to moment (which is like where the dominos actually touch each other
physically) and not for rebirth across lifetimes (which is like the claim that
the last domino on the stack on your table causes the first domino to fall in
exactly one other stack of dominos in France next week or something like that).
The former make sense and suggests we are empty of self; the latter is nutz.
Unless, like Einstein, you can come up with something like curved space-time,
which made the seeming action at a distance of gravity work without really
claiming action at a distance. Come up with something like that, as well as
evidence that rebirth actually occurs, and you'll sell me on the idea. Until
then, I'll continue to say, "that's nutz".

But I've said all this before. I'm just repeating it to stir up trouble, and
make it easy for anyone to debate any side of the issue.

--DT

Jonathan

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Jul 28, 2001, 4:31:20 AM7/28/01

to

punnadhammo <arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net> wrote

Punnadhammo - To me - if the gandhabba is a non-physical aggregate (?) it
makes no sense to assign it co-ordinates in 'physical' space as per "arises
*in* the womb".

Jonathan

GeirSmith

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Jul 28, 2001, 4:33:53 AM7/28/01

to

> dsalo@

><malcolm.smith@

The reincarnation of Maitreya is among us or Taranatha is a liar. There are
evil persons in Tibet who banned him for saying this. They are no different
from Ayatollah "Ban Salman Rushdie and the Satanical Verses". They are ignorant
morons who despise learning and who disdain the most important historian of
Tibet that Taranatha was and disdain the phenomenal impact of the meaning
contained in his work that completely turns tibetan Buddhism on it's head,
reversing the meaning of 600 years of tibetan tantric Buddhism beginning with
the banning of his work.

So you see what you're interested in. You like to play with Lego blocks ? How's
the weather where you are now ? I like to talk about the weather. Very
inspiring. Morons abound. Like rabbits. And mice. Kind regards.
geir...@aol.com / sakya-ngor.org

unread,

Jul 28, 2001, 2:55:00 PM7/28/01

to

Okay, we have established that you are Maitreya and I am Beast

Now go to the mirror and say "I'm a joke..."

pangolin

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Jul 28, 2001, 2:55:01 PM7/28/01

to

You do it and you know it. You're a pervert.
Shame on you and your race.

Lee Dillion

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Jul 28, 2001, 3:09:52 PM7/28/01

to

"pangolin" <pangolin@chelloREMOVE_THIS.nl> wrote in message
news:1g26mt4mi703nkl1l...@4ax.com...

Geir has been on my "blocked sender" list for some time. If you keep referencing
his nonsense with samples of the above, you are next.

--
Lee Dillion
dill...@home.com

pangolin

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Jul 28, 2001, 3:31:35 PM7/28/01

to

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:09:52 GMT, "Lee Dillion" <dill...@home.com>
wrote:

Go ahead, because in this NG it's all I do.

Mike Austin

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Jul 28, 2001, 5:21:38 PM7/28/01

to

In article <46E87.2962$Ke4.1...@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com>, Lee
Dillion <dill...@home.com> writes

>Geir has been on my "blocked sender" list for some time. If you keep
>referencing his nonsense with samples of the above, you are next.

Hi Lee,

These are my sentiments also. I find it sad to see people who often make
useful contributions to these groups getting side-tracked like this.

Metta
Mike Austin

pangolin

unread,

Jul 28, 2001, 6:23:03 PM7/28/01

to

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:21:38 +0100, Mike Austin <mi...@lamrim.org.uk>
wrote:

>In article <46E87.2962$Ke4.1...@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com>, Lee
>Dillion <dill...@home.com> writes
>
>>Geir has been on my "blocked sender" list for some time. If you keep
>>referencing his nonsense with samples of the above, you are next.
>
>
>Hi Lee,
>
>These are my sentiments also.

You can easily killfile me concerning alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan,
because I have no other intention in this NG than being GeirSmith's
'best friend' :)

Evelyn Ruut

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Jul 28, 2001, 7:34:09 PM7/28/01

to

"pangolin" <pangolin@chelloREMOVE_THIS.nl> wrote in message

news:4le6mtoeobouc71rb...@4ax.com...

Dear Mike and Lee,

On other newsgroups I will probably not be controversial by either of your
definitions, or if I am, it will be simply due to stating honest opinion.
On a.r.b.t. I am with Pangolin, so you may wish to skip my posts on THIS
newsgroup only. I will be careful not to crosspost.

Best Regards,
Evelyn

pangolin

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Jul 28, 2001, 10:04:03 PM7/28/01

to

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 23:34:09 GMT, "Evelyn Ruut" <mama...@ulster.net>
wrote:

>
>"pangolin" <pangolin@chelloREMOVE_THIS.nl> wrote in message
>news:4le6mtoeobouc71rb...@4ax.com...
>> On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:21:38 +0100, Mike Austin <mi...@lamrim.org.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >In article <46E87.2962$Ke4.1...@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com>, Lee
>> >Dillion <dill...@home.com> writes
>> >
>> >>Geir has been on my "blocked sender" list for some time. If you keep
>> >>referencing his nonsense with samples of the above, you are next.
>> >
>> >
>> >Hi Lee,
>> >
>> >These are my sentiments also.
>>
>> You can easily killfile me concerning alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan,
>> because I have no other intention in this NG than being GeirSmith's
>> 'best friend' :)
>
>
>Dear Mike and Lee,
>
>On other newsgroups I will probably not be controversial by either of your
>definitions, or if I am, it will be simply due to stating honest opinion.
>On a.r.b.t. I am with Pangolin,

You might wanna now I have no intention to be 'honest' with mr Smith

GeirSmith

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Jul 30, 2001, 2:56:22 AM7/30/01

to

> pangolin

>You do it and you know it. You're a pervert.
>Shame on you and your race.

http://geocities.com/longlivemaitreya/

You mongrel from Russia. Be a slave. Prostrate like your race is used to.

GeirSmith

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Jul 30, 2001, 2:58:29 AM7/30/01

to

> "Lee Dillion"

Lee dillion 's a ole-front.

GeirSmith

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Jul 30, 2001, 2:59:54 AM7/30/01

to

>pangolin

And try to speak english too; man I've practically no education ! Pangoolin.

unread,

Jul 31, 2001, 12:49:55 PM7/31/01

to

>"Namdrol"

I don't think Nam's smart enough to killfile anyone. He doesn't understand what
the difference between enemy and friend is. He has no friends. Like
aristocrats. It's only "them, them, them !" Prestige and no study.

DharmaTroll

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Aug 2, 2001, 4:58:37 PM8/2/01

to

Opionions? Is this research ethical to Buddhists? Why? Why not? --DT

http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=86527

Irrational emotion replaces rational debate in America
02 August 2001

Judging from the debate on cloning that took place in the US House of
Representatives on Tuesday, America – and its political leaders in particular –
are confused about the possible medical benefits of stem cells. Not for the
first time have supposedly educated people shown unbridled ignorance of a
subject that deserves more attention and thought than it receives.

The House of Representatives has decided to reject research into the cloning of
embryonic stem cells, which promises nothing short of a revolution in transplant
medicine, on the grounds that it is a slippery slope to the cloning of a human
being. As one Republican representative said, "this House should not be giving
the green light to mad scientists to tinker with the gift of life. Cloning is an
insult to humanity. It is science gone crazy".

Indeed, this might be the case if cloning was meant to be the creation of a
cloned baby from the cells of an adult man or woman. However, this form of
"reproductive" cloning was never on the agenda of the respected American
scientists who are calling for their government to allow federal money to be
used for research into the cloning of stem cells from human embryos. As the
latest news on the growing of heart tissue in a test tube shows, the use of
human embryonic stem cells is one of the most exciting areas in modern medicine.
But its full potential can only be realised if it is possible to derive stem
cells from cloned embryos, which means that the transplanted tissue will not be
rejected if it is later transferred to the patient whose cells were used to make
the clone.

This is quite definitely not reproductive cloning, but "therapeutic cloning", a
distinction that Britain made with legislation specifically banning one
(reproductive) whilst allowing the other (therapeutic).

It is sad, but not surprising in the America of President Bush, that senior
politicians are muddying the waters so that one form of cloning becomes linked
with the other. Britain has shown how it can be done through legislation after a
period of informed consultation and rational debate. The US, on the other hand,
is heading towards prohibition based on irrational emotion. America will be less
able to retain the best researchers, and many more people with incurable
illnesses will have to continue to suffer while science is deliberately
stultified.

Durham

unread,

Aug 2, 2001, 8:00:14 PM8/2/01

to

> As one Republican representative said, "this House should not be giving
> the green light to mad scientists to tinker with the gift of life. Cloning
is an
> insult to humanity. It is science gone crazy".

So wouldn't that mean:

1) In Vitro Fertilization
2) Contraception
3) Medicine in general

are also 'science gone crazy' and 'tinkering with the gift of life'?

Also, someone tell me what is 'morally wrong' about a human clone. Nature
creates them all the time - they're called 'identical twins'....

>-< Phant

Son of MAN

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Aug 2, 2001, 9:59:44 PM8/2/01

to

Unrelated, what can you tell me about Ajaan Chah? Does he have any books
available? Is he dead or still alive? Something I read about him has sparked
my interest. All too often, we see people being judged for the things they
say supposing them to be egocentric rather than inspired from love, but I
get the feeling I can learn from him. Any information would be appreciated.

"DharmaTroll" <nos...@newsranger.com> wrote in message
news:1aja7.15533$ar1....@www.newsranger.com...

> Opionions? Is this research ethical to Buddhists? Why? Why not? --DT
>
> http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=86527
>
> Irrational emotion replaces rational debate in America
> 02 August 2001
>
> Judging from the debate on cloning that took place in the US House of

> Representatives on Tuesday, America - and its political leaders in
particular -

DharmaTroll

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Aug 3, 2001, 12:30:57 AM8/3/01

to

In article <vpna7.8228$jL6.7...@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>,
Son of MAN says...

> Unrelated, what can you tell me about Ajaan Chah?
> Does he have any books available?
> Is he dead or still alive?
> Something I read about him has sparked my interest.

Venerable Ajahn Chah (Phra Bhodinyana Thera) was born into a typical farming
family in Baan Gor village, in the province of Ubon Rajathani, N.E. Thailand, in
1917.

He lived the first part of his life as any other youngster in rural Thailand,
and, following the custom, took ordination as a novice in the local
villagetemple for a number of years, where he learned to read and write in
addition to some basic Buddhist teachings.

After a number of years he returned to the lay life to help his parents, but,
feeling an attraction to the monasticlife, at the age of twenty he again entered
a temple, this time for higher ordination as bhikkhu, or Buddhist monk.

He spend the first few years ofhis bhikkhu live studying scriptures and learning
Pali, but the death of his father awakened him to the transience of life and
instilled in him the desire to find the real essence of the Buddha's teaching.

He began to travel to other monasteries, studying the monastic discipline in
detailand spending a very brief but significant time with Venerable Ajahn Mun,
the most outstanding meditation Master of the ascetic, forest-dwelling
tradition. Following his time with Venerable Ajahn Mun, he spend a number of
years travelling around Thailand, spending his time in forests and charnel
grounds, ideal places for developing meditation practice.

At length he came within the vicinity of the village of his birth, and when word
got around that he was in the area, he was invited to set up a monastery at the
Pa Pong forest, a place at this time reputed to be the habitat of wild animals
and spooks.

Ven. Ajahn Chah's impeccable approach to meditation, or Dhamma practice, and his
simple direct style of teaching, with the emphasis on practical application and
a balanced attitude, began to attract a large following of monks and lay people.

In 1966 the first westerner came to stay at Wat Pa Pong (Wat=temple), Venerable
Sumedho Bhikkhu. From that time on, the number of foreign people who came to
Ajahn Chah began steadily to increase, until 1975, the first branch monastery
for western and other non-Thai nationals, Wat Pa Nanachat, was set up with
Venerable Ajahn Sumedhoas abbot.

The year 1976 Venarable Ajahn Chahwas invited to England together with Ajahn
Sumedho, the outcome of which was eventually the establishment of the first
branch monastery of Wat PaPong outside of Thailand.

Since than, further branch monasteries have been established in England,
Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Italy.

In 1980 Venerable Ajahn Chah beganto feel more acutely the symptoms of dizziness
and memory lapse which he had been feeling for some years.

This led to an operation in 1981, which, however, failed to reverse the onset of
the paralysis which eventually rendered him completely bedridden and unable to
speak.

However, this did not stop the growth of monks and lay people who came to
practise at his monastery, for whom the teaching Ajahn Chah are a constant guide
and inspiration. Venerable Ajahn Chah passed away in 1992.

For more about Ajahn Chah, see http://ksc15.th.com/petsei/

--DT

Matthew Isleb

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Aug 3, 2001, 2:46:03 AM8/3/01

to

A Buddhist need not be concerned with "slippery slopes." They are the traps
of the paranoid and neurotic. I don't see where ethics come in here. I don't see
where any harm is done. Come on, can't we talk about soemthing even remotely
contravertial like capital punishment? :-)

DharmaTroll

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Aug 3, 2001, 12:48:11 PM8/3/01

to

A few more useful sites for info on Ajahn Chah:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/index.html#chah
http://www.saigon.com/~anson/ebud/ebdha011.htm
http://developer.thai.net/ajahn.chah/eng/text/

--DT

punnadhammo

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Aug 3, 2001, 3:39:32 PM8/3/01

to

In article <1aja7.15533$ar1....@www.newsranger.com>, DharmaTroll
<nos...@newsranger.com> wrote:

> It is sad, but not surprising in the America of President Bush, that senior
> politicians are muddying the waters so that one form of cloning becomes linked
> with the other. Britain has shown how it can be done through legislation
> after a
> period of informed consultation and rational debate. The US, on the other
> hand,
> is heading towards prohibition based on irrational emotion. America will be
> less
> able to retain the best researchers, and many more people with incurable
> illnesses will have to continue to suffer while science is deliberately
> stultified.

I agree with you completely that decision makers need to be better
informed about the science of such questions. I remain extremely leery
of embryonic stem cell research for the reason that I beleive
consciousness begins with conception. I understand you do not agree
with this. I am also somewhat undecided because I am unsure whether an
in vitro union of sperm and egg qualifies as "conception."

As a side thought, actually i don't see any real ethical problem with
reproductive cloning, except that it is a stupid waste of resources.

DharmaTroll

unread,

Aug 3, 2001, 4:21:21 PM8/3/01

to

In article <030820011539326146%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net>, punnadhammo says...

DT quotes british newspaper:

>> It is sad, but not surprising in the America of President Bush,
>> that senior politicians are muddying the waters so that one form
>> of cloning becomes linked with the other. Britain has shown how
>> it can be done through legislation after a period of informed
>> consultation and rational debate. The US, on the other hand,
>> is heading towards prohibition based on irrational emotion.
>> America will be less able to retain the best researchers, and
>> many more people with incurable illnesses will have to continue
>> to suffer while science is deliberately stultified.

> I agree with you completely that decision makers need to be better
> informed about the science of such questions. I remain extremely

> leery of embryonic stem cell research for the reason that I believe

> consciousness begins with conception. I understand you do not agree
> with this.

It sounds crazy to me, as there are no brain or sense organs, so calling a cell
"conscious" is a mistake. Saying that you are killing souls makes more sense,
but I don't believe in souls or other further facts like gandharvas.

> I am also somewhat undecided because I am unsure whether
> an in vitro union of sperm and egg qualifies as "conception."

So am I. Though you should call this murder, as the fertilised egg in vitro
would grow into a person if placed in the womb, and then you would claim that a
gandharva had possessed it. This is the problem with soul views in this kind of
thing. Also, if you then clone the fertilized egg (that is, cause it to become
twins) then you have to say that yet another gandharva has entered one of them.
And if you clone them, then more ghandharvas enter. (This really ought to make
you consider whether the ghandharva/spook belief really is coherent, Bhante.)

With a simple machine, you could kill more people than Hitler in a couple of
weeks if you really took the ghandarva or soul view and thought that fertilised
eggs were conscious. Which to me is a ridiculous superstition. I think we are
going to have to go back to what is real that we can verify, such as nervous
systems, if we want to coherently talk about 'consciousness' or 'persons'.

> As a side thought, actually i don't see any real ethical problem with
> reproductive cloning, except that it is a stupid waste of resources.

Well, again, if you take your ghandharva talk, when you clone the egg, then a
new ghandarva goes into the clone, you would have to claim (what else would you
say, if we can demonstrate that the cloned egg can be placed into a womb and
grown into a person). And the same issue above.

The way these experiments force us to shed light on talk of gandarvas or souls
and consciousness and nervous systems and persons is what interests me about all
of this. I really don't have too much problem with the research, unless it
encourages people to have more abortions, and that again is a different issue.
The case of in vitro fertilisation deals with the interesting personal identity
issues without the other factors that come with the abortion issue, so it is a
very interesting opportunity to explore what we mean by 'conscious' and 'person'
and 'self'.

--DT

punnadhammo

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Aug 4, 2001, 11:20:11 AM8/4/01

to

In article <5JDa7.16651$ar1....@www.newsranger.com>, DharmaTroll
<nos...@newsranger.com> wrote:

> It sounds crazy to me, as there are no brain or sense organs, so calling a
> cell
> "conscious" is a mistake. Saying that you are killing souls makes more sense,
> but I don't believe in souls or other further facts like gandharvas.

This is based on the assumption that consciousness is neccessarily
dependent on a nervous system.

> Also, if you then clone the fertilized egg (that is, cause it to become
> twins) then you have to say that yet another gandharva has entered one of
> them.
> And if you clone them, then more ghandharvas enter. (This really ought to make
> you consider whether the ghandharva/spook belief really is coherent, Bhante.)

The case of twins is actually far more easy to explain in a
rebirth-view than otherwise. Identical twins occur when the intial
zygote splits "wrongly" the first time. This could be because two
beings with closely linked karma are seeking to arise at the same time,
in the same womb. In the physicalist view there is no rhyme nor reason
to such events, they are purely "random." This is a view
irreconcialable with the dependent origination, and hence with
Buddhism. Citing the case of twins weakens your position, not mine.

In the case of artificially split zygotes, I don't know what is going
on. Presumably most of these experiments die, and only the ones with a
consciousness make it to term. Buddhists need to think more about these
new medical technologies and the issues they raise.

>
> With a simple machine, you could kill more people than Hitler in a couple of
> weeks if you really took the ghandarva or soul view and thought that
> fertilised
> eggs were conscious.

Again, I am not sure such things are conscious. How can we ever know?

[PD]> > As a side thought, actually i don't see any real ethical

problem with
> > reproductive cloning, except that it is a stupid waste of resources.
>

[DT]> Well, again, if you take your ghandharva talk, when you clone the

egg, then a
> new ghandarva goes into the clone, you would have to claim (what else would
> you
> say, if we can demonstrate that the cloned egg can be placed into a womb and
> grown into a person). And the same issue above.

My idea was that presumably reproductive cloning means the embryo is
eventually planted in a womb and taken to term. In such a case no act
of killing occurs so it is not a violation of the First Precept. It
is, as I said, at worst a stupid waste of resources.

Somehow though, this type of thing seems to horrify people more than
creating embryos deliberately to kill them for experiments.

DharmaTroll

unread,

Aug 4, 2001, 12:17:52 PM8/4/01

to

In article <040820011120111060%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net>, punnadhammo says...

>> It sounds crazy to me, as there are no brain or sense organs,
>> so calling a cell "conscious" is a mistake. Saying that you
>> are killing souls makes more sense, but I don't believe in souls
>> or other further facts like gandharvas.

> This is based on the assumption that consciousness is neccessarily
> dependent on a nervous system.

Only nervous systems in the universe have been found to be conscious.
No one-celled or even several-celled form of life has displayed it.
Other mammals have more of a nervous system than do insects, etc.
And humans, with the most complex nervous systems, are conscious.

There is no reason to think otherwise, without any evidence, simply because
something else is in the mythology of some ancient culture.

>> Also, if you then clone the fertilized egg (that is, cause it
>> to become twins) then you have to say that yet another gandharva
>> has entered one of them. And if you clone them, then more
>> ghandharvas enter. (This really ought to make you consider
>> whether the ghandharva/spook belief really is coherent, Bhante.)

> The case of twins is actually far more easy to explain in a
> rebirth-view than otherwise. Identical twins occur when the intial
> zygote splits "wrongly" the first time. This could be because two
> beings with closely linked karma are seeking to arise at the same
> time, in the same womb.

That is added ad hoc. You simply make up something to explain the contradiction.

Back to a serious error you made:

> In the physicalist view there is no rhyme nor reason to such events,
> they are purely "random." This is a view irreconcialable with the
> dependent origination, and hence with Buddhism.

Claiming that we "don't know the mechanism yet" is actually very compatible with
Buddhism. Every hear of the "don't know mind" in Zen? Zheesh!

There is no claim of "randomness". The only claim of true randomness is at the
event horizon of black holes, which is stronger than the unpredictability of the
Heisenburg principle, and we can discuss that in another thread.

We scientists do *not* simply add ad hoc claims, whether "it is purely random"
or "it is a pair of twin soulmates". Rather, we say that we don't know, and we
haven't found a pattern or mechanism yet.

I am amazed, Bhante, that you equate not knowing with true randomness. In
science, there is no 'random', but rather there are causes and conditions for
everything, even if they are unknown. In quackery, however, people 'randomly'
add ad hoc claims without evidence.

Now, back to your twin-soul theory.

Your view is easily refuted, Bhante. Now that we are able to control the
mechanism that splits the zygote into twins, we simply have to demonstrate that
we can split it at will, say, every hour. This refutes your twin-soulmate
theory, as we can show that a bioloical mechanism caused the cells to divide,
rather than twin soulmates who won't let go of each other in the bar-do, or
whatever.

You may of course claim that every time you induce the zygote to split, you then
'attract' a pair of soulmates from the bardo. In that case, if you continued the
process in the lab, and further split them every hour for 24 hours, you would
have created an astral lovers' magnet, sucking in millions of pairs of karmicly
linked soulmates from the bar-do. Do you see how ridiculous your neo-sheldrakian
nonsense is getting, Bhante?

This is getting to sound like the Kansas Creationists claiming that God put the
light in motion from the distant stars in order to trick us and test our faith.

And back to:

> Again, I am not sure such things are conscious. How can we ever know?

Well, we're back to observations and experiments to see how they react.

You also suggested telepathy last time, and I suggested that a clever machine
could figure out how to fake telepathic signals and send them without being
conscious. I think we have to make good guesses and then test them and improve
them, Bhante. That's the recomendation of the American Physicalist Association.
(Just kidding -- there is no such group!)

Or we can take on faith the words of some holy book or other.

But look where that gets us: everyone creates God in their own image, and what
is worse, *you* even point out the laughable ethnocentricity in the pali canon:

> In the pali canon it says that all Buddhas in their last lifetime
> are born to one of the two higher castes, in the Ganges valley,
> and by the way, male.

If that doesn't tell you that this is a metaphorical and cultural story, I don't
know what would. I'd rather stick to empirical testing, when it comes to matters
of fact. When it comes to matters of value and meaning, and how to live our
lives and reduce mental suffering, however, science tells us nothing and we are
wise to listen to the Buddha.

--DT

punnadhammo

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Aug 4, 2001, 4:05:16 PM8/4/01

to

In article <QeVa7.17256$ar1....@www.newsranger.com>, DharmaTroll
<nos...@newsranger.com> wrote:

I would just like to point out one very weak point in your argument;

> Only nervous systems in the universe have been found to be conscious.
> No one-celled or even several-celled form of life has displayed it.
> Other mammals have more of a nervous system than do insects, etc.
> And humans, with the most complex nervous systems, are conscious.

How do you know that amoebas and such are not conscious? It seems to me
they exhibit purposeful behaviour, which might be an indicator. There
is really no way that we can know for certain whether another being is
conscious or not, telepathy excepted.

Your argument is essentially circular; consciousness comes from nervous
systems because only conscious beings have neervous systems. How do we
know they are conscious? Because they have nervous systems!

One further point which is unclear, are you suggesting that not even
mammals are conscious? That seems ridiculous.

dharmatroll

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Aug 5, 2001, 1:09:49 AM8/5/01

to

punnadhammo <arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net> wrote in message
news:<040820011605165443%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net>...

> I would just like to point out one very weak point in your argument;

>> Only nervous systems in the universe have been found to be
>> conscious. No one-celled or even several-celled form of life
>> has displayed it. Other mammals have more of a nervous system
>> than do insects, etc. And humans, with the most complex
>> nervous systems, are conscious.

> How do you know that amoebas and such are not conscious?

Um, they are blobs of protoplasm? They don't write poetry?

By their behavior, Bhante. A dog displays emotion, yelps if you step
on his foot, comes when you call him, wags his tail when he's happy.
An amoeba is no more conscious than my doorbell, which responds to
stimuli according to simple determined algorithms, just like the
ameoba.

> One further point which is unclear, are you suggesting that not
> even mammals are conscious? That seems ridiculous.

No, I meant that we are *more* conscious than dogs, but that mammals
are more conscious that other critters. I'm saying that consciousness
is always a matter of degree, too. And it's not arbitrary: it's
directly related to the size and structure of their respective brains.
(Why are you arguing something that any 7-year-old should know,
Bhante?)

Fish seem to have some sort of consciousness, perhaps, as they do have
a nervous system and sense organs, which seem to be the bare minimum
requirement, but not enough for me to feel bad about eating them. I
would never eat a mammal, on the other hand, though once in a while I
have eaten chicken, and I have mixed feeling about them, but think
that some birds may be as sentient as mammals.

> It seems to me they exhibit purposeful behaviour,

Amoebas? No, they are stimulus response machines. Let's take a tougher
case, because I also don't see insects as sentient, even though they
*do* have the necessary components of having sense organs and a
miniscule but still distinct nervous system.

> There is really no way that we can know for certain whether another
> being is conscious or not, telepathy excepted.

No. Telepathy is NOT excepted and could be faked like anything else;
and we can't know *anything* for 'certain', but again 99.9999...%
confidence is good enough, just as it is for the guess that the world
is real and not being created by a super-computer called "The Matrix".

But we *can* know with very close to certainty that not only ameobas
are not conscious, but even very complex insects. (If you cheat and
simply redefine conscious as organic, that doesn't count, as it's not
what we really mean by conscious, which is having subjective
experience and not being 'dark' inside.)

> Your argument is essentially circular; consciousness comes from

> nervous systems because only conscious beings have nervous systems.

No, it is not. We *observe* that the more complex the nervous system,
the more conscious a critter is. Furthermore we note there are no
exceptions whatsoever to this, where, say, a paperclip starts talking
to us. Hence we have as much reason to say that consciousness varies
with the complexity of the brain as we do to claim that gravity
increases inversely with the square of the distance between objects.
Nothing circular, Bhante, as they are grounded in observation and
empirical data, and there are no counterexamples whatsoever. That's as
strong evidence as there is for anything. The claim that smoking
causes cancer isn't even as strong as the claim that complex nervous
systems cause consciousness, because there are examples where
non-smokers get lung cancer, but no cases where paper-clips exhibit
intelligent behavior.

> How do we know they are conscious?

Well, let's use a reductio ad absurdum argument. Let's assume that
insects are indeed conscious. Then we would expect certain minimal
behavior from them. Let's see if that behavior is exhibited, and if
not, then we will reject the hypothesis that they are conscious.

Whaddaya know: this has been done in hundreds of experiments, Bhante.
I'll just cite one of them, and see if it puts a dent in your
spookery.

We can switch from 'consciousness' to a new term 'sphexishness', a
term coined by Daniel Dennett and now used in Philosophy of Mind quite
often to discuss whether some system is conscious or not.

<< One kind of determinism, genetic fixity, is illustrated powerfully
by the example of the digger wasp, Sphex ichneumoneus:

When the time comes for egg laying, the wasp Sphex builds a burrow
for the purpose and seeks out a cricket which she stings in such a
way as to paralyze but not kill it. She drags the cricket into the
burrow, lays her eggs alongside, closes the burrow, then flies away,
never to return. In due course, the eggs hatch and the wasp grubs
feed off the paralyzed cricket, which has not decayed, having been
kept in the wasp equivalent of deep freeze. To the human mind, such
an elaborately organized and seemingly purposeful routine conveys a
convincing flavor of logic and thoughtfulness--until more details
are examined.

For example, the Wasp's routine is to bring the paralyzed cricket
to the burrow, leave it on the threshold, go inside to see that all
is well, emerge, and then drag the cricket in. If the cricket is
moved a few inches away while the wasp is inside making her
preliminary inspection, the wasp, on emerging from the burrow,
will bring the cricket back to the threshold, but not inside, and
will then repeat the preparatory procedure of entering the burrow
to see that everything is all right. If again the cricket is
removed a few inchies while the wasp is inside, once again she
will move the cricket up to the threshold and re-enter the burrow
for a final check. The wasp never thinks of pulling the cricket
straight in. On one occasion this procedure was repeated forty
times, always with the same result. (Dennett quoting Woodridge's
_The Machinary of the Brain_, New York: McGraw Hill, 1963, p. 82)
>>

What appears to be conscious agency making choices is revealed to be
a mechanical algorithm. Is 'spexishness' a kind of consciousness?
I think we'd almost be hard pressed to say it is, and yet the insect
has sense organs and processes data. This is a strange grey area.
Certainly, I don't see any reason for claiming that a single-celled
ameoba could be 'conscious' in any non-trival way, but what can we
say about a sphex wasp? And certainly we seem to be a lot more
complex and free to make choices and have values and so forth than
does a sphex wasp: the idea that we are just more complicated but not
qualitatively different from this wasp and its mechanical behaviour
is what pumps our intuitions into thinking that we are beyond nature
or materialism, that we have some further fact, some kind of spookery.

--DT

punnadhammo

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Aug 5, 2001, 11:48:22 AM8/5/01

to

In article <7f161754.01080...@posting.google.com>,
dharmatroll <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote:

> By their behavior, Bhante. A dog displays emotion, yelps if you step
> on his foot, comes when you call him, wags his tail when he's happy.
> An amoeba is no more conscious than my doorbell, which responds to
> stimuli according to simple determined algorithms, just like the
> ameoba.

First of all, the connection of behaviour to consciousness is secondary
at best. It may be an indicator that consciousness is present, but
again it may not. There are some highly reactive robotics out there
these days, and I doubt you would argue they are conscious.

In the case of an amoeba, it does demonstrate purposeful, albeit very
simple, behaviour. It seems intuitively likely to me that it is
conscious and I see no strong argument against this, except the lack of
a nervous system, which is, as I have shown, a circular argument.

I don't want to make too much of this because I don't really know, and
certainly can't prove, whether an amoeba is conscious. Neither do you.

> No, I meant that we are *more* conscious than dogs, but that mammals
> are more conscious that other critters. I'm saying that consciousness
> is always a matter of degree, too.

Yes, no problem here.

> Fish seem to have some sort of consciousness, perhaps, as they do have
> a nervous system and sense organs, which seem to be the bare minimum
> requirement,

Again, it is a completely circular argument.

> No. Telepathy is NOT excepted and could be faked

That is why it couldn't be relied on as a proof except for the person
immediately involved.

> But we *can* know with very close to certainty that not only ameobas
> are not conscious, but even very complex insects. (If you cheat and
> simply redefine conscious as organic, that doesn't count, as it's not
> what we really mean by conscious, which is having subjective
> experience and not being 'dark' inside.)

I don't want to redefine conscious as organic. I do not believe plants
are conscious, but they are organic. I find your "certainty" about
amoebas puzzling. How can you possibly be that sure? If you say "no
nervous systems" it will just re-inforce my argument about your
circular reasoning! But I do agree, insects are a better case to
examine.

Insect behaviour, in point of fact, is a very strong argument for a
non-physical interpretation of mind. Look at the complex patterns of
behaviour exhibited by insects such as your sphex moth. These are
nothing compared to some of the accomplishments of the social insects.
Yes, they are rigid and inflexible, but nonetheless highly complex. And
social insects are not even quite so rigid as your sphex moth, they are
able to react to a wider range of different situations.

Now, look at the crude and miniscule nervous euipment of these little
beings. There is no conceivable way that the nervous system of an ant
or a termite could store all the complex routines needed to drive their
behaviour. There just isn't the physical room for the requisite number
of connections.

Even less believable is the second-order assumption of physicalism. Not
only is all the data for such complex behaviour stored in a few
pathetic ganglions, BUT also, this pattern is even further compressed
into the DNA allowing it to be passed to future generations.

If this isn't spookery, I don't know what is.

Dirk Bruere

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Aug 5, 2001, 12:40:44 PM8/5/01

to

"punnadhammo" <arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net> wrote in message

news:050820011148228456%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net...

>
> Insect behaviour, in point of fact, is a very strong argument for a
> non-physical interpretation of mind. Look at the complex patterns of
> behaviour exhibited by insects such as your sphex moth. These are
> nothing compared to some of the accomplishments of the social insects.

That behaviour has been shown to arise from quite simple rules for
individuals.
One of the areas of 'AI' these days is to start small, at the insect level
and work upwards.

> Yes, they are rigid and inflexible, but nonetheless highly complex. And
> social insects are not even quite so rigid as your sphex moth, they are
> able to react to a wider range of different situations.

> Now, look at the crude and miniscule nervous euipment of these little
> beings. There is no conceivable way that the nervous system of an ant
> or a termite could store all the complex routines needed to drive their
> behaviour. There just isn't the physical room for the requisite number
> of connections.

They don't need it.

BTW current computers have about the processing power of a bee. Which is
quite a lot.

FFF
Dirk

Mike Austin

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Aug 5, 2001, 5:09:04 PM8/5/01

to

In article <050820011148228456%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net>, punnadhammo
<arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net> writes

>In article <7f161754.01080...@posting.google.com>,
>dharmatroll <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>> Fish seem to have some sort of consciousness, perhaps, as they do have
>> a nervous system and sense organs, which seem to be the bare minimum
>> requirement,
>
>Again, it is a completely circular argument.

Hi Ven. Punnadhammo,

The intellectual pursuit of what is conscious could end up in a circular
argument. The instinctive pursuit of what is conscious could also end up
in a similar way (although if kept strictly instinctive, it wouldn't end
up in a circular argument). When I look into my own mind and find that I
have compassion for an entity, then there's some reason to assume it has
consciousness. I'm not going to defend this one. We usually do this the
other way round - we assume something is conscious, and that it suffers
and then we have compassion for it. Perhaps it's a two-way street rather
than circular. Maybe it should be travelled both ways.

Even in ourselves, we cannot 'find' consciousness in the physical parts
of our body. How much more difficult it would be to find this in another
entity. Our physical parts can touch the physical parts of another. If
we wish to 'find' or 'touch' the consciousness of another, maybe this is
a matter for our consciousness. And maybe success in doing this will be
a sign of compassion.

Metta
Mike Austin

dharmatroll

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Aug 6, 2001, 12:47:25 AM8/6/01

to

Mike Austin <mi...@lamrim.org.uk> wrote in message news:<JiS+hLAw...@clara.net>...

> Even in ourselves, we cannot 'find' consciousness in the
> physical parts of our body.

That is because there is no such thing as 'consciousness'.

Only there are things which are 'conscious'. What this term refers to
is the system of sense organs, brains, feedback loops, and so forth.
We can easily find sense organs in ourselves, and we are aware of our
thinking and making choices.

> How much more difficult it would be to find this in another entity.

Of course. We can't hear their thoughts, so we have to infer whether
or not they are conscious from their behavior. But this is actually
rather simple.

> Our physical parts can touch the physical parts of another.

That means nothing, as you again are talking about things, where as
being conscious is a property, and not a thing. Maybe you mean
'souls'.

> If we wish to 'find' or 'touch' the consciousness of another,

That is a silly sentence that is incoherent. There is no thing called
consciousness which can be touched. Rather, we can look at behavior
and see whether or not there appears to be intention behind it,
instead of mere mechanical stimulus and response.

> And maybe success in doing this will be a sign of compassion.
>
> Metta
> Mike Austin

No, noticing that a pig acts intelligently and intentionally is not a
sign of compassion: it is a sign that we are observant.

Compassion means we don't kill the pig nor encourage others to do so
by eating them. With all the wackos flaming me for saying I'd protect
my family from harm by killing Hannibal the Cannibal, I wonder how
many of these pacifist wackos eat pigs and cows that have been
brutally slaughtered. I don't.

--DT

punnadhammo

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Aug 6, 2001, 9:59:43 AM8/6/01

to

In article <kBeb7.7610$hs5.1...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, Dirk
Bruere <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:

> BTW current computers have about the processing power of a bee. Which is
> quite a lot.

Are you sure about that? I don't know for certain, but it seems
exagerrated.

In any case, a large part of the operation of what little brain an
insect has must be taken up byy routine housekeeping chores like
pumping the blood and regulating the temperature etc. This leaves even
less space for the complicated routines that would be required for
something like the bee's direction finding dance.

Furthermore, you don't even begin to address my stronger point that
somehow all this must be further compressed to fit into the DNA code
(most of which is now known to be meaningless junk.)

The physicalist model ONCE AGAIN leads into a labryinth of absurdities!

punnadhammo

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Aug 6, 2001, 10:04:31 AM8/6/01

to

In article <JiS+hLAw...@clara.net>, Mike Austin
<mi...@lamrim.org.uk> wrote:

> The intellectual pursuit of what is conscious could end up in a circular
> argument.

Yes.

>The instinctive pursuit of what is conscious could also end up
> in a similar way (although if kept strictly instinctive, it wouldn't end
> up in a circular argument).

I would call this a non-problematic circularity. Introspection is the
only valid way to learn about mind in the final analysis.

> When I look into my own mind and find that I
> have compassion for an entity, then there's some reason to assume it has
> consciousness. I'm not going to defend this one.

Good thing, because it is basically indefensible! I think you are off
the mark here. I can imagine people having compassion for non-conscious
entities through ignorance or delusion. Like a child who feels sorry
for a teddy bear that is ripped. You can't make emotional response a
reliable guide to anything.

Dirk Bruere

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Aug 6, 2001, 12:09:15 PM8/6/01

to

"punnadhammo" <arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net> wrote in message

news:060820010959439643%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net...

> In article <kBeb7.7610$hs5.1...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, Dirk
> Bruere <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> > BTW current computers have about the processing power of a bee. Which is
> > quite a lot.
>
> Are you sure about that? I don't know for certain, but it seems
> exagerrated.

Not PCs at present, but 'real' computers.
We are currently on the steep bit of the exponential curve.
Projected power for supercomputers is mousebrain by 2005 and human
processing power between 2010 and 2015.

> In any case, a large part of the operation of what little brain an
> insect has must be taken up byy routine housekeeping chores like
> pumping the blood and regulating the temperature etc. This leaves even
> less space for the complicated routines that would be required for
> something like the bee's direction finding dance.
>
> Furthermore, you don't even begin to address my stronger point that
> somehow all this must be further compressed to fit into the DNA code
> (most of which is now known to be meaningless junk.)
>
> The physicalist model ONCE AGAIN leads into a labryinth of absurdities!

Not at all.
The DNA can hardcode rules - that doesn't take much space.
The DNA then also creates a brain to execute the rules. The model for a
brain is also quite compact, since it is generally a 'self assembly' kind of
thing.

BTW, there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between quantity of DNA
and the final animals intelligence. Several animals have more
DNA/chromosomes than we do.

FFF
Dirk

Ned Ludd

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Aug 6, 2001, 12:13:31 PM8/6/01

to

Dirk Bruere <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:Ndzb7.10117$3K2.1...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com...

>
> BTW, there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between quantity
> of DNA and the final animals intelligence. Several animals have more
> DNA/chromosomes than we do.
>

Correct. The potato has 48.

Ned

Mike Austin

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Aug 6, 2001, 12:29:33 PM8/6/01

to

In article <060820011004317002%arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net>, punnadhammo
<arcc@STOPSPAM_baynet.net> writes

Hi Ven Punnadhammo,

I'm not defending what I said, but I think it's useful to mention three
levels of compassion. The first is compassion for sentient beings; the
second is compassion towards all 'dharmas'; the third is compassion that
takes no object.

The object towards which one develops compassion at the first two levels
has no essence and is a mere designation. And the third seems to entail
a realisation of this. A child who feels sorry for a teddy bear has, for
a while, a reduction of self-concern and dukkha. So even at this level,
the child may benefit for a short while, whereas us grown-ups may remain
stiff and unmoved. Of course, the child's response is not reliable. It's
not founded in wisdom. But I think there is something we can learn from
it nevertheless. A child's mind can be a lot less cluttered than ours.

Of course, this gets us nowhere in resolving what is conscious. But it's
a reminder to moderate our use of intellect, which is also unreliable by
itself. It just models the world for us. We decide whether these models
are suitable for the reduction of dukkha by the responses when following
them. Afflicted emotional response reliably tells us we are still prone
to dukkha. If I note abhorrence at the thought of destroying an entity -
an abhorrence that does not rise from self-interest but the interests of
that entity - then I don't do it. In such a situation, I would say that
I have a notion of consciousness in that entity. I may be right or I may
be wrong. But the validity of my feeling is weighed in the balance with
my intellectual understanding. I don't rely on one of them alone.

Metta
Mike Austin

punnadhammo

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Aug 6, 2001, 8:01:28 PM8/6/01

to

In article <Ndzb7.10117$3K2.1...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
Dirk Bruere <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:

> Not PCs at present, but 'real' computers.
> We are currently on the steep bit of the exponential curve.
> Projected power for supercomputers is mousebrain by 2005 and human
> processing power between 2010 and 2015.

I'm not sure how brain power and computer power are correlated. Is the
standard one byte to one synapse or what? In any case, I found the
following figures;

----QUOTED TEXT------

# of neurons in worker bee brain = 851,458
# of neurons in drone bee brain = 1,209,681
# of neurons in fly brain = 337,856
# of neurons in locust brain = 360,000

Remember, it has been estimated that the human brain has
100,000,000,000 neurons.

Reference for the number of neurons in the insect brains is:
Comprehensive Insect Physiology, Biochemistry
and Pharmacology, Vol. 5, edited by G.A. Kerkut and L.I. Gilbert,
Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1985, p. 307.

----END QUOTE----

I realize that the number of neurons is less significant for
information processing than the number of synapses. In the human there
are several hundred synapses per neuron, but this is significantly less
in insect brains.

The comparison is rough, but it seems the insect brain is somewhat like
a very low-end PC in processing power. Would you agree with that
assessment?

Considering the job this is supposed to do, it still seems very low.
Especially as one source I looked at said that the largest portion of a
bee's brain is taken up by visual processing. What is left for the very
complex and adaptable "wiggle dance" by which they communicate pollen
finds to the other bees? Just to mention one of several complex
behaviours. It would be quite a challenge to program all that a bee
does into a simulation able to run on a home computer.

> Not at all.
> The DNA can hardcode rules - that doesn't take much space.

First of all, no one has ever demonstrated how this can be done. All
that we really know about DNA for sure is that it codes for protein
synthesis. Biologists have now mapped many genomes, including the
human, and there is afaik nothing at all in the way of code for
behaviour that can be explicated with the precision of the protein
synthesis stuff. I don't beleive it's in the DNA at all.

> The DNA then also creates a brain to execute the rules. The model for a
> brain is also quite compact, since it is generally a 'self assembly' kind of
> thing.

But how could the set of rules for complex behaviour be hard-coded into
this kind of double compression? There is a limit to simplification
beyond which you lose information.

Again, I don't beleive the bee's behaviour, much less ours, is coded
into the DNA at all.