There is rebirth of character,
but no transmigration of self.
Thy thought-forms reappear,
But there is no egoentity transferred.
The stanza uttered by a teacher
is reborn in the scholar who repeats the words."
It's great that the Dalai Lama sees it like this, because this is not unscientific, depending on how you interpret it.
I would interpret this as: "the
ego which people cling on to will be lost, but the character, patterns of thought
or
memes will live on." I.e. even if your personal memes are not directly adopted by people by contact or your
writings, surely other people will adopt some the same memes, each some of them, as result of being exposed to
the same culture, and the same things you read. From an Information theory POV, this idea is not out of thin air.
So, interpreting this quote, most of your character/memes will continue to exist, but not in a single individual and
your self will be lost. This is not unscientific at all. The question is whether this is meaningful or desirable, to fully
lose your self. For us it is not.
Philosophically speaking ideas are never lost. Like truth is never lost. So that is nothing which is unscientific. Furthermore the opinion, that your subjective point of view is conserved even after death, but without the information the mind puts in( without "you") is impossible to prove or disprove by science at this time. After all the mind and the body are not identical. Its like chocolate and its taste.
Just saw this quote after starting to write my answer. Kinda proves the point
IMO the only problematic "dogma" of buddhism, well, at least something which I find many teachers implicitly take
for granted, is that Nirvana as full loss-of-self is good. I only have a problem with the missing separation, which
many buddhists seem to accept, of the
core ego / sense of self from the
"collection of social memes,
social roleplay, common prejudices, politics, and other beliefs" that is also a part of ego and determines how
you
see yourself (and others).
These have to be separated. Letting go of all the latter, to the maximum extend after which you can still function
in society and grow (and earn money;), is great. Letting go of the first, the core of self, what you really are, not
what you think you are/how you are defined by society, is bad, and is the single thing that immortalists ultimately
should strive to preserve. It's what it's all about.
So Buddhism is not egalitarianism or full selflessness or per se. As zoolander expressed, it's what you subjectively
make of it and becomes a helpful tool in exactly in those ways. But it comes dangerously close to it, so that too
many people probably confuse it with buddishm. And accepting true egalitarianism, i.e. anti-ego philosophy is destructive
(if ego is worthless, why not kill yourself right away, other than the loss for society, etc?).
Letting go of those preconceptions (and temporarily of the sense of the true self, i.e. "ego death", which IMO does not
include letting go of the actual self even for an instant, just of your views of your self), is very cleansing and can be
achieved through a long meditational retreat (or heavy psychedelics if one is in a hurry and wants to risk psychosis
),
even a part of ego death, i.e. retreating on a sabbatical and spending a lot of time with your thoughts and not much
else, can help. This can solve a lot of emotional (but not objective) things. Doing that (not full ego death) helped me to
be much less afraid of death, for example. But still, it is and always will be the very last thing I want, of course.
Contrary, the tibetans and the Dalai Lama do stand for an enlightened, very scientific buddhism. The Dalai Lama's
connection with Gelugpa is very visible, which is a tradition that stands for constant learning in retreat and searching
for wisdom, including science (much like the christians and arabs advanced science in their golden eras). He is
not against cryonics or uploading per se, and states that he can imagine being "reborn" into a computer as consistent
with tibetan buddhist ideas:
http://www.transhuma...p/WTA/faq21/83/Now we'd just have to convince him to take up life extension, given his age and somewhat declining health... I often thought
about that. If only some multivitamin/omega's and perhaps astaxanthin for eyesight. Well I hope he already gets some of it.
If this single individual could be around for much longer, it would certainly direct buddhism into a very beneficial, pro-transhumanist
direction... and also he seems like a very nice guy personally who definitely deserves to be around for much longer
PS: Regarding the "materialistic spirituality" (=essentially just consuming spirituality as I understand it), this is also true.
It's like doing life extension and waiting for the singularity without personal engagement/accomplishments: pretty boring.
But if one's goal is to accomplish something concrete, like a scientific project, and not just be there and help others,
'consuming' more spiritualism/well-being, as a purpose for making your life and materialistic work more efficient, still
seems helpful. Helping people directly can be much harder than science or another career, because you might have to
fight people a lot (their self-harmful preconceptions and behavior) in order to 'help' them. It starts with offering life extension
and health concepts to people you know and having them rejected. Tremendously frustrating, especially if you're doing
it for sick/old friends or relatives. I really like Objectivism here, which is not at all incompatible. Just help people by offering
them something (life extension or insight into a better life strategy), and have them take it or leave it. The objectivism
part is that everyone is fully responsible for his/herself, and noone else. So personally, I help people by briefly offering
them a hand and have them take it or leave it. Which often is not much, but better than nothing, and better than too much
forced/futile effort. This does require being disconnected in many ways, and being focused on self (or not focused on anything)...
Edited by mixter, 30 May 2008 - 11:00 AM.
