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  #26  
Old 09-11-2017, 02:55 AM
Eelco
Posts: n/a
 
Lol,

Come back to me if you want to discuss things.. We are on a discussion forum after all.
I'm not waiting on your lecture. Besides You seem to misinterpret my words anyway,

If I recall correctly Buddha urged us to investigate his words for ourselves. Your way of expressing yourself doesn't seem to leave me that option.

Anyways. Where again in the Pali canon did Buddha talk about reincarnating as animals?
To be honest.. I think that that particular part of the teachings may have been a later addition, but I'm open to be proven wrong..

Here's what I could find in the Dvedhavitakka Sutta:
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"When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two... five, ten... fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, many eons of cosmic contraction, many eons of cosmic expansion, many eons of cosmic contraction & expansion: 'There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.' Thus I remembered my manifold past lives in their modes & details.

"This was the first knowledge I attained in the first watch of the night. Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose — as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, & resolute.

"When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of the passing away & reappearance of beings. I saw — by means of the divine eye, purified & surpassing the human — beings passing away & re-appearing, and I discerned how they are inferior & superior, beautiful & ugly, fortunate & unfortunate in accordance with their kamma: 'These beings — who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech & mind, who reviled the Noble Ones, held wrong views and undertook actions under the influence of wrong views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell. But these beings — who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech, & mind, who did not revile the Noble Ones, who held right views and undertook actions under the influence of right views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the good destinations, in the heavenly world.' Thus — by means of the divine eye, purified & surpassing the human — I saw beings passing away & re-appearing, and I discerned how they are inferior & superior, beautiful & ugly, fortunate & unfortunate in accordance with their kamma.

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So we see that Buddha did tech reincarnation into various realms of hell and heaven based on our actions.
I don't think he (in the Pali canon) suggested humans to become animals.

Now having thought long and hard about reincarnation myself.
I have a different view on what Buddha means by it than most spiritual seekers do.

With Love
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