Eu ficarei doente, envelhecerei, morrerei, serei separado daqueles que amo, das minhas relações e assim por diante. Desta forma, o efeito totalmente amadurecido das minhas ações chegará a mim e a mais ninguém, e, portanto, não estou além da dependência do que fiz nas vidas anteriores.

Pensar assim repetidamente é o antídoto para coisas como a arrogância. Faça todos os esforços para não se tornar arrogante meditando neste antídoto.

Kangyur Rinpoche

Yamāntaka registration and info links:

If you define reincarnation as the transmigration of a soul into a new body after the old body dies, then no, the Buddha did not teach a doctrine of reincarnation. For one thing, he taught there was no soul to transmigrate.

However, there is a Buddhist doctrine of rebirth. According to this doctrine, it is the energy or conditioning created by one life that is reborn into another, not a soul. "The person who dies here and is reborn elsewhere is neither the same person, nor another," Theravada scholar Walpola Rahula wrote.

https://www.learnreligions.com/common-misunderstandings-of-buddhism-449743

"The Sutras, Tantras, and Philosophical Scriptures are great in number. However life is short, and intelligence is limited, so it's hard to cover them completely. You may know a lot, but if you don't put it into practice, it's like dying of thirst on the shore of a great lake. Likewise, a common corpse is found in the bed of a great scholar."

Karma Chagme

The root of the path to enlightenment is correctly following the virtuous friend, by looking at the guru as a buddha, having no mistakes, only qualities. Looking at [the guru’s actions as] a buddha’s actions, and fulfilling the wishes and following the advice on the basis of seeing the guru as a buddha, having faith and believing the guru is a buddha. There are two things, not only having the mind in faith but also in action, these are two ways to correctly follow the virtuous friend.

Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche

In the view of your own mind—that which is totally hallucinated, opposite to reality—your own mistakes appeared in the guru’s actions. All this definitely shows is that your heart is totally rotten. Recognizing them as your own mistakes, abandon them as poison.

Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, 5th Dalai Lama

ZOOM LINK POSTED
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvdOmpqz0jHdDab_3_uwOpd7HO5tQ6Bsvj-
The practice of the Mahāyāna precepts is a wonderful opportunity to accumulate merit on the Holy Day of Miracles (Chotrul Duchen). Geshe la will transmit the practice, which involves keeping precepts of pure conduct and fasting after the noontime meal for a period of 24 hours.

He will also grant the oral transmission of the Prayer of Rebirth in Sukhavati by Lama Tsongkhapa, a beautiful practice to accumulate causes to be reborn in the Pure Land of Amitabha, and a powerful pray to recite for those who are passing away.

The transmission of the prayer at this hour is for the benefit of students in the European timezone. Geshe la encourages those who are in other time zones to take the precepts using the recording from Lama Zopa Rinpoche if they have not received the transmission. The transmission of the Sukhavati Prayer will be given again in the evening for North American students unable to attend the morning session.

Now a note on emptiness or shunyata. It is very easy to equate emptiness with Dharma, but this is only partially correct. Dharma that is one with the true self is non-dual with emptiness, however emptiness is the final transmutation, not the gold, just as the ether in alchemy.

In the Lotus Sutra the Buddha describes the manner of teaching:

"If a person expounds this sutra,
he should enter the thus come one’s room,
put on the thus come one’s robe,
sit in the thus come one’s seat,
confront the assembly without fear
and broadly expound it for them, making distinctions.
Great pity and compassion are the room,
gentleness and patience are the robe,
the emptiness of all phenomena is the seat,
and from that position he should expound the Law for them."

This passage, again, describes the manifestation of the Buddha nature in reality: he reaches out to us with his compassion, as we approach we are treated with patient understanding despite our attachments, but the Buddha dwells on the seat of emptiness. Emptiness is his vehicle, his chariot, that which conveys the divine to all phenomena. It is his body. It is a sphere, a plane, the field of Dharma and it is none of these. By understanding emptiness we come to know the Dharma but Dharma is not emptiness, it is eternity, happiness, true self, and purity. It is our true selves.

I too believe that the Tantras of Tibet are the best means for the modern Bodhisattva, but it is my hope that the attainments of the wider Mahayana may benefit these new Dharma warriors in understanding their path.

I believe that the angry young men of the right taking up Buddhism is the most exciting thing to happen in the Buddhist context, at least, since the seventies. By all means, kick the "peace and love" crowd up the backside! Let's make Buddhism great again.

This debate has been formatted and responded to by Hammer and Vajra.
Only the replies in this document from Hammer and Vajra reflect the views of Hammer and Vajra.
In formatting no positions or content from other participants were changed.
---- Hammer and Vajra

We finish this exchange with an extract from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra:

"O good man! I, at that time, with mind-reading Wisdom, fathomed the mind of the Bramacarins and said to them: "What do you mean by saying that I talk of "not-is"? All the Brahmacarins said: "You, Gautama, have previously stated, here and there in the sutras, that all beings do not possess the Self. Now you say that there is no Self. How can you say that this is not the "not-is" theory? If “[there is]” no Self, who upholds the precepts and who violates “[them]”? I, the Buddha, said: "I have never said that all beings do not have the Self; I have always said that all beings have the Buddha-Nature. Is not the Buddha-Nature the Self? Thus, I have never spoken of "not-is". All beings do not see the Buddha-Nature. Hence, “[for them there is]” the non-Eternal, non-Self, non-Bliss, and non-Purity. Such are the views of "not-is". Then, all the Brahmacarins, on hearing that the Buddha-Nature is the Self, aspired to the unsurpassed Bodhi “[Enlightenment]” mind, and then, renouncing the world, practised the way of Bodhi. All flying birds and all those on water and land aspired to unsurpassed Bodhi, and having aspired, abandoned their bodies

"O good man! This Buddha-Nature is, truth to say, no Self “[i.e. no defiled, circumscribed ego”]. For the benefit of beings, I say Self.

"O good man! The Tathagata, when there is reason for “[so]” saying, says that non-Self is the Self. But, truth to say, there is no Self “[there]”. Though I speak thus, there is nothing “[here]” that is false.

"O good man! On account of causal relations, I state Self to be non-Self, “and, yet, truth to tell, there is the Self. It constitutes the world. I state “[this]” as non-Self. But nothing is wrong. The Buddha-Nature is non-Self. The Tathagata says Self. Because there is the quality of the Eternal. The Tathagata is the Self. And yet he states “[this]” as non-Self. Because he has unmolestedness” [i.e. complete freedom, unrestrictedness, the ability to do what he wills].

"Altogether, rebirth is a virtually inseparable part of Buddhist thinking. It is quite impossible to compress the richness of the Buddhist Rebirth and the Western Buddhist worldview, with each being evolving through a limitless variety of states over countless aeons, into the impoverished mental frame of those who deny it.

Since amateur writers on Buddhism never tire of making the absurd claim that the teaching of rebirth is somehow contradicted by the principle of Selflessness, we should point out that this is a thorough misconception.

In the main, as Har Dayal points out, "This difficulty has arisen from the regrettable mistake of translating atman by the English word 'soul.'" Since "soul" means, among other things, "the spiritual part of man regarded as surviving after death and as susceptible of happiness or misery in a future state," it is hard to see how it could ever have been considered a possible translation for the changeless, partless and independently self-existent atman that the Buddhists deny. Such an atman would be incapable of acting as a soul.

The principle of Selflessness negates certain deluded views of how such a soul, or anything else included in or imputed upon the aggregates, exists, but certainly does not deny that they exist at all. The nihilistic misinterpretation of Selflessness is the most dangerous of wrong views: "It were better, Kasyapa, to abide in a personality-view as big as Mount Sumeru, than the emptiness-view of the nihilist." Exactly as my personal continuum follows on from year to year in this life, each moment of my body and mind arising in dependence on the preceding moment, so it follows on from life to life, always changing."

Martin Willson, Rebirth and the Western Buddhist

Recollecting Rebirth Oneself and Spontaneous recall, by Martin Willson

"Spontaneous recall, generally the recollection by a child of his immediately preceding life, and often of how he passed from that death to the present birth, is more common than is often thought. Normally, especially in the West, a young child who talks of its previous life soon learns not to. Doubtless any mother would tend to tire of repeated requests by her child to go "home" to its previous family, perhaps telling her "My own mother is much better than you." A life spontaneously recalled is generally very recent, so that there are likely to be persons still living who remember the deceased person. In these circumstances, very strong confirmation is often possible.

The child may give much detailed information on his former family and home, often not very far away but unknown to his present family, which can be confirmed by visiting the past-life abode. If the child comes on such a visit (as he is generally eager to do), he recognises places, buildings, and people known to him in his former life, and his former possessions, comments on changes since he was there, asks after missing possessions and old acquaintances, and so on.

If he died by violence (which apparently makes quick rebirth and spontaneous recall more probable), he may give details of his murder which can be confirmed from police records and witnesses.

There can also be other circumstantial evidence supporting the child's claim. If he was known to his new mother in his previous life, she may well have had a significant dream or vision of his coming to her, before his birth. The child may carry birthmarks resembling and in the same place as the wounds which caused his previous death, or even reproducing a mark deliberately applied to his predecessor's body to enable identification if he should be reborn in that family.

Some 1600 cases of spontaneous recall in various parts of the world, including 241 in Europe, have been investigated with great thoroughness by Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia. This work provides the strongest scientific evidence for rebirth that we yet have-anyone of a scientific tum of mind who still doubts the reality of rebirth should definitely read some of the reports of it, in full."

Waking up late, adultery,
living with hatred, harming others,
associating with bad friends, and greediness:
these six things ruin a person.

Gambling, associating with others’ wives,
drinking alcohol, infatuated with music and dance;
sleeping by day and roaming at night;
bad friends, and excessive greed:
these six things ruin a person.

- Buddha's advice to Sigālaka

“suffering is spontaneously present as great bliss; the obscurations
intrinsically blaze forth as wisdom.”

The Lamp (STMD)