Where to take precepts replied by sanath @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:54:52 +0800

sanath — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:54:52 +0800

Plenty, can i ask if you want to take it in the Chinese tradition or Theravadin tradition(s)?

In addition, you can check this website for activities by temples and groups in Singapore:

http://www.4ui.com/indexeng.htm

Gassho

Where to take precepts replied by Augustrush23 @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:50:28 +0800

Augustrush23 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:50:28 +0800

Hi all,

do u know which temple can I go to if I want to take the 5 precepts?Many thanks :)

Daily Buddhist Verses replied by cycle @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:03:49 +0800

cycle — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:03:49 +0800

面对烦恼，从中获取觉悟，是转变。

综合所知，籍以圆满智慧，是增上。

~ 白云禅师

Daily Buddhist Verses replied by cycle @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:58:43 +0800

cycle — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:58:43 +0800

学佛的本身，就是培养智慧。

依于佛法的内容来看，有戒，有定，有慧；说施，说忍，说勤；在在都是要我们从学习中培养智慧，从修养中得到觉悟。

~ 白云禅师

Buddhist perspective on mental illness replied by disappear @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:48:14 +0800

disappear — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:48:14 +0800

thanks for the reply. im more interested about mental illnesses which are not caused by spirit interferences, i.e. those which are due to biological/brain chemistry/genetic etc. thanks

Reflection and Presence: The Dialectic of Awakening replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:41:30 +0800

An Eternal Now — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:41:30 +0800

Originally posted by Thusness:

Indeed a precious experience but not expressed as it is. :P

You may want to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Any idea why u r experiencing it this way this time? (The condition that give rise to this sensation)?

2. If it is as described, is there 'an awareness' here realising that there is 'your body coughing spontaneously by its own'?

3 How was the feeling like?

Happy exploring!

I don't know how that experienced happened.. but maybe instead of being identified with the body or as the controller of the body, I just switched into 'just watching' the body movement and simply letting it act on itself.

So I did experience 'an awareness here' that simply sees the body coughing spontaneously. Like I'm in a space that is simply aware and watching. But it is seen there is no entity or self controlling the body, the body just acts spontaneously on its own, automatically, and it is not me or mine. Maybe this is what you call 'dissociation'?

Buddhist perspective on mental illness replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:19:36 +0800

An Eternal Now — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:19:36 +0800

I'm not too sure if there are any specific sutras talking about this subject. But some (not all) mental illnesses are caused by spirit interferences.

As the Admin of another buddhist forum (e-sangha), who also happens to be a doctor of tibetan medicine, wrote:

http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/index.php?showtopic=80865&st=0

Not in English, unfortunately. Different types of non-humans cause different types of symptoms, such as those afflicted by bhramas for example like to wear white, speak in religious language, like mantras, and so on.

N
-----

If they are Buddhists, they should accept the fact that non-human beings can cause mental illness in human beings. Many kinds of mental illness are completely treatable through Buddhist medicine.

Pretas, Nagas, etc., can all negatively affect both the physical and mental health of human beings.

There are also the research based theories of Aryas-- but their findings are not available to those without the divine eye.

N

-----

As someone who is going to graduate with a degree in Indo-Tibetan medicine in 2009, treating bhuta illnesses is time consuming and complicated. I concur that specialized skills are needed for such treatments, and sadly, such people are often drugged with psyche meds putting them beyond the capacity to helped by traditional Indo-Tibetan medical methods. On the other hand, for most people, the alternative is worse, in some instances, the kind of treatment people receive for severe mental illnesses we would typify as being afflicted by bhutas could not find treatment for there problem simply do to the lack of practitioners of traditional Buddhist medicine.

N

-----

Severe psychosis of various kinds, depression (which is often kapha affecting the heart) and so on, diagnosed through observation of behavior, pulse diagnosis and urine.

Thailand once had a system of medicine more or less the same as Indian Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine (with some cultural differences of course) which the Thais, like the Tibetans, trace back to Jivak Kumara, the Buddha's physician. Unfortunately, the systems of Ayurveda as practiced in Southeast Asia was destroyed by European Colonialism.

The only remnant of the Thai system of Medicine remaining is Thai Massage.

Treatments for mental illnesses are a combination of herbs, diet, massage and bloodletting, as well as rituals. They are extremely effective and my teacher has a great deal of experience completely curing patients in Tibet who would wind up on severe psych meds here like Haldol and so on if they lived in this country.

Frankly, bhuta possession explains many chronic mental illnesses for which patients only receive palliative care in the West.

Generally in our diagnostic protocol, we treat first through diet, then medicine, then therapies such as moxabustion, bloodletting and acupuncture, and if these methods are found not to be effective, or of limited effect, we begin to search for bhuta involvement in an illness.

But we think that a large number of severe mental illnesses are left untreated because western medicine is unable to cope with bhuta possession.

Non-human beings cause many kinds of illnesses, not only mental illness. Many skin diseases that seem difficult to cure are caused by Naga attacks, for example.

N

N

Buddhist perspective on mental illness replied by disappear @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:21:51 +0800

disappear — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:21:51 +0800

are there any sutras where the buddha mentioned about mental problems and illnesses. needless to say its all about karma but it'd be nice if there's some detailed and wise explanation about it. thanks in advance

Reflection and Presence: The Dialectic of Awakening replied by Thusness @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:42:47 +0800

Thusness — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:42:47 +0800

Originally posted by An Eternal Now:

Just a sharing.

Yesterday I was woken up by my coughing.... and when I woke up I noticed my body is coughing spontaneously by its own, automatically, without control! It feels a bit weird and disorientating when I first noticed it. But since then I have noticed it several times. It has always been so.

It's not 'I' or 'me' that have been been coughing all the while.... that is just an assumption. In reality it is more like the the universe is coughing my body... and there is no identification of the body as 'me' or 'mine'.

Similarly am I breathing or am I being breathed? I guess the truth is more like 'the entire universe is breathing'.

Indeed a precious experience but not expressed as it is. :P

You may want to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Any idea why u r experiencing it this way this time? (The condition that give rise to this sensation)?

2. If it is as described, is there 'an awareness' here realising that there is 'your body coughing spontaneously by its own'?

3 How was the feeling like?

Happy exploring!

Post Mani Retreat Reflection replied by knightlll @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:15:34 +0800

knightlll — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:15:34 +0800

I am not a full vegetarian and have tried not to eat meat for continual 6 days. I plan to to do so in specific days now. I eat meat , the meat of the mother sentient beings , my previous mothers in many previous lives. Quite disturbing to know this , on one side you are learning dharma , on the other side , you are commiting bad karma by eating meat. Both do not tally with each other. And then , there will be reasoning that meat-eaters also can go to western purelands.

You force yourself to be a vegetarian , vegetarian cookings are bad in the stalls that i encounter and it is rather hard to find one sometimes. In the end , give up the idea of being a full vegetarian and reason that karma is heavy & wisdom is limited, in the current state , it is best not to force on yourself , and let it affect your daily life and learning dharma.

What an irony but i manage to live with it. Anyone face such problem or at such crossroad before ?

Way to approach mistaken beliefs? replied by knightlll @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:08:48 +0800

knightlll — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:08:48 +0800

During the so-called 'Seventh Month' in 2008 , my colleagues asked me if i wanted to join them to burn hellnotes & incense. I declined , saying it will be better to chant and dedicate to the working area spirits if there is any. One of them said , the ghost would need money to spend and etc. I lol , maybe they do need money to spend.

When we talk about what is life after death in religious context , i talked about 6 realms and about asura , a being who is half-god and half-monster , they looked suprised and lol. I also lol.

I attend buddhist lessons , my mother asked me why i become so superstitious. I told her but you are offering jose sticks and fruits to guan yin. lol

When one day , i manage to muster all my courage and explain that heavenly beings will die one day , i think whole world would stare me with big eyes.

It is prettty fun & interesting to hold such conversations in daily life.

现世报来得特快 replied by justdoit77 @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:58:36 +0800

justdoit77 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:58:36 +0800

福报大,却缺少慈悲和智慧是多么可怕的一见事.

杀一个人,果报就足以下地狱了.
一些国家领导人一场战争杀了百万条命,下场有够掺了.

Fixated Consciousness and Spacious Awareness replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:42:27 +0800

An Eternal Now — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:42:27 +0800

"Mind is like space, because it has no limitation. When there are no clouds, when it is completely clear, space is like our 'ordinary' state of mind. Then, all of a sudden, clouds come from nowhere. Our emotional problems and mental chaos are like the clouds. When they take over, we can't see space any more, we only see the clouds! However space never goes anywhere, it's always there. It's just our mind getting into darkness so that, for us, the clouds become our only reality. It means we give more solidity to our emotional upheavals, to all the things going on in our mind, so that they become more real for us than the true essence of our mind."

"In the same way as clouds come from nowhere, our emotions and all the chaos we go through also somehow appear from nowhere and disappear into nowhere. Understanding this process, we should give it less value. Even if we've been under the clouds for seven days, we should always remember that space is there!"

"We can never find a solution to our investigation by just listening to teachings or reading books. The only way we can get closer to the nature of mind is through direct experience, and that is through meditation."

(Extracts from Living Dharma - Ven. Lama Yeshe Losal)

Fixated Consciousness and Spacious Awareness replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:40:24 +0800

An Eternal Now — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:40:24 +0800

Where exactly is our buddha nature? It is in the skylike nature of our mind. Utterly open, free and limitless, it is fundamentally so simple and so natural that it can never be complicated, corrupted, or stained, so pure that it is beyond even the concept of purity and impurity.

To talk of this nature of mind as skylike is, of course, only a metaphor that helps us to begin to imagine its all-embracing boundlessness; for the buddha nature has a quality the sky cannot have, that of the radiant clarity of awareness.

It is said: "It is simply your flawless present awareness, cognizant and empty, naked and awake."

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by Thusness @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:57:52 +0800

Thusness — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:57:52 +0800

Originally posted by An Eternal Now:

"u must also be able to that whereever it is, it's home."

You mean 'see'?

Yes typo. :P

It means u must also be able to see it from the angle of "whereever we are, it's home."

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:48:51 +0800

An Eternal Now — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:48:51 +0800

I see... thanks again.. :)

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by Thusness @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:18:37 +0800

Thusness — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:18:37 +0800

Originally posted by An Eternal Now:

I see... thanks :)

We cannot just understand non-abiding as not resting the mind anywere, u must also be able to that whereever it is, it's home.

Similarly after Form is Emptiness, you must see the fabric and texture of Emptiness.

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:49:45 +0800

An Eternal Now — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:49:45 +0800

I see... thanks :)

现世报来得特快 replied by JitKiat @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:54:09 +0800

JitKiat — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:54:09 +0800

From http://hi.baidu.com/atuonashi/blog

现世报来得特快 replied by JitKiat @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:53:37 +0800

JitKiat — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:53:37 +0800

“大修行人，还落因果也无？”百丈禅师讲：“不昧因果”。

半信半疑吗？科技越发达，福报享得又大又快，利用科技造业又大又快，福消罪长, 现世报来得特快：

1. 台湾的陈水扁 - 总统变囚犯

孔子：“不义而富且贵，于我如浮云”。（用不正当的手段得来的富贵，对于我来讲就像是天上的浮云一样）

2. 美国在和苏联冷战时一手训练的中东少年们，是911和许多恐怖事件的主力

积善之家，必有余庆；积不善之家，必有余殃。《易经》

3. 陈冠希 - 南阎浮提众生，举止动念，无不是业，无不是罪。何况恣情杀害、窃盗、邪淫、妄语，百千罪状《地藏菩萨本愿经》

4. 美国金融危机

“礼、义、廉、耻，国之四维；四维不张，国乃灭亡。” 《管仲》

5. 中国毒奶粉

子曰：损人自益，身之不祥

为善必昌，为善不昌，必有余殃，殃尽必昌；为恶必亡，为恶不亡，必有余德，德尽必亡

6. 新加坡 NKF 事件 - 盗用善款, 东窗事发

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by Thusness @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:21:03 +0800

Thusness — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:21:03 +0800

Originally posted by An Eternal Now:

I see... thanks for the explanation.

By the way is this 'Form is Emptiness' (especially the highlighted parts):

http://itisnotreal.com/subpage22.html

Hi AEN,

You must first know that “Emptiness” cannot be understood by second hand knowledge except by prajna wisdom. Prajna is a form of intuitive insight of ‘emptiness’; a kind of direct knowing. You must be deeply aware of this “direct without intermediary” sort of perception -- too direct to have subject-object gap, too short to have time, too simple to have thoughts.

I will not comment on the article but just want you to be clearly aware of this immediate sort of seeing. An experience of the Eternal Witness is not a form of knowledge that is derived from relating, associating, deducing or inducing anything. It is not about thinking, there are no thoughts. It is a whole and complete sense of ‘I’; a pure sense of existence free from all artificialities. Unlike relative knowledge that always requires an element of faith to bridge the gap as there is no certainty of knowledge, the experience of Eternal Witness is completely free from doubts. A practitioner is fully convinced, unshakeable and unmovable; not even Buddha can shake his insight.

It is this sort of insight that must arise when it comes to spirituality. It is the ‘wisdom eye’ that can see the whole of ‘sound’ by being ‘sound’. It is the same ‘eye’ that sees ‘anatta’ and ‘emptiness’. After the maturing of insight, one will naturally understands that ‘Eternal Witness’ is no more “purer” than the arising and passing sound, the empty phenomena. It is just the awakening of this non-dual eye.

Therefore after some pointers, to progress further and truly know, reflecting relatively will not help; you should start to let go completely and learnt the art of feeling directly and wholly. Buddha taught mindfulness that practices bare attention at the same time experience the impermanent nature of all arising and passing phenomena. We should not take this lightly. We can start from there to awake the intuitive insight of anatta and emptiness. :)

Discussion on Ian Stevenson Reincarnation Studies replied by bohiruci @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:50:38 +0800

bohiruci — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:50:38 +0800

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/stevenson.htm

Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect
by Ian Stevenson. Praeger Publishers, 1997; xviii + 203 pages, ISBN 0-275-95189-8, paperback, $17.95.

David Pratt

The world's leading scientific investigator of evidence for reincarnation is Dr Ian Stevenson, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. For over 30 years he and his colleagues have been studying cases involving children who remember past lives. Most of the cases come from the Hindu and Buddhist countries of South Asia, the Shiite peoples of Lebanon and Turkey, the tribes of West Africa, and the tribes of northwestern North America. In 1997 Stevenson published details of 225 cases in a massive work Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. The same year he presented a summary of 112 cases in a much shorter book Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect.

Stevenson has discovered that birthmarks and birth defects are often related to injuries sustained in the previous life, especially injuries associated with violent death. In many cases he has been able to obtain postmortem reports, hospital records, or other documents that confirm the location of the wounds on the deceased person in question. Birthmarks often correspond to bullet wounds or stab wounds; sometimes there are two marks corresponding to the points where a bullet entered and left the body. Birthmarks may also be related to a variety of other wounds or marks, not necessarily connected with the previous personality's death, including surgical incisions and blood left on the body when it was cremated. A boy who lost his fingers in an accident with a fodder-chopping machine and died of an unrelated illness the following year was reborn without the fingers of his right hand. A woman who had been run over by a train, which sliced her right leg in two, was reborn with her right leg absent from just below the knee. A man who, while resting in a field, had been mistaken in the twilight for a rabbit and shot in the ear, was reborn with a severely malformed ear.

Stevenson has found that most of the details that children remember about their previous life turn out to be accurate (he deals only with spontaneous memories and makes no use of hypnosis). Further evidence for reincarnation comes from 'behavioural memories'. Children sometimes display behaviour that is unusual for the child's family but fits in with what is known about the person whose life the child remembers. For example, there are cases where children of lower caste Indian families who believe they had been Brahmins -- and in their view still were -- would refuse to eat their family's food, which they considered polluted. Conversely, a child remembering the life of a street-sweeper may show an alarming lack of concern about cleanliness. Some children show skills that they have not learned in their present life, but which the previous personality was known to have had.

Many of the children express memories of the previous life in their play. A girl who remembered a previous life as a schoolteacher would assemble her playmates as pupils and play at instructing them with an imaginary blackboard. A child who remembered the life of a garage mechanic would spend hours under a family sofa 'repairing' the car that it represented for him. One child who remembered a life in which he had committed suicide by hanging himself had the habit of walking around with a piece of rope tied round his neck.

Phobias occur in about a third of the cases and are nearly always related to the mode of death in the previous life. For example, death by drowning may lead to fear of being immersed in water; death from a snake bite may lead to a phobia of snakes; a child who remembers a life that ended in shooting may show a phobia of guns and loud noises; and a person who died in a road accident may have a phobia of cars, buses, or trucks. Philias (the opposite of phobias) are also common. They frequently take the form of a desire or demand for particular foods not eaten in the child's present family, or for clothes different from those ordinarily worn by the family members. Other examples involve cravings for addictive substances, such as tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs that the previous personality was known to have used.

In some cases a child remembers a previous life as a person of the opposite sex. Stevenson comments: 'Such children almost invariably show traits of the sex of the claimed previous life. They cross-dress, play the games of the opposite sex, and may otherwise show attitudes characteristic of that sex. As with the phobias, the attachment to the sex and habits of the previous life usually becomes attenuated as the child grows older; but a few of these children remain intransigently fixed to the sex of the previous life, and one has become homosexual.

Discussion on Ian Stevenson Reincarnation Studies replied by bohiruci @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:45:06 +0800

bohiruci — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:45:06 +0800

In 1977, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease devoted most of one issue to Dr. Stevenson's work. In a commentary for the issue, psychiatrist Harold Lief described Dr. Stevenson as "a methodical, careful, even cautious, investigator, whose personality is on the obsessive side." He also wrote: "Either he is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known . . . as 'the Galileo of the 20th century.' "

But with rare exception, mainstream scientists -- the only group Dr. Stevenson really cared to persuade -- tended to ignore or dismiss his decades in the field and his many publications. Of those who noticed him at all, some questioned Dr. Stevenson's objectivity; others claimed he was credulous. Still others suggested that he was insufficiently versed in the cultures and languages of his subjects to do credible investigations. Dr Stevenson responded that his critics should come investigate the cases for themselves. That did not happen.

And

Dr. Stevenson's credentials are impeccable. He is a medical doctor and had many scholarly papers to his credit before he began paranormal research. He is the former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and now is Director of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia.

Discussion on Ian Stevenson Reincarnation Studies replied by bohiruci @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:41:16 +0800

bohiruci — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:41:16 +0800

The Scientific Evidence for the Existence of Reincarnation

A list of academic literature by the late Professor Stevenson, a former Head of a major university's Department of Psychiatry.

QUOTE

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/inter...m#Reincarnation

REINCARNATION

1. Shroder, Tom. Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. In 1997 Dr. Stevenson agreed to let Tom Shroder, an editor at the Washington Post, travel with him through India, Lebanon and the United States as he investigated cases of children who seemed to remember previous lives. This is Shroder's book about those experiences. Now out in paperback as Old Souls: Compelling Evidence from Children Who Remember Past Lives from Fireside Books.

2. Stevenson, Ian. Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation, revised ed., 2001. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company (originally published by University Press of Virginia, 1987). Dr. Stevenson describes, for the general reader, research conducted over the past forty years. He also addresses some of the questions frequently asked about these cases.

3. Stevenson, Ian. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1974 (originally published as Vol. 26, Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1966). Detailed reports of twenty cases of children (from five different countries) who claimed to remember previous lives.

4. Stevenson, Ian. Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997. A 200 page synopsis of Dr. Stevenson's 2 volume, 2000+ page Reincarnation and Biology.

Profile of Professor Stevenson:

QUOTE

http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-proof.htm#about

Probably the best known, if not most respected, collection of scientific data that appears to provide scientific proof that reincarnation is real, is the life's work of Dr. Ian Stevenson. Instead of relying on hypnosis to verify that an individual has had a previous life, he instead chose to collect thousands of cases of children who spontaneously (without hypnosis) remember a past life. Dr. Ian Stevenson uses this approach because spontaneous past life memories in a child can be investigated using strict scientific protocols. Hypnosis, while useful in researching into past lives, is less reliable from a purely scientific perspective. In order to collect his data, Dr. Stevenson methodically documents the child's statements of a previous life. Then he identifies the deceased person the child remembers being, and verifies the facts of the deceased person's life that match the child's memory. He even matches birthmarks and birth defects to wounds and scars on the deceased, verified by medical records. His strict methods systematically rule out all possible "normal" explanations for the child’s memories.

Dr. Stevenson has devoted the last forty years to the scientific documentation of past life memories of children from all over the world. He has over 3000 cases in his files. Many people, including skeptics and scholars, agree that these cases offer the best evidence yet for reincarnation.

Dr. Stevenson's credentials are impeccable. He is a medical doctor and had many scholarly papers to his credit before he began paranormal research. He is the former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and now is Director of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia.

In order to help the reader become familiar with Dr. Stevenson's work, a 1988 Omni Magazine Interview is reprinted below. Following the interview is a summary of one of Dr. Stevenson's most famous cases.

He was also a bright student who graduated at the top of his class:

QUOTE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1001393_pf.html

Ian Stevenson; Sought To Document Memories Of Past Lives in Children

By Tom Shroder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 11, 2007; C06

Dr. Ian Stevenson, 88, who spent nearly half a century traveling the world to meticulously investigate hundreds of cases of small children who appeared to recall previous lives, died of pneumonia Feb. 8 at the Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge retirement community in Charlottesville.

To Dr. Stevenson and his many admirers, his detailed case studies provided more than ample room for, as he liked to put it, "a rational person, if he wants, to believe in reincarnation on the basis of evidence."

In 1977, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease devoted most of one issue to Dr. Stevenson's work. In a commentary for the issue, psychiatrist Harold Lief described Dr. Stevenson as "a methodical, careful, even cautious, investigator, whose personality is on the obsessive side." He also wrote: "Either he is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known . . . as 'the Galileo of the 20th century.' "

But with rare exception, mainstream scientists -- the only group Dr. Stevenson really cared to persuade -- tended to ignore or dismiss his decades in the field and his many publications. Of those who noticed him at all, some questioned Dr. Stevenson's objectivity; others claimed he was credulous. Still others suggested that he was insufficiently versed in the cultures and languages of his subjects to do credible investigations. Dr Stevenson responded that his critics should come investigate the cases for themselves. That did not happen.

But Dr. Stevenson himself recognized one glaring flaw in his case for reincarnation: the absence of any evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and transfer to another body.

The evidence he did provide in abundance came not from past-life readings or hypnotic regressions but from using the techniques of a detective or investigative reporter to evaluate claims that a young child, often just beginning to talk, had spontaneously started to speak of the details of another life. In a fairly typical case, a boy in Beirut spoke of being a 25-year-old mechanic, thrown to his death from a speeding car on a beach road. According to multiple witnesses, the boy provided the name of the driver, the exact location of the crash, the names of the mechanic's sisters and parents and cousins, and the people he hunted with -- all of which turned out to match the life of a man who had died several years before the boy was born, and who had no apparent connection to the boy's family.

In interviewing witnesses and reviewing documents, Dr. Stevenson searched for alternate ways to account for the testimony: that the child came upon the information in some normal way, that the witnesses were engaged in fraud or self-delusion, that the correlations were the result of coincidence or misunderstanding. But in scores of cases, Dr. Stevenson concluded that no normal explanation sufficed.

Tall and lanky, patrician in appearance and diction, Dr. Stevenson was a tireless researcher who often would forget to stop for food during all-day treks on dusty third-world trails, running younger colleagues into the ground by nightfall. He catalogued more than 2,500 remarkably similar cases, mostly in Asia and the Middle East but also in Europe, Africa and North and South America. His first book on the topic, "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation," was published in 1966; his last, "European Cases of the Reincarnation Type," in 2003.

Dr. Stevenson, a native of Montreal, earned his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1943, graduating at the top of his class. In 1957, at 39, he became head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. But from his mother, a devotee of theosophy, which Dr. Stevenson described as a "kind of potted Buddhism for Westerners," he had inherited a keen interest in the paranormal, which became a calling after a trip to India in 1961 convinced him that the child cases were both ubiquitous and impressive.

As his research earned the scorn of some colleagues and caused unease in the university administration, Dr. Stevenson gave up his administrative duties to head what he cagily named the Division of Personality Studies, now the Division of Perceptual Studies, funded by a grant from Chester Carlson, the man who invented the Xerox process.

Dr. Stevenson retired from active research in 2002, leaving his work to successors led by Dr. Bruce Greyson. Dr. Jim Tucker, a child psychiatrist, has carried on Dr. Stevenson's work with children, focusing on North American cases.

Tucker said that toward the end of his life, Dr. Stevenson had accepted that his long-stated goal of getting science "to seriously consider reincarnation as a possibility" was not going to be realized in this lifetime.

But in 1996, no less a luminary than astronomer Carl Sagan, a founding member of a group that set out to debunk unscientific claims, wrote in his book, "The Demon-Haunted World": "There are three claims in the [parapsychology] field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study," the third of which was "that young children sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation."

His first wife, Octavia Stevenson, died in 1984.

Survivors include his wife of 21 years, Margaret Pertzoff of Charlottesville; a brother; and a sister.

Shroder, editor of the Post's Sunday magazine, wrote a book about Dr. Stevenson, "Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives" (1999).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_T5vNgusEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRnQT4agXY

Fixated Consciousness and Spacious Awareness replied by An Eternal Now @ Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:53:41 +0800

An Eternal Now — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:53:41 +0800

Great excerpt from http://www.greatfreedom.org/faq.html (a very good read!)

....What has no cause and what requires no effort cannot be brought about by trying to cause it or effort for it. It’s already accomplished, already naturally present effortlessly in the here and now, the pure presence of the here and now, the complete perceptual openness of the here and now. This is the basis of everything.

To have complete perceptual openness means to relax our perception into wide-open spaciousness with no need to close in on any thought, emotion, object, or experience to make sense of what’s happening. When we completely relax our attention from its habitual pinpointed focus, we see everything as it is: a limitless, seamless expanse of changeless pure awareness, in which myriad ephemeral forms of awareness appear and disappear. Most of us have learned to fix our attention on whatever is appearing and to describe it as if it had a separate existence. However, when we do so, we immediately disconnect from our natural openness and collapse into the idea of a separate self that relies on thought to describe what’s going on. When we have this individualized thinking and the fear-based emotional field that thinking creates, then we’re very restricted and limited to that emotional field. We live on the head of a pin when we do that, and that’s a very cramped and uncomfortable space!

We keep it simple: we keep it totally simple. Everything that appears is a point of view appearing within the pure view of awareness. That’s it...

Story of the writer:

http://www.saieditor.com/stars/odenver.html

....Candice began formulating the Great Freedom teachings 25 years ago, after a profound and permanent awakening unexpectedly occurred in her life. She had been raised Catholic, but as a child she intuitively rejected substantial portions of what she was taught through that religion, yet she had a strong, natural faith in God, and prayed every day for many years to be “able to see the face of God”. Her deep connection with nature in her childhood brought about a profound experience of “the oneness of all things”, but she never practiced any kind of formal meditation, and had never met a guru or had any esoteric spiritual training prior to her awakening. As a young adult she was highly successful in many ways, “efforting and achieving” as a way of life, and receiving many accolades; in fact, at age 28 she was named one of 100 outstanding women in America. But her successes gave her no real satisfaction, and by the time she was 34 she realized that no matter how hard she tried, or how many successes she had, they never would satisfy her.

She then went through an profound personal crisis which led her into states of intense fear, alienation and despair. During that period she found that everything she had learned through psychology, philosophy, religion, and all other belief systems she had studied were of no help to her whatsoever.

Furthermore, every remedy she had previously relied on to give her relief, including alcohol and marijuana, now gave her no relief at all. During that extended period of being overwhelmed by negative emotional states, she somehow discovered that beneath all those states, there was a “basic space of pure awareness” which was free from suffering, a space of complete relief. She gradually familiarized herself with that basic space by resting as awareness for short moments, repeated many times, and soon she was able to rest in that awareness for 10 continuous days. At that point “awareness rose like the sun”, and from then on that unchanging space of pure awareness became her primary reality, and the painful thoughts and emotional states which had tormented her faded away like stars in the light of day. Her discovery of all-encompassing pure awareness, and the complete relief that comes with it, proved to be permanent. From this profound awakening the Great Freedom teachings have come, offering a simple and direct path for others to gain the same realization, and the same permanent relief from suffering.

The Great Freedom teachings are designed to be acceptable to the largest audience possible, and therefore do not rely on the word ‘God’ (which would surely alienate some people), nor are they aligned with any religion or based on traditional concepts such as original sin, karma, reincarnation, or ego. Candice doesn't even use the word ‘Enlightenment’, saying it has been so tarnished through years of misuse and misinterpretation that it often just creates confusion. Although after her teachings were formulated she discovered that they are similar to the Tzogchen teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, and share the same essence as ‘The King of Samadhi Sutra’ given by Lord Buddha, the Great Freedom teachings are not presented as Buddhist, and are not called religious, spiritual, philosophy or psychology; they are simply presented as being “about the ultimate truth of what it means to be human”. Unlike most paths, which might require the acceptance of some culturally-specific set of religious beliefs, or faith in some kind of cosmological system, the Great Freedom teachings are based solely on the direct experience of awareness, which is always present within everyone....

(continued in the URL)

Recent Posts in ~ Buddhism: Wisdom Bliss ~ | sgForums.com

Where to take precepts replied by sanath @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:54:52 +0800

Where to take precepts replied by Augustrush23 @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:50:28 +0800

Daily Buddhist Verses replied by cycle @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:03:49 +0800

Daily Buddhist Verses replied by cycle @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:58:43 +0800

Buddhist perspective on mental illness replied by disappear @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:48:14 +0800

Reflection and Presence: The Dialectic of Awakening replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:41:30 +0800

Buddhist perspective on mental illness replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:19:36 +0800

Buddhist perspective on mental illness replied by disappear @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:21:51 +0800

Reflection and Presence: The Dialectic of Awakening replied by Thusness @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:42:47 +0800

Post Mani Retreat Reflection replied by knightlll @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:15:34 +0800

Way to approach mistaken beliefs? replied by knightlll @ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:08:48 +0800

现世报来得特快 replied by justdoit77 @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:58:36 +0800

Fixated Consciousness and Spacious Awareness replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:42:27 +0800

Fixated Consciousness and Spacious Awareness replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:40:24 +0800

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by Thusness @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:57:52 +0800

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:48:51 +0800

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by Thusness @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:18:37 +0800

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:49:45 +0800

现世报来得特快 replied by JitKiat @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:54:09 +0800

现世报来得特快 replied by JitKiat @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:53:37 +0800

Reality Isn’t What You Think replied by Thusness @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:21:03 +0800

Discussion on Ian Stevenson Reincarnation Studies replied by bohiruci @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:50:38 +0800

Discussion on Ian Stevenson Reincarnation Studies replied by bohiruci @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:45:06 +0800

Discussion on Ian Stevenson Reincarnation Studies replied by bohiruci @ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:41:16 +0800

Fixated Consciousness and Spacious Awareness replied by An Eternal Now @ Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:53:41 +0800