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Bante, could you please tell us how you would meet criticism regarding rebirth from modern materialists such as Richard Dawkins?

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Okay, here's one that we can all sink our teeth into.

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Richard Dawkins.

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I'll go on the record saying I'm not really fond of Richard Dawkins.

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I like some of the things he says, but if you look at... I don't know, this is an ad hominem, isn't it?

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But there is something from a Buddhist perspective to...

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It's not answering the question at all, really.

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It's hopefully kind of sitting with me.

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It's sad, really, to see how materialism destroys someone's spiritual qualities, makes them seem very, very coarse and unpleasant, in a sense.

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I mean, to me, anyway, as refined as he sounds, it's clear that he's not a very refined individual from my point of view.

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But I'd like to open it up to other people.

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Well, it seems that Richard Dawkins had a very tough Anglican childhood.

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You know?

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Honestly.

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The really difficult thing is to convince or to show materialists that they're holding a faith, that they believe in a material, physical world as a belief that is not founded in actual experience.

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Or physics.

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Well, physics is all based on assumptions and theories that are not.

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Modern physics shows that.

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Modern physics seems to suggest, barring multiverse or so on, or many worlds that are not perceived, seems to suggest that it is the case, that entities don't exist and it's all based on, to some extent, based on experience.

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Well, hell, if you really want to look at it, material form doesn't even actually exist.

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doesn't even actually exist.

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It's what we perceive as color, but really in the outer world it's just vibrations being reflected off of surfaces.

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There is no color.

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We interpret the world.

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We create this world from our interpretations of things and give it solidity and color and form and meaning where really it

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To another being with different senses, it's a completely different world.

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And that's the problem with materialist view.

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Not exactly.

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Because you can do the same experiment a million times and get the same physics experiment a million times and get the same results.

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So obviously there is not proof, but a clear indication that physics would say that there is the physical realm.

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although i i'm saying that there is a physical realm what i'm implying is that our interpretation as to what is the reality of the physical perception yeah there's a lot of psychological research it's me who's saying that there's no physical realm okay but well you're actually giving fodder to their argument because then they would say well yes that's why

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We can't trust experience.

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Why we can't trust meditation?

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Because our perceptions are skewed.

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We have to use, this is why they will say the only, this is why they fight against meditation as quote-unquote a special kind of knowing or any special kind of knowing.

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You can only know something.

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from a materialist point of view, through rigorous third, like, impersonal experimentation, where you've taken the subject completely out of the picture.

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So, you know, this idea of subjectivity is actually a bad thing, and subjective experience is just that, subjective in a bad way.

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Well, that's quite old feet, though.

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Quite old problem.

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I mean, not problem.

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It's...

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In every psychology book, you can find the subject of perception, how the eye works, and how we actually experience reality through our senses.

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There's a lot of question marks.

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We don't know how it works.

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We still don't know how it works.

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Yeah, but materialists have pretty good evidence to support their view.

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Like at death, there's nothing.

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There's nothing left of brain activity, for example.

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So just if we can get back to what is the question?

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The question is, how would you deal with people?

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Or how do you refute?

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How would you meet criticism regarding rebirth?

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Anyone read Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion?

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yeah but that's not about rebirth let's stay on track yeah I'm just asking anyone I listen to the audio book that's a good one I'll tell you personally I'm still I don't I don't hold any belief on rebirth and reincarnation at all I'm still open on that I can't say I have a belief or a faith in rebirth

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I think it's a good thing.

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Yeah, I mean, we'll just wait long enough.

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We'll all know the answer.

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It's not really that important, is it?

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But there's something great to do because you kind of have a choice.

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If your outlook on life is that, well, you can even avoid the subject entirely and just say, well, just in the present moment.

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But there are problems with that as well.

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So if you have the view...

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If your worldview is based on permanent death, not at the moment of death, then the problems with that are what you see from the materialists, what you see from secularists in general.

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They tend to get caught up in addiction and following after their desires.

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living a very materialistic lifestyle.

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And we can see the result that it's having on the world.

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We can see the result it has on people's minds and on their lives.

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But the response, of course, is that, well, it's OK.

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When you die, you're scot-free.

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And all these negative habits of addiction and aversion that you've built up, partialities and so on, you give them up when you die.

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It's not quite that simple, because actually you

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You have to deal with them even in this life as well.

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If you ever stop and look at yourself and what you're doing to yourself, it's quite unpleasant.

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If you take, on the other hand, the view of continuation and the impotence of death in that sense to deprive you of the fruit of your habits,

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then you've got to be a lot more careful about how you act.

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And you really do have to take the mind and experience seriously.

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You have to take the effects of your action seriously.

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That tends to, one would think, lead to more peace and harmony in the world on the one hand.

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And it also, well, it leads to a different way of behavior, I think, quite radically.

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So it's not trivial.

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I'd like to interrupt you and ask you a question, please.

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And it has exactly to do with what you're asking, but it's a question.

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It's the ontological dilemma of what would take rebirth

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if we don't have a permanent auto permanent self what have the five scrambles or all of the five scrambles would take rebirth that we would call an I or a self I'll answer that if you like that's why we bring that up right now because that's a perfect thing for you to really elucidate because that causes a lot of confusion

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Right.

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Okay, but what I was trying to discuss is the difference between the two views and the different effect that it has on your mind, regardless of whether one is right or how you explain one or the other.

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So you have these two views, then you also have the view that neither one is important and you should just focus on the present moment.

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I think that's...

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there's potential there.

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And it certainly seems to be very much what the Buddha taught many times, to just focus on the present moment.

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But if there is no thought of the future or the repercussions of your actions, in other words, the potential for this moment to create another moment,

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and another moment, and to have no escape from the next moment.

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If you don't have that, and if you're just really sticking and saying, well, carpe diem, seize the day, live for the now, so on, without some sort of philosophical understanding or doctrine of continuity, or maybe not even philosophical, but the idea of cause and effect,

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Let's put it this way, without the idea of cause and effect, even a theory of just staying in the here and now does, in practical terms, lead people to selfishness and to hedonism.

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Hedonism is, I think, very much living in the now, no?

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So I think that is really the key.

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And it's also the key to rebirth, cause and effect.

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Science works in terms of cause and effect.

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The laws of science show very clearly

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The idea of cause and effect, quantum physics shows cause and effect.

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Classical mechanics, classical physics shows cause and effect, but so does quantum physics.

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It just changes the realm in which we talk about cause and effect.

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Buddhist meditation shows cause and effect.

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it's quite clear from all aspects that cause and effect is reality.

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That's what we mean by karma.

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When people say karma is faith-based, this is a total misunderstanding of the concept of karma.

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When people say that rebirth is faith-based, from a Buddhist perspective, that's a total misunderstanding of our approach towards rebirth.

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Rebirth is just an extrapolation of cause and effect.

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We don't believe

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We don't accept the belief that physical death changes anything in the causal continuum of consciousness from one moment to the next, which we clearly perceive to be occurring.

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And it goes back to just the framework within which we're working, which is a mental framework, where we don't subscribe to the idea that subjective reality is a negative thing or subjective experience is a negative thing.

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we differentiate between the aspects of personal experience and the subjective ones in a way that science doesn't, or materialist science doesn't.

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Materialist science says all experience is subjective and leaves it at that, and that's certainly not the case.

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It's possible to get into a state of mind, or what we know of as mindfulness,

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And have the results and the observations of that experience be reproducible in all cases for all people.

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So you could have a thousand people performing the same experiments and provided they're truthful and so on and so on.

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Provided they are sane, provided they are ordinary human beings.

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they will be able to achieve the same results.

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This is what Sam Harris talks about in terms of everyone being able to see that compassion, that it's possible to enter into these states that he seems to think are truly objectively positive or so on.

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He seems to get a little bit caught up in them.

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But he makes a good point that there's an objective mindset.

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It does truly occur.

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And you could do materialist diagnostics or studies of it to see whether it was having the same effect on the physical side.

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So...

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We simply take that objective reality on a mental level, more on a mental level, to be the basis of reality.

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And so you would have to introduce the belief of nihilism, of annihilation at death.

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Whether this actually phases a materialist is debatable.

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I talked to the

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Atheist Association of Austin.

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What are they called?

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Do you know these guys that are on YouTube?

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The atheists of... Yeah, I know.

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I heard about them, yeah.

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They have a radio kind of thing.

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And so I started... I sent them an email and they actually responded to me.

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This Matt guy.

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Oh, he was horrible.

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He was worse than Richard.

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Like, just the coarsest... No, no, no, no.

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I think these people are very smart.

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Is that what the guy named Aaron Raw?

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I remember it, Aaron, but Matt Dillahunty or whatever his name is, he's the host.

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And he's great when he's attacking theists, but he just lumped meditation in with all of that.

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He said to me at one point, you could make the next exposed movie, this ridiculous movie about teaching evolution in school.

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He said, well, yeah, you want to teach mindfulness?

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Well, you could write the next exposed.

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Was that the movie?

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I don't remember.

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I didn't watch it, but I know about this Ben Stiller guy.

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So Sam Harris is an atheist who makes the distinction there, and who makes this distinction.

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Not all... You mean Ben Stein?

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Right, Ben Stein, not Ben Stiller.

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Ben Stein.

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Okay.

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But Sam Harris, as I'm saying, there is the objective aspect of personal experience that truly, whatever theory you have about it, it truly holds.

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And practices based on it do have an effect.

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You know, this Happiest Man in the World article.

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This guy really did get happy.

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But at the end of the day, the rebirth and karma and all these things are beyond what's going to happen.

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It's not that important in Buddhism, is it?

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No, karma is incredibly important.

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Karma is the meaning.

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I mean, no, no, no, no, no.

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I mean, you can say, instead of karma, you can see things as they are.

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You can see suffering.

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Yes, but you see, what is the problem with suffering?

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There's the cause of suffering.

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The cause of suffering is what?

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That's karma.

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If you do bad deeds, you feel horrible, right?

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You feel bad about it.

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That's all you need.

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But that's karma.

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Okay, okay.

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But don't call it karma.

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You just call it observation.

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Oh, dear.

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Just call it observation.

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This is the problem.

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This is the problem.

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It's not you.

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This is how people think when they approach Buddhism.

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Well, that's all that's important, this karma thing.

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But that's exactly, you know, what do you think karma is?

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It's practical.

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It's not a theory where you think, wow, yeah, if I kill someone in this life, I'll be killed in my next life.

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All that is is an extrapolation, if it's true or not true.

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I mean, it makes sense if you do bad things, it hurts you now, but it also has the potential to ripple out and hurt you in the future.

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It can hurt you in this life.

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Maybe the person will come back and kill you in this life.

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That makes sense.

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Yeah, if we replace things like karma with observation, if we replace meditating with mind training... No, that's not... Karma is the way it is.

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Observation is seeing how it is.

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Two different things.

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Yeah, I mean, you know, you don't have to know the concept of karma just to see it.

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You don't have to see it.

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Yeah, so, I mean, you see it, but you can see it straight away sometimes.

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Oh, exactly.

200
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Yeah, sometimes not, sometimes you can.

201
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It's not necessary to see...

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what's going to happen in your next life based on what you did in this life.

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But it's just part of the theory.

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You can't say exactly, but it makes sense that it's the bad effects of doing that.

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Exactly.

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It makes sense.

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And I don't think that if we regard Buddhism as might not be religion, that atheists shouldn't be attacking Buddhism.

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Because there's not even one thing that should be attacking.

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to be attacked.

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But rebirth and karma is something they do attack.

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Many people do attack for this reason.

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They take it from, well, ass backwards, I think is the technical term.

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They start from next life and work their way back, which is not how we just explain it.

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It starts from this moment and ripples out.

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It's going to happen in the next life.

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Well, it's conjecture, but

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It makes sense that it's based in some part on what we do in this life.

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It makes sense.

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I'm not going to give you proof, but it makes sense.