1
00:00:01,499 --> 00:00:05,084
Where should one deal with things he hasn't experienced yet?

2
00:00:05,445 --> 00:00:09,471
For example rebirth, heaven and hell, realms, psychic powers?

3
00:00:13,938 --> 00:00:14,418
What do you think?

4
00:00:17,964 --> 00:00:21,489
I think we shouldn't care about them.

5
00:00:21,509 --> 00:00:23,492
I think I'm with you.

6
00:00:23,512 --> 00:00:29,481
You should only deal with what you can experience.

7
00:00:29,731 --> 00:00:34,196
I think that you have already experienced rebirth, you just don't remember.

8
00:00:34,256 --> 00:00:35,358
That's clever.

9
00:00:38,301 --> 00:00:39,683
Yeah, I mean, there's something to it.

10
00:00:40,063 --> 00:00:44,669
How do you know you've experienced them if you don't remember?

11
00:00:47,092 --> 00:00:49,214
Well, where did you come from?

12
00:00:49,274 --> 00:00:54,000
There's no beginning to this cycle of life.

13
00:00:54,220 --> 00:00:56,683
There's no beginning, but there is an end.

14
00:00:57,102 --> 00:01:00,246
And we're clearly not at the end if we're still experiencing.

15
00:01:04,412 --> 00:01:05,975
You just say that there is an end?

16
00:01:07,357 --> 00:01:07,917
Yes, there is.

17
00:01:07,937 --> 00:01:16,329
I don't understand how you can know that there is no beginning, but there is an end.

18
00:01:16,970 --> 00:01:19,554
If you have faith, I guess.

19
00:01:19,714 --> 00:01:23,700
I mean, I haven't experienced it personally.

20
00:01:24,473 --> 00:01:25,754
That's the question.

21
00:01:25,795 --> 00:01:26,756
That begs the question.

22
00:01:27,837 --> 00:01:38,629
If you already have faith, then you need to experience something to think about it or to believe in it.

23
00:01:38,910 --> 00:01:53,046
I mean, when I feel like on the path you start to see the results come pretty much become more and more evident and you start to see like the first three

24
00:01:53,718 --> 00:01:58,963
first, second, and fourth, and then eventually you'll see the third.

25
00:02:00,244 --> 00:02:02,506
So what you mean by the end, you're talking about Nibbana.

26
00:02:02,546 --> 00:02:03,567
That's just to clarify.

27
00:02:03,627 --> 00:02:11,675
It's not really an end of the universe because the universe keeps going on, but the end for that person is what you're talking about.

28
00:02:11,735 --> 00:02:12,896
The cycle of rebirth.

29
00:02:14,157 --> 00:02:14,418
All right.

30
00:02:14,438 --> 00:02:18,742
The ending to the cycle of rebirth.

31
00:02:18,862 --> 00:02:19,062
Yeah.

32
00:02:19,082 --> 00:02:20,063
For one person.

33
00:02:20,718 --> 00:02:21,559
There's no beginning.

34
00:02:21,780 --> 00:02:22,921
Well, there's a potential end.

35
00:02:23,001 --> 00:02:30,612
I think a curious thing, if I'm not mistaken, is that there's no guarantee that every being is going to reach nirvana.

36
00:02:33,416 --> 00:02:39,765
There's an idea that perhaps beings are also infinite, which is interesting.

37
00:02:39,925 --> 00:02:43,210
It's all kind of mind-blowing and gets us very much off the topic.

38
00:02:43,631 --> 00:02:48,177
So you can see how ignoring all this stuff is...

39
00:02:49,473 --> 00:02:50,616
can actually be useful.

40
00:02:50,776 --> 00:02:52,761
What I don't like is when people get bigoted about it.

41
00:02:52,861 --> 00:03:01,060
It seems to me where people will, as soon as anyone brings up rebirth, it just gets, oh, that's not Buddhism and so on.

42
00:03:01,180 --> 00:03:05,811
Or when people talk about magic powers and say that's not Buddhism.

43
00:03:06,770 --> 00:03:08,893
Well, maybe magical powers, you could have a point.

44
00:03:08,933 --> 00:03:15,982
But the Buddha, you know, why then does the Buddha seem to, according to our scriptures, again and again and again, talk about these things?

45
00:03:16,062 --> 00:03:27,276
You know, when the Buddha outlines the entire path, both remembering your past lives and gaining magical powers are a part of that, are every time.

46
00:03:27,661 --> 00:03:28,722
a part of that path.

47
00:03:29,163 --> 00:03:34,790
Every time the Buddha talks about it, when he condenses it, you'll see that they disappear.

48
00:03:35,631 --> 00:03:44,561
But when he talks about the full and entire path, they seem to be very much a part of, you know, you can't say they're not a part of the Buddha's teaching because he teaches them.

49
00:03:46,243 --> 00:03:52,791
You know, he obviously doesn't say they're the end, and he says quite often they're not the end, but he teaches them.

50
00:03:53,243 --> 00:04:22,423
so we always try to make the point that you don't need these things and you don't have to think about them and if they're causing you problems well then you're focusing on you're barking up the wrong tree but they do have a place in Buddhism they're quite interesting and you know it might even be something to talk about them rebirth can be quite useful to help you to gain a more an understanding of reality that's more in line with reality

51
00:04:23,197 --> 00:04:35,516
as opposed to the Western mindset of physical death equals death, which is totally out of line with experiential reality.

52
00:04:41,184 --> 00:04:41,945
Are we okay with that?

53
00:04:44,409 --> 00:04:46,572
Yeah.

54
00:04:46,592 --> 00:04:47,694
I have nothing else to say.

55
00:04:49,537 --> 00:04:49,777
Okay.

56
00:04:50,598 --> 00:04:50,959
Let's quit.