--- In [email protected], "mudmessiah" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> If one lives life to the fullest then there will be no more need for
> rebirth...! So how does one live life to the fullest? Buddha
outlined
> a path called the Eightfold Path... For example, doesn't it follow
> that by not cheating (lying, coveting... etc,) a person takes all
the
> steps required to accomplish a goal. To ask why one act is applauded
> and another isn't applauded is immaterial; reward for an act and no
> reward for an act are the same. Any act is important only because
its
> accomplishemnt is the fulfillment of life. If birth requires the
> accomplishment of life, then to accomplish life is to accomplish
> birth. Both done, the soul's requirement is met... is it not? Once
> lived to it's fullest... life need not be repeated?
>
I personally don't subscribe to what I call "body-switching" in the
rebirth scenario (where you die and then some how show up in another
body.) But I tend to think of re-birth as the moment to moment
creation of the self. It's not that you *have* a self, but that you
are "selfing." It's not a thing, but a process that is created by
craving. It's happening every single moment.
When you stop craving, you stop "selfing" and there is no "self" to be
reborn. In the classic Buddhist scenario this means that you will
achieve parinirvanna and not be reborn into another body. In zen, the
invitation is to awaken in this life time. I don't hear a lot of Zen
teachers talk about re-birth into another body after physical death of
this body. Why worry about the next life anyway?
As far as "living to the fullest", and the eightfold path, just being
mindful, completely mindful, is living fully. If you practice
mindfulness, if you really do it, you are practicing the whole
eightfold path. This is true for any part really. You can't practice
one part of the eightfold path without practicing the whole thing.
But for purposes of practice it is useful to deliberately apply
yourself to each step. But each flows out from the other. That is
why it is a path that the Buddha discovered rather than created.
I hope that answers something.
-DaveK
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