Buddha, please! I'm Christian!

[jackfaire]

I don't personally look up to any monk.

The reason I don't believe the Dali Lama is the same as the last one. To grow and learn so as to help oneself reach a point of pure enlightenment. Doing the same thing over and over again is great practice but hardly a way to grow and learn.

Second the selection process assumes that time is linear. Though we experience it as such does not make it so all assumptions are that our past lives are in the past but personal chronology does not necessarily apply the same.

One may have had a past life that starts 2 centuries from now.

[infinitemonkies]

There's an interesting logical extension to that thought, Jack. Now, I'm not a Buddhist, nor have I made any serious study thereof, but this is something that occurred to me:

Assumption 1: reincarnation happens. 1 soul may live many lifetimes.
Assumption 2: Non-linear timeline. your past life may have been 5000 years ago, the one before that 200 years from now, etc.

Conclusion: If both are true, then every soul could in fact be the same soul in different reincarnations, and thus we are one and everything is the same


Am I way off base, have I inadvertently stumbled unto a basic tenet of Buddhism, or somewhere in between?

[HYHYBT]

Hey, I've thought of that too! Never taken the idea seriously, nor thought to mention it to anyone else.

[jackfaire]

Am I way off base, have I inadvertently stumbled unto a basic tenet of Buddhism, or somewhere in between?

Gonna start a new thread in religion to explain my views on Time and Soul.