An idea that challenges, confuses and sometimes even angers people is that each of us could be reborn as an animal. When I recently blogged about karma, quite a few of the comments asked more about this subject. So, what is the Tibetan Buddhist perspective? It’s important not to be encumbered with ideas from Western culture and society...
Take the following example of how we empower negative vs positive thoughts in everyday life. You bump into a friend, Mary, on your way into the coffee shop. ‘I like you hair,’ she smiles. ‘Oh, thanks,’ you say. ‘I had it cut yesterday.’ ‘Looks great!’ Mary confirms. ‘Bye.’ For a few moments, waiting in the...
It seems to me that, whoever we are and whatever our convictions, there is a single question we all need to answer. The way we answer may well underpin how we live our life. The question is seldom made explicit, but is often implicit in both scientific and religious beliefs. For my own part, I...
Having moved from the Renaissance idea of mind as soul, through the materialist notion of mind as brain, Western scientists are now deepening their understanding of mind as a flow of energy, capable of consciousness and cognition. This explanation shares certain elements of the previous paradigms, while dealing with their more evident flaws. Like Descartes’s...
The most obvious problem with claiming that mind and brain are the same is the lack of an explanation as to how consciousness can arise from matter. In the past, some scientists adopted the denial strategy, saying that mind and consciousness didn’t actually exist. The American behaviourist B.F. Skinner went as far as to say...
René Descartes, sometimes referred to as the father of modern philosophy, summed up his famous views on how mind and body are separate in his book Discourse on the Method, published in 1637. In it, he explained the reasoning behind his seminal dictum ‘I think therefore I am’: “From this I knew I was a...
I am often struck by what I think is one of life’s greatest paradoxes: even though our entire experience of reality depends on our mind, most people have no idea what mind actually is. Everything we perceive, think and feel arises only with mind’s participation. That being the case, wouldn’t it be useful to have...
There was quite a stir when it was reported that Pope Francis had told a young boy that animals have souls which go to heaven. The story grabbed the headlines because it was the opposite of the previous Papal position. Within 24 hours the story had been repeated so often that it was an assumed...
In the past I have blogged about the death process according to Tibetan Buddhism. I have been very encouraged by the number of readers showing an interest in what I believe is such an important subject. This blog is about the Tibetan Buddhist approach to after-death bardo states and rebirth. For the sake of brevity,...
In the West, there are two mainstream models to describe happens when we die. On the one hand, the Christian tradition teaches that each of us has a soul which separates from the body at death and goes to heaven or hell for eternity. On the other, the materialistic model suggests that matter is...
