Without getting into the multitude of Buddhists concepts of reincarnation, memory of self might persist if memory is holographically imprinted into a holographic universe. Such memory would reveal itself as innate talents, inherited traits, natural instincts, etc. It would explain child prodigies, for example.

Same person different name. What's confusing?

↪Banno Same person different name. What's confusing? — Mongrel

What makes it the same person?

If memories, then not.

Same soul. It's not confusing. It's just not your cuppa tea.

What sort of thing is a soul?

Even if there is a "soul" travelling from body to body, the bodies in with the same soul would be different people. Different bodies have different intelligences, different modes and degrees of perceptions, different sexual predilections, and other different appetites. So, the same person is not travelling from body to body, but the same content would be held by different people through time.

I don't know. What sort of thing is a point particle?

Where are we supposed to go with that? Or do you just want to end the conversation?

A bit too new-age pseudo for my taste.

Even given that our brain structure (memories?) is encoded in a 2 dimensional membrane at the edge of the universe, how would that mean that I am a reincarnation of Napoleon? In what way is it Napoleon that is reincarnated in Banno?

I didn't understand the question... "What sort of thing is x?"

The brain structure would be a quantum field potential which it's encoded with memory. It is not two dimensional.

The memories we carry essentially define who we are. The actions we take based upon these memories device how we explore, create, learn and evolve. So we are fundamentally evolving memory.

You asked how it could be, so I suggested a model. I didn't expect that you would like it, but as long as you were inquiring ....

Clarity obscures, obscurity clarifies... so let me confuse the shit out of everyone...

The material that makes you up changes over time, until none of what was there a decade ago remains. Memory is an autobiographical narrative, we remember a story. There are only so many forms the story can take, and only so many kinds of stories that we tell. We learn the forms until we just begin to identify everything that that comes, as the same as what came before. Nothing new under the sun. What makes you what you are is the kinds of relationships you have, the co-dependence of identity, and your form and function. Any completely unrepilcatable experiences wouldn't be representable, even to yourself. Language, and concepts require repeatability.

The irony always strikes me... which of us is the one that believes in special unchanging immutable souls? The one that says they're repeatable, or the one that hold stead fast to their special uniqueness?

Plato believed in reincarnation. I think he would agree that the self is word magic.

(Y)

So... if we can't make sense of self, then we have no hope to make sense of reincarnation?

Everything is special and unique though, it's just maya, samsara that is repeatable. The world truly is both just, and good under it all.

We can't make sense of either, no. We can think it, and do it though. Watch out for that.

But Saturday repeats once a week.

Buddhist philosophy emphatically states that you're NOT the same person. Wos has it about right but it will help to have some more formal references which I will provide later.

Like clockwork.

Buddhist reincarnation isn't really like re-starting anew but with the same "ego", it's more like the transferal of the flame from one candle to another candle.

So all the lives happen simultaneously like dandelions growing out of the same spot.

How do they happen simultaneously if they are diachronically ordered and one is supposed to learn from the past one? That would seem to counter the Buddhist framework.

smoke and mirrors

"Re-" in reincarnation is once more, afresh, again; what is it that is once more, afresh, again?

Why "reincarnation", not "incarnation"?

A question not just for Mongrel.

I have long rejected reincarnation on the grounds that it uses a confused notion of the self. It is unclear how Banno could be the very same person who was previously Napoleon...

But is there a way around such objections? — Banno

If you ask Buddhists about this question, the general answer will be: 'are you the same person now as you were when you were seven?' (The question supposes you answer 'no'.) 'Then are you a different person' (Likewise.)

So - neither the same nor different. This undercuts the usual notion of identity, because identity supposes that 'the same person' has continuity from one life to the next. But a fundamental dogma of Buddhism (yes, Buddhism has dogmas) is that there is nothing that doesn't change; everything compounded (roughly equivalent to 'created beings' in Western theology) has three characteristics, namely, it is anicca, anatta, dukkha - impermanent, not self, and unsatisfactory (although these Buddhist terms are hard to translate directly).

So there is emphatically not 'a self' that 'migrates' from one life to the next. One of the canonical statements on same is the anecdote of 'Sāti, the Fisherman's Son' who believes the Buddha teaches there is a self that migrates from life to life:

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying in Sāvatthī, at Jeta's Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika's park. Now on that occasion this pernicious viewpoint (diṭṭhigata) had arisen in the monk Sāti the Fisherman's Son: "As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, it is just this consciousness that runs and wanders on [from birth to birth], not another." A large number of monks heard, "They say that this pernicious viewpoint has arisen in the monk Sāti the Fisherman's Son: 'As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, it is just this consciousness that runs and wanders on [from birth to birth], not another.'" So they went to the monk Sāti the Fisherman's Son and on arrival said to him, "Is it true, friend Sāti, that this pernicious viewpoint has arisen in you — 'As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, it is just this consciousness that runs and wanders on, not another'?"

"Exactly so, friends. I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One such that it is just this consciousness that runs and wanders on, not another."

Then those monks, desiring to pry the monk Sāti the Fisherman's Son away from that pernicious viewpoint, quizzed him back & forth and rebuked him, saying, "Don't say that, friend Sāti. Don't slander the Blessed One, for it is not good to slander the Blessed One. The Blessed One would not say anything like that. In many ways, friend, the Blessed One has said of dependently co-arisen consciousness, 'Apart from a requisite condition, there is no coming-into-play of consciousness.'" And yet even though he was quizzed back & forth and rebuked by those monks, the monk Sāti the Fisherman's Son, through stubbornness and attachment to that very same pernicious viewpoint, continued to insist, "Exactly so, friends. I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One such that it is just this consciousness that runs and wanders on, not another.

When later quizzed by the Buddha himself as to who 'this self' is, Sāti answers:

This speaker, this knower, lord, that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & evil actions.

He is thereupon rebuked by the Buddha as 'this worthless man' who will 'create long-term harm and suffering' for himself on account of his 'pernicious view' - which is taken to be similar or the same as the orthodox Brahminical account of there being 'a self that transmigrates from life to life'.

But, that said, re-birth is still said to occur by Buddhists - so how does that work? The Buddhist answer is hard to summarize, but the gist is that a person (like everything) arises on account of causes and conditions. So 'craving and attachment' gives rise to future lives; until one is free of craving and attachment, those causes will continue to propogate, giving rise to future lives.

Of course, that leaves a great many questions unanswered, and these themes were elaborated over the subsequent centuries - but that is the gist of it.

Already answered that.

Not helpful.

Thank you. Helpful.

SO my take-away is roughly that if re-incarnation is taken as the self entering into a new life, then Buddhism does not hold to reincarnation.

Cheers.

↪Thanatos Sand smoke and mirrors

That won't win over many converts....:)

This Buddha talk avoids the question of the possibility of reincarnation but instead just speaks to the idiosyncrasies of Buddhism.