The present note is concerned primarily with the translation and interpretation of the final summary paragraph, both in the sutta and its commentary

An exploration of the somewhat unusual summary at the end of MN 136.

Is the one who acts the same as the one who experiences the result?

‘Dying was beautiful, peaceful, and graceful. I have been dead. I know the truth. And I am not scared.’

Although this book is based on my forty-five years of scientific research into NDEs, it was not written specifically for other scientists. And although I hope people who have had NDEs will feel that I have done justice to their experiences, I have not written this book for them. Rather, I’ve written this book for the rest of us, for those who are curious about the incredible scope of the human mind and about the deeper questions about life and death.

Science can tell us what experiencers say about what happens after death, and about the consistency of their reports across different individuals and different cultures. But science at this point usually can’t tell us anything about the accuracy of what they say. I say “usually” because in some cases, we can investigate what experiencers say if what they say is related to things we can observe…

‘You were wearing a striped tie with a red stain on it,’ she repeated, glaring at me. She then went on to repeat the conversation I’d had [while she was dead]…

Among the experiencers I’ve studied, 90 percent said their attitudes and beliefs changed as a result of their NDEs, and…

It is not unusual for family and friends to find that their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors change as a result of intimate exposure to experiencers. And the same is true, I found, for near-death researchers.

the abandoned factories
there has lately been so much conversation about
through broken windows they stare
asking for us to decide…

The heart’s wish of one who is virtuous succeeds because of his purity.

When giving with a certain wish in mind, you can get it.

This sutta provides a canonical basis for the ubiquitous Buddhist practice of “dedicating the merit” of an offering.

Householders, if wife and husband want to see each other in both this life and the next, they should be equals in faith, ethics, generosity, and wisdom.

One who betters their birth, one who equals their birth, and one who fails their birth.

… if this person were to die at this time, as if carried there he would be placed in heaven.

… all are his fellow-passengers in the great journey of life, subject to the same universal laws and fundamental principles to which he himself is subject.

A thorough explanation of the process of rebirth from the orthodox, Theravāda perspective.

Three interpretations of bhavaṅga have been taken up for discussion. One is as found in the Netti that bhavaṅga designates each link of twelve factors of dependent co-arising in the context of āsava, which together produce bhava. Psychological and cosmological interpretations of bhava have been studied. […] The third interpretation occurs in the commentaries that bhavaṅga-consciousness is luminous and pure, it is a natural consciousness and all beings pass away with this state of consciousness.

They must have done a good deed to be experienced as pleasant either previously or later, or else at the time of death they undertook Right View. And that’s why, when their body broke up, after death, they were reborn in a good place, a heavenly realm.

When Samiddhi presented an poorly distilled summary of the Buddha’s teachings to an outsider (saying that all deeds ultimately result in suffering), the Buddha corrected him by emphasizing the nuances of how karma can play out over multiple lifetimes.

Mendicants, there are three failures.

The snake, the scorpion, the centipede, the mongoose, the cat, the mouse, and the owl, or any other animals that creep away when they see people. Thus a being is reborn from a being; one is reborn through one’s deeds.

Those who do the ten kinds of bad deeds are like creepy creatures and are reborn as such.

Most people find you unlikable and unlovable. You have lots of enmity and many faults. You feel lost when you die.

The five drawbacks of intolerance.

Beings go to a bad bourn
Because of mind’s corruption.

Mahānāma once confided to the Buddha his anxiety about dying at a time when his mind was confused and bewildered (musati), thinking it might result in him having a negative rebirth. The Buddha reassured him that because he had developed various spiritual qualities for a long time, he had nothing to fear if such a thing should happen.

And why, bhikkhus, do you call it form? ‘It is deformed,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called form.

The Buddha explains how to view rebirth.

They discuss: past-life recollection, Western scientific methods in relation to rebirth, and whether a practitioner needs to believe in rebirth to attain awakening.

If bhavaṅga is “unconsciousness”, then it certainly is not unconsciousness in the sense of a mental blank. In fact bhavaṅga is understood in the texts as in most respects sharing the same properties as other types of consciousness; bhavaṅga is not something different from consciousness, rather it is consciousness operating in a particular mode

The teaching of rebirth crops up almost everywhere in the Canon, and is so closely bound to a host of other doctrines that to remove it would virtually reduce the Dhamma to tatters.

In this article, Bhikkhu Bodhi explains how rebirth is an intelligible view, both intrinsically and in terms of the Dhamma, and how the concept of rebirth can help a person make better sense of the world. It is further shown how the concept of rebirth is crucial if the Dhamma is to be a consistent set of teachings. The Venerable approaches the topic from three philosophical standpoints: the ethical, the ontological, and the soteriological.

I declare, Vaccha, rebirth for one with fuel, not for one without fuel.

The Buddha explains his position on rebirth, including how the state between rebirths is possible.

Bhikkhus, what one intends, and what one plans, and whatever one has a tendency towards: this becomes a basis for the maintenance of consciousness.

Of the ascetics and brahmins who say that through annihilation of existence one escapes from continued existence, none have themselves escaped from continued existence, I say.

Shortly after awakening, the Buddha contemplates rebirth.

With craving his companion, a man
wanders on a long, long time.

What can cause a monk to be reborn?

A bhikkhu who develops and cultivates the Noble Eightfold Path slants, slopes, and inclines towards Nibbāna.

Suppose a stick was tossed up in the air. Sometimes it’d fall on its bottom, sometimes the middle, and sometimes the end. It’s the same for sentient beings roaming and transmigrating, shrouded by ignorance and fettered by craving.

Consciousness together with its nutriment should be seen as like the five kinds of seeds.

They are watered by craving.

…when one dwells contemplating danger in things that can fetter, there is no descent of consciousness…

Rebirth illustrated with the simile of a tree.

Mendicants, three kinds of people are bound for a place of loss, bound for hell…

Suppose a tree were leaning toward the east… When its root is cut, which way would it fall?

Mahānāma the Sakyan expresses his fear that if he dies unmindful he may be reborn into a lower realm. The Buddha tells him not to worry, as he will definitely go to a good place, having established the four factors of stream-entry.

This is indeed that Jeta’s Grove,
frequented by the Saṅgha of hermits…

A deity who had been the Buddha’s supporter Anāthapiṇḍika in his former life comes to the Buddha and speaks verses in celebration of the Jeta’s Grove, good deeds, the Dhamma, and Venerable Sāriputta.

The bee sting is nothing: get out of the well!

You seek something that cannot be obtained. I am sure that you will die from sadness: it is impossible to get the sun and moon

A deva shows a grieving father the way to end his sorrow.

See this fancy puppet,
a body built of sores…

Some of the most clever turns of image in Pāli poetry.

Transmigrating, I went to hell…

This is thousands and thousands of times more important than my own life.

A Tibetan monk searches for his beloved master’s reincarnation.

I swear, you will wake–
& mistake these walls
for skin.

A song on the cycle of life and death.

Interesting to note: one of the methods mentioned was tried recently, with results exactly as reported.

Take a person who kills living creatures. If we compare periods of time during the day and night, which is more frequent: the occasions when they’re killing or when they’re not killing?

The Buddha rejects the poorly phrased fatalism of a Jain follower and gives an alternative method for overcoming bad karma.

In the context of Christian missionary activity, it seems again entirely natural that rebirth is seen as one type of belief that needs to be replaced with another belief, which in this case is belief in an almighty god. However, the perception of the rebirth doctrine as a belief to be either accepted on faith or else rejected does not seem to capture fully the position this doctrine occupies in early Buddhist thought.

… while the Theravādins have preserved the clearest and best-understood early texts referring to the in-between state, their philosophical posture prevented them from investigating and describing this in any detail. For that we shall have to listen to the other schools, starting with the Puggalavādins and Sarvāstivādins, as passed down through the Chinese and Tibetan traditions.

A passionate and compelling argument for both “the bardo” (as it’s popularly known) and for contemporary, comparative scholarship.

In this sutta, a bhikkhu named Sāti promulgates the pernicious view that consciousness transmigrates from life to life. The Buddha reprimands him with a lengthy discourse on dependent origination, explaining that all phenomena of existence arise and cease through conditions.

We wouldn’t say “this is proof of reincarnation,” but I would say it’s strong evidence of something like it.

Co-incidence of two phenomena, even when repeated, does not mean that one phenomenon is the cause of the other. To claim that activity in the brain causes awareness, or mind, is plainly unscientific.

Ajahm Brahm explains how science can be dogmatic and religion scientific.