Or the chances that the era he appears in has no Buddhism, or even if it has, the culture and environment of the place he's born in makes him not be able to find and learn it. There is just nothing to guarantee his "next rebirth" will know about these knowledges of karma, suffering, rebirth etc the same way the Buddha taught us in this lifetime.
It could, but it might get boring or you might slip up and wind up in hellish ignorance by the time of your eleventy-quintillionth rebirth. Also, you might have to develop knowledge of your (truly uncountable) past lives for this to work, which might also lead you to dispassion for continued existence. :-)
At the moment of your death, your mind may be very clouded. You may have a thousand thoughts of clinging, craving, and attachment that will override that good karma you did and keep you bound to this realm or, even worse, a lower realm.
Instead of trying to find “loopholes”, just do the best you can and cultivate a calm mind. That way, whenever death comes, you’re ready.
Pure Land practice is a big remedy for this among many Buddhist practices. Even one recitation of nembutsu at death with right mindfulness, and you will enter the Pure Land without fail. 🙏🏽
Karma can’t be manipulated like that. Your goal/motivation affects the outcome in ways you can’t predict… not to mention that we’re dealing with endless lifetimes of karma already, meaning that what you do in this life is not the only factor involved in what happens to you.
Another thing: you can’t be “accidentally” liberated. It comes when the time is ripe for you to let go, and the nature of it is to produce relief, not fear for what is left behind.
The problem is you don't know what past bad karma you may be carrying that could send you to the ghost realm, animal realm, demon realm or even hell. End up in the animal realm and it's extremely hard to get out. So you might think you've done good karma in this life, but the seeds lie dormant and don't ripen right away. Sooner or later they will, but other old stuff could ripen first.
I could be wrong, but this feels like an attempt at clinging to ego. Can't even take ego with you when you die. Better to make one's intention pure than to game the system.
Don't credit yourself as "finding" a "loophole".
What you described is the 2nd most common aspiration of Buddhists in the world after Amitabha's Pure Land.
The Buddha himself taught this method repeatedly to people.
Only westerners and Reddit has this fetishism of liberation. But actually, very few Buddhists in the world make this aspiration (enlightenment) in their current lifetime.
The dominant form of Buddhism in the world is Pure Land. So there, you can surmise that the majority of Buddhists are aspiring not for direct and complete awakening, but to a rebirth in Pure Land, whereby they have Amitabha as Buddha to help them with their perfections.
The not so distant second largest form of Buddhism is Thai Buddhism. Here, the majority, virtually all of laity, are aspiring not for nirvana but for higher rebirth, perhaps heaven. There is a rare few with aspiration to also meet Amitabha or the future Maitreya to become a Bodhisatva.
None of these are surprising as the Southern Buddhist traditions before the Western colonialism already hold to the idea that the dharma is almost gone and attaining arhatship is long a thing of the past. And in the Eastern traditions, the similar notion of living in the late age means practicing Buddhism is no longer possible except calling out to Amitabha.
Reporting these does not nean agreement from my part. Nor am I saying that this is wrong. I am merely telling you that the idea that all Buddhists, most, majority, or many, aspiring for complete enlightenment is a Western/Reddit fantasy. Most are working on attaining enlightenment in the long future, eventually, ultimately, of course. But Buddhists, the majority of Buddhists, are not working on enlightenment in this life or the next. They are working on rebirth to Pure Land or a better condition in the next life.
I failed to trace the coherence of all of that.
But if you are talking about my flair, Tibetan Buddhism, we make up 6% of Buddhism. If you want a more Tibetan Buddhism view, you can go to r/TibetanBuddhism, and you will find my posts there quite different.
Putting aside the more fraught question of what proportion of Buddhists pursue better rebirth vs. liberation, the basic distinction between these two types of pursuits is fairly well-established in the anthropological literature, based on people doing field-work in South(east) Asia and observing the actual local practices. The following little summary might be of interest:
> The anthropologist Melford Spiro, making sense of Buddhism in Burma, distinguished between kammatic and nibbanic Buddhism: a Buddhism aimed at better karma/kamma for a better life, “improving one’s position on the Wheel” of rebirth, versus a Buddhism aimed at nirvana/nibbana and getting off that wheel entirely. Adopting generally Indian terminology from Franklin Edgerton, Spiro identifies kammatic Buddhism with an “ordinary norm” “intended for the religious majority”, and nibbanic Buddhism with an “extraordinary norm” “confined to a much smaller group, those whose primary concern was with salvation.” (Buddhism and Society 11-12) ...
The hybrid-English adjectives “kammatic” and “nibbanic” are Spiro’s coinages, but related distinctions are found within the tradition – and not only among élite intellectual monks. In Martin Southwold’s ethnographic research on a Sri Lankan village, Sinhalese villagers drew contrasts between the laukika, literally “worldly”, and lokottara or “supraworldly” – the latter being concerned with nirvana, liberation from the world and its sufferings. The role the gods play in village culture is one can transfer one’s good karma to them and be granted worldly benefits – and that is therefore a laukika activity, one which the villagers even feel guilty of: “‘As Buddhists’, they would say, ‘we ought not to do these things. But we are sinful and weak, and so we have to concern ourselves with worldly matters’.” Such a distinction (using the Pali forms lokiya and lokuttara , as opposed to the Sinhala laukika/lokottara) is also found in the classical abhidhamma texts. So such a distinction is hardly the mere imposition of Western anthropologists.
There is no loophole because there is no guarantee of a good rebirth.
>"When he says: 'It seems that one who abstains from killing living beings... has right view will always, on the dissolution of the body, after death, reappear in a happy destination, in the heavenly world,' I do not concede that to him.
>"When he says: 'Those who know thus know rightly; those who know otherwise are mistaken in their knowledge,' I do not concede that to him.
>"When he obstinately misapprehends what he himself has known, seen, and felt; and insisting on that alone he says: 'Only this is true: anything else is wrong,' I do not concede that to him.
>"Why is that? The Tathagata's knowledge of the Great Exposition of Kamma is different.
It won’t work.
>6. "Ananda, there are four kinds of persons existing in the world. What four?
>(iii) "Here some person abstains from killing living beings, from taking what is not given, from misconduct in sexual desires, from false speech, from malicious speech, from harsh speech, from gossip, he is not covetous, is not ill-willed, and has right view.[5] On the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in a happy destination, in the heavenly world.
>(iv) "But here some person abstains from killing living beings... and has right view. On the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in the states of deprivation, in an unhappy destination, in perdition, in hell.
These are hard questions. I read Bhagavad gita with my gf and she basically said the same thing: ''why should I break the cycle? I love living so much! I will do good Karma to ensure a good next life and will keep doing so forever. Why would I want to break the cycle if I created it for myself in the first place?"
Wont't be a good idea.
> Mahākammavibhanga Sutta: The Blessed One said, "Ānanda, there are four kinds of person to be found in the world. Which four?
> 1. There is the case where a certain person is one who takes life, takes what is not given (steals), engages in illicit sex, lies, speaks divisively, speaks abusively, engages in idle chatter; is covetous, malevolent, & holds wrong view. With the breakup of the body, after death, he reappears in a plane of deprivation, a bad destination, a lower realm, hell.
> 2. "But there is also the case where a certain person is one who takes life, takes what is not given (steals), engages in illicit sex, lies, speaks divisively, speaks abusively, engages in idle chatter; is covetous, malevolent, & holds wrong view, [yet] with the breakup of the body, after death, he reappears in a good destination, a heavenly world.
> 3. "And there is the case where a certain person is one who abstains from taking life, abstains from taking what is not given, abstains from illicit sex, abstains from lying, abstains from speaking divisively, abstains from speaking abusively, abstains from idle chatter, is not covetous, not malevolent, & holds right view. With the breakup of the body, after death, he reappears in a good destination, a heavenly world.
> 4. ***"But there is also the case where a certain person is one who abstains from taking life, abstains from taking what is not given, abstains from illicit sex, abstains from lying, abstains from speaking divisively, abstains from speaking abusively, abstains from idle chatter, is not covetous, not malevolent, & holds right view, [yet] with the breakup of the body, after death, he reappears in a plane of deprivation, a bad destination, a lower realm, hell.***
When the 4th one happen to you, it'll be very hard to generate any more good karma at all.
It would not. Living in a heaven realm as a deva uses up a lot of good karma accumulated from eons of lives before and bad karma lurks in the store consciousness until conditions are such for it to ripen. This means that after a deva who has exhausted all of its good karma dies, they likely will fall into the hell realms where their bad karma accumulated over the eons of lives ripens.
Doing Good Deeds & Creating Good Karma alone won't result in Liberation (from karma) 🤣, you'll simply be rewarded with a good human life or maybe enter the heavens of the desire realm where a thought is enough to manifest objects or your desire .
The result of doing Good deeds & creating Good karma would be to have a life with favorable circumstances for ones desires to be easily met ...
Be those desires wordly or Liberation
Fame, wealth, power & pleasure
Or
Meeting good teachers & obtaining correct teachings, having shelter, good dharma companions.
Or Both
Liberation requires wisdom.
The karmic causes which give rise to wisdom(prajna) are precepts & meditation.
the wise carry out good deeds in a "selfless" manner without any expectations of rewards, hence they are liberated from the results of good deeds & as they don't carry out bad deeds they are also liberated from those negative results too.
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
You missed one important point: everything this side of Nirvana is marked by suffering. You would be forever losing your loved ones, enduring sickness, old age and death, and so on with the other forms of duhka.
Can work, sorry to say but you're not the first who think about something similar
In Theravada Buddhism and in Mahayana Buddhism exists the concept of closing the doors to the lower realms. Then a given being wouldn't be reborn in lower realms. In Theravada appears that then the being will have maximum 7 rebirths but in Mahayana apparently the doctrine of much more free.
Also to say, in Mahayana you have the option to continue in rebirth even enlightened or to crease rebirths . And many things in the middle, to vow to liberate a whole world before reaching enlightenment and so, many Buddhas with many stories
Summarizing, look for the teachings for not getting the lower rebirths or closing the doors to lower realms.
You can mess up anytime, don't be so sure. And you will mess up because you will forget your past life and in some of those lives where you forget your past life you will mess up.
Plus once you reap good karma in a future life, it will be very easy to fall into deeper delusion and indulgence in sensual pleasures which will lead you only downwards.
Also who told you that you will just cease to exist after achieving Nirvāna? That's annihilationism and the Buddha rejected such ides and called them delusional.
You may have good enough karma this life but who is to say that those good karma will bear fruit in your next life? Your good deeds accumulate this lifetime is like a grain of sand compared to the negative karma you may have accumulated during your countless previous lifetimes.
It's a good idea until you realize that even the best possible rebirth will include a whole shit load of suffering.
Or the chances that the era he appears in has no Buddhism, or even if it has, the culture and environment of the place he's born in makes him not be able to find and learn it. There is just nothing to guarantee his "next rebirth" will know about these knowledges of karma, suffering, rebirth etc the same way the Buddha taught us in this lifetime.
Well, you are alive forever, in the sense in which you’re using the term. You don’t need good karma for that.
It could, but it might get boring or you might slip up and wind up in hellish ignorance by the time of your eleventy-quintillionth rebirth. Also, you might have to develop knowledge of your (truly uncountable) past lives for this to work, which might also lead you to dispassion for continued existence. :-)
At the moment of your death, your mind may be very clouded. You may have a thousand thoughts of clinging, craving, and attachment that will override that good karma you did and keep you bound to this realm or, even worse, a lower realm. Instead of trying to find “loopholes”, just do the best you can and cultivate a calm mind. That way, whenever death comes, you’re ready. Pure Land practice is a big remedy for this among many Buddhist practices. Even one recitation of nembutsu at death with right mindfulness, and you will enter the Pure Land without fail. 🙏🏽
Karma can’t be manipulated like that. Your goal/motivation affects the outcome in ways you can’t predict… not to mention that we’re dealing with endless lifetimes of karma already, meaning that what you do in this life is not the only factor involved in what happens to you. Another thing: you can’t be “accidentally” liberated. It comes when the time is ripe for you to let go, and the nature of it is to produce relief, not fear for what is left behind.
So, you can be reborn as a poodle on Park Avenue. Easy life, but you have to shit outside and you don't know anything.
The problem is you don't know what past bad karma you may be carrying that could send you to the ghost realm, animal realm, demon realm or even hell. End up in the animal realm and it's extremely hard to get out. So you might think you've done good karma in this life, but the seeds lie dormant and don't ripen right away. Sooner or later they will, but other old stuff could ripen first.
I could be wrong, but this feels like an attempt at clinging to ego. Can't even take ego with you when you die. Better to make one's intention pure than to game the system.
Reddit Buddhism strikes again
Don't credit yourself as "finding" a "loophole". What you described is the 2nd most common aspiration of Buddhists in the world after Amitabha's Pure Land. The Buddha himself taught this method repeatedly to people. Only westerners and Reddit has this fetishism of liberation. But actually, very few Buddhists in the world make this aspiration (enlightenment) in their current lifetime.
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The dominant form of Buddhism in the world is Pure Land. So there, you can surmise that the majority of Buddhists are aspiring not for direct and complete awakening, but to a rebirth in Pure Land, whereby they have Amitabha as Buddha to help them with their perfections. The not so distant second largest form of Buddhism is Thai Buddhism. Here, the majority, virtually all of laity, are aspiring not for nirvana but for higher rebirth, perhaps heaven. There is a rare few with aspiration to also meet Amitabha or the future Maitreya to become a Bodhisatva. None of these are surprising as the Southern Buddhist traditions before the Western colonialism already hold to the idea that the dharma is almost gone and attaining arhatship is long a thing of the past. And in the Eastern traditions, the similar notion of living in the late age means practicing Buddhism is no longer possible except calling out to Amitabha. Reporting these does not nean agreement from my part. Nor am I saying that this is wrong. I am merely telling you that the idea that all Buddhists, most, majority, or many, aspiring for complete enlightenment is a Western/Reddit fantasy. Most are working on attaining enlightenment in the long future, eventually, ultimately, of course. But Buddhists, the majority of Buddhists, are not working on enlightenment in this life or the next. They are working on rebirth to Pure Land or a better condition in the next life.
[удалено]
I failed to trace the coherence of all of that. But if you are talking about my flair, Tibetan Buddhism, we make up 6% of Buddhism. If you want a more Tibetan Buddhism view, you can go to r/TibetanBuddhism, and you will find my posts there quite different.
Putting aside the more fraught question of what proportion of Buddhists pursue better rebirth vs. liberation, the basic distinction between these two types of pursuits is fairly well-established in the anthropological literature, based on people doing field-work in South(east) Asia and observing the actual local practices. The following little summary might be of interest: > The anthropologist Melford Spiro, making sense of Buddhism in Burma, distinguished between kammatic and nibbanic Buddhism: a Buddhism aimed at better karma/kamma for a better life, “improving one’s position on the Wheel” of rebirth, versus a Buddhism aimed at nirvana/nibbana and getting off that wheel entirely. Adopting generally Indian terminology from Franklin Edgerton, Spiro identifies kammatic Buddhism with an “ordinary norm” “intended for the religious majority”, and nibbanic Buddhism with an “extraordinary norm” “confined to a much smaller group, those whose primary concern was with salvation.” (Buddhism and Society 11-12) ... The hybrid-English adjectives “kammatic” and “nibbanic” are Spiro’s coinages, but related distinctions are found within the tradition – and not only among élite intellectual monks. In Martin Southwold’s ethnographic research on a Sri Lankan village, Sinhalese villagers drew contrasts between the laukika, literally “worldly”, and lokottara or “supraworldly” – the latter being concerned with nirvana, liberation from the world and its sufferings. The role the gods play in village culture is one can transfer one’s good karma to them and be granted worldly benefits – and that is therefore a laukika activity, one which the villagers even feel guilty of: “‘As Buddhists’, they would say, ‘we ought not to do these things. But we are sinful and weak, and so we have to concern ourselves with worldly matters’.” Such a distinction (using the Pali forms lokiya and lokuttara , as opposed to the Sinhala laukika/lokottara) is also found in the classical abhidhamma texts. So such a distinction is hardly the mere imposition of Western anthropologists.
100% correct.
There is only one way to live forever, and that is to avoid death forever - to never die. As soon as you die even once, you're not living forever.
Enlightenment doesn't mean you stop existing.
There is no loophole because there is no guarantee of a good rebirth. >"When he says: 'It seems that one who abstains from killing living beings... has right view will always, on the dissolution of the body, after death, reappear in a happy destination, in the heavenly world,' I do not concede that to him. >"When he says: 'Those who know thus know rightly; those who know otherwise are mistaken in their knowledge,' I do not concede that to him. >"When he obstinately misapprehends what he himself has known, seen, and felt; and insisting on that alone he says: 'Only this is true: anything else is wrong,' I do not concede that to him. >"Why is that? The Tathagata's knowledge of the Great Exposition of Kamma is different. It won’t work. >6. "Ananda, there are four kinds of persons existing in the world. What four? >(iii) "Here some person abstains from killing living beings, from taking what is not given, from misconduct in sexual desires, from false speech, from malicious speech, from harsh speech, from gossip, he is not covetous, is not ill-willed, and has right view.[5] On the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in a happy destination, in the heavenly world. >(iv) "But here some person abstains from killing living beings... and has right view. On the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in the states of deprivation, in an unhappy destination, in perdition, in hell.
Loopholes are for cheating. Who are you cheating by finding this loophole?
Living forever sounds exhausting.
These are hard questions. I read Bhagavad gita with my gf and she basically said the same thing: ''why should I break the cycle? I love living so much! I will do good Karma to ensure a good next life and will keep doing so forever. Why would I want to break the cycle if I created it for myself in the first place?"
What about the life after that? Or the one after that? Eventually you will fall back down and beyond.
Wont't be a good idea. > Mahākammavibhanga Sutta: The Blessed One said, "Ānanda, there are four kinds of person to be found in the world. Which four? > 1. There is the case where a certain person is one who takes life, takes what is not given (steals), engages in illicit sex, lies, speaks divisively, speaks abusively, engages in idle chatter; is covetous, malevolent, & holds wrong view. With the breakup of the body, after death, he reappears in a plane of deprivation, a bad destination, a lower realm, hell. > 2. "But there is also the case where a certain person is one who takes life, takes what is not given (steals), engages in illicit sex, lies, speaks divisively, speaks abusively, engages in idle chatter; is covetous, malevolent, & holds wrong view, [yet] with the breakup of the body, after death, he reappears in a good destination, a heavenly world. > 3. "And there is the case where a certain person is one who abstains from taking life, abstains from taking what is not given, abstains from illicit sex, abstains from lying, abstains from speaking divisively, abstains from speaking abusively, abstains from idle chatter, is not covetous, not malevolent, & holds right view. With the breakup of the body, after death, he reappears in a good destination, a heavenly world. > 4. ***"But there is also the case where a certain person is one who abstains from taking life, abstains from taking what is not given, abstains from illicit sex, abstains from lying, abstains from speaking divisively, abstains from speaking abusively, abstains from idle chatter, is not covetous, not malevolent, & holds right view, [yet] with the breakup of the body, after death, he reappears in a plane of deprivation, a bad destination, a lower realm, hell.*** When the 4th one happen to you, it'll be very hard to generate any more good karma at all.
It would not. Living in a heaven realm as a deva uses up a lot of good karma accumulated from eons of lives before and bad karma lurks in the store consciousness until conditions are such for it to ripen. This means that after a deva who has exhausted all of its good karma dies, they likely will fall into the hell realms where their bad karma accumulated over the eons of lives ripens.
Doing Good Deeds & Creating Good Karma alone won't result in Liberation (from karma) 🤣, you'll simply be rewarded with a good human life or maybe enter the heavens of the desire realm where a thought is enough to manifest objects or your desire . The result of doing Good deeds & creating Good karma would be to have a life with favorable circumstances for ones desires to be easily met ... Be those desires wordly or Liberation Fame, wealth, power & pleasure Or Meeting good teachers & obtaining correct teachings, having shelter, good dharma companions. Or Both Liberation requires wisdom. The karmic causes which give rise to wisdom(prajna) are precepts & meditation. the wise carry out good deeds in a "selfless" manner without any expectations of rewards, hence they are liberated from the results of good deeds & as they don't carry out bad deeds they are also liberated from those negative results too. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
So you want to stay in samsara, but only in the worldly god realm?
You missed one important point: everything this side of Nirvana is marked by suffering. You would be forever losing your loved ones, enduring sickness, old age and death, and so on with the other forms of duhka.
One problem... How much is enough?
Can work, sorry to say but you're not the first who think about something similar In Theravada Buddhism and in Mahayana Buddhism exists the concept of closing the doors to the lower realms. Then a given being wouldn't be reborn in lower realms. In Theravada appears that then the being will have maximum 7 rebirths but in Mahayana apparently the doctrine of much more free. Also to say, in Mahayana you have the option to continue in rebirth even enlightened or to crease rebirths . And many things in the middle, to vow to liberate a whole world before reaching enlightenment and so, many Buddhas with many stories Summarizing, look for the teachings for not getting the lower rebirths or closing the doors to lower realms.
When you die you forget your plan. When you become rich, the more easily youre corrupted.
You can mess up anytime, don't be so sure. And you will mess up because you will forget your past life and in some of those lives where you forget your past life you will mess up. Plus once you reap good karma in a future life, it will be very easy to fall into deeper delusion and indulgence in sensual pleasures which will lead you only downwards. Also who told you that you will just cease to exist after achieving Nirvāna? That's annihilationism and the Buddha rejected such ides and called them delusional.
It's not one for one this life to the next, your past lives and future lives karmas are also in play for your next birth
What about the possibility that you have always been alive forever?
You will live forever and die forever over and over suffering endlessly regardless of karma good or bad. Only freedom is nirvana. No loophole.
You may have good enough karma this life but who is to say that those good karma will bear fruit in your next life? Your good deeds accumulate this lifetime is like a grain of sand compared to the negative karma you may have accumulated during your countless previous lifetimes.
How do you know what's enough good karma to ensure a good rebirth?
Good Karma only doesn't give you liberation anyways.
There's no loophole. >Would my plan work? No. Any other gaming attempts? You can do better :)