#reincarnation

Wert thou that just Maid who once before Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth, And cam'st again to visit us once more? Or wet thou that sweet smiling Youth? Or any other of the heavenly brood Let down in cloudy throne to do the world good? Or wert thou of the golden-winged host, Who, having clad thyself in human weed, To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post And after short abode fly back with speed As if to show what creatures heaven doth breed; Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire, To scorn the sorded world, and unto Heaven aspire? John Milton ↗

— John Milton

#reincarnation #weiss #love

As a man, casting off worn out garments taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, entereth into ones that are new. ↗

— Epictetus

#reincarnation #religion #religion

Immortality like this is about as useful as sunscreen on a submarine. ↗

— Elizabeth Marx

#humor #immortality #reincarnation #death

I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog. ↗

— Leonard Cohen

#called #come #daughter #dog #i

Many cultures have independently developed a belief system in reincarnation that includes return of the unit of consciousness to another physical lifetime on Earth. ↗

— Stanislav Grof

#belief #consciousness #cultures #developed #earth

It comes as no surprise to find [Norman] Mailer embracing [in the book On God] a form of Manicheanism, pitting the forces of light and darkness against each other in a permanent stand-off, with humanity as the battlefield. (When asked if Jesus is part of this battle, he responds rather loftily that he thinks it is a distinct possibility.) But it is at points like this that he talks as if all the late-night undergraduate talk sessions on the question of theism had become rolled into one. 'How can we not face up to the fact that if God is All-Powerful, He cannot be All-Good. Or She cannot be All-Good.' Mailer says that questions such as this have bedevilled 'theologians', whereas it would be more accurate to say that such questions, posed by philosophers, have attempted to put theologians out of business. A long exchange on the probability of reincarnation (known to Mailer sometimes as “karmic reassignment”) manages to fall slightly below the level of those undergraduate talk sessions. The Manichean stand-off leads Mailer, in closing, to speculate on what God might desire politically and to say: 'In different times, the heavens may have been partial to monarchy, to communism, and certainly the Lord was interested in democracy, in capitalism. (As was the Devil!)' I think it was at this point that I decided I would rather remember Mailer as the author of Harlot's Ghost and The Armies of the Night. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#capitalism #communism #democracy #devil #god

What we call life...is the combination of the Five Aggregates, a combination of physical and mental energies. These are constantly changing; they do not remain the same for two consecutive moments. Every moment they are born and they die. 'When the Aggregates arise, decay and die, O bhikkhu, every moment you are born, decay, and die.' This, even dow during this life time, every moment we are born and die, but we continue. If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or a Soul behind them after the non-functioning of the body? ↗

— Walpola Rahula

#buddha-quotes #buddhism #change #circle-of-life #death

...knowing about your past lives is worse than useless if that knowledge doesn't bring you some kind of positive change or healing. ↗

— Lianne Downey

#past-livesves #reincarnation #spirituality #change