--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "rjkjp1" <rjkjp1@...> wrote:

> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Norman Joseph [Jou] Smith"
> <josmith.1@...> wrote:
>
> > Despite the well known idea that the Buddha taught [the goal of]
> his
> > teaching was for THIS VERY LIFE, there is a popular idea that he
> spoke
> > of "past lives" [pubbe jiivitaani]. I have found no evidence of
> this, or
> > of RE-birth [punna-jaati] in the early texts [the Paali Nikaaya

or

> > Vinaaya]. If anyone has found such evidence please let me know.
> ===========
> Dear Jou,

Hi Robert

Hope you are well and happy.

> Anguttara Nikaya III.15

cut...

> "Now, monks, the thought may occur to you that the chariot maker on
> that occasion was someone else, but it shouldn't be seen in that

way.

> I myself was the chariot maker on that occasion. I was skilled in
> dealing with the crookedness, the faults, the flaws of wood. Now I

am

> a worthy one, rightly self-awakened, skilled in dealing with the
> crookedness, faults, & flaws of bodily action; skilled in dealing
> with
> the crookedness, faults, & flaws of verbal action; skilled in

dealing

> with the crookedness, faults, & flaws of mental action.""endquote

I appreciate you supplying that quote. I have come across quotes
like this before, e.g. D ii 196-7 = DN 17:

"King Mahaasudassana indulged in boyish sports for eighty-four
thousand years, for eighty-four thousand years he exercised the
viceroyalty, for eighty-four thousand years he ruled as King, and
for eighty-four thousand years, as a layman, he lived the holy life
in the Dhamma Palace. And, having practised the four divine
abidings, at the breaking-up of the body he was RE-born in the
Brahamaa-world.

Now Aananda, you might think that King Mahaasudassana at that time
was somebody else. But you whould not regard it so, for I was King
Mahaasudassana then..."

The problem I have with them is they would contradict the Buddha's
teaching given so many times as the pracitce of Insight and Right
View as not thinking "I am [any of the five clinging aggregates]"
or "I am not [any of the five clinging aggregates]".

As well as that it is not surprising to me, thinking the
physiological interpretaion of the three insight knowledges
[tevijjaa] is a later teaching, that these ideas are usually found
in Nikaayan texts that most scholars take as later texts, i.e.
Anguttara and Diigha as opposed to Majjhima and Samyutta.

I don't see any exhortation to practice in the first type of
teaching, i.e. the revealing what one's past lives were. It is
getting a little close to an exhortation when they say "I was REborn
there due to such and such action [kamma]". Anyway the final test is
which teaching we find beneficial after testing it and which
interpretation of the three insight knowledges [tevijjaa] we find is
most practical in our daily lives. I do not find the common
interpretation so.