Dear Ven. Sir,

> >>> So show me where the Buddha explicitly denies an
> antaraabhava, please.
> >>
> >>How can I? You don't subscribe to the same texts that I do... The
> >>Buddha taught, according to the Three Pali Canon, that what you are
> >>describing is either a person not yet dead or a peta.
> >
> >Dear avuso,
> >
> >I hope you are not trying to avoid the issue. Could you
> please answer the question?

I already have. In the same place where He explicitly denies a horned hare.

> >Can I trust that you have read the Pali suttas whereby the
> Buddha and his disciples seem to be taking the "in-between"
> as a commonly accepted fact?

You are referring to the antaraparinibbayi? I don't know what it means, but
it is a far cry to say this obscure reference proves an antaraabhava.

> >Can you show us any sutta that shows otherwise?

Of course. MN 43 says this:

"Friend, in the case of one who is dead, who has completed his time, his
bodily formations have ceased and subsided, his verbal formations have
ceased and subsided, his mental formations have ceased and subsided, his
vitality is exhausted, his heat has been dissipated, and his faculties are
fully broken up."

This is death. What is rebirth? So many examples, here's one:

DN 2:

"'With his heart thus serene (&c. as before), he directs and bends down his
mind to the knowledge of the fall and rise of beings. With the pure Heavenly
Eye{2}, surpassing that of men, he sees beings as they pass away from one
form of existence and take shape in another; he recognises the mean and the
noble, the well favoured and the ill favoured, the happy and the wretched,
passing away according to their deeds: "Such and such beings, brethren, evil
in act and word and thought, revilers of the noble ones, holding to wrong
views, acquiring for themselves that Karma which results from wrong views,
they, on the dissolution of the body, after death, are reborn in some
unhappy state of suffering or woe. But such and such beings, my brethren,
well doers in act and word and thought, not revilers of the noble ones,
holding to right views, acquiring for themselves that Karma that results
from right views, they, on the dissolution of the body, after death, are
reborn in some happy state in heaven." Thus with the pure Heavenly Eye,
surpassing that of men, [83] he sees beings as they pass away from one state
of existence, and take form in another; he recognises the mean and the
noble, the well favoured and the ill favoured, the happy and the wretched,
passing away according to their deeds{1}."

MN 143:

"Soon after they had left, the householder Anaathapi.n.dika died and
reappeared in the Tusita Heaven."

Where is the antarabhava?

One would think that if the Lord Buddha agreed with Stephen that this was a
most important time in the "life" of a person, that the Lord Buddha would
have mentioned it, not just skipped over it, time and again saying that
"after death they are reborn". An obscure reference to "antaraaparinibbayi"
is hardly enough to prove anything.

> >Btw, in the suttas, peta usually mean "departed one",
> regardless where the stream of consciousness has gone to. It
> is not as most Buddhists now understand the term. Look it up
> for yourself.

Okay, I did:

PetaV:

27. "Aha.m bhadante petiimhi, duggataa yamalokikaa;
paapakamma.m karitvaana, petaloka.m ito gataa."

So does this mean that all dead people go to this "departed-ones-world"
(petaloka)? Which suttas are you referring to?

Yuttadhammo



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]