Dear Stephen

How are you?

You wrote:

"If you disagree, could you please demonstrate where the Buddha
explains the nirantarabhava process."

I thought that Bhante Yuttadhammo, Robert K and Rett had answered
and resolved the issue of antaraabhava, thereby sparing me the
obligation of dealing with it.

Before I touched on the issue, I would like to share with you a
recent funny court case in Canberra.

At a club bar in a Canberra suburb one night, there was a crowd
drinking and partying, among them Mr Mal Maninga, a nationally
famous retired Rugby League legend. He is over 6 feet tall and twice
the size of an average Aussie man. One drunken man went up to him
and taunted verbally and grabbing Mal, leaving the big Rugby icon no
choice but to punch him. The man sued Mal for assault. But, finally
the judge ruled that the man's behaviour on the occasion amounted to
his consent to be punched, and the case was closed!

So if you consented to be punched, :-), please describe what an
antaraabhava is, preferably in terms of Nikaaya Pali. For example,
does it have the five aggregates? Or does it have only consciousness
aggregate (viññaa.nakkhandho)? It would be even better if you could
quote a Sutta Pali that contains the term "antarabhavo".

Good luck!

Suan

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Stephen Hodge" <s.hodge@...> wrote:

Dear Suan,

> As you will notice in the above discussion, antaraabhava
> (intermediate life) is a natural belief or superstition of the
> uninformed masses in Myanmar and, presumably, elsewhere in Asia. So
> we can for sure know that the concept of antaraabhava is not part
of
> the teachings of Gotama the Buddha and Arahants, namely, Theravada.

I echo Frank's comment about this: that a natural belief in
antaraabhava is
not part of the teachings of the Buddha is a non sequitur, though it
is not
disputed that it does not form a part of the orthodox Theravadin
dogma.
However, I again echo Vasubandhu who states that nirantaraabhava-
vaada is
contrary to reason and contrary to the suttas. You have already been
presented with a fairly lengthy list of suttas which assume the
existence of
the antaraabhava, either implicitly or explicitly, which you have
failed to
address. But as Vasubandhu also states, nirantaraabhava-vaadins
either
distort or equivocate the meaning of the suttas -- indeed, he points
out
that some (not Theravadin) nirantaraabhava-vaadins have even altered
the
words of the suttas to fit their dogma. But I assume it is unlikely
we
shall reach an agreement concerning textual interpretation.

Which leaves reason. I posted a hypothetical case to which,
disappointingly, I did not receive any rational replies. Just to
spell out
the problem, I hypothesized a death ocurring on a space mission to
Pluto.
Though not mentioned by the Buddha or the arhats, Pluto is
5,756,778,388 km
from Earth. This distance is so great that even an object travelling
from
Pluto at the speed of light (300,000 km/sec) would take 5.3 hours to
reach
Earth. Various figures are given for the minimal duration of a citta-
kkhana
but let's say it is 0.013 sec (1/75th), so, even travelling at the
speed of
light, the maximum distance that one citta-kkhana can cover is 3900
km.
Therefore, unless there is some mechanism by which death citta
moment Z can
link up to birth citta moment A by travelling faster than the speed
of
light, it is clear that nirantaraabhava-vaada is irrational. If you
disagree, could you please demonstrate where the Buddha explains the
nirantarabhava process.

I think the problem is quite simple. Both logically and scripturally
(suttas), one can assume the reality of the antaraabhava, but
because around
the time Moggalitissaputta was active, there was a major controversy
involving the puggalavaadins. In order to completely cut the ground
from
beneath their feet, Moggalitissaputta wanted to deny everything that
could
possibly be construed as a puggala (or self) and hence, contrary to
the
suttas, he attempted to disprove the reality of the antaraabhava
because
some people might use that transitional state as grounds for arguing
in
favour of a puggala / atta. However, apart perhaps from the
Puggalavaadins,
this fear was quite ungrounded, since none of the Nikaya (or
Mahayana)
schools accepting the antaraabhava *ever* thought that it implies a
permanent personal puggala or atta -- Vasubandhu is quite adamant
that the
anataraabhava state itself is impermanent, often unpleasant, and in
*no way*
to be construed as a self. So as I said before, poor old
Moggalitissaputta
did everybody a disservice by throwing the baby out with the bath-
water.

This is, to my mind, the most rational explanation of
Moggalitissaputta's
position. The problem for people adopting your kind of viewpoint is
that
they are unwilling to concede that Moggalitissaputta's position is
wrong or
a kind of upaaya. If they were to accept that there is an
antaraabhava,
then the implication for them would be that Moggalitissaputta was
not an
arhat in the sense that they understand -- indeed, antaraabhava-
vaadins
would say that Moggalitissaputta could not have been an arhat
because if he
was, then he would have seen the reality of the antaraabhava with
dibba-cakkhu. Or perhaps he did see it with his dibba-cakkhu, but
chose to
deny it for strategic upaaya reasons -- but this might lay him open
to
charges of lying. I can see that this situation would lead to all
sorts of
undesired conclusions for nirantaraabhava-vaadins as long as they
maintain
their apparently uncritical view of orthodox Theravadin dogmas.
Belief then
becomes more important than rationality -- perhaps the difference
between
sraddhaa-anusaarins and dharma-anusaarins.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge