I think you need to provide a solid argument that how the death of a person in one place can be causally related to formation of a zygote in another place.
Three constituents are required to form a zygote: egg, sperm and gandhabba. The gandhabba is a non-material component which carries the accumulated karma of the previous life. In a similar way, Christianity required egg, sperm and soul, with soul being the non-material component. The gandhabba disappears after formation of the zygote, since the zygote now has its own Formations element.
Did you understood my argument “there is no self in Buddhism so the idea worrying about Karma in next life is meaningless”? In simple world a dead person and a new zygote don’t casually share anything. They are completely unrelated so the the idea of cycle of birth is meaningless.
The Buddha said, “Love others as you love yourself.” Whether that future person is you, or a different person, (or both or neither) you should love them. Hence the need to avoid causing that future person suffering.
That I understand but it is problematic. We in fact cannot distinguish between ourselves and external world without a self.
In our day-to-day interactions we talk about “car” and “myself” and everybody knows what we mean. When analysed more deeply, both “car” and “myself” dissolve into a collection of separate parts.
In the case of ourselves, we are part of a causal chain. Other people are parts of a different causal chain. Cars are part of yet another set of causal chains. These chains may interact, but they are still different chains.
Here is some relevant poetry:
He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.
“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!
“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Bellman to thank”
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best -
A perfect and absolute blank!”
Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark, Fit the Second.
Both “car” and “self” are “merely conventional signs”.
Moreover, one can reach to state of non-self during meditation. How could possibly exist the meditation mode if you have no self?
It would be better described as the “state of realisation that there never was a self in the first place” but has been shortened for obvious reasons. There appears to be water in a mirage. At some point you become aware that it is just a mirage, and that there never was any water there at all. The same with the “self”; what you think is the self isn’t.
rossum
Without love life is meaningless…
based on the available data (the pattern of topics and responses, the language, never seeing them together in the same space-time coordinates), to conclude that STT is a reincarnation of Bahman makes sense to me. 