Burial vs Cremation

[Addled Platypus]

how do you plan on going

[Addled Platypus]

along with a banana

might take a whole tree

[Wernazuma III]

vultures

[Lorizael]

The idea of my family spending thousands on a casket... and having me waste away in the ground... no thanks. Then again I'd rather not have anyone spend any money on my funeral at all. I've always told everyone that if I do die, I'd like them to just toss my body out into the woods behind my house and then keep going. Anyways, I'll probably be cremated.

[loinburger]

The tiger that kills me probably won't leave enough behind to warrant burial/cremation.

[LordShiva]

Cryogenically frozen!!!

[aneeshm]

Cremation. The links the soul has to the body must be irrevocably broken so as not to hinder its progress onto better things.

[Lorizael]

But what if your unbridled hatred of Muslims makes you come back as a newt?

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Lorizael
But what if your unbridled hatred of Muslims makes you come back as a newt?

What gave you the preposterous idea that I hate Muslims?

As for your question - once you're human, you usually don't go back into the animal yonis.

[Lorizael]

Just trolling you.

But actually, I'm pretty curious about Hindu reincarnation. What would a human have to do to get sent back to the animal yonis? And what does yonis mean? And what consequences does a human face for bad behavior? Reincarnation into a lower caste?

[LordShiva]

I'm curious too. How could one possibly have any evidence to back up any theories on the subject?

[Lorizael]

You're a traitor to your people, LordShiva.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
vultures

So we like Persian culture, do we?

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Just trolling you.

But actually, I'm pretty curious about Hindu reincarnation. What would a human have to do to get sent back to the animal yonis? And what does yonis mean? And what consequences does a human face for bad behavior? Reincarnation into a lower caste?

Either he'd have to choose to go back, or he'd have to be incredibly forgetful of the lessons which have brought him above the animal yonis in the first place. Yoni means one of two possible things. The first meaning is the female genitalia (though I'm sure you didn't want to know that, because it's rather irrelevant). The second is loosely "species". Human yoni, animal yoni, siddha yoni, and so on.

The concept of Karma is not easy to explain. It does not simply posit that "whatever you do will come back to you". If that were so, there would be no way out of the cycle. My take on Karma (my view diverges a little bit from orthodoxy, but in the essentials, it is the same) - it simply means that any action committed with any attachment to the result of the action or with attachment to the action itself will create an imprint on the person committing it and on the universe, and that these two resolve themselves and both these imprints disappear when the time for their resolution has come.

A consciousness can only be affected by the karma of the actions he commits with attachment. When a person achieves complete detachment (i.e., enlightenment), all past karmas disappear, because all attachments, both past and future, are gone.

Originally posted by LordShiva
I'm curious too. How could one possibly have any evidence to back up any theories on the subject?

It's not a falsifiable hypothesis, IMO. But it follows logically from the rest of the psychological system. If you read Vivekananda's translation of the Patanjali Yoga Sutra, this will become evident. Try it, sometime. You'll like it for its working method.

If you want details - according to Indian logic, valid sources of knowledge are called pramanas, or proofs. Orthodoxy admits of three primary pramanas,

1) Perception
2) Logic based on inference (both deductive and inductive - though according to orthodoxy, both of them are separate, I'm including them as under one, as both are essentially the application of the intellect)
3) Testimony of competent people

The third point is what allows us to accept the words of the composers of the Veda as true. That is taken as accepted because the composers of the Vedas are taken to be people who are enlightened.

[Lorizael]

How is your belief system (or the orthodoxy belief system) practically different from the Western conception of reincarnation? This idea that bad behavior leads to being a bug in your next life has to come from something, even if it is a serious misconception.

Also, how can you accurately evaluate the writers of the Vedas?