Skip to main content

Someone remembering past life as a house cat, confirming with human owner details


from a reddit user:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/hfik4b/i_remember_being_an_animal_how_is_this_possible/

I remember being an animal. How is this possible?

Question

I was a house cat. I still remember a few snippets of my previous life - I can remember the spot I liked to eat, a small glimpse of my owner, and the moment I died. When I became a human, I was close to my owner - I was able to verify that my memories were legitimate. Apparently, my cat self experienced kidney problems and had to be euthanized because I was no longer able to eat. I was even able to remember some fragments of the time in between lives, although some of it has no doubt been forgotten.

The reality of the world I found myself in has led me to ask a few questions about this experience.

  1. Aside from a brief few seconds as a baby, my memory started to be continuous in roughly October 1999. Back then, I realized that I couldn't remember anything other than the day I was experiencing, the brief memory as a baby, parts of my cat life, and the time "in-between". According to my owner, my cat body was long dead before my human self was born. With this in mind, was my mindstream always inside my human body since birth, or did I possess someone?

  2. How did some of my cat memory survive? If my cat body was dead before my human body was being formed, this must mean that the cat's ability to possess memory was dead too. How could it be, then, that I have those cat memories in my head?

  3. Where are the other animal -> human individuals? Early on, I questioned others about their past lives, thinking it was common at first. When I realized it was not, I read stories about people remembering past lives as other humans, but there was never one about an animal life. Am I really that alone?

  4. I read that habits can influence where you end up in the next life. I very much want to try and retain some memory of my current or past life for the next one. If I think about my strongest memories moments before death, is there a better chance that those memories will survive? I don't know if my cat self was actively trying to pass memories on - maybe I just got lucky that I could remember something.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Advice to younger meditators on jhāna, sex, porn, masturbation

Someone asked: Is porn considered harmful sexual.activity? I don't have a sex life because I don't have a partner and I don't wish to engage in casual sex so I use porn to quench the biological urge to orgasm. I can't see that's it's harmful because nobody is being forced into it. The actors are all paid well and claim to enjoy it etc. The only harm I can see is that it's so accessible these days on smart devices and so children may access it but I believe that this is the parents responsibility to not allow unsupervised use of devices etc. Views? Frankk response: In another thread, you asked about pleasant sensations and jhāna.  I'm guessing you're young, so here's some important advice you won't get from suttas   if you're serious about jhāna.  (since monastics are already celibate by rule)   If you want to attain stable and higher jhānas,   celibacy and noble silence to the best of your ability are the feedstock and prerequiste to tha
Post a Comment
Read more

SN 48.40 Ven. Thanissaro comments on Ven. Sunyo's analysis

This was Ven. Sunyo's analysis of SN 48.40: https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2024/05/exciting-news-honest-ebt-scholars-like.html And here is Ven. Thanissaro's response to that analysis: I think there’s a better way to tackle the issue of SN 48:40 than by appealing to the oldest layers of commentarial literature. That way is to point out that SN 48:40, as we have it, doesn’t pass the test in DN 16 for determining what’s genuine Dhamma and what’s not. There the standard is, not the authority of the person who’s claiming to report the Buddha’s teachings, but whether the teachings he’s reporting are actually in accordance with the principles of the Dhamma that you know. So the simple fact that those who have passed the Buddha’s teachings down to us say that a particular passage is what the Buddha actually taught is not sufficient grounds for accepting it. In the case of the jhānas—the point at issue here— we have to take as our guide the standard formula for the jhānas, a
Post a Comment
Read more

1min. video: Dalai Lama kissing boy and asking him to suck his tongue

To give more context, this is a public event,  * everyone knows cameras are rolling  *  it's a room full of children * the boy's mom is standing off camera a few feet away watching all of this * the boy initiated contact, he had already had a hug with Dalai Lama earlier and then asked Dalai Lama for another hug which triggered this segment  17 min. video showing what happened before that 1 min. clip and after, with some explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT0qey5Ts78 16min talk from Ajahn Acalo with his thoughts on Dalai Lama kissing boy, relevance to Bhikkhu monastic code, sexual predators in religion in general, and how celibate monastics deal with sexual energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2m0TcUib0 The child's comments about the incident in a filmed interview later https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/world-news/2023/04/18/643eba5d46163ffc078b457c.html The child: It's a great experience It was amazing to meet His Holiness and I think it's a great ex
Post a Comment
Read more