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Rebirth 101
ClayTheScribe
Veteran
So I'm new to Buddhism and I haven't got a clear answer to my questions surrounding rebirth. What is rebirth? How is it different than reincarnation? How is it the same? If I don't achieve enlightenment in this lifetime, will I come back into this life or a different, new life? How is this possible if I don't have a soul? I don't ask these questions because I'm obsessed with life after death or even afraid of what comes, I'm just really curious because I have always had the inclination to believe in reincarnation, but I was told rebirth is different.
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So the "very subtle mind" is what separates from the body at death, and moves on. They say it's not a soul, it might be likened more to what New Agers call the Astral Body, if I may venture such an opinion. It's an extremely subtle form of consciousness. So...how do we define "soul" vs. "consciousness"? Is this just a semantic game? I think we had a thread on that once, actually. It might even have been mine, haha. Some liken this passing on of consciousness to lighting a candle from the flame of another candle. It's not the same flame. And yet, it has components from the original flame.
OK, that's the best I can do with that.
But there is an apparent contradiction in Tibetan Buddhism, because they clearly believe in reincarnation, the same person being reborn in another body, with those reincarnate lamas, the tulku tradition. So that looks a lot more like transmigration of the soul, but they'll never call it that.
As I understand it, rebirth means the recycling of the five aggregates, with a link provided by karma. "Self" is an illusion we impose on the process.
It happens in the course of one life as well -- we aren't the same person we were in kindergarten, though we're not exactly a different person either.
In the language of the original scriptures, the word is "born again", "appear again", "arise again", etc. It does not necessary refer to the physical birth a life form from a woman's womb.
Reincarnation is a meta-physical concept. It refers to the mind leaving the physical body and entering a new body.
Where as rebirth is a moral concept. It means when you perform a certain action, that action & its results will arise again afterwards.
So, whether one believes the results of one's actions appear in this life or the next life, "rebirth" still happens as a result of karma.
Regards
DD
These are my answers, they are not "orthodox buddhism"
>>What is rebirth?
Nobody can really say without metaphor or obtuse attempts to explain.
The "problem" is that one of the grounding tennets of Dharma is that there is no soul, no self, no ego, it is all just illusion.
If there is nothing there in the first place, how can there be anything there after death?
>>>How is it different than reincarnation?
In reincarnation there is a soul that continues into different manifestations.
Reincarnation is meaningful in a way that rebirth is not. (I don't believe in reincarnation but can at least make some sense of it)
>>>How is it the same?
Well, all of these ideas share the same existential attachment to the idea of an afterlife - the driving force of all organised religions: you do this now and you will get benefit when you are dead.
>>>If I don't achieve enlightenment in this lifetime, will I come back into this life or a different, new life?
I think this is all there is.
>>>How is this possible if I don't have a soul?
Yes, how is it possible?
Also if Dharma teaches us to focus on the now, who should we even think about an afterlife?
>>>I don't ask these questions because I'm obsessed with life after death....
It is the natural state to be obsessed with "more than this". It is my belief that the buddha saw that this attachment leads to suffering and showed the way to embrace our existential insignificance, impermanence and emptiness in wonderful ways.
Namaste
As an aside, the reason it isn't useful to spend time looking to previous lives or future lives is because
1) it strenghtens our attachment to self-identifying
2) our chance to work with karma is here and now, always and only
The Buddha said: