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Can anybody please explain rebirth & karma ?
LostSoul
Veteran
Hi.
I'm just curious
. I understand the "concepts", and what they mean (being an ex-wiccan, these two were very big).
I currently see karma as:
1) An action you do, always has a consequence on your psyche and those around you.
Is that karma? Or, do buddhists mean karma taken literally as: "Anything you do, is reflected back to you." (or however you want to word it)? I'd really like to know how that makes any sense to a rational person?
Also, rebirth is very confusing to me. I've heard it thrown around that it is, in the literal sense, you die and you come back to life with a different consciousness. I've also heard that rebirth is us being "reborn" every moment.
I'm just curious. Not trying to troll... if somebody could please provide a link or something to seriously clarify karma & rebirth, that would be wonderful.
I'm just curious
. I understand the "concepts", and what they mean (being an ex-wiccan, these two were very big).I currently see karma as:
1) An action you do, always has a consequence on your psyche and those around you.
Is that karma? Or, do buddhists mean karma taken literally as: "Anything you do, is reflected back to you." (or however you want to word it)? I'd really like to know how that makes any sense to a rational person?
Also, rebirth is very confusing to me. I've heard it thrown around that it is, in the literal sense, you die and you come back to life with a different consciousness. I've also heard that rebirth is us being "reborn" every moment.
I'm just curious. Not trying to troll... if somebody could please provide a link or something to seriously clarify karma & rebirth, that would be wonderful.
0
Comments
Now to answer your questions to the best of my ability!
1) "An action you do, always has a consequence on your psyche and those around you" is basically correct, or at least the way it was explained to me. Although, I'd be careful to use the word "consequence" as it has a negative connotation - karma can be wholesome/"good." Also, I think that karma doesn't necessarily have to be psychological - it can be the real-life result of your actions. For example, if you yell at a stranger for stepping on your toe, that stranger may go home and hit their children because they felt angry due to your release of anger upon them.
2) Rebirth is a bit tricky. Since Buddhists don't believe in an eternal "self" (or "soul") that continues after death, it's not really accurate to say that one dies and "comes back to life with a different consciousness" (what do you mean by "consciousness" by the way?). Yet some Buddhist schools teach the "candle analogy" - that rebirth is like one candle lighting another candle. The flame is fundamentally the same, but you can't say it's the same flame. Not identical, yet not entirely distinct (Middle path concept alert!).
Also, Buddhist schools don't really have a unified stance on what rebirth is. Some (mainly Zen I think) consider rebirth to be a moment-to-moment thing, almost an analogy for the impermanence of the "self."
Briefly (and perhaps not very officially)...
Karma is action. All action has a result. So to reduce suffering (dukkha) it is advised to try to ensure your intention and actions are good, so the result is more likely to be good i.e. free from suffering.
Rebirth is the result of action (or intentions) that we have before the body dies. You (and I) are not the body, we simply have a body which consists of elements/cells etc. So when the body dies if there are any intentions and actions which have to yet returned a result then the result will require a body to experience the result. This is why there is rebirth.
What is actually reborn is a difficult area because there is more than one answer. On top of that when there is no results left pending then there is no more rebirth. So to break the cycle of samsara and rebirth one needs to arrive at a position in this life in which "you" are not dependent on the results of any actions. I kindly suggest reading online about Karma to help build a foundation on this wide topic
More seriously, try not to worry too much about what may or may not be true. If things are true, they will show up when needed. And the same is true for what is untrue. Just find a practice that more or less appeals to you and then practice it with determination. Let "karma" and "rebirth" take care of themselves. Just practice your good practice and true friends are bound to show up at your party.
from: http://www.thesecularbuddhist.com/articles_response.php
By Ted Meissner:
"So, I'm on retreat. I'm practicing anapanasati, or perhaps mindfulness, with the same diligence as the person next to me. We both practice silence during this time, we both practice right speech at other times. And we both have personal experiences in the broadening of this present moment to help us make better decisions, to be free from suffering.
How does a belief in rebirth impact that moment by moment practice? Knowing that my grandfather was a toymaker or a horse thief has no more effect on my meditation than the other person's conviction that they were Eleanor Roosevelt, nor should it. Whoever I was in the past is totally irrelevant to what I choose to do this very moment.
Secular practice does not require the promise of a better afterlife, or the threat of a woeful rebirth, to practice the eightfold path in this lifetime. The practice itself is unchanged."
It's essentially presented as a natural, psychological process in which there's a cause and effect relationship between our actions and how they're experienced. It's generally understood to be both as the process is essentially the same either way, i.e., a process of conditionality that occurs moment to moment, as well as over multiple lifetimes.
Personally, I understand rebirth to signify the Buddha's observation that there's a type of continuity that underlies experience in the form of our actions and their results — one that doesn't necessarily end at death — and kamma to represent the intentional element of our psyche that goes into experience. The purpose of these teachings being to encourage one to develop awareness of casual patterns in life involving our intentional actions of body, speech, and mind with a soteriological eye towards reshaping our experience of the present in ways that limit and even eliminate suffering.
Spiny