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Reincarnation and Rebirth
I would like others thoughts on the differences between Reincarnation and Rebirth. I have read several posts on it so far but if anyone has more I would love to hear it.......
Thanks,
Deb
Thanks,
Deb
0
Comments
is rebirth just a part of reincarnation?
It really all depends on who is defining the terms. For example, in certain Eastern religions (such as many Vedic traditions), reincarnation is the transmigration and subsequent rebirth of an individual's soul into a new material body for a variety reasons. In Buddhism however, rebirth is the arising of a new consciousness due to the conditioning of a previous consciousness. There is no entity that is reborn, but there is merely the continuation of a conditional process. In Buddhism, if one were to ask the question, "Which is the birth and whose is the birth?" they would be answered, "Not a valid question, from becoming as a requisite condition comes birth." (SN 12.35) However, many people simply use one over the other out of sheer personal preference, and not for any meaningful reason whatsoever.
Jay
So what is the 13th Dalai Lama to the 14th Dalai Lama then?
And I read about a Lama that was suppose to be the rebirth of 4 different Lamas.
Of course I can't find the book that I read it in but I'll keep looking......
Do different Buddhist groups believe differently by chance? Or all believe the same?
Reincarnation: a conscious birth in a physical form such as is done by bodhisattvas at a time and place and in a form which will benefit beings.
Palzang
this is the simplist terms i could find.. i think i get it now to..lol
its a cut and paste that i googled..
Reincarnation vs Rebith
There is a lot of confusion surrounding the concepts of Reincarnation and Rebirth. At first glance it seems like they are synonyms, but there is a big difference between these two concepts.
The doctrine of reincarnation, also referred to as transmigration, is taught by Hinduism, Jainism and Gnostic Christianity. It's main postulate is that there is an indestructible, eternal, personal element that travels from one life to the next. This element is called atman in the Hindu religion, jiva in the Jain faith and soul by Gnostic Christianity. Reincarnation assumes identity between the occupant of this body and, when this body dies, the occupant of the following body.
In contrast, Buddhism teaches the doctrine of rebirth. Between a series of lifetimes there is a relationship of causality, not of identity. To make this more clear, let's use the example of the falling dominos. If I place a series of dominos standing up in line next to each other, and I strike the first one to make it fall down, this causes the second one to fall down, and the next, until the last in line falls down. The fall of the first domino is the cause of the fall of the last one, but there is not a shared identity between the first and the last domino.
When somebody dies, rebirth is caused by the continuation of the mental processes of the dead person in a new body. The new person however is not identical to the one that left the previous body (a lot of causes and conditions come into play to shape this new being), nor a completely different person (because of causality relation).
The only serious, scientific research on reincarnation and rebirth has been carried out over the course of more than 30 years by Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia. I strongly recommend his book Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect.
As I said in my example, it all depends on who is defining the terms. My answer was just one of many. As for what the 13th Dalai Lama is to the 14th, I would say a requisite; however, it might be better to ask the 14th Dalai Lama himself. I am sure his answer would be much more reliable than mine on these matters.
Jay
Am I wrong, didn't the Budddha teach that metaphysical specultation is beyond the scope of the dharma? ( paraphrase )
Concepts such as rebirth fall within mental formations, one of the five skandas.
Don't get me wrong, I have done past life regression work which I don't care to go into here, but to me speculation of beyond "what is" is outside the scope of the dharma. For me, such work takes one from what is important, which is, being fully present in the moment. IMO
I understand it now thanks to all of you, or I understand it as best as I can at this moment. lol!
As for the question of the 13th and 14th Dala Lamas, wouldn't that fall into the category of bodhisattva reincarnation as Palzang defined it?
I am of " I don't know mind" as far as rebirth is concerned. My focus as of recent is to free from concepts, not solidify them.
I do paticulary favor--Elohim's comments
Yes it would......
To all of you,
Thank you ..........This has helped me so much.......I really appreciate all your responses. You have made it so much clearer........
I personally feel though that rebirth (for me) implies a more moment-to-moment fluidity in life. We are not the same person we were yesterday. Every moment is new and presents itself with opportunity for change toward perfection of discipline in wisdom, ethics, and meditation. In other words, the 8-Fold Path.
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
Palzang
The Non-Self.
The concept of rebirth is unfamiliar to most Western people. Its philosophical and traditional foundation is found in India, where the theory of transmigration of souls had presumably existed long before it was written down in the Upanishads around 300 BC.
The Buddhist concept is subtly different from the classical Indian understanding, because it denies the existence of a self. In Buddhism, the idea of self is merely an illusion. Man wrongly identifies perception, consciousness, mind and body with what he calls self. In reality there is no abiding entity that could be identified with a self, because the states of perception, consciousness, and mind constantly change.
The body is mortal and when it dies, consciousness and all mental activities cease. That is why there is no soul. The idea of soul is simply an extension of the self. Soul is the immortal version of the self that supposedly survives physical death. Since we know that consciousness is a function of our nervous system, it seems difficult to believe that the conscious self survives death. Hence, Buddhists deny the reality of both self and soul.
The idea of an abiding self is deceptive, because it is derived from unenlightened reasoning. The word self simply provides a reference frame for the mind-body phenomena of sentient beings. We usually identify it with our body and the stream of consciousness induced by sense perceptions and thoughts. In reality, what we call self is neither abiding nor detached from the rest of the world and other beings. Buddhists call this the "neither self nor non-self".
What is reborn if not the "self"?
If the idea of non-self sounds odd, then it must sound even more curious that non-self can be reborn. There is a seeming contradiction between the canon of rebirth and that of the non-self, which even many dedicated Buddhists find difficult to understand. The contradiction is, however, only on the surface and can be solved if one pictures the self as the result of karmic formation. This can be put into less abstract words:
If we imagine the world as an ocean, we are like the ripples on the ocean. Formations like ripples and waves occur, because of wind, tides, and other kinetic forces. In the Buddhist analogy, the universe is in motion due to karmic forces. A ripple, a wave, or a billow may seem as an individual entity for a moment, creating the illusion that it has a self, but it is gone in the next moment. The truth is that all individuals are one. A ripple is a temporary phenomenon; it is just water in motion. We know that kinetic energy causes wave forms on a body of water and it would be ridiculous to say that a single ripple or wave has a self.
Similarly, in case of beings, the process of coming into life and being conditioned in a particular way is caused by karmic forces. The up and down of the ocean's waves corresponds with the rotation of the wheel of life. The sea that surges, falls, and resurges, is the life that is born, dies, and is reborn again. It is therefore obvious that we should not focus on the temporary phenomenon of the wave, but on the force that causes, forms, and drives it.
Palzang
Palzang
I recall a meditation of Tich Naht Hahn's on dying, part of it says,
"I am not this body, this body is not me."
...
Also...physics points to the lack of any fundamental hard matter at any quantum level, but lots of processes. So science might confirm that everything is process, including our minds.
::
When Karmapa XVI was dying in Zion, Illinois (he came to the West to die so that the doctors could study it), one of his Western students became very distraught. The Karmapa called him over to his bed and said, very forcefully, "Nothing is happening!"
Palzang
Excellent point. To say "I am a process" reveals a very basic identification-view because it does not divorce "myself" from this impermanent locus. For me, this is the opposite of the Buddha's teaching on anatta. He said, since the existing organism, your current personality, is impermanent, it is therefore suffering; to see that the personality is impermanent and suffering may give rise to the insight: these are not me, these are not what I am. He did not say you were impermanent. He said that which is impermanent is not you!
So, how does this relate to the difference between reincarnation and rebirth? "Rebirth" imho is really a way for Buddhists to have a word for reincarnation and still have a way to try to not be saying the same thing as "those Hindus". It is in either case, without direct insight, a fairly speculative topic. Frankly I don't see the difference between reincarnation and rebirth as being that important, but some will insist on it fiercely. Nevertheless, in Buddhism, we do still have "identity" of some sort between lives, because you can, or so it is said, recall (according to the discourses) your former existences, and the Buddha is made to say things like "Back then, in that former existence, I was that King." So, he knows who he was, and further he also knows where someone is headed to after they die. What kind of existence they will have when they arise again. A lot of Buddhists say that instead of a Hindu-like soul, that it is just an impermanent subtle stream of consciousness that goes between births, but this raises just as many questions as the idea of a soul does when you sit down with it and think about it. For instance, if consciousness is dependent on body, what is the medium for this "subtle" consciousness
between death and rebirth? Can there be consciousness without the body? Is mind something other, something more foundational that consciousness per se, something not dependent on there being a living body, and is it through the mind that samsara between death and rebirth is possible? And so forth, etc. Just lots of difficult questions. In the face of all these questions, a lot of people just give up and decide that they want the Buddha's teachings without rebirth at all, or with rebirth as only some kind of metaphor for impermanence. They only believe in one birth.
I'm not one of those. I feel that the way in which the Buddha's teachings are framed assumes and requires for coherency that rebirth/reincarnation is a fact, but I acknowledge that it's something I am not at all awake to at this point.
in friendliness,
V.
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.1:1:1909.pali
Respectfully,
Jason
Of course, all of the five skandas is always in a constant state of flux, but for practical purposes, can we at least just call it our Self, while knowing the true meaning behind it? My view is that if we cannot, then would it not complicate things up at times and worse still, lead to a risk of attachment to label (No Self)?
Palzang
Thanks for playing keep coming back!!!
LOL!!:winkc:
Again, I don't really care to form a concept around these words.
As long as you don't get stuck with the idea of consciousness as a thing, yes. In a sense the whole universe is conscious, even rocks and trees, but it's not an individual consciousness, if that makes any sense at all.
Palzang