Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
A debate on reincarnation
Simonthepilgrim
Veteran
An interesting discussion, not only for its content but also because the two participants adopted the same tradition, were ordained but have put off their robes. I wonder if this may not be a metaphor for the way in which Buddhism is developing in the West?
Reincarnation: A Debate - Batchelor v. Thurman
Reincarnation: A Debate - Batchelor v. Thurman
0
Comments
I liked this. Very astute indeed.
Thanks for the link Simon.
Interesting as well for what they omit to say (as ex-Gelugpas).
While I agree that monasticism faces a difficult time in the materialistic West, I would hope that this does not portend how Buddhism will develop in the West. It should, perhaps, be noted that the first monks to be ordained in Tibet (by Shantarakshita, the first abbot of Samye Monastery), numbered only 7. It took time for monasticism to take root there, just as I believe it will take time for it to take root in the West, if at all.
Taking robes in the West is very, very difficult, and even more difficult to keep them. The vows which one takes are lifetime vows, not just something to be discarded like an old pair of shoes when you're tired of them. That's a difficult concept to grasp when one is young (or at least younger). The honeymoon wears off, naturally, and what you're left with is the realization that the course you have chosen is long and lonely, no matter how many other ordained are in your community. It is a constant struggle for me, and most Western ordained do not enjoy large monastic communities as I do. I at least have the support of others who tread the same lonely path. Most of the ordained I have known who didn't have such a support system didn't make it. And even a lot of those who do don't make it either. It's sad, but understandable. Even in India at the large monasteries there, Tibetan monks all too often choose to leave and drop their robes due to the ever present temptations of the bitch, Samsara.
But the great lama who ordained me, His Holiness Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, said that the Dharma does not truly arrive in a new land until a monastic community is established. This is a very traditional view held by all traditions of Buddhist monasticism. And I (surprise, surprise) completely agree. The reason, in part at least, is historical. Monks traditionally are accorded the highest honor, even more so than nuns, but actually the reason is not sexist, believe it or not. The actual reason is because it was the monks who first received the teachings of the Buddha, and it was the monks who kept Lord Buddha's teachings pure by memorizing entire sutras and passing them from generation to generation until such a time as they could be recorded in writing and passed along in a written form. In other words, they were the link between the historical Buddha and all those who came after and benefitted from the study of the Dharma. So this is the basis of Khenpo Jigphun's wise words. And it remains the monastic community that is mainly responsible for upholding the Dharma and the Sangha to keep the Dharma pure and in the world. That's the way I view it. For me, no sacrifice is too great to do that. To lose such a jewel would, imho, also mean the end of the Dharma in this world.
As for Thurman's and Batchelor's views on death and rebirth, well, to me they're both really saying the same thing, just viewing it from different viewpoints. It is not something that can really be understood logically or with words anyway.
Palzang
For myself, in the present moment, past or future lives are non-existent.
.
I had a dream one night that David (my best friend who died of AIDS) stopped me on this bridge and told me to turn around and go the other way. I had already been sober for a number of years so I knew it wasn't that. He said I wouldn't find peace until I went the opposite way. (Christianity? Belief in myself?) Sometimes, when I'm afraid of trying something new I will think of this. It has given me the courage to keep on trying when everthing around me says quit. This dream came to me approximately 1 year after his death. Every now and then, it seems Peg (my twin sister who passed) and David are trying to tell me something. I've grown to trust this a bit more and have had some incredible experiences. There are things that I never thought I would be able to do by following David's advice (?) and Peg's gentle nudge. These are not empirical reasons to believe, but offer me comfort. One thing that I grapple with is if something offers you comfort, is it reasonable to believe them? Don't know on that one also. These experiences lead me to believe that there is more to life than we see here and now. I am going to have to read the artice a couple of more times as some of it I didn't get.
One point, did Thurman infer that if you did not believe in reincarnation, then why believe in any of Buddhism since you wouldn't come back at all and have no reason to try to change or improve your karma?
I do. I don't much care whether it's in anyone's official religion or not, because as you rightly say "there is more to life than we see here and now". This is absolutely my take on it too.
He did indeed. It's a tough question; how much of what we are, of 'us' survives death? I would say there is good reason to expect that the outcome may not always be the same for everyone in all circumstances, so the two chaps may actually have hold of different ends of the same rope.
Namaste
Kris
That he did. But I'd say, isn't the whole point of buddhism to end suffering? Did Buddha not say 'I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and its cessation'? Doesn't suffering exist regardless of whether reincarnation is true? At one point Thurman suggested we wouldn't be able to justify morality without some sort of belief in a future life- as though he wouldn't feel any need to be moral without some sort of karmic whip driving him. People, we must have more respect for ourselves and each other than THAT. Right Action is meaningless if only done under threat of punishment.
IF reincarnation isn't true, I'm baffled as to why this would disturb, of all people, my fellow buddhists. Buddhism, far from depending on future lives, actually seems to me the perfect philosophy that you'd want for overcoming the NEED for future lives. After all, it is only the ego that craves its own immortality. Surely the reincarnationists' view of true happiness only being available in some future moment is the very kind of 'wrong view' to which buddhism itself is supposed to be an answer!
Why not treasure this life and the lives of others all the more BECAUSE they are impermanent? Why not feel privileged to have been born at all, and thus to have known at all those loved and lost, however briefly? Cosmology, evolution, and the reproductive process show the staggering odds against your being here to complain about death in the first place. It's as though a man won a hundred million dollars in lotto and did nothing more than whinge that he didn't win infinity million dollars!
Peace:)
Welcome on board. Some good points made in that post. That struck me too. It seems to be a feature embedded in the human psyche. Good point, which you answer here: Exactly. Regardless of what view we have on this, whether we posit an immortal soul at one end of the spectrum, or an entirely materialist 'nothing' at the other, we all croak and these cherished philosophies (sublime though they may be) must then disperse.
Namaste