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.
Proof of Reincarnation/Rebirth?
laughing_statue
Explorer
I will put this really simply, when skeptical people ask you what the proof is for reincarnation/rebirth or simply why you believe it exists, what do you tell them? What do you tell them when they throw their beliefs back at you?
I am an atheist and I have been getting into Buddhism lately. But this is honestly an unrelated subject to me. I am trying to prove to myself that reincarnation/rebirth exists, but I haven't been able to be content with my certainty. I thought I would ask you experts on the subject.
Any input would be very appreciated. Thanks!
I am an atheist and I have been getting into Buddhism lately. But this is honestly an unrelated subject to me. I am trying to prove to myself that reincarnation/rebirth exists, but I haven't been able to be content with my certainty. I thought I would ask you experts on the subject.
Any input would be very appreciated. Thanks!
0
Comments
Why?
Maybe this will help.
That Dharma is True, with or without there being, in any sense, an Afterlife.
Some belive the Buddha taught rebirth, others believe he taught rebirth is delusion. We will never have certainty which of those are true, or if it was something else.
The Buddha doesn't offer certainty, only clarity.
The middle word in expert is...
Er
namaste
http://www.amazon.com/Monk-Philosopher-Father-Discuss-Meaning/dp/0805211039
Fascinating book to read no matter why you read it.
Also perhaps read about Matthieu Ricard or watch him in interviews and talks (youtube, TED) if you are not familiar, he is a brilliant person and very entertaining to listen to. His personal history is also truly fascinating and rare.
Rebirth is different, you can see it everytime your mood changes, or your train of thought is altered. You can see it with each intake and expulsion of air from your lungs. We're reborn every moment, each time different and unique, but dependant on moments past for our origination.
But you can consider your own consciousness, what happens to it when you die?
Unless you believe that your consciousness is totally extinguished when you die,
it will exist in some form or other. As Einstein said energy cannot be destroyed.
Much like a computer. How can software work if the hardware is not working?
There is reincarnation, yes. Or, properly, there can be. But this makes the doctrine of the soul more problematic, not less: You've had countless prior existences where you were different in every way from who and what you are now -- so what does it mean that they were "you"?
If you want to know about the afterlife, read up on various ideas about it, try to separate the wheat from the chaff, and meditate on it.
To understand karma as consequences, I suggest meditating on cause and effect in this lifetime: how people's present circumstances relate to their past circumstances, their decisions, and luck.
Buddha bless,
Conrad.
But doesn't practicing Buddhism mean not needing anything to be a particular way in order to be content?
re: Buddhists not believing in transmigration of souls, what then, does the tulku represent? How does he recall which objects were his in the past life? That whole custom is about reincarnation, isn't it?
I second that!
There must be something if there is anything.
But as an atheist the idea of a mundane enlightment its something really factible.
If enlightment people just cant lie because goes against everything sustain that state, and enlightment people say, there is rebirth...
That makes me think.....
Dreams are mundane and freaky enough for me to not understand how people immediately make the connection to past life memory. Deja vus too.
I wonder if a person who has never heard of past life memories or of reincarnation before, would still automatically attribute it to past lifes while experiencing such a vision. It kind of sounds like confirmation bias often times.
People tend to believe in the knowledge currently avaliable, in the Buddha's time people had no knowledge of genetics to explain how mind and personality arises in a child, so they assumed (as people still do) somehow the mind of a dying man gives rise to the mind of a new born child.
Just as he had no knowledge of bacteria or the causes of disease, he used the current knowledge; .
The Buddha isn't giving false teachings, he's just attempting to teach the truth he has found through the limited knowledge of the world avaliable to Indians of 2,500 years ago. The concepts of rebirth/reincarnation, karma etc prevalent in his time became vehicles for his teachings, which is why it's more important to live the spirit rather than the letter of the teachings. At least in my opinion.
Hello:
I never insinuate that the Buddha was omniscient.
I insinuate that theorically to the mind of an arahant its impossible to tell conscious lies.
The argument that reincarnation is true because an arahant can't lie, and arahants say that reincarnation is true is circular and self-reliant.
This quote from Ajahn Sumedho of the Theravada Thai Forest Tradition nicely sums it up:
_/\_
Personally, from my base understanding of physics, I lean towards The Big Bounce Theory because matter doesn't disappear but transforms, and that warmth makes objects "grow", while cold (and cooling off) means that they come together again.
On a galactic scale, that means that the universe will expand and cool off, then contract, heat up (due to atoms moving, pushing eachother) and then expand again (a big bang).. Causality causes the same reactions to happen again in roughly the same manner - thus we will "be here" again in a "new life" of some kind..
Makes sense in my puny head..
I really look forward to the CERN accelerator casting more light on such questions
Hi.
The problem is that the Buddha talks about rebirth as something he witness throw recollection of past lives experience. Not just as common knowledge.
I only say that if we believe in enlightment, and u cant lie being enlightmented, then that experience should be true. Thats just logic..as long as we believe in enlightment and as long as he actually said that.
But of course its just an experience, maybe was just the product of high serotonin levels and quimical imbalance,maybe he didnt even tell that...and of course its a very circular and self-reliant argument, we are talking about rebirth!!
We will be here again? Even if we exact same thread of evolution happened, it wouldn't be us. Surely not you and me. Humans, possibly.
First, I am not an expert. But I do have some input.
I understand it like this; a thing cannot come from nothing, and something can never be made into nothing. We can see this as a fact in the material world. We can apply these principles to consciousness and come to the conclusion that a consciousness cannot come out of nothing and a consciousness cannot be dissolved into nothing. So we may conclude that like all things, the consciousness must continue ever changing. And while this is not proof of rebirth, it is my basis of belief or understanding (which is like all things, subject to change).
In any case, pondering rebirth and reincarnation may be of little use when we have the current and present life to contend with.
Reincarnation requires a belief in a permanent you to be reincarnated.
Rebirth is based on no self Anatta. We are not who we think we are. It is the ego that creates the illusion of our self as a separate entity.
Our normal way is to create an apparently workable self and then spend a lifetime defending it. This is not our true identity although this false perception appears real. Judgements, opinions and other tricks for feeding the ego keep us locked in this dualistic view.
Through meditation we can learn to allow ourselves to let go of these beliefs and fantasies. In the space between thoughts there is no "I".
We are reborn moment by moment by moment ...
There is nothing wrong with being skeptical, find out for yourself.
Best Wishes
Another way to phrase this phenomenon is that we create/imagine this ego which is a delusion, and we keep re-creating it at every moments.
so the ego is re-created "re-borned" at every moments
Absolutely - and a mind spinning around pointless speculation means we have lost our potential for present moment awareness.
.