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Reincarnation for Dummies Like Me?
MindGate
United States Veteran
I was wondering about reincarnation. I mean, I've really been looking up a lot of stuff and reading my books lately, but I'm a bit torn now on this subject. I know some Buddhists believe in reincarnation in the literal sense of death and rebirth in a different body. Actually, as a younger child, I was some-what raised (long story) with the idea of it. Though, now I've been reading that most, at least Western, Buddhists do not believe in it with the actual literal sense. They believe something along the lines of rebirth meaning just an everchanging personality, that you are not the same person you were five minutes ago.
I'm not sure where your believes are held, so I was just curious. The idea of reincarnation, in the literal sense, was starting to make sense to me a little bit (I have loads on confangled, hard to wrap your head around theories on this and other stuff) and I was getting quite comforted by the thought of it. I understand the whole literal thoughts on samsara and such. Though, now, I'm wondering, if it isn't true, then what do Buddhists, that don't believe it, believe happens upon one's death? What happens to our conscious, our mind?
Thanks,
Jarred.
I'm not sure where your believes are held, so I was just curious. The idea of reincarnation, in the literal sense, was starting to make sense to me a little bit (I have loads on confangled, hard to wrap your head around theories on this and other stuff) and I was getting quite comforted by the thought of it. I understand the whole literal thoughts on samsara and such. Though, now, I'm wondering, if it isn't true, then what do Buddhists, that don't believe it, believe happens upon one's death? What happens to our conscious, our mind?
Thanks,
Jarred.
0
Comments
All conditioned phenomena are subject to dissolution.
Not quite the quote for dummies.
And I noticed that there was another topic asking somewhat of the same question just a bit below me, though not named as so. I'd still appreciate it though if I got more answers here. I did read a good comment though saying "Rebirth does infact happen, but not with yourself, your ego, the self you think you are. Your self is not reborn."
I wish there was an easier way to put it.
If you don't mind reading a bit here is an exert from the same website offering some of Dr. Alexander Berzin's own convicting experience with the matter, it is accounts like these that really get me to consider a literal, metaphysical reincarnation.
Hi Jarred
I would like to point out there is another option here, that seems compatible with Dharma, and this is that the Buddha actually taiught that we must escape not samsara but the very idea of samsara. That is, perhaps the buddha taught that attachment to a the idea of an afterlife (which was the dominant view of the time) itself causes suffering.
some food for thought there,
namaste
I'm not sure what that means Jeffrey?:)
I'm not sure I follow......
If there is something to be known about death, I am certain it will become apparent when we die. But we are not dead yet, so any speculation, while it may be exciting or depressing or whatever all else, simply has no credible experience to back it up.
Buddhism, as I get it, is based on investigation and experience and not so much on fruitless speculation. In Zen, a teacher once observed (approximately), "I have always taken a great vow that I would rather burn in hell for all eternity than to portray Zen as a human emotion." As I read that, I take it to mean that feel-good and feel-bad are not the point of practice.
Just noodling.
Maybe, but that wasn't the possibility i was introducing into the thread:)
Strictly speaking, I'm an agnostic. But what that means is that I assign approximately equal probability to every plausible after-life scenario. Since there is no evidence on the matter whatsoever, there is an infinitude of plausible after-life scenarios — more than we can possibly imagine. ("The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.") So I assign approximately zero probability to any given afterlife scenario.
(Actually, I assign slightly lower probability to the Buddhist after-life story than I do to, say, the Christian one, because Buddhist reincarnation would have effects on this world which we just don't see.)
Are you sure about that?:p
Whether you believe it or not is not important. Whether anyone believes it or not is really not important. What's important is how we act right now, here, in this life. What good do we do, and how do we treat others while on our path? If there is rebirth, that's great. If there isn't, then we're not out anything by having been good people on our one and only trip through this part of town.
Also - as a side note, our concepts of existence and possible rebirth are contingent upon our agreement that time is linear. I think that's a very narrow view, since there is a lot of scientific evidence coming to light that is to the contrary. Our human brains don't have any other way to reference time, so that's our default understanding. I'm here now, and I'll be gone in a certain amount of arbitrary units of time that stretch out into the "future". But if that view of things is all messed up, then the idea of existence and rebirth afterward kind of fly out the window.
What fun!
At death our guts stop processing food, and our blood stops transporting the chemical products up into our brain, so our brain runs out of fuel. There is no energy available to generate electrical charges for nerve impulses. Stimuli cannot be responded to, responses cannot be processed, thoughts cannot be generated. The cells are starved of oxygen and nutrients, they stop metabolising and disintegrate releasing any energy that would have become thoughts as heat.
Nothing happens to our consciousness, our mind, as there is nothing in existence for anything to happen to.
Pretty much.
Please forgive my ignorance and simple-mindedness, but thats quite hard to follow. It seems pretty abstract to me.
Thats the part that stumped me. Anyway to elaborate on that more... explained out? I appreciate your effort in helping me understand, though.
--
And the only reason I'm bothered by it is just the idea that any any time, any place, anywhere, I could be struck dead in an instance. Now true, in a pure scientific sense, 'I' have been dead billions of years before my birth and it hasn't seemed to have bothered me, but what is the point now then?
Here now we suffer. We suffer because of our ignorance (of the Four Noble Truths) at the deepest level of our mind. We will continue to suffer, to endure these painful rebirths of unwholesome states, until we through our own actions (karma) break free of the cycle.
Study the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path as much as you can. Sites like http://www.buddhanet.net have study guides I believe, so you can start off with basic info and then go deeper and deeper as you wish.
In the two ways of thinking about rebirth, one is unknowable in this life. That's the post-mortem rebirth. You can believe whatever you want about it and it will still be unknowable.
Reading discussions like this highlights for me how the propensity to think about such things, ie. beliefs has changed - I have still have beliefs, of course
Said the Blessed One:
"O Brahman, thou art religious and earnest.
Thou art seriously concerned about thy soul.
Yet is thy work in vain because thou art lacking
in the one thing that is needful. [8]
"There is rebirth of character,
but no transmigration of a self.
Thy thought-forms reappear,
but there is no egoentity transferred.
The stanza uttered by a teacher
is reborn in the scholar who repeats the words. [9]