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Do Buddhists believe in rebirth?
hermitwin
Veteran
If you believe in rebirth, isnt that the same as a Christian who believes in a god?
There is no evidence for either one.
There is no evidence for either one.
0
Comments
The essense of Buddhism is skilful means which free human beings from suffering.
Buddhism has direct methods to free human beings from suffering, such as non-attachment, accepting impermanence, etc
Buddhism also has other methods to free human beings from suffering, such as believing in rebirth. for example, when your death comes & when the death of a loved one happens, if you believe in rebirth, your mind can reduce or even end its sufferings & worries
So the goal is something more important than the means
The Buddha said: "I teach only about two things: suffering & freedom from suffering"
Kind regards
I also like the idea that there is no beginning and there is no end so, as a result, there is a good chance that continual rebirth results in us having been or will be everybody (again, in terms of linear time).
This would mean that if someone was about to cause suffering to another living being, they would actually be about to cause suffering to themselves. The realization of this may be enough to prevent the harmful action.
Even if this were not true, and I'm not trying to say that it is, I believe it would be a good way to live our lives and help us grasp the concept of Universal Compassion.
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For a Christian, God is the supreme and ultimate Truth... For a Buddhist, rebirth is merely a truth that is empty of inherent existence, but merely has relative existence.
For a Christian, experiencing light and labeling it an ultimate truth, or supreme God binds one to this ideation, and reabsorbing super concept... thus unbinding is not realized.
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For example a Tibetan tulku said offline.. "Never mind about other lives, this is the one that counts!" ...So what I say to you isn't nonsense. Anyway, its the practice that matters not talking about it all the time.
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There is another view, where birth and death disappear. In that (supramundane) view, there is no rebirth because there are no beings or things to speak of, certainly none to be born or to die.
Rebirth either exists or does not exist depending upon which of these views a mind has.
It's all a matter of perspective, not of one view being right and another wrong.
Namaste
So how will you take a poll among Tibetan teachers, Dakini? Arrange to interview them offline and ask them ?
. Well please keep me informed of your findings, I'll be interested in what they have to say to you
Rebirth teachings are mostly for the purpose of morality anyway, and feature in the Four Ordinary Foundations for beginners, before Ngondro is taught - which is still basics level really.
But that's quite enough of Tibetan Buddhism for me today. Nearly time to log off the internet!
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It was just an honest suggestion. I didn't mean to be offending.
Goodnight.
Watch this movie (Documentary on the Tibetan book of the dead) to understand the Buddhist practice and "beliefs" a little better.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3219838328703873592#
edit: I may have misinterpreted your use of the word rebirth for re-incarnation. Did you mean rebirth in the ego sense or rebirth in the reincarnation sense?
Do you know of any good general information online? I have never actually read the Book of the Dead, and maybe it's best not to read it without initiation and supervision, but I have an interest in that area and if you can suggest anything online I'd appreciate it.
Why would I want to watch a documentary when I already did all the Bardo (Tibetan Book of the Dead) teachings and practices offline with a Tibetan tulku !
Try this:
http://www.abuddhistlibrary.com/Buddhism/A - Tibetan Buddhism/Authors/Thrangu Rinpoche/Bardo Teachings.pdf/Bardo Teachings- Thrangu Rinpoche.pdf
Think whatever pleases you patbb. I really don't want to get into a pointless argument, I'm going to bed now.
Goodnight
The Buddha taught rebirth, there are a few that say he didn't, but it is clear he did if you read the suttas. Anyway, lot of other things he taught can be verified through meditation at quite an early stage in your development. So this makes it much more plausible for me that rebirth is actually true. Of course, this is no direct evidence but if you take for example a science book and can verify certain laws it makes the rest of the book much more believable. This is the same with the Dhamma.
Actually I have quite a firm believe in rebirth, but as stated before, not every Buddhist does and doesn't have to.
"Rebirth of what? How do you define rebirth?"
Interviewer: "Do you believe that you will exist again in the future after death, and that what you do in this life will determine your future existence?"
"I don't believe that I exist right now as any separate thing, so the question itself is based on false presumptions. I do believe that actions done in this life will cause change now and in the future, just as the actions of our ancestors have come down through the ages to us in either wholesome or unwholesome conditions. Those like Jesus and the Buddha who had skillful actions are remembered for bringing good into the world. Those like Hitler and Stalin who had unskillful actions are remembered for bringing evil into the world. This is how our actions, our karma, continues on. It also can cause change in this very life to awaken us to truth."
Interviewer: "Then do you not believe that the Buddha taught rebirth, or that rebirth is a true teaching?"
"Rebirth seems indicated both by the scriptures and personal experience to have been taught and to be perceived in different ways depending upon one's viewpoint. What is important is to understand that whatever our beliefs, we are not separate from the whole. Actions lead to results. If those results do not happen to us personally in a future life, do they not happen to others? If we do not see others as different from ourselves, we love them with equal regard as ourselves. In this, selfish action for personal/self gain in the future drops away. We act selflessly for the gain of all sentient beings to come. This is our legacy."
P.S. Cloud: who is being interviewed in your quote above?
But "belief" in rebirth (as opposed to knowing from experience) is clearly faith-based. So the answer to your OP is, "yes".
And one more point: I'm a huge fan of HHDL, but FYI, there's been a lot of debate on this site fairly recently about this idea that current life conditions, and conditions at birth are all due to past life karma. Some people feel it's very unfair to say that babies born to abusive parents, or born with crippling deformities, for ex., are to blame for their own conditions, due to their past life actions. It's a bit of a hot topic. I've come to suspend judgment on the question myself, even though I was taught that all current life conditions are the result of past life actions.
And yes, karma is very complicated; the parents' karma is also involved in the examples I gave, and who knows who else's karma?
Well, so...are the babies being "punished" for their past life actions, by being reborn in these difficult situations, or is "punishment" an alien value judgment?
(Not that we want to open this whole can of worms again, but I appreciate your perspective.)
There is no entity out there that punishes us. Just because I was a C-Section baby, born with the umbilical wrapped around my throat, even though I died at birth, and had to be rushed to the emergency room to be awakened. I see no sense of projecting the ideation of punishment onto the occurrence, it's just an effect of endless causes, as each of the endless causes are themselves effects of endless causes.
I was also neglected by my mother who was just finding her spiritual path and abused by my father. I was begging for quarters at the age of 4 on the streets of San Francisco around the Mission in the late 70's. Anyway... I could go on...
Yes, karma is just too complex for black and white mentalities which I think the idea of punishment falls under. I do not see myself as being punished for anything. I just see these circumstances as the results of previous actions, that is all. These circumstances don't have to even be seen as "bad" under the microscope of our general current world view of comfort and material satiation which is generally how we measure happiness. I just see it as an example of why I should follow the Buddhas insight and create future conditions that are more accommodating to wisdom instead of anger.
Talking about karma I think is an almost impossible thing due to the dualism of language, but I think it can be understood intuitively.
p.s. If you were to look at human history, it would be a glorious day to have even one full meal in a single week as a human being many thousands of years ago. Being able to find a cave to sleep in, or sticks to rub a fire into existence would have been so much cause for joy!! I think it's all just dependent upon perspective and the wider it is, the better.
"When I mention to people that I am exploring Buddhism, the immediate response is an attack on 'reincarnation'. As far as I am aware, this term has not been used through the course books I have followed so far."
Lama Shenpen:
This is an important question. Have you read the booklet called the Gateway of Death about death and dying? I touch on this topic in this booklet - so you may find it useful.
Student:
"I am experiencing confusion about my beliefs, their beliefs, Buddhist beliefs and how to respond, if at all, to what seems to be a closed automatic response and seems to miss the essence of what I am learning. But then I wonder if I have missed something fundamental that I need to consider."
Lama Shenpen:
I think there is a naive idea of reincarnation that sounds bizarre and is often what people take the Buddhist idea of rebirth to mean. The question is - what is a person in the first place? I think the crude idea is that we are some kind of living entity that flits from life to life, even when the worlds that we find ourselves in are not connected to this world at all.
For example we might think we were an ancient Egyptian in a past life - but what was it that connected us to that time and place? Our body is obviously not connected, we may think, but then how is our mind connected? What is the mind? How does it connect to a body at birth? It's all rather incredible isn't it?
How do we get in there between the sperm and egg and somehow make it our home? Were we already there or did the sperm and egg somehow create us? How did our mind emerge from stuff like cell tissue and DNA and so on? What has our mind got to do with DNA? How did it produce its first thought - what made it suddenly think 'I am'?
So it's important to reflect on how odd it all is and on how, ancient Egyptian apart, it's all pretty incredible! The point is that our view of materiality is too material and our view of mind then becomes too material too - both body and mind are mysterious and cannot be grasped as this or that. Nonetheless we can know what they are simply by being them in a very simple and direct way. That is the path to Awakening.
It would be like being the dream and being the awakened person who knows they are dreaming and somehow being so in touch with the experience that you can know exactly what the dreaming mind can and cannot do - how it deceives and gets lost and then wakes up - just by being it - just by recognising its nature from the inside as it were. Similarly we can be in touch with what our body and mind really are and somehow wake into what the whole of experience and the whole of the Universe is - Universes in fact.
When you realise this you stop thinking of the mind as a kind of entity that can somehow hop from one time and place or one universe to another - instead we can gradually understand from the inside how we emanate as an empty but distinct emanation that can be grasped as solid and real by the deluded minds of ourself and of others to create worlds we can enter, create, engage in, share with others and in the end step or slip out of again. Yet the essential nature of our being remains unchanged. This is the Indestructible Heart Essence.
We can discover this mysterious reality and recognise how it manifests as the whole world around us and how that world dissolves and reappears again and again. It is like life and death - a timeless display - and rebirth is taught within that context.
From the practical point of view it's as if we pass from life to life just as we seem to live from day to day. Analysed logically that doesn't make any sense. You cannot find anything that travels through time from past to future. We cannot find it even in our every day life. That is what Buddhism teaches us to notice. Buddhism doesn't say 'you have to believe this in order to be saved' but challenges us to look and see for ourselves. It is pointing out something that we are overlooking all the time, to our cost, to the cost of our ultimate happiness. So it's a challenge.
You can tell your friends that you can follow the path to Awakening without taking on blind beliefs but just like people asking a guide to show us the way, it's no good if we start off by declaring that we don't believe in either the starting point or the destination. In any situation like that it's a calculated risk, you check out the guide as best you can and then you go for it - but keeping your wits about you all along the way.