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Mathematics of Rebirth and Population Multiplication
Amida
Explorer
From what I've read, it seems nirvana/final liberation, from samsara, is rare and difficult. Also, the population of animals, including humans, continues to multiply, becoming more and more. The mathematics of karma, rebirth, and liberation don't seem to work logically.
My question is: How does one make sense of rebirth and population multiplication, in relation to the rarity of final liberation?
I hope people don't say, "Oh, that's one of the things we cannot ponder!"
My question is: How does one make sense of rebirth and population multiplication, in relation to the rarity of final liberation?
I hope people don't say, "Oh, that's one of the things we cannot ponder!"
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There are infinite worlds possible in infinite universes, so rebirth could happen anywhere in any one of them...
PS: It's one of those things we can't ponder.
It seems illogical to think manifestations keep multiplying into Samsara, while manfestations rarely find final liberation. There has to be a balance between those entering and exiting.
And if such process is ungraspable and unfindable what use it to call it you?
Everything is a stranger.
Thus everything is you.
The process always is but it is empty.
2) There are an infinite number of sentient beings.
3) When the Buddha says it is imponderable means it is impossible to ponder because it is beyond the capability of thought.
I'm hoping someone can shed some light on the question asked, without saying we just can't know.
If there's no exiting, then what is Nirvana in relation to Samsara?
You are thinking of the concept of "rebirth" in a way that is obtuse and simplistic. It is not a simple thing that any person on this site can just spell out for you.
The effect of one's karma is an imponderable because the factors involved of too complex for the mind to comprehend. Instead you need to directly realize that which is important.
This is suffering
This is the cause of suffering
This is the end of suffering
This is the path leading to the end of suffering
Nirvana is the cessation of suffering
If things like rebirth are true, I think there are ways of explaining them coherently, in relation to science and reason.
My understanding-- rightly or wrongly-- of rebirth is that our actions continue like ripples that radiate outward indefinitely-- these ripples begin not after we die, but in this very present moment. Those ripples (karma) have effects that go far beyond what we can even know.
I myself have never met my great great grandparents (to pick just one set of sentient beings) and yet they live on in me through their actions, though I likely wouldn't even know that. Some of those ripples are beneficial, some perhaps harmful. But this is not a one-on-one transference of one sentient being to another. There are many other people and animals whose ripples have affected me and in that sense they live on in me too. Only in a few instances of immediate individuals am I able to perhaps identify some of those influences. Others will always remain hidden from me-- their influence may surface, but from where I cannot always say.
In that sense, via the karma created by this individual, I am being reborn again and again with every action I take, and at the same time, people I interact with are reborn within me too. Its a vast complex network of karma and rebirth that is taking place RIGHT NOW, not just in some undetermined future when my body and consciousness cease to function.
So there is rebirth, but not in a one-on-one transference kind of way. The metaphor of a candle lighting another has been used to describe rebirth. But when I have used one candle to light another, I have often lit more than just ONE other candle, but several.
Nothing is added or taken away in this vast cosmos. Every action counts-- not just for the sake of the future-- and certainly not how it would simply benefit ME, but it matters because what I do unto others I am already doing to myself.
Oh the losses into the All, Marina, the stars that are falling!
We can't make it larger, wherever we fling ourselves, to whatever
star we may go! In the Whole, all things are already numbered.
So when anyone falls, the perfect sum is not lessened.
Whoever lets go in his fall, dives into the source and is healed.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, from "Elegy" (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Just an FYI the Buddha never said "rebirth" or "born" or "reborn." He said that there is "Birth conditioned by Becoming." Your own lack of understanding of the Dharma is causing your confusion and disatisfaction. Take some time to study what the Buddha said and what it is Buddhists actually believe before you start spouting your "mathematical dogma."
I have studied it, and it doesn't make sense, and you made no effort to answer my question reasonably. So, maybe you should study more to find some way of sharing your beliefs in a sensible way, so others won't think you trust in nonsensical superstitions of primitive mindsets.
Feel free to enlighten my understanding to this Dharma you understand.
In my opinion, that seems like the easy way out of hard questions. Again, it remainds me of Christians saying, "God's ways are past our finding out!" when you question their illogical beliefs not supported by observation or reason.
Not all beings take rebirth in this planet
Not all beings take rebirth in this level of existance
It is not possible to quantify something that is beyond our ability to measure... Re: beings on another planets within our universe, being on other levels of existance etc.
I would suggest as a starting point that you quantify the total number of grains of sand on every beach on planet earth. Once you've done that, you'll have an idea of the scale of the project you're talking about.
What exactly are you trying to gain from this thread?
I like the analogy of a grain of sand... I also like to use a drop of water and the ocean.
Will you stop making statements not based on reality, implying I haven't studied. You're making no attempt to answer my question, from your vast understanding of Dharma, merely exalting yourself at my expense. I hope you'll put away that golden calf, first, before you try to grind mine to powder and make me drink it.
@Mountain & others
As you know, in Science they say the Universe equals 0. If you have +100 you have -100 that would cancel each other out and return to 0. It's gravity that keeps it from returning to 0.
If the ground of being is unmanifest and formless and from that form manifests, then it seems illogical that beings of form would increase ad infinitum, while forms release from phenomenal existence at a lower rate.
Maybe there are realms where beings release from phenomenal existence at higher rates than others?
What exactly are you trying to gain from this thread (other an an argument)?
"An increase in the human population simply implies that creatures from other planes are being reborn into the human realm at a rate faster than humans are dying. Likewise, a decline in the human population would imply that humans, upon death, are taking rebirth in other planes (or exiting samsara altogether) at a rate faster than other creatures are taking rebirth as humans. These sorts of population shifts have been occurring for countless eons and in themselves hold little cosmic significance."
I understand that transmigration and rebirth are different. I'm not talking about transmigration here. Are you implying that not all the streams of consciousness of humans undergo rebirth?
"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.
I made the point of this thread clear in my last post directed toward you. Bodhipunk's last post was in relation to what I was looking for.
@bodhipunk
Thanks. I've been waiting for an answer like that. All I've gotten so far is answers unrelated to my question and insults.
You last post implies a kind of balance of numbers. And that was part of my question; "Is there a balance between the number of births and those who are no longer reborn?" Your last post seems to imply there is.
Namaste
*Smile*
First of all I have no idea where you heard "in Science they say the Universe equals 0." What does that even mean?
To return to you OP:
"My question is: How does one make sense of rebirth and population multiplication, in relation to the rarity of final liberation?"
There is no rebirth. There is no "population multiplication." The population of this planet goes up and down constantly. There have been what? 5 mass extinctions so far. And there will be others.
What you believe to be rebirth, or at least the way you have described it, is more like reincarnation or transmigration. One mind constantly "reborn" into new bodies. This is not what the Buddha taught. The Buddha taught that becoming conditions birth. Birth can take place on our planet, on another planet, in a heavenly state, in a hellish state, as an animal or a man or a god. Birth takes place in many places and times.
You are thinking of things in a rigid and obtuse way. Stop thinking of things as cut-and-dry. You are trying to find answers to questions that can only be answered by yourself. This is the purpose of the path. You need to seek the answers through direct realization. No one here or anywhere in the universe can make you understand something that you need to learn for yourself.
Again, I understand the difference between rebirth and transmigration. And again, Bodhipunk is offering answers to what I was asking.
I got that science from Stephen Hawking's new book "The Grand Design".
Let me start over and ask: Is there a balance between the number of births and those streams of consciousness no longer subject to rebirth? If not, you fall into an increase ad infinitum.
The purpose of this question is my attempt to see if this issue (rebirth) can be taken seriously or not, in light of my epistemology.
"Why do I suffer?"
here's a question that is meaningless and leads to suffering:
"Where do I go when I die?"
I read your post. And again, I understand what Buddhism teaches on rebirth, as opposed to reincarnation/transmigration. Your post didn't answer my question. I was looking more for an answer like bodhipunk posted from accesstoinsight.org.
Again, I think for rebirth to be realistic the numbers have to balance and ultimately equal zero. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas how that could be so.
I belive this topic was one of the things the Buddha said was unknowable intellectually and counterproductive to think about too much