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Making sense of Buddhism without Kamma and Rebirth.....
AjeevakDharmana
Explorer
I was watching an episode of Atheist Experience where a caller identified herself as Buddhist who does not believe in kamma and rebirth. But if we remove kamma and rebirth from Buddhism, then what remains....simple psychology or self-help book. Without these central tenets, can Buddhism still be considered spiritual path...
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She isn't Buddhist...
What did she say about her definition of kamma? Maybe she has a wrong understanding. It's just cause and effect. Anyone can observe that in their day-to-day life. Now, if she thinks that kamma involves belief that cause-and-effect stretch into future lifetimes (or into the present, from past lifetimes), that's a different matter, and is highly debatable.
There are lots of Buddhists who don't believe in rebirth. They're called "Secular Buddhists". That doesn't mean they don't believe in kamma. They believe cause-and-effect apply to the current lifetime, and that there are no other lifetimes. Believing thusly doesn't disqualify someone from being a Buddhist.
The word "spiritual" describes something that is related to the human spirit, as well as its more religious connotations.
Thus, if practicing Buddhism without the more supernatural aspects adds to one's experience of life and spirit, then it can be a spiritual practice.
@Dakini I do not know what she meant by kamma. She defined three kinds of buddhism
religious, cultural and philosophical one. She identified herself with philosophical buddhism. I do not know what was her criteria for these classifications...
Ah. In other words, a 'cherry-picker'..... takes the bits she likes....
I think that when someone thinks that Buddhism is a set of beliefs that must be adopted, they are missing the point of it.
Buddhism is quite unlike a typical religion. There is no creation story, no god. It compels nothing from you, merely offers a set of observations and practices. And there is no gatekeeper, no one to throw you out if you hold the wrong beliefs.
I have no idea what Atheist Experience is. But if someone says that philosophically she is a Buddhist, I say "welcome."
Better to say when it comes to Karma and Rebirth "I don't know"
Than to say. "I believe it's true"
Because then it's just one more belief system to see through.
I thought the central tenets were the 4 Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path? Which a person can practice with or without an actual belief in karma and rebirth and it's quite enough to manage for many, many lifetimes.
Well, this is very interesting. This really expands the topic. By "religious", my guess is that she meant Buddhism that includes belief in that which cannot be proven, for example: rebirth, the Buddha's divine nature, the existence of 32 realms, etc. By "cultural", my guess is that she means people who say they're Buddhists mainly because they grew up in a Buddhist culture, but who don't practice. Like people who say they're "Christians" because they grew up in a Christian culture, but they never go to church, and don't believe Jesus was Divine. So, by "philosophical", she probably means how she believes--more or less the Secular Buddhist way. People who believe Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion.
There are Buddhists, some very educated and wise monks even, who claim Buddhism loses its goal when you take out reincarnation or rebirth and past/future life karma. If you can't accumulate merit and continue walking the wheel of rebirth and you're not a monk destined for enlightenment in this life, then why bother?
This to anyone who is a skeptic completely misses the point and is just another variation of, "If Heaven and Hell don't exist, then why not just do whatever you want? Without reward and punishment, why should people be moral?" Substitute "without past life karma to punish or reward you, why be moral?" and you have the same false assumption.
Nobody ever performed one single selfless act of compassion because they were promised a reward in the next life. Nobody ever hesitated to pull the trigger on a gun because they suddenly remembered about bad karma and didn't want to screw up their next incarnation. Your belief or nonbelief in an afterlife or next life are not what motivates you to live a spiritual life in this one. A religious life, yes. But not a spiritual life. And I give my audience credit for knowing the difference between the two.
My point is of similar nature. Making progress on path is extremely arduous and tedious process. Not many practitioners achieve satisfactory level of spiritual growth, even up to their deathbed. how many of us can confidently declare that i have tamed my anger, my avarice etc. If it was so prevalent, we wouldn't have met every claim of achieving enlightenment with suspicion. So whole idea of enlightenment would become more or less similar to winning lottery if we drop rebirth from whole picture(if we assume that enlightenment is not also one of the myths).
I am not arguing that our every action is influenced by our belief in kamma nor that our morality is derived from it. It would be like taking theistic rhetoric and replacing God with Kamma. What i would argue is that morality depends on our innate sense of fairness but what is fair, is derived from our environment and society. The concept of kamma simply says that morality is beneficial for ourselves as well and we should cultivate moral behaviour. when we, ourselves are in the picture, we make more responsible and compassionate decisions. Certain beliefs are not dangerous because they influence our decisions consciously but because they influence them unconsciously as well,,,,
If i imagine buddhism as a body then 4 Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path are two legs on which it stands and moves whereas kamma and rebirth are hands which tells how it functions......
I take offense to outright rejection of these principles. Our ideal approach should be agnostic. Then later we can decide whether it makes sense or not. Because only dead person can know for surety whether it happens or not and I assume we are all alive....
Even if a person has "died" and returned to tell of his near death experience, we can come up with all kinds of explanations to reject what he says.
There in lies the problem.
Taking offense to someone else's rejection of your beliefs is just another major attachment issue to work through. Their path is theirs. Yours is yours. Their beliefs or lack thereof that do not align with yours have no impact on your path unless you allow it. Or, you can choose to learn from it on your end rather than demand an explanation for why someone would dare believe differently than you. Looking for justification for why it's ok for you to be upset or offended at their different beliefs is probably not the best way to spend your practice. Instead, spend it looking at why you are offended at all. Whatever the truth is, it is the truth whether it is believed in or not.
One of my favorite quotes from a non-Buddhist book is:
"But this sounds as if you are pushing reincarnation, I just can't believe in that."
"Belief is not required. You will reincarnate anyway. A leaf does not have to believe in photosynthesis to turn green."
(From Messages from Michael)
So, regardless of whether the person believes in karma and rebirth and lives their life to those principles, doesn't really matter. It's not like you won't get your rebirth because they don't believe in it. Nor does it mean their lack of belief in it keeps it from happening to them. We don't know with certainty what happens when we die. Religion and beliefs exist almost entirely to help us grapple with this question. All of them are based on how to live well so that when you die, you have reassurance that something good will happen so that it is not so frightening. So what someone else does to deal with those questions has zero impact on you.
I don't see why not. The meat and potatoes of Buddhism isn't its belief system, or any particular concept within that system like kamma or rebirth, it's its methodology for cultivating insight. And the more insight you develop, the further along the path you'll travel. What someone else believes or doesn't believe isn't really my concern.
The Buddha said over and over again "I only teach of Dukkha and cessation of Dukkha," so my bet is he could not care less for labels such as "psychology," "self-help" or "spiritual" for his method, as long as the method worked to bring about acceptance of affliction.
His method can be anything of the above. Whatever rocks your boat.
And if we remove kamma and rebirth from Buddhism, then what remains?
Dependent Origination: this is because that is, this is not because that is not.
Dukkha, with the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path for cessation of Dukkha.
Impermanence. Non-self... you name it.
https://www.facebook.com/BuddhismConnect
@Jeffrey - The title for that video made me think it was gonna be a 10 minute discussion tops... 1h 20?
It doesn't help that the woman has a wonderfully calming British accent that will put me into a cozy nap-like state.
Could you summarize what you found meaningful in the video?
Taking offense may be a bit much, but I do agree that the agnostic approach makes the most sense from a Buddhist perspective.
I agree that cultivation of insight is it's backbone but this insight has to be applied on reality to obtain wisdom. If we deny that kamma and rebirth are part of reality, then wisdom derived will be quite different from what it was originally designed to develop.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Take the teachings on right view in MN 117, for example. Things like kamma and rebirth fall into the category of mundane right view, "right view with effluents, siding with merit, resulting in the acquisitions [of becoming]," and not right view as a factor of the path. I'd say that the two forms of right view are complementary; but the one that we need to pay the most attention to in terms of developing wisdom is the latter. I think the former is certainly useful in this regard, but I don't believe that it's a requirement for developing the other factors of the path.
You'll have to put the time in if you want to benefit from the video.
-I would argue the idea of Karma has an empirical basis. I do not believe the same can be said for the belief in rebirth.
I think there's a big difference between simply not believing in rebirth and outright rejecting it as a possibility.
If it's true it makes sense that it would follow causation and if it's not it doesn't take away from the 4NTs or the Middle Way in this life.
For someone who claims to practice Buddhism but denies kamma or karma, a question we might ask is:Why do you eat or drink or go to work?
Each is a cause with a resulting effect which in turn leads to another cause...Oversimplified, you bet! But that is an illustration of kamma or karma.
As for "Rebirth", well, you can accept it or reject it or withhold judgement. If you have led a good life, from a Buddhist sense, and you are right, it won't matter. Of course, if you are wrong, it still won't matter. If you choose to "wait and see", that won't matter either. What will matter, what does matter is your here and now.
We can go along that twisting, winding back and forth on the issue of "Rebirth". However, as a Buddhist who is a Buddhist, I have "bought into" the Buddhist concept of "Rebirth".
Having said that, I must, in truth to myself and my Buddhist faith and practice, allow the self-declared Atheist to have his/her own take on this issue....
Oh babble, babble, babble...
Peace to all
Yes, there can be a lot of aversion involved in rejecting. Attachment to belief is a hindrance, but so is attachment to disbelief. An open mind seems like the best approach on these questions.
I keep looking at this thread and thinking I have something worth saying and then wondering why I can't seem to dredge it up. Maybe it's just that I think adding or subtracting anything from what's blithely called "Buddhism" is a sure-fire way to make a mistake.
I'm glad to finally find out who it was that Buddha appointed as gate keeper.
I think we should leave people alone to find their own path. To fulfill their own needs. To cherry pick, if they wish, because in reality, everyone here cherry picks. To help them if they ask. To be supportive of their growth.
When the ideas of kamma (as an invisible mechanism of reward) and rebirth were created people loved miracles. For any religion magic was not a problem but an essential part of the product.
But in the modern world things are different. Christians have problems combining the story of God creating the world in six days with modern understanding of evolution. A Christian who denies the Genesis-version of creation is “cherry-picking”. He is trying to make sense of his religion in a modern world.
As a Buddhist too we can look for the meaning in our religion which is left when we strip the magical thinking from it. That’s cherry-picking if you like. But for me the alternative of being a dogmatic Buddhist is worse.
The idea of rebirth is not falsifiable. It is shaped in such a way that we can’t think of any way to disprove it. That could lead to a stalemate; a perceived draw. If it can’t be proven right and it can’t be proven wrong, that’s 0-0. We should keep an open mind. But it really isn’t like that. There are many non-falsifiable religious ideas in other religions that we (being smart Buddhists) simply dismiss as nonsense. It would be fair to be equally critical in our evaluation of Buddhist religious notions.
Rationalism can be dogmatic too. We all get attached to views.
When quantum-physics has seemingly impossible consequences it isn’t dismissed. The reason is that the scientific method behind it is solid.
If by the same standards there was a solid case for rebirth; it would be a hot topic and a Nobel Prize would very likely follow.
The scientific community is not perfect; but essentially it isn’t dogmatic.
Do you (whoever) ever wonder why we feel justified in trying to demand an explanation, or going to others to ask them to explain why someone does something different than us? I examine that tendency a lot and it all seems related to ego to me. When we believe one thing, and someone else who carries the same label as us believes something else, our ego feels challenged. So then we ask the other person to justify their beliefs by demanding an answer as to why they reject something we find important. I've found it bugs me when people think they have a right to question my own path and demand answers of me just because my beliefs are different than them. It's one thing to ask out of curiosity, to spark a good discussion so that both sides are thinking about the beliefs they hold. But most of the time, the case seems to be otherwise.
In the end, why does it matter? So what if someone who calls themselves a Buddhist doesn't believe in Karma or Rebirth. The only problem with it is because when they say that, you feel a little niggling in your mind of "well, if they are Buddhist and don't believe in it, is it still ok that I do??" or even "Well, pfft, I'm a better Buddhist, obviously, because I understand how important and necessary those things are in Buddhism and they don't." All ego. Let it go. Comparison is the thief of joy.
Is fear of death a suffering?
Might belief in rebirth lessen the fear of death?
Could rebirth be a teaching to lessen suffering?
It could be but I don't think so; not directly.
The Buddha made it plain that he came to teach the Origin of Suffering, and the Transcendence of Suffering.
That solution is to be found in the 8Fold Path.
The law of Kamma, and rebirth may well be sub-sets of those indicators, but i don't think they're the primary lesson....
Although Kamma looks more plausible than rebirth but rebirth can be more easily established...Since kamma is casuality it is very hard to pinpoint it....one example i heard was of cancer caused by tobacco...
....How, exactly can it be 'more easily established'....?
Ah yes, to those who say that karma is merely cause and effect, nothing out of the ordinary: I don’t buy that.
If a guy says he stole his partner’s idea and became the wealthiest man on the planet. Nobody says, see that’s karma!
It is cause and effect however. (By the way any similarity between the story and a real life event or person is coincidental).
But when he suffers a terrible disease, or if someone steals something vital from him; then we start looking at it in terms of karma. There must be a moral dimension to it. A lesson.
Only the positive results from good actions and the negative results from bad actions will be seen as karma.
@karasti sez " When we believe one thing, and someone else who carries the same label as us believes something else, our ego feels challenged. So then we ask the other person to justify their beliefs by demanding an answer as to why they reject something we find important. I've found it bugs me when people think they have a right to question my own path and demand answers of me just because my beliefs are different than them. It's one thing to ask out of curiosity, to spark a good discussion so that both sides are thinking about the beliefs they hold. But most of the time, the case seems to be otherwise."
Those dag-nab Cling-ons! Maybe someone will invent a spray - like Raid.
I don't have any credible evidence or experience of rebirth. Some experienced Buddhists who do have memories of past lives do not trust these 'memories' as anything more than a brain fart. I have sufficient dukkha for which I know and understand the causation without trying to think like a fish or remember when I was one. Abrahamic mystics have visions of heaven. Funny that. They have equal veracity and integrity. Somehow their interior experiences are ignorant? Maybe. Maybe not.
I iz (apparantly not) Buddhist. OK. Might be my karma. Might not be.
In the Ariyamagga Sutta the Buddha says that the Noble Eightfold Path is a type of kamma, a kamma that is neither dark nor bright with neither dark nor bright result, leading to the ending of kamma.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.235.than.html
My question is why are so many westerners uncomfortable with karma and rebirth? I have no problem with it. I never once disbelieved it.
My grandma was Christian but she also believed in reincarnation. Different people have different beliefs.