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Discussion: Agnostic about reincarnation
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 ZenDreams |
Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 9 2008, 7:29 PM EDT (from my blog) I discovered Buddhism through Zen. However sometimes I feel like I slipped in through a backdoor, since practicing Zen has never required me to accept reincarnation. (See Chuan Zhi Shakya’s discussion about this). So I am a little disoriented when I hear teachers from other traditions speaking so matter-of-factly about past and future lives –- as if the truth of it was obvious. However, in letting go of my Christian upbringing, I have developed antibodies that interfere with accepting anything on blind faith. So it was not the promise of reincarnation, but statements like this that endeared me to Buddhism: "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions simply because they have been handed down for many generations. ... Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But when, after observation and analysis, you find anything that agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." – Buddha, Kalama Sutta Since I am hoping to avoid “observation and analysis” of reincarnation for as long as possible – I choose to be agnostic, and focus on being in the moment instead. However, when I do come across teachings that depend on reincarnation – I take reincarnation to mean being reborn each day, each moment, and in each breath — and inheriting the karma from previous moments. Sometimes abstraction works too, as when I heard a teacher explain that beautiful people can attribute their looks to karma inherited from past lives. Here I equate beauty to be a personality – and voila! I don’t take tinkering with the dharma lightly – but these interpretations don’t negate the original meaning, and I think are consistent with Buddhist thought. I am curious about how the community here feels about this perspective! Gassho, Justin 2 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
 nathan28 |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 9 2008, 8:04 PM EDT There are a couple ways I can see reincarnation interpreted. I'll preface this by saying that I tend to believe all of them are speculative and largely lacking pragmatic value. 1. You have past lives, and that was really you. Note this can be a sneaky "True Self" teaching. You can be an Atlantean warrior-saint, a Native American, a Haitian Hougan, Immanuel Kant, King Arthur, ad nauseum. I suspect in Asian cultures this tends to be voiced in a less obnoxious way. 2. The Buddhism 101 college explanation, as paraphrased from some professor: "It's like a candle lighting another candle or one billiard ball hitting another; they're not the same but somehow related." Notice that while this is an interesting metaphor it also defies any solid explication. 3. Following on the heels of that one, you get the Law of Cause and Effect. Your karma persists and will carry on down the causal chain well after you're gone. Likewise, you are subject to conditions that arose practically aeons ago. 4. The strange Tibetan teachings about willfully reincarnating, e.g., in the body of a recently dead (very, very recently, I would hope) person and reviving the body. I didn't make this up, it was in one of Tenzin Wangyal's books. Obviously, #3 seems to be the most pragmatic, since it partly serves as an injunction to be careful about your ethical behavior. In my own experience the teacher's I've been exposed to usually refer to reincarnation half-jokingly. I tend not to worry one way or another about this--if you practice well what you believe is secondary. On the other hand if you sit with a group that likes "sharing" about their past lives, maybe sneak out after the walking sessions. 2 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
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ZenDreams |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 9 2008, 11:11 PM EDT Hi Nathan... Number 2 sounds familiar -- I think I heard a version using a stack of dominoes as an analogy, the relationship between lives being akin to the relationship between the dominoes. This model fits the “moment to moment” interpretation of reincarnation nicely – but still requires a leap of faith to explain the literal interpretation of reincarnation. Would you say that number 3 is like waves washing up on the sea shore? The energy of the wave not being lost but returning to the sea? In other words, the effect you have on other people continues to ripple through their lives after you’re gone. I suspect this becomes more and more satisfactory as you lose your sense of self – or include everyone in your sense of self. Actually I don’t worry about it either. (A Zen master would probably answer such questions with a whack from their stick.) But I do worry about which schools of Buddhism I might be excluding myself from. (Not that Zen isn’t satisfactory, but I like exploring.) Do you find this valuable? |
 woman_alone |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 10 2008, 2:29 AM EDT Personally I buy into the idea, though I didn't start out that way. Personal experiences and the experiences some close friends/family have acted as the proof that I need. My understanding goes something like this: in this lifetime you are clinging/fabricating/holding onto the framework of "I" - "I" am separate from the rest. You use your body/mind to delimit "inside" (me) from "outside" (the rest). When the body goes, unless you've gone through the work of unbinding, you still hold the perspective "I". This being the case, you are not "free" to "be", so you re-take a form that allows you to easily uphold the "I" perspective. Hence "another life". My understanding is that personality, body, location, situation have no carry over. If you want to call that "you", then "you" are not the same person. That being said, relationships follow you the way your lifetime-consciousness doesn't (effluents). Hence your actions have real consequences, and are not simply "cashed out" upon the surrender of the body. All that being said, you don't need to believe in order to practice. I don't practice because I want to have a better life NEXT time. And I don't practice because of previous lifetimes either. I practice because it's "right" for "me" now. I practice because I have this profound curiosity and passion for experiencing unbinding, and because of an accompanying rightness inherent in it. Most people I know don't practice the way I do, and they don't get the feeling of rightness around this kind of practice that I do. So they are doing what they need to/are moved to do with their life. That's really all that matters. If practice without belief in re-incarnation works for you, then that's all you need at this point (says me). 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
 monkeymind |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 10 2008, 2:37 AM EDT Justin, Two points which I have found helpful when dealing with any teaching: "How do I pick this up?" - this is basically the Snake Simile out of the Suttas. A teaching can turn around and bite me when picked up from the wrong end, just like a snake will. A form of observation and analysis - observing the snake (teaching) to come to a better understanding of its behavior. "Observing" in the sense of acting, too! "How do I react?" - and this is from the Kalama Sutta which you alluded to above. Watch, observe, analyse *how* I *react* to the teaching. This is observation and analysis at its best, I feel. Both of these emphasize the *doing* over the pondering. Thinking things through can be helpful, but more often just results in a rearrangement of the opinions already held. The best intellectual understaning of rebirth I have arrived at, that is, one that doesn't interfere by making me constantly think about it, is: "Action shapes experience" - then it doesn't matter if that action lies in the present, or back a few moments or many moments. That said, I have lots of fun dealing with all the rebirth, gods and demons, magic powers and whatnot teachings which abound in Theravada. ;) Cheers, Florian 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
 Hokai |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 12 2008, 1:10 PM EDT This is an interesting subject, and a source of confusion for many Western practitioners. Most of those who believe in rebirth (lit. "again-being", skr. punarbhava) don't really understand any of traditional teachings concerning the process rebirth, and there's no guarantee that those who don't believe understand what it is they don't believe. So, for most folks, having such beliefs is not the result of careful consideration. Secondly, the question of body/mind separation, and the question whether one is different or identical from life to life, are both not adequate in strict sense. The first, because the level of mind taking rebirth is not the same level of mind that identifies with the body, that gross mind dying away along with the gross body, and the very subtle mind that undergoes rebirth is only made apparent in dreamless sleep and in formless dhyana during lifetime. These are standard teachings, common to all three vehicles if we ignore secondary details. The second, because the question conflagrates levels of being. Thirdly, some principles concerning rebirth, however, need to re-evaluated when necessary. For example, the issue of complex newly discovered developmental and evolutionary dynamics - both collective and individual, and their inextricability - and their karmic interpretation, will need to be evaluated in this context. Fourthly, the issue of rebirth (to be distinguished from reincarnation and metempsychosis) comes up not just as a chief belief in "dharmic religions", but also as a consequence of the indestructibility of the nature of mind, and its relation to separate awareness. So, one may go further and ask if rebirth makes real sense only for those who have awoken to the very subtle mind, when this process (a la bardo) begins to become transparent to itself, which is a legitimate question. In short, wherever one stands, is it a hindrance in your practice? Any thoughts? 2 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
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woman_alone |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 15 2008, 3:19 AM EDT I dug into my favorite book (Wings to Awakening, Thanissaro Bhikkhu) on this question, and this is what I found... "It is entirely possible that a person with no firm conviction in the principle of kamma can follow parts of the Buddhist path, including mindfulness and concentration practices, and gain positive results from them...The full practice of the path, however, is a skillful diverting of the flow of the mind from its habitual kammic streams to the stream of Unbinding. As the Buddha said, this practice requires a willingness to 'develop and abandon' to an extreme degree [A.IV.28]. The developing requires a supreme effort aimed at full and conscious mastery of mindfulness, concentration, and discernment to the point of non-fashioning and on to release. A lack of conviction in the principle of kamma would undercut the patience and commitment, the desire, persistence, intent and refined powers of discrimination needed to pursue concentration and discernment to the most heightened levels, beyond what is needed for a general sense of peace or spontaneity. The abandoning involves uprooting the most deeply buried forms of clinging and attachment that keep one bound to the cycle of rebirth...This is why the Buddha insisted repeatedly...that conviction in the fact of his Awakening necessarily involves conviction in the principle of kamma, and that both forms of conviction are needed for the full mastery of the kamma of heightened skillfulness leading to release." (Thanissaro, 1996:47-48) 2 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
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monkeymind |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 15 2008, 3:36 PM EDT I like that book, too - it's an anthology, glued together by very little commentary. One point the Ven. Thanissaro often makes is that Kamma is not some piece of doctrine we need to believe in to get saved - its observable right here, in the present, in meditation. The experience of the present moment is shaped by the results of past actions, the results of present actions, and the present actions themselves. Thus, in meditation, memories arise (results of past actions), and whether we rush towards them, or not will have an immediate impact on our meditation. If we didn't think our actions matter, why meditate? Drawing conclusions about the possibility of previous and future lifetimes from this immediate experience is a different matter, of course. A German monk I deeply respect (a student of Ven. Ajahn Maha Boowa) will go on and on about rebirth and the various hells and heavens. He's really convinced of their literal existence. The way he "picked up" this teaching, by the way, was as a motivation to keep going when he almost left his teacher: "Do I really want to get born another time, have to learn to walk, fall down hundreds of times in the process, learn to talk, be frustrated over and over when the grown-ups don't understand me" and so on. Cheers, Florian Do you find this valuable? |
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Hokai |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 15 2008, 5:39 PM EDT Thanks, monkeymind. Though I appreciate your input on this, what you point has only a general semblance with the Buddhist notion of karma, especially in Mahayana terms. Sure our actions matter, but we don't need karmic dynamics to explain or accept that. The whole Western ideal of individual responsibility is based on principle that our choices and actions do matter, without any reference to karma whatsoever. Of course it's then difficult to draw "conclusions about the possiblity of previous and future lifetimes" from that. I'm not saying anything about the heavens and hells (not real places in Mahayana anyway) but I'm just stressing how there are many personal versions of "karma" out there. Do we ever stop to question those - privately held - beliefs? Or it's safer to question "Buddhist" beliefs we don't hold anyway? What do you say? Do you find this valuable? |
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sonamdolma sonamdolma |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Mar 16 2008, 1:05 AM EDT "(from my blog)Justin; It's funny - I was born believing in reincarnation and became a vegetarian at 6 yrs of age - probably the only one in Canada at that time.. My atheist/Irish/drinking/smoking fighting parents thought the hospital had mixed up the babies. So I was shocked as an adult at a Tibetan Buddhist retreat in Dharamsala to be told there really was no such thing as reincarnation. Then they explained that it isn't "us" that reincarnates - not "us" as we think of ourselves. We're one-offs. Put simply, they said that what passes from birth to birth is a collection of "karmic energy" - not a soul. We (our physical self) get it prior to birth, change it by how we live and then it moves on when we die. This makes sense if you believe that we are all destined to eventually become enlightened. This could be the mechanism for improvement. Recently, I've been putting a lot of energy into learning the best techniques for reincarnating from those who claim to have done it consciously many times. So let me say that your feelings of being reborn with each breath and inheriting Karma from previous moments doesn't sound all that different. My feeling is that we're all doomed to find that none of our ideas or concepts or expectations are valid and that this whole thing is a gigantic joke. ..think about what it means if there is no such thing as time!! I hope we get some more response to this fascinating topic. 2 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
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Tracy. Tracy. |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Apr 4 2008, 9:46 AM EDT I thought I'd chime in with a quote from Meetings with Remarkable Women, by Lenore Friedman. This is a pretty good book, by the way. Lenore Friedman is a laywoman who went around interviewing female Buddhist teachers about their lives. In her interview with Jiyu Kennet, she asks about reincarnation, and the passage struck me as the first explanation of rebirth that actually made some sense to me. Here it is: We talked for a while about problems in translating scriptures from the Japanese, and Roshi Kennett gave the example of older translations using the word predestination for what she currently translates as "past life experiences." She said there was "one heck of a difference" and I asked her to amplify. "Because of a tiny bit of ignorance centuries ago, a mistake was made. And that mistake was continued down the past lives. I was not predestined to make that mistake. All I had to do was train at any time to clean it up. But I was not predestined to it. There was no God that predestined me to make the mistake. The mistake had been made once, and I was free at any time to end it, and that's the big difference between predestination and past life experiences." "Okay. I think I get that. Would you say a bit more, though, about understanding past lives without a sense of continuing ego or self?" "Well, if you once think that you are in it, then you cause the thing to eternize. And then what you've got is a bunch of ghosts and you're into witchcraft and spiritualism." (Continued in next post..) Do you find this valuable? |
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Tracy. Tracy. |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Apr 4 2008, 9:54 AM EDT "It isn't entirely clear to me how you get rid of that." "You just know that when they come up, this is not you. In you is all that is left of this person or this animal. But it isn't you. It's just like a shadow that you've been carrying around with you. And once you saw the mistake, you could put it right. And the thing disappears and no longer affects you. Something was done wrong, a grave mistake was made, and it left vibrations around. Imagine you have a bag in which you've brought home some fish. You eat the fish, but you carry the bag around and it still smells of fish. That's an impregnation. We all carry the impregnations of past lives. But they've got nothing to do with us." "But there's a continuity down the line?" "We tend to pick up stuff that made the same mistake. And that's how you can make the mistake of predestination." "So we do each have our own particular series of impregnations." "But they're not our personal ones." "In the sense that we're not personal either?" "No. You see, we're part, if you like, of a great central ego. We all have a spark of the Eternal. Each one of us is therefore here as a bag of karma. Our duty throughout our lives is to cleanse that karma so that part of the Eternal has got rid of that much. We're probably a very, very religious holy being, in other words. And we have a definite purpose, which is cleaning this stuff up." - That's on pages 191-192. The part that really struck me was, "In you is all that is left of this person or this animal. But it isn't you." She kind of lost me at the end, though, with the "great central ego." What I find fascinating is that there are countries where karma is the default belief, and heaven, hell, and the eternal soul are weird. Do you find this valuable? |
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monkeymind |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Apr 5 2008, 6:29 AM EDT "Thanks, monkeymind. Though I appreciate your input on this, what you point has only a general semblance with the Buddhist notion of karma, especially in Mahayana terms. Sure our actions matter, but we don't need karmic dynamics to explain or accept that. The whole Western ideal of individual responsibility is based on principle that our choices and actions do matter, without any reference to karma whatsoever. Of course it's then difficult to draw "conclusions about the possiblity of previous and future lifetimes" from that. I'm not saying anything about the heavens and hells (not real places in Mahayana anyway) but I'm just stressing how there are many personal versions of "karma" out there. Do we ever stop to question those - privately held - beliefs? Or it's safer to question "Buddhist" beliefs we don't hold anyway? What do you say?"Hokai, I was clumsily describing my own approach to the teaching on karma. You make important points, so let me clarify my understanding: Starting from the Buddha's definition - "Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect." - and from teachings like the opening verses of the Dhammapada, or the teachings on bright karma, dark karma, and neither bright nor dark karma, I arrived at my current understanding, which I summarized in "intentions shape experience". For me it is helpful, because it is simple, and yields all the intricacies when followed through. (Similar to the way the simple concept of "natural selection" will, when followed through, explain the diversity of species). This understanding of Karma is not something I hold as a belief, in the sense that I have to make my experience fit in with my opinions. We experience the results of intentional actions: not even necessarily our "own" actions, and neither the concept of individual responsibility, nor the concept of moral justice have much to bear on this fact. Responsibility and moral choice come into play only when we want to shape our experience in certain ways. As to previous and future lifetimes - that can become a batter of belief. I understand "belief" as wishful thinking to make experience conform with expectations and opinions. Over the past year or so another approach to rebirth has become evident to me, again working from my understanding of karma: to see how belief in rebirth (again, not necessarily my own belief) affects my experience. That has been the most useful approach so far. Any useful understanding of karma and rebirth must necessarily be personal. Otherwise, it is just wishful thinking, "belief" in the sense of making experience fit in with expectations and opinions: dogmatic or otherwise. Cheers, Florian Do you find this valuable? |
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monkeymind |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Apr 5 2008, 6:53 AM EDT One thing to contemplate with respect to rebirth is that it's right there in the noble eightfold path, in the definition of Right View (for example MN 117, right at the top). It is there along with generosity, karma, and respect for parents, spiritual beings, and wise people. All of these make up Right View. The other definition of Right View, the supramundane one, is "knowledge of the four noble truths". So these "beliefs" and respectful behaviors on one hand, and the four noble truths on the other hand, are congruent in some way, the Buddha claimed. Cheers, Florian 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
 SongMt |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Apr 6 2008, 12:02 PM EDT Thanks everyone for this thread. I find discussion on karma, and rebirth an enjoyable and thought provoking topic. As this forum stresses practice, i thought i would share one of our insight meditations here. It deals with rebirth indirectly. and has in the past led practitioners to knowing and having insight into their lives without respect to the perception of time. Keep in mind though, this is more for insight, it may have an effect on insight into rebirth, but the main point is expanding awareness and perception. My teacher taught that if it doesnt lead to much, not to worry or attach to an outcome, and if something does arise, just like any other sensation, to let it be, rise, then fall.......... standard meditation of stabilizing the mind, then examine/analyze an object, we generally choose something close to its state found in nature, piece of wood or something. As you delve into deeper insight into the object, see it with utter clarity until it is the only perceivable object in the mind. the next step is the focal point of this. The stick, for example, regresses to its previous state, branch of a tree. see the tree in the stick until you perceive the tree, then the sapling, then the seed. More than just an excercise in imagination, you want to be able to truly perceive the inherent interconnectedness of the object with its past. The goal is always insight and enlightenment, and not to take the pursuit of past life remembrance too seriously, but it may be helpful in some cases. On a personal note, i do attribute this to attaining a semblance of insight into rebirth, it was actually a turning point for me in whether or not i could be accepting of that teaching. So in the end, it helped me in insight with a direct confrontation with something i had trouble wrapping my mind around. Let me know what you think, this has been a great discussion, Tony. 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
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Abe_Dunkelheit Abe_Dunkelheit |
Reincarnation & The Yogins of Ladakh (part 1)
Apr 7 2008, 4:03 PM EDT Quoted from The Yogins of Ladakh (2007), p. 113f: One day [in late 1986] James and I visited Tikse Gompa near Leh. (…) [W]e met a young monk with elegant manners and a wispy moustache who surprised us considerably. He turned out to be the incarnation of a very famous figure in Ladhaki history and now the abbot of a Gelugpa monastery in a remote part of the Himalayas to the east of Ladakh. The young Rimpoche became most enthusiastic about our project and requested a private meeting with us at our hotel. Since this meeting was private we give no details identifying the Rimpoche. Most of his training as a Gelugpa had been of an academic and scholarly nature and *** HE WANTED TO QUESTION US ABOUT MEDITATION. *** His monastery was the base for some two hundred monks but its rural location meant that they had little training. *** AS A REINCARNATING LAMA, *** Rimpoche was expected to find study easy for he would have known it all in his previous lives. (…) It was clearly difficult for a reincarnation who was also an abbot to arrange basic training [in meditation] for himself. *** He was simply expected to know. *** This he found unrealistic and embarrassing. Asked whether he had any recollections of his previous incarnation, he replied he had no such memories and that *** he often doubted whether he really was a reincarnation of a great lama. *** Once he had spoken with the Dalai Lama about this. *** His Holiness *** had said that although he had been told who he himself was when he was very young, he too had no direct memories of his past history and he *** often had such doubts. *** However, being placed in the position that he was, he felt that he had come to activate the spirit of his noble predecessors so that he could emanate this for others. This had been a considerable inspiration to the young Rimpoche. 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
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Abe_Dunkelheit Abe_Dunkelheit |
RE: Reincarnation & The Yogins of Ladakh (part 2)
Apr 7 2008, 4:04 PM EDT (…) It seemed clear to me that this intelligent young man had been provoked into asking these questions partly by his training in English and Western ways at school. This new generation of young lamas has a hard task of integration to perform. * * * Having no clue about meditation, and doubting their own reincarnation, one wonders how many elite monks are out there who, like ‘His Holiness’, play the transference game ‘for the benefits’ of their followers?! 2 out of 3 found this valuable. Do you? |
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Tracy. Tracy. |
RE: Reincarnation & The Yogins of Ladakh (part 2)
Apr 7 2008, 5:38 PM EDT "On the other hand, well-known and seemingly accomplished meditation teachers in the west have admitted to having past-life experiences (See After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, by Jack Kornfield, p. 219). In their case, no one has told them they were reincarnated, and their positions as teachers do not depend on this claim. Therefore, it's likely that these individuals endorse rebirth doctrines because of their own actual experiences and insight. Whether or not anyone who has not had these experiences can trust their validity based on faith in the teacher is a different issue. It may be that some (or many) reincarnated lamas don't have a clue whether it's real or not, but their testimony does not disprove the phenomenon. I think it's at least possible that the doctrine is true, but of course it's impossible to know for sure unless I experience it for myself. 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
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Paticca Paticca |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Jun 16 2008, 2:21 PM EDT I think the believe in reincarnation is a result of some meditation experiences. In some strange states of consciousness seems the consciousness able to remember all past lives. This can come along with an omnipotent feeling (Often told in the suttas: you can touch the moon and the sun with your hands). If you live in a country may be 2000 years ago. You will believe in this experience. Today we will interpret this state more as a kind of psychosis. The believe e. g. in reincarnation may be only one delivered result of this states. Paticca 1 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
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Abe_Dunkelheit Abe_Dunkelheit |
RE: Agnostic about reincarnation
Jun 23 2008, 5:14 PM EDT Unusual memories by children is often presented as evidence in favor of reincarnation; but there is at least one other possibility - the children may pick up the information telephathically; and so may people who experience memories of past lives in altered states of consciousness. Recommended Reading: Origins of Psychic Phenomena by Stan Gooch Altered states of consciousness The memories of past lives Do you find this valuable? |
