There is sometimes talk about how this forum is too focused on Western religion. I came across a passage and thought I would mix it up a little -- of course, to clarify, I am a Christian and do not believe in reincarnation or anything, but I find the following stuff to be interesting and worthy of posting...
There are a lot of misconceptions that Westerners have about Eastern religion. Many of us end up thinking of reincarnation as a sort of immortality.
Here is a perfect passage about this:
To Euro-American thinkers, reincarnation seems to pose a possible solution to the problem of death: If what you fear is the cessation of life (we set aside for the moment considerations of heaven and hell), then the belief that you will in fact live again after you die may be of comfort. How nice to go around again and again, never to be blotted out altogether, to have more and more of life, different lives all the time, perhaps a horse or a dog next time, or an Egyptian queen last time. But this line of reasoning entirely misses the point of the Hindu doctrine. If it is a terrible thing to grow old and die, once and for all, how much more terrible to do it over and over again. It is like being condemned to numerous life sentences that do not run concurrently.
Doniger, Wendy. The Hindus (pp. 157-158). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Buddhism also takes an extremely negative view of rebirth:
“Bhikkhus, this rebirth process, where beings whose minds are covered by ignorance and are bound to it by bonds of craving, has no discernible (na pannāyati) beginning”.
“What do you think, bhikkhus: Which is greater, the tears you have shed while trapped in this rebirth process — crying because of being born into a bad birth and being separated from loved ones in good births — or the water in the four great oceans?”
“As we understand the Dhamma taught to us by the Bhante, the tears we have shed while trapped in this beginning-less rebirth process is greater than the water in the four great oceans.”
“Excellent, bhikkhus. It is good that you thus understand the Dhamma taught by me. This is the greater: the tears you have shed while trapped in this beginning-less rebirth process — not the water in the four great oceans.
Long have you (repeatedly) experienced the death of a mother. The tears you have shed over the death of a mother while trapped in this beginning-less rebirth process are greater than the water in the four great oceans.
Long have you (repeatedly) experienced the death of a father… the death of a brother… the death of a sister… the death of a son… the death of a daughter… loss with regard to relatives… loss with regard to wealth… loss with regard to disease. The tears you have shed over loss with regard to disease trapped in this beginning-less rebirth process are greater than the water in the four great oceans.
Why is that? A beginning to this rebirth process is not discernible.”
The Assu Sutta
Generally speaking, our concept of reincarnation hinges on the idea of whether or not we will be born again with our smartphones and not being born into lower forms and lower statures.
What is also interesting about this is the concept of iccantikas -- these would be people who are born into lower & lower forms of existence until enlightenment itself was impossible. This was, however, largely erased by the Mahayana tradition which believes that everyone will eventually achieve enlightenment.
Yet, to many people in the West, and perhaps to many moderns in the East as well, past lives is like a fun game.
It is like the line from Mad Max: Fury Road: "I live, I die, I live again."
But we cannot fully fathom that our living is actually taking on a new set of pain and burdensome experiences.
@Philokalia
How nice to see a thread on this. Kudos.
One of the better presenters of Eastern ideas to people from Western cultures is Marco Pallis, author of, among other books, "The Way and the Mountain."
One of the most common and, for Westerners, easiest, misconceptions about reincarnation is to suppose that there is some thing, call it a "soul" for example, which gets re-embodied as some other creature. This is emphatically not what Buddhism teaches. Nothing of your personality will survive in another incarnation, and this is profoundly different to what most Westerners, given their infatuation with individualism, would expect.
Buddhist teachers give many metaphors for what gets passed on. One of the better ones is this: a flame ignites a candle; just before the candle burns out, it ignites another candle; just before that candle burns out, it ignites yet another candle. It is different candles, one after another, but is it the same flame or a different flame each time? The candle represents the physical bodies, the flame represents what is carried over to the next 'incarnation.' The point of the example is to indicate that it makes no sense to say either that it is the same flame or a different one.
@moonbus saidThat last part there is a very good point and it is quite a difficult topic.
@Philokalia
How nice to see a thread on this. Kudos.
One of the better presenters of Eastern ideas to people from Western cultures is Marco Pallis, author of, among other books, "The Way and the Mountain."
One of the most common and, for Westerners, easiest, misconceptions about reincarnation is to suppose that there is some thing, call it a "soul" for exampl ...[text shortened]... ate that it makes no sense to say either that it is the same flame or a different one.
What you teach now is a more popular consensus these days, and I will say, the idea that the personality doesn't carry over at all is actually rather vital to the Buddhist concept of reincarnation because we are talking about people trying to achieve enlightenment, right. They can't be born over & over again with the same personal characteristics because these are characteristics that would be extinguished.
Moreover, what is Nirvana but for the ultimate extinguishment, right?
So I would agree that the consensus is that personalities do not carry over -- yet, even Easterners do end up caught up in this romance, though I think this is more of the folksy Buddhism. I would also say that there are many Hindus that believe personality traits can carry over -- no idea to what level this is folksy, and to what level this is canonical.
There is some old Sutta that describes the passing on of something. I forget what. But, judging from a Wikipedia, it would be vijnana, consciousness:
Different traditions within Buddhism have offered different theories on what reincarnates and how reincarnation happens. One theory suggests that it occurs through consciousness (Pali: samvattanika-viññana)[156][157] or stream of consciousness (Pali: viññana-sotam,[158] Sanskrit: vijñāna-srotām, vijñāna-santāna, or citta-santāna) upon death, which reincarnates into a new aggregation. This process, states this theory, is similar to the flame of a dying candle lighting up another.[159][160] The consciousness in the newly born being is neither identical to nor entirely different from that in the deceased but the two form a causal continuum or stream in this Buddhist theory. Transmigration is influenced by a being's past karma (kamma).[161][162] The root cause of rebirth, states Buddhism, is the abiding of consciousness in ignorance (Pali: avijja, Sanskrit: avidya) about the nature of reality, and when this ignorance is uprooted, rebirth ceases.[163]
I have to say that I agree that the transmigration of consciousness is a rational conclusion from a Buddhist perspective... I think, also, the traditional concepts of enlightened persons being able to recall their lives, and the concepts of things like the Jataka tales (the past lives of the Buddha) hint at some idea of consciousness being passed down and teaching lessons.
However, I do understand this is more in line with the religion of Buddhism and less with the more hardcore philosophical Buddhism or Zen Buddhist type attitudes. Though these, two, vary a lot.
One of the other important things for all Westerners to understand about Buddhism, of course, is that it is not as doctrinally rigid as the West which has always had its Nicene creeds & cultivated dogma. It is unfathomable to think of any Christian who denies Christ to really be the head of a Churhc (well, maybe not now), but within Buddhism, which is syncretic and accepting of many perspctives, it is not a big deal at all to have pretty divergent views and to be a member of the Sangha.
@Philokalia
I have read a fair bit in the Buddhist tradition and you are right that it is much less doctrinaire than the Christian tradition.
What the Buddhist tradition works towards is the instillment not of a set of beliefs, but rather of mental discipline, and it has a multitude of well-tried and tested techniques for instilling mental discipline (such as meditation). Hence, the different 'schools' of Buddhism.
Some of these schools say that personality is only a vehicle for the working out of karma, and that multiple personalities will be taken on and dropped along the way, like clothes, which are necessary and appropriate in each separate incarnation. Memories of past incarnations do not necessarily mean that the same personality is carried over. What is carried over is the karma (the consequences of previous actions) remaining to be discharged in the next incarnation, in different circumstances and with a different set of personal talents or abilities suited to the next stage.
The transmigration of consciousness is a separate issue, I believe, and several ancient religions do accept this principle. Orphism in ancient Greece, for example, appears to have accepted this.
@moonbus saidRight, Buddhism ends up becoming a tool for treating the anxiety and pain that surrounds life in many interpretations. To many, the cosmology & the metaphysics, the religious aspects of it are mutable.
@Philokalia
I have read a fair bit in the Buddhist tradition and you are right that it is much less doctrinaire than the Christian tradition.
What the Buddhist tradition works towards is the instillment not of a set of beliefs, but rather of mental discipline, and it has a multitude of well-tried and tested techniques for instilling mental discipline (such as meditation ...[text shortened]... ons do accept this principle. Orphism in ancient Greece, for example, appears to have accepted this.
This is why you have such different cosmologies ranging from Sri Lanka to Tibet to China to Japan to Korea, and sometimes within the same Sangha (Korea's Jogye Buddhism, for instance) you can have a mix of people who believe gods and those who do not.
There is a massive distinction between folk Buddhism and the Buddhism of the philosophers and the literati.
Buddhism, I think, is so malleable and changeable that it isn't utterly absurd to claim being a Buddhist and a Christian at the same time -- of course, this would mean that the Christian cosmology and Christ as God is a very central aspect (otherwise you wouldn't be a Christian)... But yeah, I have met my share of Koreans who are great admirers of Buddhism and study it in addition to maintaining their Christianity. I do not think they are correct... But it isn't absurd.
... So in a very real sense: Buddhism is all about functioning as a tool to alleviate pain...
And it is about the uppaya, the skillful means, of alleviating the pain of existence, and providing the Buddhist teachings that lead to Nirvana to people. So, even if people conceptualize things different and have different doctrine, if it affirms the core of what Buddhism is, it is passable.
The Buddhists are able to take the concept of unity in the essential, liberty in the non-essential to a very radical conclusion that Christians never can quite do with.
-Removed-Well, to play devil's advocate...
We generally accept the idea of our Christian afterlife (of heaven & hell) based on the faith that we put into the divine revelation, do we not?
What, exactly, is absurd about Buddhists and Hindus accepting their concepts of rebirth based on divine revelation?
@philokalia saidYes, I agree. Buddhism is a technique for coping with suffering; and yes, it is quite compatible with metaphysical and/or theological belief systems involving a God or gods, or no such.
Right, Buddhism ends up becoming a tool for treating the anxiety and pain that surrounds life in many interpretations. To many, the cosmology & the metaphysics, the religious aspects of it are mutable.
This is why you have such different cosmologies ranging from Sri Lanka to Tibet to China to Japan to Korea, and sometimes within the same Sangha (Korea's ...[text shortened]... berty in the non-essential[/b] to a very radical conclusion that Christians never can quite do with.
Asian traditions in general, including Buddhism, generally embrace two distinct spiritual paths: the esoteric, or inner-directed, and the exoteric, the outer-directed. The esoteric would correspond roughly to the life of contemplation, or the monk's path in Christian traditions, whereas the exoteric corresponds to the path of works (the Mother Theresa model). Both are accepted as valid, and they are not mutually exclusive.
Personally, the symbolism of Buddhism speaks more to my own spiritual condition than any of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic ones. Which is not to say that I necessarily think that reincarnation really happens in any but some metaphorical sense. Reincarnation is just part of the symbolism; an instance of uppaya for coming to grips with the issues any particular person confronts. If the idea helps, use it, if not, drop it. This is like the story of Adam and Eve in the Judeo-Christian tradition; it does not matter whether it really happened, and the empirical evidence of genetics strongly indicates that it did not. What the story of Adam and Eve is about is not to recount a factual history anyway; what it is doing is placing mankind in a moral context, showing mankind that he has responsibility for the consequences of his actions, and that this consciousness awakens with the knowledge of a) good and evil, and b) his own mortality. It is a powerful metaphor; it just doesn't happen to speak to me personally.
@moonbus saidHave you ever read the Philokalia -- the text after which I have taken my name? I think that you would be quite impressed with a lot of the content. Particularly, Evagrios the Solitary has a lot of advice on prayer and on moral behavior that honestly becomes indistinguishable from a lot of the Buddhist material that you will read out there.
Yes, I agree. Buddhism is a technique for coping with suffering; and yes, it is quite compatible with metaphysical and/or theological belief systems involving a God or gods, or no such.
Asian traditions in general, including Buddhism, generally embrace two distinct spiritual paths: the esoteric, or inner-directed, and the exoteric, the outer-directed. The esoteric ...[text shortened]... d b) his own mortality. It is a powerful metaphor; it just doesn't happen to speak to me personally.
In Orthodoxy, we conceptualize prayer as meditative, and while it does involve a component of praying for others with the belief that we are affecting reality through our prayers, there are plenty who emphasize hesychasm (the meditative praying of the Jesus prayer) as the basis for spiritual advancement and a form of meditation unto itself.
Were you bron into a Western tradition? I think a lot of people end up giving up their Christian past because they were in a tradition which does not emphasize the mental life or the ethics of Christianity. If they do not get the whole picture of what Christianity is, then they end up becoming disillusioned.
This is not an accusation that you just willy-nilly abandoned the tradition... I know that finding a lot of this material can take decades, and a lot of people just never have had the interest in it.
