Thread: Tell me your thoughts on reincarnation

Originally Posted by Taosaur

These misunderstandings arise from trying to graft the idea of reincarnation onto the Western idea of the universe as a mechanical artifact with all different, distinct parts that may work together but exist independently, hence the idea of 'soul' as an indivisible unit of self that shouldn't change. Even in cultures that believe in both reincarnation and some type of soul, that soul is seen as an extension of a singular force/entity that encompasses all that exists. The universe is not a machine designed for a purpose, but a drama enacted as play: one being pretending to be a plethora of forms, including us, for amusement.

In Buddhism, there is no soul at all, but merely a stream, a continuity. The teaching of karma/rebirth emphasizes that there is no escape from the continuity of actions and events, that we neither pop into being nor are inserted into the universe from outside at our birth. Instead, our existence is continuous and intertwined with all beings throughout beginningless time. An individual's existence might rest more immediately on the activities of some past beings than others, so those beings can be said to be 'past lives,' but like our individual identities here and now, it's an abstraction employed for convenience, not a complete, hard-and-fast truth.

In that case, belief in this seems odd. I mean, in what practical or detectable way would the world differ if this were true.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

In that case, belief in this seems odd. I mean, in what practical or detectable way would the world differ if this were true.

In what way would the world differ if gravity were true? Karma/rebirth is a way of engaging the experience of being human, not a science-fiction premise. Its value lies in encouraging us to get out of our own heads and take a broader approach to identity, recognizing our common cause with all beings and making less trouble for ourselves and others as a result. You don't need to employ the concept of karma/rebirth, but as with gravity, doing so may give you a more complete understanding of events.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

In what way would the world differ if gravity were true? Karma/rebirth is a way of engaging the experience of being human, not a science-fiction premise. Its value lies in encouraging us to get out of our own heads and take a broader approach to identity, recognizing our common cause with all beings and making less trouble for ourselves and others as a result. You don't need to employ the concept of karma/rebirth, but as with gravity, doing so may give you a more complete understanding of events.

If I'm thinking correctly, we don't differ on facts.

Merely ways of viewing the world.

Maybe I'm not correct.


Duck/Rabbit.

Well, reincarnation makes a hell of a lot more sense than any religion.

It seems that Taosaur has said:
Because of reincarnation, people of the world gather from their past lives information and experience on how to be a better person. We don't remember the past lives eactly but we carry the values of what we bring.

Am I right in saying this is what you said?

If so would being a "bad" person get harder and harder the longer man exists? As in the more past lives one lives the better they become?

Originally Posted by doctor

It seems that Taosaur has said:
Because of reincarnation, people of the world gather from their past lives information and experience on how to be a better person. We don't remember the past lives eactly but we carry the values of what we bring.

Am I right in saying this is what you said?

If so would being a "bad" person get harder and harder the longer man exists? As in the more past lives one lives the better they become?

No, I would (and did) cite this view as a misunderstanding. It derives from the idea that there's some irreducible unit of self, the soul, which had a beginning and is moving toward some goal or purpose. No one has lived "more past lives" than anyone else.

Awareness of karma and rebirth is a first step toward recognizing our true situation, an introductory teaching which doesn't lead anywhere in and of itself, but provides a foundation for further insight. We will not learn or develop or improve by passing through the endless rounds of rebirth, nor will we ever escape unless we dedicate ourselves to doing so.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

If I'm thinking correctly, we don't differ on facts.

Merely ways of viewing the world.

Maybe I'm not correct.


Duck/Rabbit.

Ultimately duck/rabbit, yes. Disputes on worldview tend to be one person presenting arguments about the position of the ears while the other is looking at a duck.

sorry still confused
but trying to learn:

so if all is one and one is all (is that even correct???)
then how would we gain individual concious.

and also how does death work?

just me trying to see the world from another's eyes

Originally Posted by doctor

sorry still confused
but trying to learn:

so if all is one and one is all (is that even correct???)
then how would we gain individual concious.

and also how does death work?

just me trying to see the world from another's eyes

Well in my eyes we never really die. Mostly just our bodies giving out. So (this part might offend someone but i'm sorry) until we are reborn we might go to some kind of heaven/hell based on karma.

And also I disagree on how everyone has lived the same ammount of time. That wouldn't make much sense with the growth of the world population.

Originally Posted by music_man

Well in my eyes we never really die. Mostly just our bodies giving out. So (this part might offend someone but i'm sorry) until we are reborn we might go to some kind of heaven/hell based on karma.

And also I disagree on how everyone has lived the same ammount of time. That wouldn't make much sense with the growth of the world population.

Belief in reincarnation is merely an evasion of death and a support of ego without the accompanying understanding of emptiness, specifically no-self. The Buddha teaches that all suffering in the world arises from thirsting after forms (including thought-forms, concepts) that have no set shape, no independent identity: that do not exist at all as we envision them. The shadow we try hardest to grasp is ego: the self, personal identity.

Let go of the idea that you are a self-contained entity existing in its own right, and some of the knots behind rebirth begin to untangle, such as how it has little to do with the population of the world, human or otherwise.

There's a continuity to life on earth, like the course of a river: some currents run eons, some centuries, and some for 72-odd years; at places the river is wide with many different flows and eddies, yet all those currents may reach a narrowing through which they must pass as one, and further on spill into the ocean where they are multiplied into yet more currents and each current giving rise to countless waves. We wouldn't count the currents of all the rivers and insist that they match the number of ocean waves, nor could we, because none of the above would hold their shape long enough for us to try. Now, we might find gathered in a wave some 92% of the water that comprised a river current long ago, or we might find a dozen waves each with 8% of a single long-gone current. We wouldn't say the wave, even if it had every bit of the water from the old current, was the same as the current, but we could trace a continuity between the two, and it wouldn't be an orderly, straight line.

In this way it can be said that a great lama in Tibet might put out 200 emanations upon death, or that thousands of individuals simultaneously can be the incarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.

Some believe we are on an infinite cycle of life and death but we are born on different worlds. Now I'm not sure if thats what you were getting at but. It would make more sense with the world population thing.

When you die your matter will decompose into its most basic form and from there it will spread all over the world, becoming many things and beginning the process again (Builds up, breaks down, disperses - Repeat). That's my idea of reincarnation and as for the "soul"; that is created by the person, so I believe once you die your "soul" (essence) goes as well. I believe that is the truth and whether I chose to accept it is irrelevant (I find it hard to accept btw). Anyway, that's just my opinion.

one thing i dont understand is why people think if we are reincarnated we have to come back to earth? Isnt there billions and billions of other solar systems? Cant we just as easily go to one of them rather than back here?

I didn't grow up believing in reincarnation

It was a false belief by my catholic views

and a belief people carried just so they can dream of coming back to earth. which didn't make sense to me at the time, who would want to leave heaven?

but I have a certain. . . policy I follow by. and its the human experience. and against my belief, thousands were having a near death experiences, and were being told about the grand scheme of reincarnation. what it is, and how it functions. and thousands of these people, were devout christians who had never believed in reincarnation before. who were church goers

why would they suddenly change 'sides', unless for an authentic life altering experience?

to reject their experience, was to say they were all fooled by the devil in disguise

but the story they were saying, presented a truth greater than christianity has ever presented

so I listened to their story, based on their experiences.

according to their story. . reincarnation is real, and this is how it works

First off, we have this thing called free will. Our free will is divine. God has no intention of forcing you to do anything. The story starts with your birth. You CHOOSE to be born. Why? In your first birth, thousands or millions of years ago, it was simple. To EXPERIENCE the material realm, and to conquer its challenges. When you conquer it, you are 'ascended' and are ready to partake in higher realms.

Essentially, your consciousness starts out as a child, and must learn and grow. Earth is your school ground

But why isn't just one life time enough? Well it might have been, had we not fallen into the illusion of death

There's a catch. It's this thing called karma. Karma is apart of the law of co-creating. What you do to others is done onto you. That is karma. So if you love others...others love you. Its the golden rule of the universe. And it is put in place to deter people from harming others. Because if you harm others..you are harmed.

If you have a great deal of Karma, you are bound to the earth realm. You can not descend into heaven and remain there. You must return to resolve your karma. You must......reincarnate............But you will always create karma so long as you remain in the carnal mind of the ego. The only way to resolve karma, is to rise above the dualistic frame of mind that created it. To enter into the Christ Consciousness. Which is why Jesus said, the only way to the Father is through Christ. Jesus meant to awaken the Christ in you, not to place him on a pedestal.

We create karmic relationships all the time. A person we are bound to, until we resolve the karma.

At some point in your evolution, you are able to detach yourself from your previous earthly life. You know it is your life, but you know it is no longer you. This detachment is a good thing. It means you are finally separating yourself from the ego.

Now you can decide what your next incarnation will be like, when you are born, where you are born, and what major events will take place in your life. You create and design your own destiny in accordance to where your personal evolution is at.

Eventually you will be at the point where your only desire is to free yourself from karma - so you can finally realize the Christ Consciousness

But to do so, life gets interesting

You must learn to love those you hated . . . or you will never be free of that karmic relationship and will always be bounded to earth. You WILL choose to partake in an intimate relationship of some kind with a soul you have hated or done wrong to. Be it, mother, father, sister, or lover.

Most of our romances are with souls we have had problems with in past life..which is why romances can be tragic.

We don't always resolve our difficult relationships...but it doesn't mean you have to be bound to this person forever. There is one last thing you can do to free you from your karmic bound. . . . forgive them and forgive yourself.

Forgiveness always resolves karma. Always.

Once you have learned enough from the earth realm, you can finally graduate and begin learning in the heavenly realms. Life never ends, and neither does enlightenment. Reaching enlightenment in earthly terms, is just graduating from high school. What about college and there after?

There are many enlightened souls that choose to return back to earth - why? Without them we would be lost. Were so trapped in our lower consciousness, sometimes we need someone to jolt us awake. I think such service is the college lesson.

I understand Buddha spoke against the soul. But words get in the way. From what it sounds like, the soul is who you think you are, your personal identity. When in reality, you are just pure consciousness.

Reincarnation isn't really the plan. Reincarnation doesn't necessarily help you reach Christ Consciousness. If anything, all it does is make you tired of living on earth - angry and bitter. Remember that forgiveness frees you from karma. There are ascended humans...that only lived ONE LIFE...ONE LIFE.....And they reached enlightenment. Maybe they were forgiving people?

believe it or not, I didn't learn this from studying new age or the hindu religion. all of these ideas were expressed in near death experiences, even by church going orthodox christians.

juroara, I can assent the gist of what you're saying, though you wax a bit dramatic for my tastes

This bit:

There are ascended humans...that only lived ONE LIFE...ONE LIFE.....And they reached enlightenment.

I find to be a nonsense statement. In a beginningless, endless cosmos, what does it mean to have lived one life? What are the alternatives?

I think it is extremely hard for anyone from the west to understand the concepts of reincarnation. When we imagine heaven, we see ourselves as we look now (except maybe with wings) floating around in the clouds. When we try to envision ourselves reincarnated, we see our consciousness continuing on in a different body (like that old show, quantum leap; I was a fan). Its so hard to get past the idea of discrete individuals that we can only imagine reincarnation as a continuity of oneself as that image of a discrete individual.

From an eastern perspective, things like past life regression and living just one life are illogical.

The hardest part for us here in the west is that since our languages are also so much different along with our perspectives, its hard to even attempt to describe to each other (east and west) where we are coming from. For me, the only way I can even attempt to try to understand buddhist thinking is to make certain assumptions.

Firstly, although I don't necessarily believe this, when I contemplate buddhist teachings I assume that Gotama Buddha was in fact a perfectly enlightened one.

Then I assume that if he was perfectly enlightened, everything he said must make sense in the correct context.

Then I try to think, in what way could ideas such as reincarnation make sense? That is, not incorporate any supernatural or unfalsifiable premises. If there is one concept in buddhist teaching that is universal throughout, it is the idea of dependent origination. Cause and effect. When this is taken with the idea that the dhamma is not dogmatic or to be believed blindly, it becomes clear that whatever the buddha intended to say, he meant that it should be logical and understandable through causal reasoning.

From this perspective, reincarnation becomes self evident. We know that nothing is created or destroyed. Things simply change. We also know that recurring patterns are inevitable. When a human being is seen simply as a pattern of molecules and ideas, it becomes apparent that through endless time, this pattern is bound to show up countless times, changed only in the ways that everything is changed; through the gentle progress of the world. Our actions today effect the state that our recurring pattern will come to exist in in the future, and the way we behave now will effect the way the world reacts to things that are like us down the road.

Good stuff guys, if I HAD to believe in something happening after death, I'd go with the Tibetan world-view as laid out in The Tibetan Book of the Dead (incorrectly named, by the West, mind you).

Basically, there are 6 levels of existence.
The first hell realm is brought about by hatred (mostly) where you experience hot, cold, compression, and dissection.
The second hell realm is brought about by greed (mostly) here you'll have insatiable hunger and thirst.
The third realm is the animal realm that is brought about by ignorance.
The fourth is the one with the most potential for enlightenment, the human realm.
The fifth is the titan realm, where you will eventually fall back down to a hell realm because of your desire for power.
The sixth is the god real, you'll have a very long life and great intelligence, but you'll fall back down to a hell realm because of arrogance.

Of course I think it's rather pointless to go through life thinking about death and what happens thereafter (assuming we're all laymen here) so I don't prescribe to these beliefs, but it explains a lot more than the "Heaven or Hell" (or purgatory I suppose) theory. Not to mention it's way more interesting haha.

I believe in some form of reincarnation I guess. Since matter can't be created or destroyed we have to come back as something

Taosaur seems to be the only person not talking out of his cornhole.

Originally Posted by grasshoppa

Taosaur seems to be the only person not talking out of his cornhole.

How so? Are you just trolling?

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

I think braindeath and brain damage poses a problem to reincarnation.

How so, the brain would be seat of the soul.. but without the seat the soul can not function in that body.

Or you could be stuck per se in between planes when your brain is damaged.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

How so? Are you just trolling?

A little bit. I just thuoght that everyone aside from Taosaur is just filling in the blanks with their imagination whereas Taosaur provides us with eastern philosophy - the source of this belief.

Originally Posted by grasshoppa

A little bit. I just thuoght that everyone aside from Taosaur is just filling in the blanks with their imagination whereas Taosaur provides us with eastern philosophy - the source of this belief.

On the one hand, I'd like to agree with you. I personally don't really agree with just filling in the blanks with imagination, since that is precisely what skeptics would say all religious belief is, and I don't agree. Unfortunately though, the thread isn't "Tell me what you know about the doctrines of reincarnation as professed by eastern religions" its "tell me your thoughts on reincarnation." which would include whatever it is people think about it. Either way, it is healthy to try to understand religious ideas from ones own perspective, although I do think there are some people who should do some more indepth study into what is actually meant by reincarnation before they form ideas about it.

I have to admit though, the real reason I questioned you is because I'm pretty sure that although there is a fairly decent chance that Taosaur has covered more ground in the buddhist texts than I have (or at least I hope he has if he calls himself a buddhist), I know I'm not that far behind him, and everything I've said has been based on careful study of both buddhist and hindu literature.

buddha didn't invent reincarnation, and many buddhists believe neither did he teach it. that he only taught rebirth.

there was no imagination involved in my post, only direct experiences of human beings. direct experience is the foundation of all eastern beliefs and philosophy. why do the eastern religions talks about an energy body, because of their personal experiences with it, not because they simply thought it would be cool if people had one

my post is closer in line to the hindu religion than buddhism

While I appreciate the votes of confidence, I wouldn't say my responses here entirely lack the scent of my cornhole, even if they've taken on a fairly firm consistency through the digestion of lots of Alan Watts, Tibetan lamas, Joseph Campbell, and Buddhist scriptures. I've also had a fair sampling of Richard Bach, The Celestine Prophecy, NDEs (which are hardly unanimous, nor immune to cultural bias), Ishmael, and even a bit of Scientology, and I've got to say all the latter strike me as quite light reading compared to all the former.

Reading aside, this topic is easy for me to riff on because I've been thinking about reincarnation and rebirth for about as long as I've been thinking, not so much in relation to my upcoming death as to where I came from. Around age four or five it came to seem that I often understood things beyond what I should have known, beyond the experience I'd acquired in those few years, and also that my family had not always been my family. I came to identify with a larger entity, like a spirit of which I was one avatar, so my childhood religion was a kind of spirit-shamanism with reincarnation or multi-incarnation assumed.

Through adolescence, pondering cosmology was a favorite passtime, and I pretty much over-thought the whole thing, coming up with something kind of like the grand narrative juroara laid out. In fact here's a poem I wrote when I was 17-18 that bears a strong resemblance to juroara's post:

Spoiler for A breath exhaled:

A breath exhaled in the wind,
we leave this latest flesh to death.
Countless lives, surrendered at birth,
are remembered, resolved in this timeless instant.


Sloughing off the crippling pain,
we gather the wisdom and the strength.
With these
our paints
and our self
the canvas,
We work now as ever
perfecting the piece.


This spirit is enhanced, expressed
more clearly with each passing life:
Optimism
helps us bear the agonies of mortal life;
Curiosity
drives the soul to understand
and thus, transcend;
Aggression,
cast as anger once
would raze the struggling hordes;
now honed to an iron will,
it keeps our kindred from the storm.
Each trait evolves in flesh.


Our recent life now catalogued and
added to the shining whole,
We seek out opportunities
in genes and wombs of human hosts.
Past prodigies and wealthy families,
past the comfortable,
secure,
we look into each forming seed.
We look for something more.


For the challenges of new life
and for new things to be seen,
we let the past lives slip away
and ghost joins machine.

Buddhism cropped up in college, and I took a course of meditation, read Sogyal Rinpoche's A Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (an attempt to provide the kind of overview for which people had mistaken the Book of the Dead), and while it may be a stretch to call me a Buddhist insofar as I've never taken refuge (kind of the Buddhist equivalent of Confirmation) the Buddhist views have pretty much won out.

The value I see chiming in on a discussion like this one is not so much to give people a "correct" idea of reincarnation, but because the topic seems to be a good lever to pry open someone's worldview and get them to step outside, see the shape of the thing, and kick the tires.