GOOD QUESTION GOOD ANSWER Rebirth

GOOD QUESTION GOOD ANSWER
Rebirth

 

“Where do we humans come from and where are we going?”

ANSWER: 

There are three possible answers to this question. Those who believe in a god or gods usually claims that before individuals are created, they do not exist, then they come into being through the will of a god. They live their lives and then, according to what they believe or do during their lives, they either go to eternal heaven or eternal hell. There are others, humanists and scientists, who claim that the individual comes into being at conception due to natural causes, lives, and then at death, ceases to exist. Buddhism does not accept either of these explanations.

The first gives rise to many ethical problems. If a good god really creates each of us, it is difficult to explain why so many people are born with the most dreadful deformities or why so many babies are miscarried just before birth or are still-born. Another problem with the theistic explanation is that it seems very unjust that a person should suffer eternal pain in hell for what they did in just 60 or 70 years on earth. 

Sixty or 70 years of non-beliefs or immoral living does not seem to deserve eternal punishment. Likewise, 60 or 70 years of virtuous living seems a very small outlay for eternal bliss in heaven. The second explanation is better than the first and has more scientific evidence to support it but it still leaves important questions unanswered. 

How can a phenomenon so amazingly complex as human consciousness develop from the simple meeting the sperm and the egg and in just nine months? And now that parapsychology is a recognized branch of science, phenomena like telepathy are increasingly difficult to fit into the materialistic model of the mind.

Buddhism offers the most satisfactory explanation of where humans come from and where they are going. When we die, the mind with all the tendencies, preferences, abilities and characteristics that have been developed and conditioned in this life, re-establishes itself in a fertilized egg. Thus the individual grows, is reborn and develops a personality conditioned both by the mental characteristics that have been carried over from the last life and by the new environment. The personality will change and be modified by conscious effort and conditioning factors like education, parental influence and society and once again at death, re-establish itself in a new fertilized egg. This process of dying and being reborn will continue until the conditions that cause it, craving and ignorance, cease. When they do, instead of being reborn, the mind attains a state called Nirvana and this is the ultimate goal of Buddhism and the purpose of life.

 

QUESTION: How does the mind go from one body to another?

ANSWER: 

Think of it as being like radio waves. The radio waves, which are not made up of words and music but energy at different frequencies, are transmitted, move through space, are attracted to and picked up by the receiver from where they are broadcast as words and music. It is similar with the mind. At death, mental energy moves through space, is attracted to and picked up by the fertilized egg. As the embryo grows, it centers itself in the brain from where it later ‘broadcasts’ itself as the new personality.

 

QUESTION: Isn't it the soul or the self that passes from one body to another when someone is reborn?

ANSWER: 

Not according to the Buddha. In fact, he taught that the belief in an eternal soul or self is a delusion created by the ego and which further encourages the ego. When we see that there is no eternal self, egoism, narcissism, conceit and self-centeredness disappear. The individual is not a solid rock but a flowing stream. 

QUESTION: That sounds like a contradiction. If there is no self there must also be no identity, and if there is no identity how can you say that we are reborn?

ANSWER: 

It is like a football team which has been going for 95 years. During that time hundreds of players have joined the team, played with it for five or ten years, left and been replaced by other players. Even though not one of the original players is still in the team or even alive, it is still valid to say that 'the team' exists. 

Its identity is recognizable despite the continual change. 

The players are hard, solid entities but what is the team's identity made up of? Its name, memories of its past achievements, the feelings that the players and the supporters have towards it, its esprit de corps, etc. 

Individuals are the same. Despite the fact that both body and mind are continually changing, it is still valid to say that the person who is reborn is a continuation of the person who died - not because any unchanging self has passed from one to another but because identity persists in memories, dispositions, traits, mental habits and psychological tendencies. 

QUESTION: Okay then, if we all lived before, why can’t we remember our former lives?

ANSWER: 

Some people can, at least during their early childhood. But it is true that most people cannot. 

There may be several reasons for this. Perhaps the nine months in the womb before birth erases all or most memories. Perhaps the shock of all the new sensory input at birth, after nine months of almost complete sensory deprivation, just wipes out all former memories. 

QUESTION: Is one always reborn as a human being?

ANSWER: 

No, there are several realms in which one can be reborn. Some people are reborn in heaven, some are reborn in hell, some are reborn as hungry spirits and so on. Heaven is not so much a place as a state of existence where one has a subtle body and where the mind experiences mainly pleasure. Like all conditioned states, heaven is impermanent and when one's life span there is finished, one could well be reborn again as a human. Hell, likewise, is not a place but a state of existence where one has a subtle body and where the mind experiences mainly anxiety and distress. Being reborn as a hungry ghost, again, is a state of being where the body is subtle and where the mind is continually plagued by longing and dissatisfaction. So heavenly beings experience mainly pleasure, hell beings and hungry spirits experience mainly pain and human beings experience usually a mixture of both. The main difference between the human realm and other realms is the body type and the quality of experience. 

QUESTION: What decides where a person will be reborn?

ANSWER: 

The most important factor, but not the only one, influencing where we will be reborn and what sort of life we shall have, is kamma. The word kamma means 'action' and refers to our intentional mental, verbal and bodily actions. In other words, what we are is conditioned very much by how we have thought and acted in the past. Likewise, how we think and act now will influence how we will be in the future. The gentle, loving type of person tends to be reborn in a heaven realm or as a human being who has a predominance of pleasant experiences. The anxious, worried or extremely cruel type of person tends to be reborn in a hell realm or as a human being who has a predominance of unpleasant experiences. The person who develops obsessive craving, fierce longings and burning ambitions that can never be satisfied tends to be reborn as a hungry spirit or as a human being frustrated by longing and wanting. Whatever mental habits are strongly developed in this life will simply continue in the next life. Most people, however, are reborn as a human being.

~ Venerable S Dhammika