Tags / 20 quotes from 1 source
#reincarnation
The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian)
Buddhist reincarnation versus no-self
I have found Buddhist philosophy to be a rich intellectual tradition. Yet its often profoundly rational thought sits alongside other ideas which seem to be no more than outdated superstitions. Conceptions of self are a case in point. Like many, I have been struck by the…
Meeting a man who believes he is reincarnated
I wanted to find out what it really meant for someone who sincerely believed he was a reincarnation.
Levels of reincarnation and the tulkus
‘In Buddhism, everybody is a reincarnation. But there are different levels of reincarnation. Some choose what kind of home they want to be reincarnated in, in order to help others. Some are reincarnated without their own wishes because of their past karmic accumulations.’ In…
No memory of a previous life
Revealingly, however, there is an absence of any semblance of a personal relationship between Akong II and Akong I. Most obviously, Akong says of his previous life, ‘I don’t remember anything.’
Death like changing house
For him, all that matters is that everybody says he is the first reincarnation of Akong, and that means he must have the same qualities. ‘Then I have to serve the best that I can for the benefit of people whenever I can. I’m not here to investigate the first Akong.’ Nor does he…
Reincarnated lamas are just Tibetan culture
Ringu says that the whole idea of reincarnation is ‘just Tibetan culture’. As he explains, the idea of lines of reincarnated lamas is not something that goes back more than two millennia to the life of the Buddha, but one that actually only started in the twelfth century with…
Tibet became full of tulkus
‘It became like a system that if your teacher is supposed to be a highly realised being then his students would try to find his reincarnation, and Tibet became full of tulkus,’ said Ringu. ‘So some of them may be true reincarnations, some of them maybe not so much, so we don’t…
Reincarnation is not survival of the self
Akong and Ringu’s lack of any felt connection with their previous incarnations, the absence of any clear evidence that someone even is a reincarnation, and the no-self doctrine of anattā: all these suggest that, whatever reincarnation is supposed to be, it is not about the…
No distinction between self and other
Akong’s explanation starts with the assertion that on the Buddhist view of ultimate reality, there is no distinction between self and other. ‘Each individual is part of everybody,’ he tells me. ‘We are all the same mind, part of the same thing. We are not divided.’ How is it…
Buildings around the same emptiness
Akong offers a better explanation of what might survive death by use of an analogy. Ultimate reality is like an empty space. Individuals are like buildings occupying a part of this space. The end of a life is like the demolishing of a building, but then we build another – our…
The habits practised inside the building
But for Akong, these aren’t the most important things at all. What really matters are the habits that are practised inside the building, and which give the space a strange kind of character that persists even once the walls have come tumbling down.
Habitual tendencies and the mindstream
That which continues from one life to the next is not the contents of consciousness, such as memories or knowledge of people and places, but the mind’s ‘habitual tendencies’. So if, for example, you have practised mindfulness enough to have extreme mental clarity, then that…
Coherent if impersonal, ethical if personal
Buddhism needs to deny the personal nature of reincarnation in order to make it coherent, but assert its personal nature in order to make it ethical.
Mindstream emanation rather than rebirth
In practice, Buddhists seem to be ambivalent about the extent to which reincarnation is personal. For instance, many insist that even the terms ‘rebirth’ and ‘reincarnation’ are misleading, and that ‘mindstream emanation’ is better.
Inheriting the karma of a predecessor
Rather than being a rebirth of self, it is as if you inherit the habits and karma of your predecessor and you try to leave a decent legacy to the next person in the chain. But, in other ways, Akong does talk as though it will really be him in the next life.
Accumulating good karma for a good house
‘Death is trying to change another house. If I want a good house then I have to accumulate good karma, positive things.’
Where reincarnation gets slippery
This is where I think the doctrine of reincarnation gets slippery. On the one hand, for it to make any sense, it clearly can’t involve the straightforward transference of one life to another body. You have a set of memories, plans, projects, friends and family. All of these…
The plural of anecdote is not data
Here we move from conceptual coherence to empirical evidence, and despite the numerous books and testimonies Akong and Ringu cite, as the old saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. If someone had really remembered a detail from a past life which could be verified and…
Choosing the late lama's possessions
Without necessarily adopting a deliberate strategy, a child could sense from the reactions of the group which object should be his settled choice. This is not remotely fanciful: even horses can do as much.
Describing, not criticising, Buddhist claims
Reincarnation in the context of anattā, even if it takes place, is certainly nothing like survival of the self in any ordinary sense – and that is not in itself a criticism of Buddhism, but simply a description of its claims.