Reincarnation

drumbeat said:
Logically reincarnation doesn't make sense.

7 billion people are alive now.
When there was only 10 million people on Earth, where were the other 6,990,000,000 'souls' that are in use today?
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The traditional Indian answer to that one is that most rebirths aren't human rebirths. I'm most familiar with the earlier Buddhists and will use them as my example. Buddhists say that being born as a human is very auspicious and not something to be wasted, because enlightenment is easier to attain as a human than it is from most other states of rebirth.

The Buddhists traditionally say that all sentient beings are reborn according to their karma. That includes all the animals, from insects to us, and it's common and routine to move from one to the other. Not only that, they also traditionally believed that there are an unlimited and potentially infinite number of other world systems out there, all with their own loads of inhabitants.

And perhaps most significantly, the Buddhists gave everything a 'vertical dimension', imagining a whole hierarchy of multiple heavens and hells, representing ontological states of being analogous to the various psychological states that individuals can attain (or descend to). The heavens are kind of ontological analogues to the various jhanas of meditation for example. Traditionally, rebirths can (and typically do) occur in these higher and lower 'planes' as well as on this earthly one.

Significantly, it's possible for human beings to be reborn as gods in heaven, and given the unlimited time-scales of Buddhist cosmology, all of us have been gods at some point. (Traditional Buddhist gods are mortal, albeit extremely long-lived.) All of us have been hell-demons too. That's the attitude that Buddhism tries to impart: when we see an insect walking along, we should think "Been there, done that."
 
Jan Ardena said:
spidergoat,

It's like the question ''does god exist'', there's no amount of external proof of evidence that can convince anyone. Either you accept it (instead of belief), or not.
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Most emphatically no, not in this case. If reincarnation works as people say it does, and people can remember their past lives, it is theoretically possible to confirm their story.


Jan said:
Either way it doesn't matter..
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Like whether God exists?



Jan said:
But what represents the ''incarnation''?
IOW how does the philosophy account for the 'mind' and/or 'personality'?
Presumably the body is what is incarnated into (if that make sense).
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In Zen Buddhist philosophy, the mind is only thought, and thought comes from culture.
 
Yazata said:
The traditional Indian answer to that one is that most rebirths aren't human rebirths. I'm most familiar with the earlier Buddhists and will use them as my example. Buddhists say that being born as a human is very auspicious and not something to be wasted, because enlightenment is easier to attain as a human than it is from most other states of rebirth.

The Buddhists traditionally say that all sentient beings are reborn according to their karma. That includes all the animals, from insects to us, and it's common and routine to move from one to the other. Not only that, they also traditionally believed that there are an unlimited and potentially infinite number of other world systems out there, all with their own loads of inhabitants.

And perhaps most significantly, the Buddhists gave everything a 'vertical dimension', imagining a whole hierarchy of multiple heavens and hells, representing ontological states of being analogous to the various psychological states that individuals can attain (or descend to). The heavens are kind of ontological analogues to the various jhanas of meditation for example. Traditionally, rebirths can (and typically do) occur in these higher and lower 'planes' as well as on this earthly one.

Significantly, it's possible for human beings to be reborn as gods in heaven, and given the unlimited time-scales of Buddhist cosmology, all of us have been gods at some point. (Traditional Buddhist gods are mortal, albeit extremely long-lived.) All of us have been hell-demons too. That's the attitude that Buddhism tries to impart: when we see an insect walking along, we should think "Been there, done that."
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Yaz, that explanation was so nice, that I found the last highlighted statement
hard to believe. It kind of put me in the mind of ="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLB-uMPj27s"]this.

Why have you discarded it?

jan
 
You do know that belief in Christianity and belief in reincarnation are incompatible?
 
spidergoat said:
I personally believe in reincarnation, but not the orthodox kind. My belief is based on Zen Buddhism which implies that the thing we think of as our own thought patterns are actually inherited from culture. And our bodies are based on ever recycling molecules. So, the body gets born again out of the mother, father and the food she eats, and that body's mind fills with the culture in which it finds itself.
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My views are influenced by Theravada, but I feel free to improvise around some of the traditional ideas. In particular, I try to bring the psycho-spiritual insights of ancient Buddhism into harmony with the naturalism of the modern scientific worldview.

When it comes to reincarnation, I can't say that I literally believe in it. Of course, we aren't born into a vacuum either. Not only the circustances of our lives, but literally who we are as individuals, is strongly dependent upon causal influences. And those causal chains extend far back into the past. (Our human DNA has taken a billion years to take its current shape.)

But having said that, I don't see myself as being the karmic continuation of any single discrete individual in the past, nor do I think that my life is shaped by the ethical choices that person made. Though as you say, I'm in some significant part a product of my culture and that culture was shaped by many people's ethical choices in aggregate.
 
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spidergoat,

Most emphatically no, not in this case. If reincarnation works as people say it does, and people can remember their past lives, it is theoretically possible to confirm their story.
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Please check out post 66.
I would like to hear your commentary.


Like whether God exists?
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It makes no difference whether we discuss it or not.


In Zen Buddhist philosophy, the mind is only thought, and thought comes from culture.
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Why stop at culture?

jan.
 
Jan Ardena said:
Hey guys, if you've got some time, check out this video.
I would like hear your thoughts on it.
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I think the biggest problem with reincarnation is that the notion is so foreign to our Western culture that the person who claims to be someone else's reincarnation / to have lived before is likely to be considered mentally disturbed. Which tends to have grave consequences.
 
I wonder how many people have said they were Jesus Christ and how many think they are the reincarnation of him? That's what I'm talking about, many people do actually think that because someone else says that reincarnation is real then many others will just play along with the idea and say they are someone else to get attention, not really being that other person but just saying so.
 
drumbeat said:
I'm not reading your 3,400 posts to find out what you think to a similar question. I was hoping you or someone else could answer it directly. I've only been reading this place for a few weeks.
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Use the forum search function, in the line of links above.

E.g.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=89421&highlight=reincarnation
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=74929&highlight=reincarnation
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=54710&highlight=reincarnation


Get over yourself.
Jan was asking if someone believed they had had past lives, what should they do to convince me.
I likened it to if someone believed they could jump the Nile, what should they do to convince me.
Now you're asking if I believed I could jump the Nile, what should I do to convince others, and I told you.

How is that spoilt?
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If you want others to prove their claims to you, but you refuse to prove your claims to others, than that is spoiled ...

This is how I set out the reasoning:


You claim X.
A person doubts you.
If you are telling the truth, and the other person doesn't believe you,
what more do you think you should do?
What do you think they should do?


And it wasn't about jumping the Nile or any question in particular. It was about the onus of proof and the willingness to do oneself too what one asks of others.
 
Signal said:
If you want others to prove their claims to you, but you refuse to prove your claims to others, than that is spoiled ...
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Thank you for the links.


But I have never asked them to prove they were reincarnated. I would just leave them to believe it, live and let live. Therefore me not caring whether someone believes me or not in not contradictory or spoilt.
 
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