Questions round rebirth—from the way it works as to if it’s even actual—have energized and divided Buddhists for millennia. On this excerpt from his e-book Rebirth, Roger R. Jackson unpacks the complexity of all of it and affords 4 primary approaches to incorporating it (or not) into our personal observe.
Picture by Philippe Frangiere.
The writings of philosophically inclined students of Buddhism revealed up to now a number of a long time reveal a outstanding number of positions on rebirth, starting from deliberate silence, to outright rejection, to the doctrine’s acceptance on metaphysical, empirical, or different grounds.
A lot of writers who want to place Buddhism in dialogue with up to date philosophy and science have been content material to go away conventional cosmology and metaphysics—particularly the notion of rebirth—in abeyance. Thus, thinker and neuroscientist Owen Flanagan writes in The Bodhisattva’s Mind of his need to “naturalize” Buddhism inside fashionable philosophical discourse, partly by bracketing out such unproven and certain unprovable notions as rebirth, karmic causation, nirvana, magical powers, heavens and hells, and nonphysical states of thoughts. Equally, in his best-selling Why Buddhism Is True, journalist Robert Wright specifies that the Buddhism he claims is “true” is not “the ‘supernatural’ or extra exotically metaphysical elements of Buddhism—reincarnation, for instance—however slightly…the naturalistic elements: concepts that fall squarely inside fashionable psychology and philosophy.” Even thinker and Buddhism scholar Jay Garfield specifies on the outset of his Participating Buddhism: Why It Issues to Philosophers that he’ll “not talk about Buddhist theories of rebirth, of karma, or approaches to meditation…not as a result of I take these to be unimportant…[but] as a result of I don’t see them as principal websites of engagement with Western philosophy.” The underlying assumption right here, clearly, is that the majority up to date philosophers and scientists merely won’t contemplate nonphysicalist accounts of the operations of thoughts, not to mention perception in life after demise. Related attitudes are evinced by Western Buddhist scholar–practitioners intent on aligning the custom with fashionable tradition. Stephen Batchelor, as an illustration, surveys a variety of Buddhist rational, empirical, and moral justifications for rebirth, finds them inconclusive at greatest, and concludes that
…all the images I entertain of heaven and hell, or cycles of rebirth, merely serve to interchange the overwhelming actuality of the unknown with what is understood and acceptable…. To cling to the thought of rebirth, slightly than treating it as a helpful image or speculation, may be spiritually suffocating. If we’re capable of take Buddhism as an ongoing existential encounter with our life right here and now, then we’ll solely achieve by releasing our grip on such notions.
Equally, and much more pointedly, Richard Hayes asserts that the potential of Buddhism within the West “won’t ever be realized…[until it] is purged of a number of the Asian habits it has acquired down via the millennia,” and goes on to specify that the primary of the teachings that must be discarded “are the obstructive doctrines…of rebirth and karma…[reflection on which] dulls the thoughts and impairs the college of reasoning”—though he does additionally concede that it might be a helpful fiction for Buddhists as they search to search out their manner within the fashionable world. Batchelor and Hayes know Buddhism effectively sufficient to acknowledge the significance of rebirth for conventional Buddhists, however each are satisfied that it’s attainable to be Buddhist with out taking the doctrine actually, and go on to think about what a nonmetaphysical Buddhism is likely to be like.
The usual argument for rebirth within the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophical circles was that of Dharmakirti, which is notoriously complicated. Richard Hayes summarized and partially translated a variety of Dharmakirti’s arguments towards materialism and in favor of rebirth, commenting alongside the best way that, ingenious as they’re, they don’t absolutely reach dismantling materialist claims concerning the bodily foundation of thoughts or in establishing thoughts as finally impartial of bodily causes. In his 2012 research of the issue of intentionality in Buddhist and up to date philosophies of thoughts, Dan Arnold faulted Dharmakirti for discussing psychological causation in phrases that really are based mostly on the mannequin of bodily causation that we observe on this planet, mentioning that fashionable cognitive philosophers ceaselessly eschew such basic causal language when trying to make sense of how the thoughts works—and that doing so would have made a case like Dharmakirti’s simpler slightly than tougher to argue.
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama has repeatedly reframed Dharmakirti’s arguments for rebirth in his discourses and revealed writings, most notably, maybe, his dialogue of Buddhism vis-à-vis science, The Universe in a Single Atom. He has famously declared that if a Buddhist doctrine is contradicted by irrefutable scientific proof, then the doctrine should be discarded, and within the case of the normal flat-earth principle, he has proposed simply that. Relating to rebirth, nonetheless, he argues, though not in so many phrases, that as a result of absence of proof doesn’t represent proof of absence, he can not settle for that the doctrine has been refuted. He continues to current Dharmakirti’s arguments, no less than in a common manner, and to insist that though there could also be a stronger connection between neurological occasions and odd psychological states than conventional Buddhists consider, there stays the chance that there are extraordinary psychological states that don’t rely upon the neurological system, particularly, the meditative experiences of superior tantric yogis, particularly those that have entered the postmortem focus on the clear-light nature of the thoughts often known as thukdam. The Dalai Lama has even inspired neuroscientific research of meditators in thukdam, though whether or not these will present proof for both the materialist or Buddhist place on thoughts and physique stays to be seen: the presence of refined neural exercise in such contemplatives may immediate revisions of present notions of demise, however wouldn’t show that the yogi who has handed out of thukdam strikes on to a different realm; whereas the absence of neural exercise wouldn’t guarantee that the meditative state assumed by custom is not occurring, solely that it’s clinically undetectable. And whether it is actual however undetectable, then our present definitions of demise—and consciousness—actually would require rethinking.
Different up to date thinkers search to justify rebirth, and Buddhist thoughts–physique metaphysics, not by reframing Dharmakirti’s arguments however by embracing different scientific cosmologies that make the thoughts or consciousness, slightly than matter, the driving drive within the universe, therefore its passage from one life to the subsequent comparatively unproblematic. B. Alan Wallace has argued lengthy and passionately that science’s prejudice towards “first-person” subjective experiences as a supply of data each overestimates the reliability of science’s “third-person,” measurable strategies and underestimates the position and reliability of what’s usually dismissed as “mere subjectivity.” That is very true on the quantum degree, the place it seems that thoughts performs an energetic position in shaping so-called exterior actuality. Certainly, says Wallace, an necessary implication of cutting-edge analysis in quantum mechanics is that the universe is correctly conceived not—as classical physics insisted—as a bodily system however as “essentially an information- processing system, from which the looks of matter emerges at a better degree of actuality.” He provides:
On the macroscopic scale this means a shift from a materiocentric view of the universe to an empiricocentric view of the universe, and on a microcosmic scale, this requires a shift from a neurocentric to an empiricocentric view of human existence…[in which] which means is key.
On such a view, the independence of thoughts from physique is simpler to keep up, and rebirth simpler to defend. In a considerably comparable trend, David Loy proposes a “new evolutionary delusion” impressed by the work of cultural historian Thomas Berry (1914–2009), which sees the universe as an organism and “evolution because the inventive groping of a self-organizing cosmos that’s turning into extra self-aware.” If, as advised by such a state of affairs, “consciousness is primary—if there is likely to be rudimentary consciousness even on the quantum degree, as some physicists now consider—then there could also be some plausibility to the notion of sanhkara [karmic formations] persisting after demise.” This won’t find yourself entailing particular person survival within the method often described by conventional Buddhists, for within the absence of a self that’s reborn, there’s merely the vacancy/infinity that’s the nature of the cosmos, which endlessly seeks and assumes type after type; on this sense, concludes Loy, “there’s solely rebirth,” however nothing resembling particular person immortality. It’s price remarking briefly that the stances taken by Wallace and Loy, whereas influenced by radical interpretations of latest physics and cosmology, are additionally redolent of Yogacara “idealism,” and appropriate in a variety of methods with such Mahayana contemplative traditions as Zen, Tantra, and the Nice Perfection.
Descending from the world of metaphysics, we discover that a variety of up to date Buddhist thinkers are intent on demonstrating rebirth by interesting to empirical proof, whether or not that proof be the results of scientific investigation or meditative expertise. Thus, the French-born Tibetan Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard finds that “the knowledge arising from a lifetime of contemplative observe, or a life lived with a religious trainer, is simply as highly effective as that arising from the demonstration of a theorem,” therefore should be granted some epistemic worth. B. Alan Wallace, along with his insistence on the significance of “first-person” proof for information concerning the world and his confidence within the deliverances of profound meditative focus, argues that the experiences of superior contemplatives give us actual details about the world, and that the recollections of previous lives usually unearthed by such yogis might due to this fact be dependable—therefore proof of the opportunity of rebirth.
Even an “empirical” proof of rebirth—had been there one—wouldn’t essentially affirm the Buddhist principle of rebirth, both in its broad strokes or its nice particulars.
Extra not too long ago, Bhikkhu Analayo has examined a variety of fashionable grounds for accepting rebirth. He delves deeply into the analysis and case histories recorded by Ian Stevenson (1918–2007), who researched numerous instances “suggestive of reincarnation”—agreeing that there are a small variety of instances that actually appear inexplicable with out the notion of rebirth—and investigating specifically element a case with which he’s personally acquainted, that of a Sri Lankan boy whose fashion of reciting Pali texts was utterly unknown early in his life, however seems, on the idea of more moderen analysis, to have been prevalent in an earlier period, of which the boy claims to have recollections. These instances are, as Stevenson says, suggestive of rebirth, however hardly conclusive. As Evan Thompson notes, Stevenson’s research could also be faulted on a variety of methodological grounds, significantly as pertains to the time lag between a toddler’s first report of a past-life reminiscence and the time they had been interviewed by researchers, leaving “a considerable amount of room for false reminiscence and after-the-fact reconstruction.” And Stephen Batchelor observes that even when some such studies are dependable, and sure folks have undergone rebirth, “this in itself wouldn’t furnish any proof in anyway both that they themselves would expertise rebirth once more or that anybody else was reborn up to now or can be sooner or later.” In different phrases, even an “empirical” proof of rebirth—had been there one—wouldn’t essentially affirm the Buddhist principle of rebirth, both in its broad strokes or its nice particulars.
It must be added that any Buddhist claims about metaphysical truths resembling rebirth which are based mostly solely on extrasensory or different particular, “mystical” perceptions should inevitably face comparability with special-experience-based claims in different non secular traditions, which can level to a really totally different manner of “seeing” the cosmos—and within the absence of “third-person,” publicly out there proof, there isn’t any technique to give precedence to at least one declare or the opposite, besides on purely dogmatic grounds. As William James places it,
Mystics don’t have any proper to say that we ought to just accept the deliverance of their peculiar experiences…. The utmost that they will ask of us on this life is to confess that they set up a presumption…for they type a consensus and have an unequivocal end result.
“However,” provides James, “even this presumption from the unanimity of mystics is much from being sturdy,” for his or her unanimity dissolves upon nearer inspection, for the reason that philosophical positions and methods of life developed by mystics are fairly varied, admitting, as an illustration, of pantheism, monism, dualism, or theism; asceticism, celebration, or self-indulgence; and pictures of darkness or of sunshine. James is discussing mysticism generally, however even when we had been to push the doubtful declare that each one completed Buddhist “mystics,” wherever they’ve been, have loved the identical imaginative and prescient of the cosmos and its nature, these mystical claims—together with claims to have seen the truth of karma and rebirth—can not stand on their very own as proof, for they invite inevitable comparability with conclusions drawn by mystics in different traditions, which level in very totally different metaphysical and cosmological instructions.
Approaches to the Query
Though most Buddhists in premodern Buddhist cultures accepted, and generally defended, the normal Buddhist karmic eschatology, it’s evident that since Asian Buddhists started to take account of modernity and Western Buddhists to take account of Asian traditions, these Buddhists which have bothered to speak about rebirth in any respect (and plenty of haven’t), have sometimes performed so by adopting one or the opposite of 4 attainable approaches to rebirth:
(1) Amongst literalists—who settle for conventional descriptions of the karma–rebirth cosmology and arguments for it both unquestioningly or on the idea of their very own evaluation—the most typical constituency is Asian Buddhists, whether or not in Asia or the West. These would come with many historically skilled Theravada monks and Tibetan lamas, with the latter class together with such figures above as Sakya Trizin, Dudjom Rinpoche, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and Kalu Rinpoche. Many of those lecturers’ Western disciples have adopted a literalist thought of rebirth as effectively, although they don’t usually write about their views, and what they do write is usually tough to search out exterior of small Buddhist tracts and magazines.
(2) Neo-traditionalists—who search to justify conventional cosmology and metaphysics in additional “up-to-date” phrases—comprise a big and various group. Amongst them, we’d depend Robert Thurman, who has argued for the reality and significance of the classical notion of rebirth however reframed it in evolutionary phrases; B. Alan Wallace, who has argued on the idea of quantum physics that the thoughts is a extra outstanding issue within the cosmos than materialist science will permit, and, within the spirit of William James, that first-person expertise is extra dependable as a supply of data than philosophers will admit; Martin Willson, who finds rational arguments for rebirth unpersuasive however regards a number of forms of empirical or experiential proof as very promising; and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who accepts most of the premises and conclusions of Dharmakirti’s arguments on rebirth, however limits their true applicability to the very subtlest degree of the operations of thoughts and physique, conceding that odd consciousness might certainly be unattainable with out neural exercise.
(3) Modernists, who’re unsure concerning the literal reality of the normal cosmology and metaphysics and usually unpersuaded by arguments for it, search in varied methods to keep up the language and imagery of karma, rebirth, and the realms of samsara—however recast in symbolic, psychological, or existential phrases which are extra amenable to fashionable sensibilities. Stephen Batchelor, along with his “existential” interpretation of Buddhism, is probably the most outstanding Western exponent of such an strategy, however there are lots of others. Alan Watts, for instance, understood claims about previous and future lives as a manner of describing the a number of social roles we undertake in our current life. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche appears (at occasions, no less than) to have favored a largely psychological clarification of the six realms of rebirth and conventional concepts about demise. David Loy recasts notions of rebirth inside a brand new cosmological delusion that successfully removes them from the normal individual-survival framework. Richard Hayes regards rebirth as, at greatest, a helpful fiction.
(4) Like these within the different teams, secularists range of their motives and arguments, however are in accord that rebirth simply doesn’t matter very a lot. Even when it was taught by the Buddha and his followers over the previous two millennia, it’s truly superfluous to the true which means of the dharma, immediately as in B.C.E. India: a technique to perceive actuality and dwell correctly, compassionately, and meaningfully inside our current lives and within the widespread world we share. Thus, writers like Owen Flanagan, Robert Wright, and Jay Garfield intentionally put rebirth in abeyance when trying to have interaction Buddhism with fashionable philosophy or psychology. Engaged Buddhists both reject the thought outright, as B. R. Ambedkar did, or largely ignore it, like Thich Nhat Hanh and plenty of others. And, for the various fashionable individuals who don’t establish as Buddhist however want to draw on Buddhist insights and meditation strategies for particular functions of their each day lives, rebirth is irrelevant at greatest, a distraction at worst, and in any case hardly price worrying about.
In varied contexts, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama could also be learn as a literalist, a neotraditionalist, or a modernist—and he even has propounded an ethics which may align him with the secularist camp.
These classes should be taken with many grains of salt: the strains between one and the opposite usually are not at all times sharp, such that, as an illustration, the distinction between literalism and neotraditionalism will not be at all times clear, nor that between modernism and secularism. By the identical token, most of the thinkers mentioned listed below are too complicated to assign solely to at least one class. Thus, in varied contexts, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama could also be learn as a literalist, a neotraditionalist, or a modernist—and he even has propounded a secular ethics which may align him with the fourth camp. Batchelor and Hayes could also be categorised as modernists however present sturdy secularist tendencies; certainly, Batchelor, for his half, has most not too long ago described his as a secular Buddhism, although he presents Buddhist doctrines, together with rebirth, symbolically and existentially, as a modernist would. And a determine like Thich Nhat Hanh, who largely eschewed dialogue of rebirth and therefore seems “secularist,” clearly had each conventional and fashionable parts at work in his public ministry—and maybe in his personal convictions as effectively.
It is likely to be argued that the very effort to consider Buddhism vis-à-vis modernity that generates these 4 classes is itself open to criticism. Many of the aforementioned thinkers try in a method or one other to align conventional Buddhist cosmology and metaphysics with fashionable Western concepts and practices, whether or not merely to make it understandable, to defend it, to reject it, or to reinterpret it alongside much less historically “non secular” strains. One may counsel, although, that such efforts stem from a failure to acknowledge that conventional Buddhism is in truth virtually fully incommensurable with fashionable science, psychology, and aesthetics. That is the stance taken by Donald Lopez in his evaluation of “the Scientific Buddha”—the Buddha imagined by moderns as completely consonant in his life and teachings with the scientific perspective and procedures developed up to now a number of centuries within the West. Lopez finds that such a Buddha by no means existed, and to posit him is to do critical violence to the best way Buddhists have historically understood and lived on this planet. In keeping with Lopez, the Buddha and the custom he based are in most methods incompatible with fashionable, Western concepts and values, and should be acknowledged as such:
The Outdated Buddha, not the Scientific Buddha, introduced a radical problem to the best way we see the world, each the world that was seen two millennia in the past and the world that’s seen immediately. What he taught will not be totally different, it isn’t another, it’s the reverse. That the trail we expect will lead us to happiness as a substitute results in sorrow. That what we consider is true is as a substitute false. That what we think about to be actual is unreal. A sure worth lies in remembering that problem sometimes.
Lopez says, in impact: don’t attempt to align Buddhism with science, psychology, or up to date philosophy, don’t attempt to justify it, don’t attempt to reimagine it; slightly, perceive it as a radical critique of modernity and its complacencies. Maybe, then, this can be a fifth strategy: literalism as radical cultural critique. Lopez’s strategy is a demanding one, for it forces fashionable Buddhists to carry in thoughts opposing methods of understanding the world, an train in “unfavourable functionality” solely sustainable by a couple of. The overwhelming majority, I count on, will go for one of many 4 approaches to rebirth outlined above, or some mixture of them. Every of them, I consider, has a task to play within the ongoing colloquy amongst Buddhists as to how the custom should be imagined and enacted within the fashionable world: literalists remind us of the classical Buddhist outlook, so totally different from our personal; neo-traditionalists present methods to argue for the normal cosmology and metaphysics, or one thing akin to it; modernists both droop or reject the classical paradigm, however discover new, nonmetaphysical methods of creating it significant; whereas secularists increase important questions on simply how a lot of custom may be jettisoned within the technique of discovering a spot for Buddhism in our disenchanted world.
My very own view—actually debatable—is that one or one other type of modernism greatest factors the best way ahead. I’m significantly drawn to the varied types of “Buddhist agnosticism” which were articulated in latest a long time. The time period was coined by Stephen Batchelor, however might appropriately be utilized to any thinker who finds conventional rational, empirical, or faith-based arguments in favor of rebirth problematic however doesn’t reject the thought outright, admitting that—with our current limitations—we merely have no idea whether or not previous and future lives are actual. One attention-grabbing agnostic argument comes from an sudden supply, the late Tibetan lama Lati Rinpoche, who in a 1986 dialog with Richard Hayes advised that Westerners unsure about karma and rebirth (which Rinpoche concedes are “past absolute proof ”) ought to stay open to the chance that the normal cosmology and metaphysics are true, and in any case behave as in the event that they had been true by residing ethically and compassionately. In that manner, they are going to generate happiness for themselves and others on this life, and if there are future lives, they are going to be blissful ones; conversely, in the event that they behave negatively, they are going to carry distress to themselves and others on this life and face a sorrowful rebirth, if rebirths there are. As Hayes rightly notes, this argument is akin to Pascal’s well-known “wager” concerning the existence of God and the truth of ultimate judgment. Leaving apart the query whether or not so tentative an acceptance of spiritual claims may itself be problematic within the eyes of God or amidst the subtleties of karma, we might agree with Hayes that Rimpoche
…appears to put these doctrines in a legendary area, versus a historic or scientific framework. Entry to this legendary area may be gained, not by logical proof or via a methodical empirical investigation of the wise world, however by exercising one’s creativeness after which having the braveness of 1’s imaginings.
For Hayes, studying conventional cosmology and metaphysics as delusion—as “fictional”—permits fashionable folks to think about methods of residing fairly totally different from their very own, not not like a very good novel; to the identical diploma {that a} novel or different murals might widen our perspective and ennoble our lives, partaking with the normal Buddhist imaginary permits fashionable Buddhists to enter extra meaningfully into the streams of Buddhist life and supply which means inside their very own.
Free of the phantasm of good objectivity, why not assume and dwell as if Buddhism had been true?
Alongside comparable strains, Batchelor opts for a “center manner” agnosticism during which one “doesn’t have both to claim [rebirth] dogmatically or deny it; one neither has to undertake the literal variations introduced by custom nor fall into the opposite excessive of believing that demise is the ultimate annihilation.” This, he asserts, doesn’t mire us in indecision. Reasonably, it permits us, as in Zen, to confront with ruthless honesty “the Nice Matter of Life and Demise,” and “is a robust catalyst for motion, since in shifting concern away from a hypothetical future life, to the dilemmas of the current, it calls for…a compassion-centered ethic” that can carry pleasure to our lives and the lives of others. In his writings, Batchelor appears ambivalent about entertaining conventional cosmology and metaphysics even on the symbolic degree; he usually implies that we merely should get past these outmoded conceptions. He has additionally asserted, nonetheless, that if he had been to make the most of the normal Buddhist imaginative and prescient, “I might attempt to behave as if there have been infinite lifetimes during which I might be dedicated to saving beings.”
I actually would argue with out ambivalence for what I name “As-If Agnosticism.” My stance is agnostic as a result of, like Hayes and Batchelor (and plenty of others), I don’t discover conventional descriptions of karma and rebirth actually credible, nor am I absolutely persuaded by arguments of their favor, whether or not rational, empirical, or faith-based; then again, I can not rule out the chance that such descriptions (or one thing akin to them) might in truth be true. The universe, in spite of everything, is surpassingly unusual.
Within the spirit of Wallace Stevens’s well-known assertion that “we consider with out perception, past perception,” I suggest that we dwell as if such descriptions had been true. I’m not suggesting we merely take up wishful pondering: if solely there have been previous and future lives, if solely karma works the methods custom says it does, if solely superb and excellent buddhahood awaited us all on the finish of the rainbow. Possibly they do, perhaps they don’t. However as Buddhists have argued for millennia, Western humanists have claimed for hundreds of years, and scientists have not too long ago begun to acknowledge, the world is definitely constructed much more on our concepts, aspirations, and speculations—the As-If—than we suppose, and the strong foundations we presume to lie beneath us—the “As-Is”—are rather more tough to search out than we assume. It’s not, due to this fact, that by residing as if sure doctrines had been true we actually are in flight from some bedrock, goal actuality, as a result of that actuality—although it actually imposes limitations on us, most notably on the time of demise—seems to be much more a matter of conference and much much less “simply the best way issues are” than we had thought. Free of the phantasm of good objectivity, due to this fact, why not assume and dwell as if Buddhism had been true? In doing so, we empower ourselves to enter, as absolutely as is feasible in a skeptical age, into the continuing, ever-changing lifetime of the dharma, adopting Buddhist beliefs, telling Buddhist tales, articulating Buddhist doctrines, performing Buddhist rituals, and embodying Buddhist ethics in ways in which make which means for ourselves, present a measure of consolation to others, and maybe contribute in some small technique to the betterment of the imperfect and imperiled world during which all of us dwell.
From Rebirth: A Information to Thoughts, Karma, and Cosmos within the Buddhist World, by Roger R. Jackson (Shambhala Publications, 2022)