What do you think are the benifits of belief in reincarnation? Buddhists seem to believe it makes people more compasionate? As you might believe an insect was your mother once. This has a knock on effect of protecting animals and insects which supply their own psycological benifits? What do you think?
There is that benefit to the belief. There are also drawbacks. When you take the emphasis on linearity out of the idea though, it becomes a whole different animal. The key to understanding something like this, at least within the Buddhist tradition, is to think of Buddhist philosophy as a family of related concepts - none can be truly understood in isolation. “Dependent arising” (pratītyasamutpāda) for instance is an important related concept.
I think there’s one drawback, unlike say afterlife like heaven, reincarnation does not supply the sense of joy that heaven does. At least I think anway. Anon you seem to know a little about Buddhism, I wonder if you’v heard a bit about Tenrikyo, another religion. This may be going a bit off topic but what do you think is better a religion that “generally” is not known to tell you to be optimistic but rather to simply go with the flow or a religion that does tell you to be optimistic?
In Buddhism I believe it doesnt generally tell you to be optimistic because it wants you to despair over aging, death,etc and then escape that despair by having faith that you can escaspe from samsara, the world of suffering. Alot of religions do this they create a structure that you react in and to.
I’ve never heard of Tenrikyo until now. “Optimism” has purely relative meaning - it is highly debatable whether Buddhism is pessimistic, optimistic, realistic, etc. I agree that Buddhism doesn’t dangle so many carrots in front of us as most religions. The first step isn’t to reject suffering by trying to get as far away from it as possible - this, realistically, is a fundamental cause of future suffering. Accepting suffering as a fact of life, we can begin to deal with it properly.
Sorry…not really on topic…but this just struck me as very strange.
I have a difficult time comprehending the idea of rejecting suffering.
To refuse to recognize pain or distress in a life.
The only way I can understand this idea in my mind is something like psychopathy.
But isn’t that what most people do, most of the time? It’s the basis of the entire entertainment industry.
I have no idea…I know some people seem to just ignore various aspects of reality as a whole to tailor to their desire of what reality is more than the average person, but I can’t understand (truest sense of the word) how someone rejects suffering outright.
It seems … really mentally unfit.
As a passionate followers of Film and amateur independent film maker/student for years, I have a very difficult time seeing this as the perspective.
Typically, my companions and myself saw our medium as a means of primarily three things:
- Dialogue of important topics.
- Escapism for respite of the regular stressful life; a breather.
- A method of sharing what was great about humanity; often through exploring the ranges of joy’s and pains of life as a human through various scenarios.
I know big business see’s things as just purely money, so they are looking for maximum entertainment capability and don’t really often consider it’s ramifications in any fashion.
So it’s hard for me to think that entertainment is purely complete escapism from suffering; as a method of ignoring pain.
TheStumps:
I’m having a hard time understanding why you think we don’t generally attempt to separate ourselves from suffering. Who wants to suffer?
I’m not saying “refuse to recognize”.
Anyway, take it or leave it, but the Buddhist take is that all our actions can be categorized as pulling something towards us because we want more of it, pushing something away from us because we don’t want it, or neutral (things we just don’t care about or maybe don’t even notice). And many people find it hard to just be themselves, while noticing everything it is possible for them to notice. Meditation takes training, precisely because we are unable to do this. We have a very strong tendency to entertain ourselves (i.e. daydream, move around, find something to do…). We can’t just be with ourselves - for some reason it is a cause of suffering and we don’t want to just sit and experience that.
I suppose this is just alien to me because it is a vantage that I just don’t have.
I don’t have this not because I worked at not having it; I simply just do not have this.
For all of my life, I have seen all of life as good as it is my life as I experience it, and all of which I experience is what allows me to be who I am.
I have always felt thankful for all of my experiences respectively, though obviously not always in the moment of all experiences.
So this is why I have such a difficult time with the idea of rejecting suffering (which is to say, by definition, refusing to recognize [reject] distress or pain [suffering]).
To me, it is to refuse life as a whole, and to refuse oneself as a whole.
Indeed, being human can be said to best be defined by what human’s do in response to their suffering, and how they grow because of it.
To still hold on to the hope and humanity inside of oneself pursuant through suffering is the goal. What really happens, with all the successes and failures, is the story of humanity entirely.
I suppose if you believed in reincarnation, and in fact, reincarnation was real, being correct could be seen as a benefit. I mean, that is the tentative goal of believing stuff, right?
If you boil it down, all religions with an afterlife theology are practitioners of a belief in reincarnation.
Reincarnation is simply the rebirth of the soul into another body or form.
All afterlife concepts apply to this description.
Reincarnation upon the earth, however, is not applicable to all forms of religion.
Aren’t we forgetting Nirvana? reincarnation isn’t exactly supposed to be the desired outcome… but one benifit i can think of is that if you don’t get to go to “heaven” after the first try, you can try and try again… come to think of it, that kinda makes the christian notion of “mercy” look like savage brutality, don’t it? 
One of the benefits of being an atheist I suppose, is that since it’s all a crock, you can pick the thing that sounds Super Awesome and declare it to be superior. For example, I think Star Wars is way cooler than the Cold War.
Heya Ucc, been a while, good to see you too 
Exactly.
I guess all other religions are screwed if christianity happens to be the true religion… imagine the surprise when that sweet old buddhist monk dies with peace of mind knowing he’s done his best at leading a good life and then finds out that not only won’t he be reincarnated, but that he’ll burn forever in hell!
Only if he’s been introduced to Jesus by some kind missionary. Otherwise he’s innocent and tried his best and God takes that into account.
Oh thank heaven for that… this makes it so much better… I was worried that God might be a real prick for a second, with him sending people to hell for no good reason and all… but if the sweet and kind old monk has heard of Jesus yet remains a buddhist he’s clearly asking for it… that bastard! by all means torture his soul FOREVER. 
Plenty of Christians don’t believe that, but supposing it were true, what’s your point? That made up story A gives you a warmer feeling inside than made up story B? Or that made up story B is deficient because the rules about who gets into pretend-heaven seem too strict? I just want to get it clear if you have a point, or if you’re just making fun.
The point would be that the christian notion of what kind of god is worthy of being called a merciful god is nothing short of barbaric when compared to what might have been the case if a god were more of a buddhist, say.
Even in fiction some characters are decidedly despicable, and just like anyone else I’d find it disturbing if anyone would call such a character “merciful” or “kind” or in any other way attempt to exalt him/her… regardless of whether or not the character they were defending was fictional.
I guess my problem is that 'barbaric' is such a context-heavy judgment call. I'm sure buddism will seem barbaric compared to that 'everybody gets a free bike' religion that'll get invented in a few years. I'm sure I seem barbaric to some people because I eat meat. I dunno. The kinda stuff you're saying used to worry me, but more and more lately, the whole "offends 21 century notions of civility" thing doesn't move me like it used to.
Sure, and in all the really good fiction, the ‘bad’ characters would have complex reasons for doing the things they did, and somebody would wind up sympathizing.
Yes, absolutely… I’m sure there used to be a time where eternity in hell used to be considered a mild slap on the wrist… Because, naturally our sensativities have changed and so our understanding of what it means to be eternally tortured has changed dramatically over the years… and in a few years i’m certain that NOT handing out bikes will be considered the equivolent of eternal torture… Very context-heavy stuff indeed… 
I don’t think this one belongs to what you call “the whole offends 21 century notions of civility thing” catagory… I think eternal hell defies ANY notion of civility we’ve ever had in our history… I mean… it’s ETERNAL TORTURE… when was that ever “cool”?