Can there be Buddhism without reincarnation?

As a person with a naturally philosophical way of thinking, I am often drawn to esoteric subjects, only to bounce off them again when the metaphysical claims arise.

Buddhism has always seemed eminently practical to me, with the meditation, the stilling of the chaotic mind, the focus on direct experience. I can get so far into this and then ‘bounce’ - I hit the reincarnation. It’s like I hit a glass ceiling.

Once we get into discussing reincarnation on different levels of life, and the passage of karma from one life to the next, I close off. It’s not just that I close off at an intellectual level only, this is an emotional reaction. I feel deeply misled, like opening a christmas present and finding sawdust instead of the gleaming gift I had dreamed off. I want to believe something like this, but in my heart I just can’t do it. I feel like I am in the Wizard of Oz and I have just seen behind the curtain.

So my question is: If we strip out the reincarnation, can we make something of what’s left over?

I feel the same way…

Even though I am not buddhist, buddhism makes a lot of sense to me. Nevertheless, I tend to ponder about that very question a lot.

I believe your idea of Buddhism is inaccurate. Hinduism believes in reincarnation, the ATMAN, i forget how its spelt, thats your soul, or SELF. But Buddha, he said there is no soul, there is no self, thus leading him to say that there is no reicarnation. So, to me, Buddhism is making more and more sense. So again i say, dont worry about reicarnation under Buddhism, cause it doesn’t exist.

I’d like to pick up on Graighter’s point. Yes, this is a description of Buddhism that I can relate to.

However I’m still a bit confused. I came into this confusion through Amithaba Buddhism. The resident Monk at the Amithaba group gave us a pretty evangelical sell on the need to meditate so that we could avoid coming back as lower life forms, thus limiting our progress on the path to enlightment.

I may have confused the issue by using the term reincarnation rather than rebirth, but either way I am talking about the view that actions in this life have a karmic effect on future births, which includes our own rebirths. The Amithaba Monk was quite definitely stating that WE should do the meditating so that WE wouldn’t come back as rabbits (or whatever). He said that there was only a limited supply of human lives in the universe and we needed to make as sure as we can that we get one next time around, by emptying our minds at the point of death and being as pure as possible in mind at that moment in time.

At the end of the session, philosophy won out for me, and I rejected this stuff as groundless metaphysics. It was a disappointing experience.

There is something here that I don’t follow at all, and I’m going to get into some reading and try to sort it out.

This is a good website, check it out.
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/reincarnation.htm

I am not an expert in Buddhism but I have read a lot of books on the subject. To say that Buddhism disbelieves in the self, though true, can lead to some confusion. The self or Atman exists as a cognitive obscuration. If it did not exist as such then we would be free to exist in Buddha consciousness which is our true nature. The self and the physical world serve to deceive us into believing in our own individual existence. Buddha consciousness is the only thing that truly exists. Even the world is not real, it is only the experience of the world which is real.

Here is a link of the Buddha conversing with a student on the subject of the self and individuality.

http://reluctant-messenger.com/gospel_buddha/chapter_53.htm

SideshowBob wrote - “The self or Atman exists as a cognitive obscuration.”

Yes, this is what makes the term ‘reincarnation’ confusing in relation to Buddhism, especially for the Western mind. Your link is helping, and I’m spending some time with it.

There was a story about a Buddhist monk who was asked, “What part of me will survive death?” The monk replied, “Your bad habits.”

Most of the academic Buddhologists do not believe in the tulku (nirmana-kaya) stuff and hence in reincarnation. Here is where the Buddhist Religion came into contradiction with Buddhist Philosophy. If we resort to Abhidharma, and study it seriously, we shall see that there is not a single dharma that can be made responsible for the identity retribution implied by the Law of Karma.

In this single point, I would recommend to follow the advice of Nagarjuna and drop any metaphysical views (and the Reincarnation View is for sure one of these “dropable” metaphysicalities).

Thanks for that. I am reading a book at the moment by Stephen Batchelor, called ‘Buddhism without Beliefs’. It is similarly helpful. :slight_smile:

This is off topic, but I have to reply to your implication that rabbits are lower forms of life than humans. Have you learned nothing from Loony Toons? Bugs Bunny kicks Fud’s ass on a regular basis, you have failed to recognize this obvious allegory to the greatness and nobility of all Lagamorphs that has presented itself through the subconcious of the creators of the Bugs Bunny character, who were no doubt Rabbits in their former lives and through some act were demoted to humans.
–><–

Well, not until now. :smiley:

"Death and Rebirth
The death consciousness (cuti-citta) of this existence occurs at the end of the dying process. The next consciousness is the Rebirth-linking consciousness, called the patisandhi citta, which is the moment of conception in the next existence.

It is explained in the Patthana, the last book of the Abhidhamma, that when death ceases, the force of proximity-condition brings about the next consciousness which is the Rebirth-linking Consciousness. It is further explained that the force left behind produces results. Although an asynchronous faultless or faulty volition arises for one thought moment and then ceases, this is not the end of it. For a special force is left behind in the mind’s successive continuity so that at some time in the future, the appropriate result of that volition will be produced when the proper conditions are satisfied. It is due to the presence of this force that results appear. However, this force does not manifest itself like the mind with its nascent, static and terminating phases but is present like the latent tendencies. And just as the latter are not concepts, so also this special force of asynchronous kamma is not a concept. It is a special force of the ultimate realities. It may be called a germinal force.

The patisandhi consciousness lasts for one thought moment only and is then called the bhavangha which lasts for 16 thought moments impelled by its craving for existence and then sinks into the passive state of mind.
It is at the moment of conception that the foetus gets its tactile sense organ and the heart basis (hadaya-vatthu), and its gender, whether it is going to be a male or a female, and all these are produced by its past karma.

At the end of each course-of-cognition, the bhavangas arise and cease successively till the next course-of-cognition occurs. But consciousnesses are so swift that the bhavangas in between are not detectable. How many thought moments your bhavanga takes between courses of cognition depends on the stage of your mind development. It is the aim of mind development to reduce the time of the bhavanga, and the shorter the time, the more alert is your mind. It determines the acuteness of your brain.

This death consciousness takes as its object one of three things. At the last moment, the person thinks of something that has been most prominent in his mind. A murderer may get an idea that he is going to commit a crime, whereas a pious man may think he is worshipping the Buddha or listening to a sermon. This is known as kamma or the “vision of action”.

Or he may see all article generally associated with his action. The murderer may see a knife whilst the pious man may see a yellow robe. This is vision as kamma-nimitta or the “vision of an article associated with the action”.

Or he may get a vision of hellfire or a vision of the higher regions. This is known as gati-nimitta, or the “vision of the sign of destiny”.
Your bhavanga of this existence has as its object what was the object of your last dying process.

After each course-of-cognition, the mind goes back to the bhavanga-state.
Life has been compared to a river, which has its beginning or source at birth and its mouth at death (cuti). It seems to have a constant form or identity but there is not a drop today of all the water that composed it yesterday.

This stream of life or being is also called the life-continuum by certain authors; it is the passive state of mind as in dreamless sleep.
The dividing line between Being and Thought is called the Mind Door (mano-dvára); it is the threshold of consciousness. Below the threshold is subliminal consciousness and above the threshold is called supra-liminal consciousness.

One Indian author is of the opinion that a thought may be compared to a wave in the sea. The wave rises up from the surface and then sinks down again. Similarly, a thought rises up from the surface of the bhavanga and sinks back to its base; it sinks back between courses of cognition and after cognition is over before the start of any new course-of-cognition. However, this opinion is not universally accepted as it is said that the bhavanga is arrested before a thought commences.

For a vivid sense-object, there are 17 thought-moments in a course-of-cognition, after which bhavangas arise and cease successively for a few hundred thought-moments and then there arises the second course-of-cognition, followed by a few hundred more bhavangas.

Then there are thousands and thousands of more impressions, and course-of-cognitions, each followed at the end of each course by bhavangas, the duration of which are about 30,000 or 40,000 thought-moments. It is said that chief Disciple Sáriputta had such a great mind that there were only a few hundred bhavangas after each course-of-cognition.

It is the function of mind development to reduce the duration of the bhavangas between the course-of-cognitions. The quick mind has only a few thousand bhavangas after each course-of-cognition.

You cannot be born a human being, without some good karma in the sum total of previous existences. Nevertheless ignorance (avijjá) and craving (tanhá), of which you will hear a lot later, are pulling, like gravity, to bad deeds, to blindness of moral vision. Your education during all your childhood years, including your training, makes you a better and better boy changing your blindness to a better vision. The time will come when you will be more good than bad. Or, if you cannot profit from your education, you will be predominately bad."
palikanon.com/english/intro- … pter_i.htm

Can you use this …?

Shalom
Bob

Hi Bob,

I have read your post with interest and respect. This indeed is the metaphysics that I have been confronted with, and which I have doubts over. This is the bit where I ‘bounce off’. I can see very clearly how the Karmic process works in one life and between living beings, and I have experienced my own struggle in this respect.

My concern is that we need an element of belief to posit what might happen at the end of the dying process. I have read the ‘Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’ (I may have the title wrong) and I felt towards the end of that book that I was reading religious dogma. I did feel that there was an advantage over Christian dogma, in that the claims where a logical progression from Buddhist psychology, but they still seemed to be only claims.

At the moment I am reading Zen again, looking for some agnosticism in the metaphysics.

Good Luck :sunglasses: