I think there are self-evident things like this. Not the product of empirical scientific research. Not the product of deduction. But just bare-faced obvious. The trick for those who get that is to trust themselves.
Often when one brings up such an idea, you get the universal rejection - what I mean by that is responses like ‘well, people think all sorts of things are obviously true, often contradictory things’ which is a kind of lowest common denominator argument. Since many people get things like this wrong you have no reason to trust your intuition. But if we have an art evaluator, such a person could walk into a room, see a purported Rembrandt and often know in a second that it is a forgery. How? They have a long intimate, sensory, focused training in Rembrandt. They might even find it hard to put into words how they know. We could call this kind of response: epistemic egalitarianism run amok.
It’s fair to argue that my intuition or yours is not proof for others. But that’s different from saying you can’t know and that obviously must be wrong. It’s just a guess on their part.
So for those who remember portions of past lives, they might arrive at a similar conclusion. (There have been as scientific as possible investigations into reincarnation such as those like Dr. Ian Stevenson and those who took over his projects. Basically they check as much of the details of past lives as possible and also check to see if there was any way for the child (often) to know these things by ‘conventional’ means.)
The Shan and Palaung Peoples of Asia (not representative of all Buddhism) verbally preserved a destroyed Buddhist scripture which quotes Guatama as saying, “After me will come Phra-Ariya-Metrai (the Lord of Mercy). When he appears, my followers must all follow him.”
(However, there is a separate belief … which somehow Bing’s Copilot thinks represents all of Buddhism… that the Lord of Mercy is the fifth manifestation of Buddha. Jesus is not the fifth manifestation of anybody, so nobody should be using that to “reach” Buddhists.)
I remember when it used to be popular/fashionable to believe Buddhism was a philosophy/worldview, not a religion.
From a fast check in google, I found a few information about Dr. Ian Stevenson. A scientist can publish plenty of claims in articles, but if there are very few peers that support them, then these claims are ignored. This happens a lot in science.
Dr. Ian Stevenson’s work has a lot of criticism and I do not know if there are other psychiatrists that continue such research. Nevertheless, if there is in the future more substantial evidence on that, the scientific community is always open to re-examine the reincarnation.
With regard to those who believe they had previous lives: there are also people who believe that they spoke to God or Jesus. There is nothing you can say or argue that you can convince them otherwise.
Sure, and paradigmatic biases abound, even in science.
Oh, I doubt they are open to it, for the most part, but when you have paradigmatic divergence then they pretty much have to be forced by an incredible amount of evidence. Let’s remember that up to the 60s and early 70s, animals were considered machines - that is not subjective experiencers like us.
But if one actually reads Dr. Stevenson’s case studies the remarkable nature of many of the cases are very hard to dismiss. They don’t form conclusive evidence, which would take the work of many people - and there are people who continue the work - but they are odd enough to warrent more research.
And then for those not trying to convince others, their beliefs may be based to justification similar to most people’s assumption they are, at the core, the same person they were when a kid and that they will experience things years in the future.
Buddhism has a strong appeal to left brain dominated technocrats and scientists. So, for them it was important to view it as a kind of technology not as a religion.
I’m not saying those are the only people. Further, you have a very specific non-anatta version of Buddhism. You are your own sect in some ways and I don’t mean that pejoratively at all.
Yes, and once the examples for the opposite started piling up, they investigated further and eventually arrived to different conclusions. Researchers are like vultures: if there is a potentially interesting new theory that is supported by substantial evidence, they enter into it and investigate to prove or disprove it (both cases give credits).
I am not psychiatrist, so I cannot evaluate Dr. Stevenson’s scientific approach and how representative or accurate are his cases. His peers are more adequate to do so. If his work is so remarkable, there will be (if not yet) several others investigating his claims.
In death I choose to believe there is something rather than the oblivion of nothing even if I cannot entirely quantify it in the empirical sense. Is it unknowable? Yes, not everything in this existence can be easily explained by the human mind or its constructs. Sometimes we’re simply left grasping unknowns and that’s all there is.
Actually no. What example proves that animals have experiencing subjectivity? What happened was that the old paradigm eased up and I suspect that women researchers in zoology, now entering in larger numbers made the difference. The obvious was accepted. They did not develop devices that could tell animals had consciousness. They stopped buying a very strange belief.
And the fact that they managed in that instance does not mean that they don’t drop the ball in other instances where paradigmatic biases are present or let us know how long.
My point was more that they chose the default case based on their paradigm, one influenced very much by Christianity, ironically enough, but also thinkers like Descartes.
You don’t need to be a psychiatrist. He interviewed people about what they remembered about the past life and where he could he would see if such a person existed, what the landscape was around the home of that person, the architectures, the relatives, the events of that past person. No psychiatry involved. The tricky area is the statistics. But one can certainly read the cases and get a general impression without any scientific knowledge.
Yes, others are investigating new cases. My point was not that it was remarkable, though I think many of the cases would pique interest in people, given the odds or the correct answers. I was responding to
How would one know that?
This is just one way to come at the issue. There may well be others.
I was confirming what you were saying and then offering an explanation for why it is important for many in the West to not categorize Buddhism as a religion. Many of those drawn to it in the West don’t like religions (read: Christianity and Islam primarily). So, it’s better if Buddhism is not a religion since they like it.
I can see how every “mistake” ruins perfection… ever since the first… we are born into an imperfect situation, inheriting the aftermath of others’ mistakes (though not responsible for them)… and I can see the benefit of second & etc chances to fix errors (except the forgetting makes every new life a first chance, as you said)… but/so… it makes no sense in that case to erase memory… and it makes even less sense to put a specific person’s mistakes onto a blank slate that should only be held responsible for (to learn from) their own mistakes (well…except we are responsible to interrupt generational cycles…not because we chose them… but just not to repeat them). But that is obv not the point of reincarnation… given the forgetting (IF the forgetting).
But it does kinda remind me of how video games let you switch between characters and respawn until you master the game. IF no forgetting.
That’d be resurrection, not reincarnation, though.
The experiences you have in the new life push you to learn. I don’t believe in the Hindu version of Karma, but there the soul carries the moral and psychological residue of previous lives into the present body. These will draw experiences to counter bad tendencies and postive attitudes will get enhanced. If you’ve victimized people, then you may well be victimized and while not remembering the past life abuse you suffered, you will be much more likely to have empathy for the people you might have once abused.
Also, there are stages. Most remember little and often only in childhood that little amount. But once you engage in the practices of Hinduism, you will, in that tradition, start to remember more about past lives. And once you fully dedicate yourself, perhaps with life in an ashram, you may well remember it all, on the way to the states that are considered pure and do not accrue any more negative Karma.
Atonement is not really part of Hinduism. Correcting past mistakes isn’t either. Have the soul/mind purified by experience, including harsh experience is what this process supposedly does. It’s not my model for reincarnation, but it’s probably the one with the most adherents. It can be tricky understanding a religion that has very different roots and assumptions from the ones more commonly around one.
Verification of reincarnation requires investigating both lives of one person. How can you interview someone in his/her previous life?
Nevertheless, I agree that my phraseology was too rigid. I could change the phrase to:
Reincarnation has not yet verified scientifically. Claims of reincarnation need to be investigated in all claimed past lives, which becomes practically almost impossible.
This of course remains a big speculation. If I cannot recall these experiences, nor identify somehow the residue of previous lives, there is nothing concrete to suggest that I am “pushed to learn”. A few people in Stevenson’s studies claiming that they had past experiences do not lead to the conclusion that everyone has been or will be reincarnated.
Still, in this life, Hinduism and Bouddhism suggest certain actions/behavior to cultivate good karma. Which means that, if in previous life I had not received these suggestions, I would have cummulated a lot of bad karma, aka being penalized in the reincarnation. Again, being pushed by past experiences is a strong hypothesis.
All these remain high speculation, exactly as the case of Abrahamic religions. The Hindus and Buddhists introduce an elaborate schema for karma, which includes many assumptions on how potential reincarnation works.
Theravada is the first historical sect of Buddhism, it is very secular in philosophy.
As Buddhism evolved overtime it absorbed or coexisted with other religions of the far east becoming more esoteric and mystical overtime pushing the boundaries beyond secular philosophical notions.
Again, it depends which historical branch or sect of Buddhism you’re talking about. Historical context is everything here.
Like Christianity there are many different kinds of cultural denominations of Buddhism. For me myself personally I tend to follow the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean interpretations.
(Mahayana.)
