Reincarnation: What do modern research and traditional Buddhist teachings say?
BY SAM LITTLEFAIR
MAY 11, 2018
at Lion’s Roar website
Lion’s Roar describes itself as “BUDDHIST WISDOM for OUR TIME”
Okay, admittedly, I have never had a dream myself that led me to speculate that perhaps reincarnation is real. But for those who have, again, connect the dots between the dream and actual demonstrable evidence that it does in fact exist. Buddha’s mother having a dream “in which an elephant came to her and entered her womb”? How does that factor into “supernatural predictions or dreams that correspond to seeming cases of reincarnation.”
Explain “seeming” in more detail.
And supernatural in what sense? After all, once the “supernatural” is brought into the assessment anything goes, right?
All I want to know is simple enough:
Given the lives that Buddhists choose to live when confronted with contexts in which others challenge the behaviors they choose on moral grounds, how is their understanding of enlightenment and karma reconfigured in to the behaviors they choose as this impacts that which they believe their fate to be in regard to reincarnation and Nirvana.
What experiences or dreams or predictions or evidence have they accumulated that would allow them to make an argument in a philosophy forum such that other reasonable men and women would in turn “see the light”. Their own and not all of the others.
Yes, but in regard to the components of my own philosophy – dasein, conflicting goods, political economy – that is no less true. Our actions are rooted in “I” as an existential construction, deconstruction, reconstruction from the cradle to the grave. “I” comes to acquire a set of values that can and often do come into conflict with the values of others. And, out in any particular human community, there will be laws that reward or punish particular behaviors based on who has the political power to enact and to enforce them.
How is this not also true for Buddhists?