The Buddha’s teachings offers the most satisfactory explanation of where man came from and where he is going. When we die, the mind, with all the tendencies, preferences, abilities and characteristics that have been developed and conditioned in this life, re-establishes itself in a new being.
Thus the new individual grows and develops a personality conditioned both by the mental characteristics that have been carried over from the previous life and by the new environment. The personality will change and be modified by conscious effort and conditioning factors like education, parental influence and society but once again at death, it will re-establish itself as life in a new being. This process of dying and being reborn will continue until the conditions that cause it, the mental factors of craving and ignorance, cease. When they do, instead of being reborn, the mind attains a state called Nirvana.
How does the mind go from one body to another?
When a person is dying, he begins to lose conscious control of his mental processes. There comes a time when his actions and habits locked away in his memories are released. In many instances, there arises in his mind a mental image. This image is totally involuntarily and is produced by his karma or past actions. Thus depending upon the nature of the particular karma that produces this image, the person may see dark shadowy figures, frightening images, or he may see his relatives or perhaps visions of scenic beauty. Quite often, he will cry out at these visions or remark about them to his visitors. Even though the physical body may be weak these thought units are very strong as death approaches. When the body finally breaks down at the point of death these energies are released as mental energy. As energy cannot be destroyed they have to re-establish themselves in a new body thus causing the phenomenon of rebirth.
Think of it being like radio waves which are not made up of words and music but energy at different frequencies, which are transmitted, travel instantaneously through space, are picked up by the receiver from where the radio produces them as words and music. It is the same with the mind. At death, mental energy travels through space, is picked up by the fertilized egg of the future mother, is reborn as a new being and manifests as a new personality.
Thus it is important that a dying person is comforted and reminded of his good deeds. He should not be made confused and visitors should not overtly grieve in his presence. Neither should unfamiliar ideas like a new religion be introduced to him. The Buddha advises that when one is fearful, he should recall to mind the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha.
Is one always reborn as a human being?
No, there are several realms into which one can be reborn. Some people are reborn in heavenly planes, some are reborn in hell planes, some may be reborn as ghosts and as animals. Heaven is not a place but a state of existence where one has a subtle body and where the mind experiences mainly pleasure. Some religions strive very hard to be reborn in a heavenly existence mistakenly believing it to be a permanent state. But it is not. Like all conditioned states, heaven is impermanent and when one’s life span there is finished, one could well be reborn again as a human. Hell, likewise, is not a place but a state of existence where one has a subtle body and where the mind experiences mainly anxiety and distress. Being a ghost, again, is a state of existence where the body is subtle and where the mind is continually plagued by longing and dissatisfaction. So heavenly beings experience mainly pleasure, hell beings and ghosts experience mainly pain and human beings experience usually a mixture of both. So the main difference between the human realm and other realms is the body type and the quality of experience.
“Those who imagine evil where there is none, and do not see evil where it is — upholding false views, they go to states of woe. Those who discern the wrong as wrong and the right as right — upholding right views, they go to realms of bliss. ~ Dhammapada 318, 319”
What decides where we will be reborn?
The most important factor, but not the only one, influencing where we will be reborn and what sort of life we shall have, is karma. The word karma means ‘action’ and refers to our intentional mental actions. In other words, what we are is determined very much by how we have thought and acted in the past. Likewise, how we think and act now will influence how we will be in the future. Just as radio waves will be picked up by a radio tuned to its particular frequency, the mental energies released at the time of death will naturally be re-established in a new material body that most suits it. Thus, the gentle, loving type of person shall be reborn in a heavenly realm or as a human being in a comfortable environment. The anxious, worried or extremely cruel type of person is reborn in a hell realm, or as an animal, or as a human being born in extremely difficult environment.
Not only is there scientific evidence to support the phenomena of rebirth, it is the only after-life theory that has any evidence to support it. During the last 30 years parapsychologists have been studying reports that some people have vivid memories of their former lives. Professor Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia’s Department of Psychology has described dozens of cases of this type in his books. He is an accredited scientist whose 25 year study of people who remember former lives is very strong evidence for rebirth
Credits: E-Buddhism.
I think we are kinda in a hell place right now.
This is the Devils world so it makes sense.
The countable population of humans has been steadily rising for at least 10,000 years, esp. since ~2500 BCE. This means that there are more bodies coming into existence in any given generation than recurring souls from the previous one. Not even counting those that got promoted or demoted.
This is very basic logic that is not accounted for in any recurrance cosmology. They all pre-date the invention of the zero by thousands of years, so there was no simple arithmetic with which to evaluate the idea.
People who teach this now should be expected to provide an account that is not in contradiction to what is known about the physical universe.
The fact that beings can be reincarnated as other species, could easily account for the increase in humans. There are countless other beings on earth alone, dwarfing the count of human beings infinitesimally.
According to Karmic law at some point when an animal exhausts its karmic debt it can be reborn as a human. According to the Buddha the chance of being born a human is like going to the beach and picking up a grain of sand. Given every grain of sand on all beaches of the planet represents a soul (animal or human). If you count insects alone there may be trillions of them on earth. Therefore, to be born human alone is a feat, irrespective of ones life circumstances.
No.That is the view of Tibetan Buddhism which is heavily influenced by the indigenoius Bon religion. More conventionally, there is no “you” to be reincarned. See the Diamond Sutra. Westerners prefer this Tibetan version because it helps maintain their ego view of existence/.
“Heaven and hell are not a place but yet a state of existence.” As it is here on Earth. Since I was a child I always believed this to be true because it’s fair. Our actions determine what state of existence we end up in. That makes sense. It’s not a brainwashing cult with ideas that forbid free thinking. It simply states your actions determine your state of mind, not who or what you believe in as nobody truly knows.
(I by no means consider it infallible; but my comments are informed by modern knowledge, just as the ancient ones were)
Humans are known to be susceptible to some very basic and universal INTELLECTUAL fallacies; people of the pre-industrial era(s) had virtually no intellectual culture by which to develop their minds (and it would have been lethal to express critical thinking within earshot of a despot in, say, the Buddha’s society). The average citizen of the ancient world would present to us, in terms of pure intellectual functioning, as mildly mentally retarded (look up IQ range of 65-70)
One is magical thinking; another is anthropomorphisation. I also point to the then not-so-distant-in-the-past traditions of animism. Insects, dogs, birds, and monkeys are organically incapable of the experiences and especially the volitional actions of humans. It is preposterous to suggest that any amount of time or repetition of existence in the form of these organisms could have any equivalency to human fate. This is literally as absurd as suggesting that one could atone for an emotional transgression by doing pushups (sorry, Catholics). Similarly, a rat that is spending a life as a rat because a) it was a bad dog in a previous cycle; or b) because it was a particularly noble mosquito; has no capacity to appreciate its being in either case. I emphasize here that Buddhism links karma to volitional action. If that is what determines the karmic fate of humans, I am asking for some form of non-absurd expansion on the doctrine regarding the supposed transmigration of an insect soul to that of a human.