Rebirth

From Buddhist Encyclopedia

• Chinese :  lunhui
• Pali :  punabbhava
• Sanskrit :  punarbhava

Rebirth is where streams of consciousness composed of aggregates called skandha causes a new form to emerge, and would continue as long as those aggregates abide in ignorance or avidya, which is the root cause of existence.

Although the cessation of a life is not in itself a sufficient condition for the inception of a new life (since arhats, pratyekabuddhas and buddhas pass away without rebirth), the supporting conditions for a new birth are almost always present. From an external perspective, each life appears as a link in a beginningless sequence of lives, varying in length and in quality.

In traditional Buddhist cosmology, these lives can be in any of a large number of states of being, including those of humans, any kind of animal, and several types of supernatural being (see Six realms). The type of rebirth that arises at the end of one life is conditioned by the karmas (actions of body, speech and mind) of the previous life; good karmas will yield a happier rebirth, bad karmas will produce one which is more unhappy.

In the languages of Sanskrit and Pali, there is no word corresponding exactly to the English rebirth. A rebirth, that is, the state one is born into, is referred to as jati, i.e. simply birth, also referring to the process of being born or coming into the world in any way. The entire process of change from one life to the next is called punarbhava (Sanskrit) literally becoming again; it is also known simply as bhava, i.e. "becoming". The process seen from a universal perspective, encompassing all living beings, is called Samsara.

From an interior perspective, a person who remembers or imagines a past life is likely to think of it as representing a continuity of existence between lifespans, i.e., that the same person (however defined) was formerly one person (with a certain name and body) and is now a different person (with another name and body). This perspective is objectionable from the point of view of Buddhist philosophy on two counts. First, because it seems to postulate an enduring, self-existing entity that exists separate from the elements of mind and body, contrary to the Buddhist philosophical position of anātman. Second, because it overlooks the characterization of this process as one of constant change, both within and between lives, in which the newly-arising life is conditioned by but in no respect identical to the predecedent life.

Nonetheless, the Buddha is represented using language reflecting the interior perspective in stories about his past lives in both jātakas and sūtras. For instance, "At that time I was the Brahmin, the Great Steward..." (Mahāgovinda-sutta, DN.19) or "Six times, Ananda, I recall discarding the body in this place, and at the seventh time I discarded it as a wheel-turning monarch..." (Mahāsudassana-sutta, DN.17). This can be regarded as a concession to the needs of conventional speech.

Through careful observation of the mind in meditation, it is possible to see consciousness as being a sequence of conscious moments rather a continuum of awareness. Each moment is an experience of an individual mind-state: a thought, a memory, a feeling, a perception. A mind-state arises, exists and, being impermanent, ceases following which the next mind-state arises. Thus the consciousness of a sentient being can be seen as a continuous series of birth and death of these mind-states.

In the practice of Vipassana meditation, the meditator uses “bare attention” to observe the endless round of mind-states. This observation derives insight and understanding from seeing this cycle of birth, death and rebirth without interfering, owning or judging the individual states of mind that arise and pass away. This understanding enables them to limit the power of desire, which according to the second noble truth of Buddhism is the cause of Dukkha (unsatisfactoriness) thus making possible the realisation of nirvana.

The term rebirth or re-becoming is preferred to "reincarnation", as the latter is taken to imply there is a fixed entity that is reborn.

The lack of a fixed self does not mean lack of continuity. One of the metaphors used to illustrate this is that of fire. For example, a flame is transferred from one candle to another, or a fire spreads from one field to another. In the same way that it depends on the original fire, there is a conditioned relationship between one life and the next; they are not identical but neither are they completely distinct. The early Buddhist texts make it clear that there is no permanent consciousness that moves from life to life.

Early Buddhists had to deal with the problems of establishing the nature of the causal link between two lives, especially the crucial one of how one being could receive the fruits of the actions of a previous being, now dead, and how saṃskāras, or volitional tendencies to act and think in particular ways can be transferred from one being to another.

The Pudgalavada school (now extinct) believed in a personal entity puggala that separate from the five skandhas which provided a link of personal continuity that allows for karma to act on an individual over time. The medieval Pali scholar Buddhaghosa posited a 'rebirth-linking consciousness' (patisandhi), which connected the arising of a new life with the moment of death, but how one life came to be associated with another was still not made clear. Some schools were led to the conclusion that karma continued to exist in some sense and adhere to a particular person until it had worked out its consequences. Another school, the Sautrantika, made use of a more poetic model to account for the process of karmic continuity. For them, each act 'perfumed' the individual and led to the planting of a 'seed' that would later germinate as a good or bad karmic result.

The Tibetan schools, on the other hand, hold to the notion of a bardo (intermediate state) which can last up to forty-nine days, and this has led to the development of a unique 'science' of death and rebirth, a good deal of which is set down in what is popularly known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Also, Rick Strassman's book The Spirit Molecule touches on the association between the intermediate state and a possible scientific explanation.

The Sarvastivada, who believed that between death and rebirth there is a sort of limbo in which beings do not yet reap the consequences of their previous actions but in which they may still influence their rebirth. The death process and this intermediate state were believed to offer a uniquely favourable opportunity for spiritual awakening.

Rebirth in Hinduism

The Buddha lived at a time of great philosophical creativity in India, where many different concepts of the nature of life and death that were proposed at that time. Some thinkers were materialists, believing that there was no existent consequent upon the end of a life, and that there was an ātman (self) which was annihilated upon death. Others believed in a form of cyclic existence, where a being is born, lives, dies and then is re-born, in which karma played no role. Others were eternalists, postulating an eternally existent soul, when a being (or his body) dies, the soul survives death and is re-embodied reincarnates as another living being, based on its karmic inheritance. This last belief is the one that has come to be dominant in modern Hinduism.

This concept was consistent with the common notion of a sequence of related lives stretching over a very long time, but was constrained by two core Buddhist concepts: Anatta, that there is no irreducible self tying these lives together; and Anicca, that all compounded things are subject to dissolution, including all the components of the human person and personality. The connections between karma, rebirth, and their ultimate causes is set out in the twelve links of Pratitya-samutpada.

References

• Upali Sutta
• Kukuravatika Sutta
• Mahakammavibhanga Sutta
• Moliyasivaka Sutta
• Sankha Sutta
• Tibetan Book of the Dead
• Exploring Karma & Rebirth by Nagapriya
• On Rebirth and Nibbana by Ven. Nyanananda