Today’s ' A New Notion of Karma & Rebirth' post builds on my previous essays, entitled "Further Hunches" (LINK) and "Even Further Hunches" (LINK) and "Yet Even Further Hunches" (LINK), Still Yet Even Further Hunches (LINK), Still Yet Even MORE Further Hunches (LINK), "10 Amazing Lucky Breaks Leading to You" (LINK), "10 Hunches about Hunches" (LINK) and "Hunches about Causes" (LINK). They follow on my original scribblings, entitled just "Hunches" (LINK). If you don't buy the wild notions I toss out there, you surely won't catch what I'm pitching today. The premises of those essays can be summarized as follows (you can read the rest at the foregoing links):
I propose that there is something special, deserving special explanation, in the fact that this very personal "I" (and, I will assume, the same for you) finds myself as a sentient, self-reflective life form existing now as the apparent product of an amazing chain (in fact, tangled chains within chains within chains) of forces, factors and freak events in physics, chemistry, stellar and planetary development, biology and evolution, as well as human and personal ancestral history, which apparently all had to happen to work out just so, just on time (and did!), to allow my conception and birth in this fragile yet complex and intricately structured body and brain (without which workings of body and brain, together with all past events which led to this body and brain, I seemingly could not be this self-aware "I") now able to reflect back over what seems billions of years of moment-by-moment happenings and happenstances where events could (one would surmise) have headed off in any of untold other directions without some "me" as a result at all (and, I assume, the same for you.)
If you do not think such fact anything special, then you are wasting your time reading this.
Today, I wish to ask whether the premises described above might allow for, and even point to, the existence of a system Karma and Rebirth in traditional Buddhist meaning.
My answer: Yes, at least in some aspects.
If you are reading these words right now, and are self aware of your doing so right now, then you are the product of a most intricate, and seemingly (at almost any imagined point in time prior to your conception and birth) most unlikely, chain of events which has led to your being so. Assuming that such outcome is not merely the happenstance result of a most tangled, billions-of-years long series of dice rolls (and assuming that there is not other explanation, such as that "everything happens sometime" in an infinite reality, so your being so had to happen sometime ... a proposal I reject as it seems merely to explain versions of "you" happening one or more somewheres and many sometimes, maybe countless times, but not this particular "you" happening right here now ... and further begs the question of why the universe has any "you" at all, and most importantly, this particular one you are experiencing right now), there might be a guiding principal, natural process or "programming" to the universe that has steered events in particular directions, one outcome of which (among all its resulting outcomes) is this "very you" experiencing you right now.
Traditional Buddhism proposed a system of Karma, in which causal effects from the past, tied to volitional moral behavior deemed good, bad, neutral or mixed, passed in long streams of causes leading to effects, until coming to fruition as the good and bad in a particular lifetime (which lifetime, in turn, would be filled with its own Karmic actions leading to future effects in subsequent lifetimes.) Karmic causes were never the only determinant of someone's life (e.g., chance, social causes, natural environmental causes and the like were also determinants, besides our past volitional acts). However, traditional Buddhism found something special in the happenstance of human existence, described this way:
It is unclear where and when, according to traditional Buddhism, such chains of cause-and-effect would have begun, whether they had an initial cause or are somehow endless (much as we wonder the same about this universe itself, its start and such). However, whatever their start, Buddhism posited that these cycles can eventually be brought to an end in "nirvana," and its escape from the samsaric cycle of rebirth.
If you are "you" right now, you cannot have been very different from how you are now while still being "you." For example, you could not lack a heart and lungs and still be able to be experiencing your "you" right now (not for very long anyway). The molecules that constitute you could not be in the shape of a chair, tree or ant while recognizable in any way as "you" (especially to you), even if perhaps that would still be loosely "you" in some sense growing or crawling in my garden, or serving as this seat upon which I sit. Even small changes (at nearly any one point during at least the last 13.8 Billions years that we know about) in the chain of "cause-and-effect which led to this current "you" right now would seemingly have sent the chain off in radically other directions, the vast majority not possible to result in a "you" at all, especially this one "you" reading these words now.
Of course, your life would tolerate small changes which would still allow for a recognizable you: Your parents could have decided to move to Paris just prior to your birth, and to raise you there, rather than Los Angeles, for example. You could have been born with six fingers on each hand, an inherited heart defect, or other genetic condition which you do not now have, which (assuming it would not be so serious as to have killed you) would still allow this "you" here and now, even if in poorer health or speaking French. However, if we might assume that you could not have been born as "you" without those very parents, and their most specific act of copulation and insemination, nor if some genetic error had been such as to cause the mother's body to reject the resulting fetus in miscarriage before birth, then your being born was a most fragile outcome. In other words, while there appears to be some "play" in the range of variations which would have allowed you to be this "you," that range still would occupy a very narrow window compared to all other seeming possibilities.
For some reason, the universe did not result merely in this "you" with your particular parents, your heart and lungs, but also in this "you" with your life situation, filled with its various starting conditions that are most unique to you. As you are well aware, those conditions of your birth and life are mixed and varied: You were born rich or poor or in between, with good health or bad or in between, in the culture and age when you were born, with the opportunities or obstacles that life presented to you at birth based on the surrounding circumstances of your birth which (for whatever reason or no reason) life handed you. To reiterate, while there could have been some variation in those conditions while still allowing "you" to be "you" (e.g., you could have been a bit more handsome and a mega-rich version of you, or the opposite), the range of variations which would have allowed this "you" to be "you" seemingly remains finely narrow compared to all other imagined possibilities.
Thus, the question is presented: If the universe did, in fact, load the dice in some way to "summon forth" this "you" who, seemingly, the universe could more easily have done without altogether, did it do so by "setting up" the particular conditions required for you to be you including, not only the physical requirements for a human being such as heart and lungs, but also the particular family situation, wealth, health and the like into which you were born? Those conditions are so narrow in range, and seemingly as unlikely as all the other events of physics, astronomy, earth history, evolution and human history required for this "you," that they may have been a "set up" too together with all the other incredibly unlikely conditions for "you," the product of that guiding principal, natural process or "programming" that appears to have perhaps loaded the dice.
I am not prepared to say that the situation you found yourself in as a child (with a certain family, a certain kind of familial environment, with a certain level of wealth and health) is somehow directly attributed to some good or bad acts done by you in some life earlier in the stream of cause and effect which has resulted in this current you. However, I will assert that, for whatever reason, if the universe is somehow a guided process less random than it superficially appears, that process seems to have set you up with the particular life start you experienced, with all its advantages, benefits, obstacles and demerits. Nor could it have done much otherwise, assuming that you are to be "you" (which you obviously are) and that your being "you" was not a pure crap shoot.
If the universe did so, might there be a purpose to it? Buddhism does imply that there is some "purpose" and direction to the process (liberation), thus is traditionally teleological. And besides the process of "liberation" which Buddhism envisions, other religions speak of God's "mysterious" plan for each of us (in which we are sometimes tested like Job). Perhaps, as I suspect, there is a certain "story" to the universe being played out or told, and our individual lives just make good characters in the intricate tale, entertainment for the gods or for the universe itself, even if just small bit players in whatever is playing out. Theologians like Teilhard de Chardin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre...ard_de_Chardin), philosophers like Philip Goff (https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...w-a-real-poser) and some physicists like Paul Davies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWuC6jh1r0Q&list=PLFJr3pJl27pLetTwsMIM7OWz wESz9J2Nl&index=4) propose that "something is up" with some apparent ends or objectives. I believe that Dogen and the other old Zen masters felt and expressed that "something is up." I feel that "something is up" too.
Of course, none of this means that we human beings need to be playing a central and starring role in some plot: After all, every tree or ant, stone and breeze is just as unlikely in its way, the product seemingly of billions of years of fantastic events. Nevertheless, one might surmise that they each and all play a role if there is an overarching cosmic "story:" The tree is to grow as a tree, the ant is to crawl and cleans the soil, each in its position in the world. Likewise, if we find ourself (as we do) born into a certain human life, in certain conditions, might we equally surmise that our role is to grow and crawl through our life, beginning from where we find ourselves? "Set up" or not, if finding oneself born and alive in a little rowboat in the middle of a river, oar in hand, my suggestion is to start rowing (drifting now and then too is fine)! Certainly, our being born in these human bodies is as strange as finding ourself suddenly, very mysteriously, alive and aware in such a little boat on such a twisting, sometimes terrifying yet oh so beautiful river.
I suspect (another one of my hunches) that the guiding principal, natural process or "programming" (yes, with some form of intelligence or designer tuning things, either behind the process or which is the process itself) does not have perfect control of this wild and chaotic cosmos. "It" is powerful, yes, far beyond our puny human scale, but far from omnipotent. It too can only steer things, set things rolling, adjust here and there, but it is too facing a wild rolling river ... better, an ocean ... of currents in which it can only tune the heading of its boat now and then. It is not unlike our own life in our own boat amid a river of life circumstances, where the best that we can do is try to point our bow in good directions, avoiding unwanted rocks and shoals. Even so, nature seems a wild place, a jungle, where so many babies are stillborn for every healthy birth ... many more never make it beyond childhood ... much like scattered seeds in the garden, some of which sprout tall and some of which never do. (Or perhaps the universe is like a film in which, in fact, the script is totally written, all events determined, but what we see on the screen is only the appearance of wild events and chance actions.) In either case, "something is up."
What you cannot deny is that here you find yourself ... with your life, amid its conditions here and now. I suspect that we are meant to do a little more, play a special role, a bit more than the trees, ants, rocks and breezes (although, of course, they play their precious roles too and are not to be dishonored: Where would we be without the trees and ants and all the rest, each necessary to make this balanced world and its environment what it is.) I suspect that human beings, with our degree of self-sentience, creativity, powers of thought and emotions, the current product of long chains of evolution, are to play some special role commensurate with those special talents. I do not mean that we human beings are the "end of history" in any way (I doubt that we are the final product, especially as we seem such flawed "works in progress"), but it is very possible that we are important stepping stones to what comes and emerges next.
I suspect that there is a moral element to it too, for the simple reason that now (unlike much of the past) our very survival as a species depends on our overcoming the hate and violence, greed and overconsumption, divisive and small thinking of our human condition. The lion which kills the elk need not ponder the morality of killing, the world's very existence did not hang in the balance when samurai armies stormed enemy castles, the planet was fine as our ancestors engaged in "slash and burn" agriculture or built rows of smokestacks for their 19th century mills ... but now is very different. If we are to survive and thrive from this point forward ... not burned to ashes in some nuclear armageddon, or scrambling to get by on an unlivable, hot husk of a poisoned world ... we must make the right moral choices from now on ... for peace, non-violence, generosity, mutual respect and tolerance. Should we fail to realize such ethical standards, we do not deserve to survive amid all the other likely lifeforms scattered like seeds through the galaxies, each facing their own crossroads to tomorrow.
Finally, I cannot guaranty that "you" will be reborn as any one, identifiable lifeform in the future. I cannot say that, if you eat that extra piece of pie now, you will be born as a hungry ghost next life, or as worm, puppy or god. That still does not make sense to me and, perhaps, when the Buddha spoke of his sitting under the Bodhi Tree witnessing the past lives of "all" beings, and our future prospects, he witnessed that we are each "all lives," for our causal streams are more like tangled blood vessels, coming together and dividing apart, heading in many directions, all sustaining the one body. We are the trees, ants, stones, breezes, tomorrow's lifeforms too, maybe intelligent robots, really all the life of the galaxies. Those are our rebirths, determined in part by the choices we make, the acts we undertake now.
My notion which I propose in these "hunches" also implies that "you," and likewise me, everyone, each ant and pebble, are all the product of our particular respective lines of cause-effect falling dominoes that have wound around through the billions of years to our own individual doorsteps. That fact seems undeniable given our present understanding of the history of our universe. As Carl Sagan said, "We are stardust," as the atoms in ypu were forged in unknown exploding stars long ago, which atoms have since been many things before finding their current (and temporary) home in you (likewise for for me and my atoms, and the ants and all else.) So, in a sense, we can say that the particular twisting line of falling dominoes, and all that developed, formed and decayed along the way, was "your" particular stream, without which you would not be you. That also resembles traditional Buddhist beliefs on rebirth.
So there you have it: A vision of Karma and Rebirth ...
... Causes and conditions we are mysteriously handed as the ground of our life ... Ethical choices we individually (and thus collectively) make ... Effects and lives which result from those choices and acts in the near and distant future ... Resultant lives which are also somehow "us."
Let the show go on. That show is us too.
Gassho, J
stlah
- There is something special, deserving special explanation, about the fact that, in a seemingly wild and largely random universe, you find yourself to be a self-aware being able now to imagine and contemplate any point in time in the history of this universe, beginning from a moment after the Big Bang, continuing on through 13.7 billion years to the moment of your conception when, according to our currently accepted notions of physics, chemistry, stellar and planetary development, biology and evolution, the intricate sequence of events headed in precisely a direction necessary for your eventual existence despite the seemingly far greater likelihood time-and-time again that any single event amid the ages-long unbroken chain could, it would be thought, have turned in another direction among the vast set of directions which would have foreclosed your eventual existence, all as proven by the simple fact that here you are, alive and pondering your existence and all it required.
- Although the same unlikelihood could be claimed for any sentient being, creature or thing that has come into existence at this now current moment of universal history, the fact that the contemplator is not just someone or some creature or something, but rather, you yourself now subjectively contemplating your own personal fortune is a special phenomenon deserving special explanation.
- You are not the winner of a single lottery (something not particularly amazing), but the always and each-and-every time winner after winner of a string of constant lotteries within lotteries, one after the other in sequence and often entwined in complex parallel, stretching through all time from cosmic expansion to sperm meets egg, which unbroken chain of a googol of wins resulted in you, no step skipped or tripped over, bar none, not a single miss as proven conclusively just by your present contemplation of the most personal outcome.
- This outcome, if more than brute fact, may point to a mechanism, as yet unknown but open to conjecture, which has served to weight nature’s dice, tilt the roulette wheel, limit the possible results, fix the game. If such a mechanism exists, it need not always remain unknown, its nature can be the subject of theory and, hopefully, testing and demonstration.
- Though beings identical to you, or extremely close, may have appeared time and again in an infinite universe or ensemble of universes where like circumstances endlessly happen, their existence would not explain your existence, here and now, in this place and timeline where you apparently need to find yourself to be this you right here and now. The others might be doppelgängers or twins, but that would be different from this very you which you need right now in order to be experiencing you.
- While Buddhism is generally not concerned with "where we all came from," being content in guiding us to Liberation here and now however we got here, Buddhism also does not forbid our investigating such matters. In fact, Buddhism is based on certain suppositions about reality, our deep connection and inter-identity with the universe, and even a "built in" system of ethics/Karma, which overlaps with many of my speculations
~ ~ ~
I propose that there is something special, deserving special explanation, in the fact that this very personal "I" (and, I will assume, the same for you) finds myself as a sentient, self-reflective life form existing now as the apparent product of an amazing chain (in fact, tangled chains within chains within chains) of forces, factors and freak events in physics, chemistry, stellar and planetary development, biology and evolution, as well as human and personal ancestral history, which apparently all had to happen to work out just so, just on time (and did!), to allow my conception and birth in this fragile yet complex and intricately structured body and brain (without which workings of body and brain, together with all past events which led to this body and brain, I seemingly could not be this self-aware "I") now able to reflect back over what seems billions of years of moment-by-moment happenings and happenstances where events could (one would surmise) have headed off in any of untold other directions without some "me" as a result at all (and, I assume, the same for you.)
If you do not think such fact anything special, then you are wasting your time reading this.
Today, I wish to ask whether the premises described above might allow for, and even point to, the existence of a system Karma and Rebirth in traditional Buddhist meaning.
My answer: Yes, at least in some aspects.
If you are reading these words right now, and are self aware of your doing so right now, then you are the product of a most intricate, and seemingly (at almost any imagined point in time prior to your conception and birth) most unlikely, chain of events which has led to your being so. Assuming that such outcome is not merely the happenstance result of a most tangled, billions-of-years long series of dice rolls (and assuming that there is not other explanation, such as that "everything happens sometime" in an infinite reality, so your being so had to happen sometime ... a proposal I reject as it seems merely to explain versions of "you" happening one or more somewheres and many sometimes, maybe countless times, but not this particular "you" happening right here now ... and further begs the question of why the universe has any "you" at all, and most importantly, this particular one you are experiencing right now), there might be a guiding principal, natural process or "programming" to the universe that has steered events in particular directions, one outcome of which (among all its resulting outcomes) is this "very you" experiencing you right now.
Traditional Buddhism proposed a system of Karma, in which causal effects from the past, tied to volitional moral behavior deemed good, bad, neutral or mixed, passed in long streams of causes leading to effects, until coming to fruition as the good and bad in a particular lifetime (which lifetime, in turn, would be filled with its own Karmic actions leading to future effects in subsequent lifetimes.) Karmic causes were never the only determinant of someone's life (e.g., chance, social causes, natural environmental causes and the like were also determinants, besides our past volitional acts). However, traditional Buddhism found something special in the happenstance of human existence, described this way:
[In] the “King Wonderful Adornment” (twenty-seventh) chapter of the Lotus Sutra [it states] that encountering a Buddha’s teaching is as rare as a one-eyed turtle finding a floating sandalwood log with a hollow in it to hold him. The Nirvana Sutra uses the same image to express the rarity of being born human and encountering a Buddha’s teaching. The story behind this reference is found in the parable of the blind turtle in the Miscellaneous Āgama Sutra. A blind turtle, whose life span is immeasurable kalpas, lives at the bottom of the sea. Once every one hundred years he rises to the surface. There is only one log floating in the sea with a suitable hollow in it. Since the turtle is blind and the log is tossed about by the wind and waves, the likelihood of the turtle reaching the log is extremely remote. It is even rarer, says Shakyamuni, to be born a human being; having been born human, one should use the opportunity to master the four noble truths and attain emancipation. https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/dic/Content/O/17
If you are "you" right now, you cannot have been very different from how you are now while still being "you." For example, you could not lack a heart and lungs and still be able to be experiencing your "you" right now (not for very long anyway). The molecules that constitute you could not be in the shape of a chair, tree or ant while recognizable in any way as "you" (especially to you), even if perhaps that would still be loosely "you" in some sense growing or crawling in my garden, or serving as this seat upon which I sit. Even small changes (at nearly any one point during at least the last 13.8 Billions years that we know about) in the chain of "cause-and-effect which led to this current "you" right now would seemingly have sent the chain off in radically other directions, the vast majority not possible to result in a "you" at all, especially this one "you" reading these words now.
Of course, your life would tolerate small changes which would still allow for a recognizable you: Your parents could have decided to move to Paris just prior to your birth, and to raise you there, rather than Los Angeles, for example. You could have been born with six fingers on each hand, an inherited heart defect, or other genetic condition which you do not now have, which (assuming it would not be so serious as to have killed you) would still allow this "you" here and now, even if in poorer health or speaking French. However, if we might assume that you could not have been born as "you" without those very parents, and their most specific act of copulation and insemination, nor if some genetic error had been such as to cause the mother's body to reject the resulting fetus in miscarriage before birth, then your being born was a most fragile outcome. In other words, while there appears to be some "play" in the range of variations which would have allowed you to be this "you," that range still would occupy a very narrow window compared to all other seeming possibilities.
For some reason, the universe did not result merely in this "you" with your particular parents, your heart and lungs, but also in this "you" with your life situation, filled with its various starting conditions that are most unique to you. As you are well aware, those conditions of your birth and life are mixed and varied: You were born rich or poor or in between, with good health or bad or in between, in the culture and age when you were born, with the opportunities or obstacles that life presented to you at birth based on the surrounding circumstances of your birth which (for whatever reason or no reason) life handed you. To reiterate, while there could have been some variation in those conditions while still allowing "you" to be "you" (e.g., you could have been a bit more handsome and a mega-rich version of you, or the opposite), the range of variations which would have allowed this "you" to be "you" seemingly remains finely narrow compared to all other imagined possibilities.
Thus, the question is presented: If the universe did, in fact, load the dice in some way to "summon forth" this "you" who, seemingly, the universe could more easily have done without altogether, did it do so by "setting up" the particular conditions required for you to be you including, not only the physical requirements for a human being such as heart and lungs, but also the particular family situation, wealth, health and the like into which you were born? Those conditions are so narrow in range, and seemingly as unlikely as all the other events of physics, astronomy, earth history, evolution and human history required for this "you," that they may have been a "set up" too together with all the other incredibly unlikely conditions for "you," the product of that guiding principal, natural process or "programming" that appears to have perhaps loaded the dice.
I am not prepared to say that the situation you found yourself in as a child (with a certain family, a certain kind of familial environment, with a certain level of wealth and health) is somehow directly attributed to some good or bad acts done by you in some life earlier in the stream of cause and effect which has resulted in this current you. However, I will assert that, for whatever reason, if the universe is somehow a guided process less random than it superficially appears, that process seems to have set you up with the particular life start you experienced, with all its advantages, benefits, obstacles and demerits. Nor could it have done much otherwise, assuming that you are to be "you" (which you obviously are) and that your being "you" was not a pure crap shoot.
If the universe did so, might there be a purpose to it? Buddhism does imply that there is some "purpose" and direction to the process (liberation), thus is traditionally teleological. And besides the process of "liberation" which Buddhism envisions, other religions speak of God's "mysterious" plan for each of us (in which we are sometimes tested like Job). Perhaps, as I suspect, there is a certain "story" to the universe being played out or told, and our individual lives just make good characters in the intricate tale, entertainment for the gods or for the universe itself, even if just small bit players in whatever is playing out. Theologians like Teilhard de Chardin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre...ard_de_Chardin), philosophers like Philip Goff (https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...w-a-real-poser) and some physicists like Paul Davies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWuC6jh1r0Q&list=PLFJr3pJl27pLetTwsMIM7OWz wESz9J2Nl&index=4) propose that "something is up" with some apparent ends or objectives. I believe that Dogen and the other old Zen masters felt and expressed that "something is up." I feel that "something is up" too.
Of course, none of this means that we human beings need to be playing a central and starring role in some plot: After all, every tree or ant, stone and breeze is just as unlikely in its way, the product seemingly of billions of years of fantastic events. Nevertheless, one might surmise that they each and all play a role if there is an overarching cosmic "story:" The tree is to grow as a tree, the ant is to crawl and cleans the soil, each in its position in the world. Likewise, if we find ourself (as we do) born into a certain human life, in certain conditions, might we equally surmise that our role is to grow and crawl through our life, beginning from where we find ourselves? "Set up" or not, if finding oneself born and alive in a little rowboat in the middle of a river, oar in hand, my suggestion is to start rowing (drifting now and then too is fine)! Certainly, our being born in these human bodies is as strange as finding ourself suddenly, very mysteriously, alive and aware in such a little boat on such a twisting, sometimes terrifying yet oh so beautiful river.
I suspect (another one of my hunches) that the guiding principal, natural process or "programming" (yes, with some form of intelligence or designer tuning things, either behind the process or which is the process itself) does not have perfect control of this wild and chaotic cosmos. "It" is powerful, yes, far beyond our puny human scale, but far from omnipotent. It too can only steer things, set things rolling, adjust here and there, but it is too facing a wild rolling river ... better, an ocean ... of currents in which it can only tune the heading of its boat now and then. It is not unlike our own life in our own boat amid a river of life circumstances, where the best that we can do is try to point our bow in good directions, avoiding unwanted rocks and shoals. Even so, nature seems a wild place, a jungle, where so many babies are stillborn for every healthy birth ... many more never make it beyond childhood ... much like scattered seeds in the garden, some of which sprout tall and some of which never do. (Or perhaps the universe is like a film in which, in fact, the script is totally written, all events determined, but what we see on the screen is only the appearance of wild events and chance actions.) In either case, "something is up."
What you cannot deny is that here you find yourself ... with your life, amid its conditions here and now. I suspect that we are meant to do a little more, play a special role, a bit more than the trees, ants, rocks and breezes (although, of course, they play their precious roles too and are not to be dishonored: Where would we be without the trees and ants and all the rest, each necessary to make this balanced world and its environment what it is.) I suspect that human beings, with our degree of self-sentience, creativity, powers of thought and emotions, the current product of long chains of evolution, are to play some special role commensurate with those special talents. I do not mean that we human beings are the "end of history" in any way (I doubt that we are the final product, especially as we seem such flawed "works in progress"), but it is very possible that we are important stepping stones to what comes and emerges next.
I suspect that there is a moral element to it too, for the simple reason that now (unlike much of the past) our very survival as a species depends on our overcoming the hate and violence, greed and overconsumption, divisive and small thinking of our human condition. The lion which kills the elk need not ponder the morality of killing, the world's very existence did not hang in the balance when samurai armies stormed enemy castles, the planet was fine as our ancestors engaged in "slash and burn" agriculture or built rows of smokestacks for their 19th century mills ... but now is very different. If we are to survive and thrive from this point forward ... not burned to ashes in some nuclear armageddon, or scrambling to get by on an unlivable, hot husk of a poisoned world ... we must make the right moral choices from now on ... for peace, non-violence, generosity, mutual respect and tolerance. Should we fail to realize such ethical standards, we do not deserve to survive amid all the other likely lifeforms scattered like seeds through the galaxies, each facing their own crossroads to tomorrow.
Finally, I cannot guaranty that "you" will be reborn as any one, identifiable lifeform in the future. I cannot say that, if you eat that extra piece of pie now, you will be born as a hungry ghost next life, or as worm, puppy or god. That still does not make sense to me and, perhaps, when the Buddha spoke of his sitting under the Bodhi Tree witnessing the past lives of "all" beings, and our future prospects, he witnessed that we are each "all lives," for our causal streams are more like tangled blood vessels, coming together and dividing apart, heading in many directions, all sustaining the one body. We are the trees, ants, stones, breezes, tomorrow's lifeforms too, maybe intelligent robots, really all the life of the galaxies. Those are our rebirths, determined in part by the choices we make, the acts we undertake now.
My notion which I propose in these "hunches" also implies that "you," and likewise me, everyone, each ant and pebble, are all the product of our particular respective lines of cause-effect falling dominoes that have wound around through the billions of years to our own individual doorsteps. That fact seems undeniable given our present understanding of the history of our universe. As Carl Sagan said, "We are stardust," as the atoms in ypu were forged in unknown exploding stars long ago, which atoms have since been many things before finding their current (and temporary) home in you (likewise for for me and my atoms, and the ants and all else.) So, in a sense, we can say that the particular twisting line of falling dominoes, and all that developed, formed and decayed along the way, was "your" particular stream, without which you would not be you. That also resembles traditional Buddhist beliefs on rebirth.
So there you have it: A vision of Karma and Rebirth ...
... Causes and conditions we are mysteriously handed as the ground of our life ... Ethical choices we individually (and thus collectively) make ... Effects and lives which result from those choices and acts in the near and distant future ... Resultant lives which are also somehow "us."
Let the show go on. That show is us too.
Gassho, J
stlah
)
"
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