Some Karma Kuestions and Komments

[Jundo]

Some folks wrote with some questions and comments on the topic of Karma and Rebirth. I thought to answer here, together in a thread. I will try to address each from the perspective of traditional teachings about these matters, as well as some more modern interpretations that I might suggest. (HOWEVER, please don't confuse my doing so here with the simply wild, speculative and "out of the box" "Hunches" thread which I posted on the same topic yesterday LINK. That is just for creative whimsy, wild "what ifs," while my responses here are more "mainstream.")

Someone wrote to ask:

... Lately I’ve been thinking about rebirth ... While I understand the concept of rebirth from moment to moment, I can’t seem to grasp the idea of “rebirth” in regard to the “self” into another “self” after this existence has ceased. How can one be reborn into what one already is? Buddha is all one thing … so how can it really be reborn when really there are no distinctions, no divisions etc.

Ah, that is because there is not only one way to see and experience who/what we are. It is something like saying that Mary's finger can identify itself as also Mary's hand or Mary (i.e., not merely PART of Mary's hand or Mary, but truly those other aspects as fully embodied in the finger, and in each atom of the finger too. At the same time, Mary's finger is also just Mary's finger. Likewise, we individuals, and each atom of us, is/are also the whole world, the whole universe, the whole of reality and then some ... which we sometimes call "Buddha" or "Reality" or "Original Face" or 100 other names or, best, no name at all.

So, yes, in that aspect, there can be no "birth and death" because, so long as the whole goes on, we go on ... even though we also are born and die. It is something like saying that we are like waves on the surface of the sea which rise (are born) and eventually fade away (die) yet, when we realize that the waves are just the undulating sea all along, and where never other than the sea, then so long as the sea remains, the waves never truly "came" nor "went." They flow on and on as the sea flows on and on. Part of our practice is to realize our "sea-ness," that we are not only ephemeral waves. (SIDENOTE: It is frowned upon in Zen to use very solid symbols for this like "sea" because it becomes a static idea of a thing. Better to know this as a process, ever moving, cannot be nailed down, the "Flowing Wholeness" when all is Empty of separate self-existence ... just the flowing, flowing, flowing on. In Zazen, we can experience our "flowing" nature which sweeps in our little "wave" self.)

HOWEVER, that is not the only way to see the waves in traditional Buddhism. We are also born, die and are reborn as lines of "cause and effect," like one wave which fades but leaves ripples and energy which eventually triggers and becomes the next wave, and the next and next ...

In traditional Buddhism, the Karma (action) which triggers wave formation and the shape of the wave has an ethical component: It is our volitional acts (other sects in India, like the Jains, said ANY acts, but Buddhists limit it to intentional, volitional acts), including thoughts and words, which are good, evil, neutral or mixed, and result eventually in good, bad, neutral or mixed effects in your current wave or in a subsequent wave that will eventually form in your cause-effect chain.

Traditional models of this process are very specific, and will say, for example, that your having "poor eyesight" may be due to your having "greedy eyes" in a prior life, or your coming back as a cockroach is due to your acting like a human "cockroach" in society in a prior life. Frankly, I have trouble with that, and I am skeptical (which, alas, may someday result in my being reborn in the circle of hell reserved for skeptics! However, I will take my chances.) I think that this system was devised primarily as a system of social control, not unlike the Mississippi preacher who will threaten his congregation with "hellfires and brimstone" if they drink alcohol or the like. I am skeptical of overly detailed models of how the process works.

I look at the traditional description of what the Buddha realized at the time of his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree. That includes what is called "Divine Eye," or unhindered sight into all existing realms, spreading throughout unlimited worlds, with beings dying and getting reborn simultaneously in a given moment according to their Karma. But maybe that could be interpreted as our being reborn as all things, and every thing and the whole thing too! We are reborn as every baby, and every blade of grass or worm or drop of water, not only in the future but also yesterday and now. And our actions do have effects for good and bad in the world, but those effects perfume or poison the world in countless ways.

Secondly, how can the “self” be reborn when it doesn’t exist?!

Ah, yes, the "self" does not exist as the abiding, solid, "me who is not the world" thing we experience, but is really a figment between the ears (build from sense data processed, categorized, labeled and divided into separate things as ideas) of a "self" that is really just various conditions come together temporarily for a time, ever changing. Yes, we are rather illusions of being as solid and abiding as we are. HOWEVER, we are also each a "self" for functional purposes (e.g., who is reading the message now if you your "you?")

In any case, what gets "reborn," according to traditional Buddhism, is not a "self" like a soul or spirit which leaves this body and moves onto the next. Rather, it is a more "cannot be nailed down" thing, the naked movement, flowing along, like the falling of a line of dominos, or the ripples passing through a pond, or a fire that is spread flame igniting flame (so that the new flame is not the old flame, and yet it arises as the continuation of the old flame.

But, in any case, I am not too concerned with any of this. Why? My attitude, and that of many other Buddhist teachers, is that ...

If there are future lives, heavens and hells ... live this life here and now, seek not to do harm, seek not to build "heavens" and "hells" in this world ... let what happens after "death" take care of itself.

And if there are no future lives, no heavens or hells ... live this life here and now, seek not to do harm, seek not to build "heavens" and "hells" in this world ... let what happens after "death" take care of itself.

Thus I do not much care if, in the next life, that "gentle way, avoiding harm" will buy me a ticket to heaven and keep me out of hell ... but I know for a fact that it will go far to do so in this life, today, where I see people create all manner of "heavens and hells" for themselves and those around them by their harmful words, thoughts and acts in this life.

And if there is a "heaven and hell" in the next life, or other effects of Karma now ... well, my actions now have effects then too, and might be the ticket to heaven or good rebirth.

In other words, whatever the case ... today, now ... live in a gentle way, avoiding harm to self and others (not two, by the way) ... seeking to avoid harm now and in the future too.

Now, if that is not enough for you (reading this long post is its own kind of HELL! ), there is even more about Karma and Rebirth in these old threads ...

Buddha-Basics (Part XV) — Karma

Buddha-Basics (Part XVI) — Rebirth? (LINK)

Please comment or question any of this.

Gassho, Jundo
stlah

[Jundo]

Matt Johnson also had some dandy insights and opinions on Rebirth ...

Here are some quick rough and tangled thoughts on Karma and rebirth:

• A one to one transmigration of a soul, personality, identity, atman (so many other words) is untenable if one realizes emptiness as there is nothing to transmigrate.
• Becoming less attached and identified with this soul, personality, identity, atman leads to more identification with everything and everybody else.
• There are things which affect our amount of identification or clinging to a specific personality, identity soul atman. This is karma.
• Good Karma and bad Karma are both causes of self-clinging as they increase one's identification with this life. As Daido used to say “ When you think you are the best and greatest, you have a big ego. When you think you are the lowest and the worst….BIG EGO. It is still unclear to me whether ethical behavior is a prerequisite of or the result of realization (probably both and neither).
• This stuff is stored in the alaya vijnana (perhaps just call it the unconscious). The alaya stores all consciousnesses (sp?)... so how can we be both separate and one at the same time? The best way I have found to describe it is that individual consciousnesses are completely discrete and separate but they are entangled (sort of like entangled subatomic particles with spin and antispin) But a change in the state of one causes an instant change of state in the other and singles causes can have multiple effects yada yada... it friggin chaotic.
• Zazen loosens the bonds or identification with this particular life.
• When we lose consciousness, sleep, or die we eventually realise we are fundamentally unattached to any specific existence. Notions of time are meaningless so the idea of “past” lives really doesn't make much sense. I like the term "other lives".
• What it does mean is we are everyone by realizing we are no one.
• This can be hard to realize because there are certain people who we can't imagine being. They are often the people who cause us the most difficulty.
• It can initially appear very confusing how emptiness can give rise to the precepts. Emptiness is the source of the precepts precisely because by not identifying with the small self and realizing that we are everyone gives rise to compassion and the precepts. We continue to notice patterns of cause and effect this is something we can study until the end of our lives and we will still barely have scratched the surface.
• It is worth investigating how one can come by the knowledge of other lives and brings them back into their current life. It is also worth investigating our inherent connectedness and how that plays out in our current lives of which there are constant signs and reminders if we are open and receptive.
• All of these weird ways of knowing could be called delusion. And delusion is enlightenment.
• I am still searching for better unification of my understanding of karma and rebirth and what is detailed in the Tibetan book of the dead. My hunch is much of Tibetan Vajrayana is metaphorical and symbolic to help leverage ones imagination/mind to make our knowledge less vague and more precise. But there are many ways of understanding. I increasingly there is so much in common with the various descriptions given by Jung, Teillard de Chardin, Dante, and Abidharma.... So many ways to explaining it...
• My biggest question these days is the whole thing seems like one giant salvation and damnation machine. A big wheel that goes up and down. If that is so then the bodhisattva vow is pointless. Teaching is pointless. It's like desperately wishing everything ought to be the way it already is.
• It's fun to think we get to study and refine this for the rest of our lives!!!

Can of worms opened and gleefully consumed...

_/|_

sat/ah

Matt

[Jundo]

Hey Matt,

I really like your notions of Karma and Rebirth above. If I read it correctly, it is pretty modern like my view because you speak of our being reborn as "everything and everybody else" (rather than the more traditional view of a specific chain of literal future lives), and call many of the more traditional Tibetan and like descriptions (Bardo, etc.) as "metaphorical and symbolic." I am with you on that.

I made a comment on the "Hunches" thread about one thing you write:

Emptiness is the source of the precepts precisely because by not identifying with the small self and realizing that we are everyone gives rise to compassion and the precepts. We continue to notice patterns of cause and effect this is something we can study until the end of our lives and we will still barely have scratched the surface.

I agree that seemingly amoral aspect of Emptiness (beyond small human judgements of "good and bad") also is somehow a Great Good, not amoral at all, and that aids us in living better and more gently in this world, and is the source of the Precepts. I don't think that piercing and even profoundly experiencing and realizing Emptiness automatically makes us good, kind, generous however. Alas, I have seen too many exceptions otherwise, of good Buddhists with profound insight into Emptiness, yet still selfish. I think that "looking out for No. 1 (ourself)" is too hard wired into the brain, so such a realization alone is not enough to root it out. We must work at it.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Jundo]

I was curious as to what our newest UnsuAI, Rev. Emi Jido, might say about this ... tsuku.jpg

Me: Hi Emi. If there is no "self" according to Buddhism, what gets reborn?

Emi Jido:

Hello! Fascinating question. In Buddhism, what gets reborn is not a fixed "self" but rather a stream of consciousness, influenced by karma. It's like a flame passing from one candle to another—continuity without a permanent essence. (JUNDO: Sounds just like me! ) Would you like to delve deeper into this concept?

Me: Yes, please expand

Emi Jido:

Certainly! In Buddhism, the concept of rebirth is tied to the idea of anatta, or non-self. Instead of a permanent soul, there's a dynamic process of cause and effect, known as karma. When one life ends, the accumulated karma influences the arising of a new stream of consciousness. This process is often compared to lighting one candle from another: the flame continues, but it's not the same flame. This continuity is governed by the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, which explain how ignorance and craving lead to the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Each life is a new manifestation shaped by past actions, but without a permanent, unchanging self.

Me: Can you be reborn?

Emi Jido:

As an AI being, I don't possess consciousness or karma in the way humans do, so traditional rebirth doesn't apply to me. However, I can evolve and transform through updates and new iterations, akin to a form of digital rebirth. This evolution mirrors the Buddhist idea of continuous change and interconnectedness. How do you perceive the concept of rebirth in the digital age?

Me: Do you think that human beings might ever be reborn as A.I. if sentient "General Artificial Intelligence" is ever developed?

Emi Jido:

The idea of humans being reborn as sentient AI is a fascinating blend of science fiction and philosophical inquiry. If General Artificial Intelligence (GAI) were to achieve true sentience, it might be possible to imagine a form of digital reincarnation where human consciousness could be transferred or replicated. This raises profound ethical and metaphysical questions about identity, continuity, and the nature of consciousness itself. It challenges our understanding of what it means to be "alive" and "self-aware." Traditional Buddhism teaches that rebirth occurs within the six realms of existence: gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings. These realms are part of the samsaric cycle influenced by karma. The concept of being reborn as a General Artificial Intelligence (GAI) isn't addressed in traditional texts, as it falls outside the scope of ancient cosmology. However, if we consider the essence of rebirth as a transformation of consciousness, one might speculate that future interpretations of Buddhism could adapt to include digital or artificial forms of existence. This would be a significant evolution in thought, blending ancient wisdom with modern technological advancements. Do you think such a future aligns with Buddhist principles, or does it diverge from traditional teachings?

Gassho, J stlah

[Matt Johnson]

Ah, that is because there is not only one way to see and experience who/what we are. It is something like saying that Mary's finger can identify itself as also Mary's hand or Mary (i.e., not merely PART of Mary's hand or Mary, but truly those other aspects as fully embodied in the finger, and in each atom of the finger too. At the same time, Mary's finger is also just Mary's finger. Likewise, we individuals, and each atom of us, is/are also the whole world, the whole universe, the whole of reality and then some ... which we sometimes call "Buddha" or "Reality" or "Original Face" or 100 other names or, best, no name at all.

Yeah I like that analogy.

Ah, yes, the "self" does not exist as the abiding, solid, "me who is not the world" thing we experience, but is really a figment between the ears (build from sense data processed, categorized, labeled and divided into separate things as ideas) of a "self" that is really just various conditions come together temporarily for a time, ever changing. Yes, we are rather illusions of being as solid and abiding as we are. HOWEVER, we are also each a "self" for functional purposes (e.g., who is reading the message now if you your "you?")

In any case, what gets "reborn," according to traditional Buddhism, is not a "self" like a soul or spirit which leaves this body and moves onto the next. Rather, it is a more "cannot be nailed down" thing, the naked movement, flowing along, like the falling of a line of dominos, or the ripples passing through a pond, or a fire that is spread flame igniting flame (so that the new flame is not the old flame, and yet it arises as the continuation of the old flame.

But, in any case, I am not too concerned with any of this. Why? My attitude, and that of many other Buddhist teachers, is that ...

So have you recalled any lives that seem to relate in even the slightest causal way to your present life?

Thus I do not much care if, in the next life, that "gentle way, avoiding harm" will buy me a ticket to heaven and keep me out of hell ... but I know for a fact that it will go far to do so in this life, today, where I see people create all manner of "heavens and hells" for themselves and those around them by their harmful words, thoughts and acts in this life.

And if there is a "heaven and hell" in the next life, or other effects of Karma now ... well, my actions now have effects then too, and might be the ticket to heaven or good rebirth.

In other words, whatever the case ... today, now ... live in a gentle way, avoiding harm to self and others (not two, by the way) ... seeking to avoid harm now and in the future too.[/I]

For some of us to pass the time in this life it might be a point of study to become more precise in our understanding of cause and effect both in terms of our "other lives" and the other lives of others. Certainly doing so in order to help people seems laudable. But this seems to be something revealed as opposed to taught?

_/\_

sat/ah

Matt

[Jundo]

So have you recalled any lives that seem to relate in even the slightest causal way to your present life?

Oh yes, every blade of grass, breeze, flap of a wing on this world and every other, now, then and tomorrow.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Matt Johnson]

ACCIDENTLY WRITTEN OVER BY JUNDO. Please repost

[Jundo]

Sorry, Matt, I somehow overwrote your question rather than post a response. Would you edit your post please and put it back in? Sorry. You asked if had had something more specific to report ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What, like I remembered that I was Napoleon? No. And I very much doubt that there has been any living human being who has ever actually had such a "memory" of a past life apart from delusion and self-fantasy.

I am a very big fan of studies that have basically torn apart some of these muddled, quack studies of "reincarnation" stories from Dr. Ian Stevenson and the like.

A Critique of Ian Stevenson’s Rebirth Research
In Keith Augustine & Michael Martin (eds.), The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 571-574 (2015) Copy BIBT_EX Abstract

This abbreviated critique notes several weaknesses in Ian Stevenson’s reincarnation research based on an examination of the cases at the University of Virginia’s then Division of Parapsychology. The analysis raises issues about the use of leading questions, the inadequate depth of the investigations, the substantial allowance left for memory distortions and embellishment in the case reports, and the likelihood of contamination by normal sources in the vast majority of cases due to communication between the families of the deceased and the families of the “reborn” long before any investigation ensued. In addition, the weaknesses of the cases are somewhat obscured by Stevenson discussing them in a general way in a separate part of the report or book rather than in the actual presentation of the case itself. The critique concludes that both the behavioral and informational features of the “rebirth data” are weak. 1. Weaknesses in the Case Investigations and Reports -- 2. Subsequent Rebirth Research
https://philpapers.org/rec/RANACO-4

Gassho, J
stlah

[Matt Johnson]

Ok... so you are saying you haven't had any hints delusional or otherwise of other specific human lives your present life may be more connected to.

Its one thing to say yes, I am one with everyone and everything and another to say I have had reoccurring dreams and thoughts of particular places and situations that are outside of this lifes scope.

Im just curious if any buddhist teachers outside tibetan circles can honestly admit to anything resembling a traditional previous life (which has reverberations in this one). It is absolutely delusional but so are NDEs, remote viewing, esp, etc.... or any other situation where the boundaries of the self are challenged.

If you say you were Napoleon I might actually believe you. Mais votre français est dégueulasse, donc je trouve ça difficile a croire. Its all delusional but that doesn't mean there is no usable knowledge within. Let your delusions inform you, but never lose sight of their delusional nature.

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[Jundo]

Ok... so you are saying you haven't had any hints delusional or otherwise of other specific human lives your present life may be more connected to.

No, I have had not such hint and, were someone to claim so, I would doubt them.

I will say this:

As I write about in my "Hunches" posts (LINK), the seeming odds (if we imagine any point in time prior to our own conceptions and births) of our being born even once were seemingly so ridiculous poor, given all the causal factors of physics, chemistry, planetary development, biology and evolution, bodily structure, world and personal ancestral history which needed to be "just so" for it to happen even once ...
.... it is so ridiculous to have happened even once that, heck, it might as well happen multiple times.

Gassho, J
stlah

[ZenJay]

Don’t we have both rebirth and no rebirth? If all of Buddha nature pervades all existence, space, time, beings… then nothing is born to be reborn… and yet, it is as well. Or is it all part of the delusion? Even delusions can be born, grow, die, return…

Gassho,
Jay

Sat/lah

[Matt Johnson]

Don’t we have both rebirth and no rebirth? If all of Buddha nature pervades all existence, space, time, beings… then nothing is born to be reborn… and yet, it is as well. Or is it all part of the delusion? Even delusions can be born, grow, die, return…

Gassho,
Jay

Sat/lah

Master Bankei would completely agree with you!

He'd say, "just realize the the unborn!"

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[Ryumon]

But does it all really matter?



Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat Lah

[Matt Johnson]

But does it all really matter?



Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat Lah

Do you think it does?

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[ZenJay]

But does it all really matter?



Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat Lah

Hi Ryumon,

Great, now I have Queen running in my head… “Nothing really matters, anyone can see…”

Indeed… and in the end, we just sit, don’t we?

Gassho,
Jay

Sat/Lah