How to see rebirth

unveiledartist · February 3, 2018, 3:04pm

Just a question. How do you see rebirth in everyday life? Are there suttas that connect daily life to rebirth?

I think of it like the earth turning, plants growing, dying, and grow again. Cycle of life. I can see that with our physical body but our mind?

samseva · February 6, 2018, 1:26am

Although they are confined to cycles and to impermanence, the Earth and plants don’t get reborn (plants don’t have consciousness or kamma).

If one understands the validity of rebirth, it affects choices in this life, as even after one dies, there are positive or negative results/consequences from those actions.

awarewolf · February 6, 2018, 11:23am

When still, make a question in the mind like: I wonder what my next thought going to be …

Mat · February 6, 2018, 8:11pm

We are not the people we were when we were 7 year old. We had a very different personality back then, and for all intensive purposes, we were different people from who we are now.

This means that gradually things changed -and we turned into someone else… However we stayed within the same general ‘stream’ of physical and mental ‘turnover’. This of course can only mean that we are changing from one person to the next moment to moment -if we breakdown the sequence of change, into ever microscopic portions. It then becomes clear that there cannot be a Self wandering through these string of sequences and that we ‘invented’ a Self to get a handle on a rapidly changing and complex phenomena [needless to say we liked it enough to call it our Self, and hang around]. So in some ways there is birth, change and death in every moment. However that is not to say change of the rebirth kind isn’t present or wasn’t mentioned in the EBTs. It abundantly was, as was arising and passing away of the aggregates [that which we mistakenly consider to be Self]. In any case, this is my view on this…

with metta

samseva · February 7, 2018, 7:54am

The application of rebirth to every moment (or to oneself) is a Mahāyāna concept. The arising and passing away of all phenomena is based on the characteristic of impermanence (annica) and not on rebirth (jāti). Although, you can see it this way; it’s not wrong per se.

unveiledartist · February 7, 2018, 1:06pm

Interesting. I thought it was a EBT concept. What is the difference between rebirth and impermanence in the EBTs?

Kalia · February 11, 2018, 10:41am

For a moment -to -moment approach to rebirth, I recommend reading the section “Dependent Origination - the Source Code” in Ajahn Amaro’s " Theravada Buddhism in a Nutshell":

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/469-theravada-buddhism-in-a-nutshell

Here’s an excerpt from the section “Escape from the cycle of birth & death”

This cycle of rebirth is what was illustrated in that last story: my being born into my negativity and then being shown that there really wasn’t anything to be negative about. The other monk was born into his chocolate éclair. We get born into all kinds of things. It’s not just what happens in the maternity ward. Birth is happening many, many times a day. We can look at it on an external, physical level, but more directly we can see over and over the whole process on a psychological level.

karl_lew · May 11, 2019, 4:15pm

Rebirth compels with the promise that “this time I’ll be bulletproof.”

But the only way to be bulletproof is to let go of the craving. Did your foot tap to this song? Ouch!

Relishing is the root of suffering. mn1/en/sujato