Rebirth, rebirth, rebirth

[DKervick]

@Aminah

I’m a bit confused by this point because the teaching the Buddha offers is not rooted in his wisdom pre-awakening, but rather from what he directly saw through meditative practice after he renounced regular life and practised to full awakening. In the description of the final steps of that process the tevijja report pops up over and again.

Yes, Aminah, I agree that the teachings are based on the Buddha’s perfected wisdom and transformed thinking post-awakening. But what I was trying to address here the question of spiritual motivation and aspiration, and the charge, frequently leveled against secular Buddhists and other kinds of modernists and rebirth skeptics, that the Buddhist path only makes sense for people who have a prior belief in rebirth, and who form the intention to escape from the round of rebirth. That charge frequently takes the form of something like, “For you one lifers, the path is pointless. Why don’t you just wait until you die? Or even better, kill yourselves! Then your suffering will be over.”

And so the passages I cited seem especially relevant from that standpoint. Since from those passages it would appear that, for the Buddha himself, intense dismay with the violence and futility of worldly life, and an aspiration to seek unbinding and the deathless, were perfectly adequate motivations for going forth from worldly life, and that they were also motivations strong enough to take him all the way through his struggle to the complete end of suffering and release of the mind, I don’t see how one can argue that they are not also sufficient motivation for the contemporary spiritual aspirant who has experienced the very same all-too-human dismay with worldly life.

For such a person, following the path means imitating the Buddha, following his practical guidance for improved moral behavior and mental cultivation through gradual training, and heeding his insights into what causes the binding or fettering of our minds to the world, and the miserable corruption or defilement of those minds.

Telling a young person, as the Buddha still was when he went forth, that they should have no worries if the don’t believe in rebirth, because it will all be over in 40 or 50 years - or that they can always kill themselves! - would be most misguided advice.

@Aminah

It is understandable how someone who says the path “makes sense” to them while at the same time rejecting a key aspect could be a bit puzzling.

Well, it seems to me that the knowledges that are alleged to have arisen after the completion of the path are no part of the path itself. They are something that are held to have arisen subsequently to the achievement of the goal, and played no role in its completion. The picture is usually that the Buddha first attains release. Then the knowledge arises, “I am released”. And then all of those subsequent knowledges arise. I take it that the Buddha’s nibbana is equivalent to the moment of release and the path consists of the total gradual sequence of effacements of unwholesome states and fruitions of wholesome states that eventuated in his nibbana.

[Dhammiko]

Dear Ajahn,

You are one of the dear monks I call “right view monks”, rightly practicing monks who emphazises right view and its fundamental importance for awakening. As the Buddha says himself, right view awakens the Path. So it’s not a small part of the Path - it is like the button you press to get light from the lamp, the light of jhana.

Still, I think that you slightly miss the point when describing right view regarding rebirth in your Dhamma talks. As the Buddha say in Kalamasutta, we ordinary people doesn’t know if there is rebirth, but we can examine what kind of results this view will lead to. We all know the implications of the common saying “you live only once” - follow your desire because there’s no point not to. Faith in rebirth, on the contrary, awakens samvega, fear of bad rebirth and the sense of urgency to get freed from the cycle of birth and death.

People argue that faith is unintelligent, foolish and also dangerous. A human being can do any kind of harmful actions under influence of faith, in a leader or an ideology. But if we examine the view of the Buddha, faith in the Dhamma stops a human being from any kind of killing, stealing, lying and so on. It is only when we forget the Dhamma, and doesn’t have faith in karmic consequences, that we are able to kill, steal, lie or do any other harmful action.

Even so, some people, mostly western people I guess, still doesn’t like faith, even if it’s faith in the harmless Dhamma, because only faith seems stupid. When we talk about scientific evidence, and the necessity of the Dhamma being compatible with scientific truth, we are siding with these people. But did the Buddha really talk about about faith in rebirth? Here we come to the point slightly missed. It is not about faith in rebirth as a scientific fact as much as faith in that this particular view will free us from dukkha. When the Buddha talks to sceptics he says that, yes you don’t see for your self if there is rebirth or not, and I can’t show you. But the safe bet is to expect rebirth because that will make you develop skillful actions which, if there is no rebirth, at least will make you happy in this world, and if there is rebirth you will also take birth in heaven.

So, what is the difference between faith in rebirth and expecting rebirth? The former is believing in something regardless evidence pro or con, the latter is more a reasoning like “there may be rebirth or there may be not, but I will act like there is rebirth, because that will make me shape my actions like a craftsman shape his handicraft”. Ehipassiko is not about verifying the truth of rebirth, but about verifying if the Dhamma results in Nibbana or not, and since Nibbana is the up rooting of greed, hate and delusion, ehipassiko is to try practicing the Dhamma and see if these qualities dissappear from my mind. Regardless the current scientific findings on rebirth, anyone can apply the thought “there may be rebirth or there may be not, but I will act like there is rebirth, because that will make me shape my actions like a craftsman shape his handicraft” and verify that greed, hate and delusion starts to fade away, and finally dissappears completely.

It is true that the Buddha categorically states that the thought “there is this world and the next” is right view, which is more on the faith side, but there are also suttas, like Kalamasutta (mosty clearly in the chinese version) and Apannakasutta, that leaves the answer to the question open, but emphazises that expecting rebith, whatever the true reality is, will lead to liberation from greed, hate and delusion. As a matter of fact, science hasn’t verified rebirth, but neither has it verified complete extinction after death. There are plenty of anecdotal evidence of life after death which offer an intelligent person the possibility to reason that “it may be life after death”. There is no stupidity in this, like thinking “rebirth is truth!” or “rebirth is false!” without any evidence.

Probably, these two different approaches to the thought of rebirth is applied to non-buddhists and buddhists respectively, the “may approach” being a kind of bate that leads non-buddhists to accept faith in rebirth, and so, the “faith approach” being the approach of someone who has decided to put all effort in practicing the Dhamma, knowing that there may be no rebirth, but also knowing that giving this thought attention will only result in less effort.

What’s important is that this particular view sides with skillful actions and will be of greatest benefit for myself.

What science says is not interesting

[Mkoll]

@Brahmali

The idea of rebirth deserves to be treated extremely seriously.

Indeed, rather than with some form of radical reinterpretation or dismissal. I don’t think that’s too much to expect of Buddhists.

[DKervick]

It seems to me that there is no better way of treating an idea seriously than to debate it in a careful and rational manner, and to consider any evidence that has been offered for or against it.

[Mkoll]

There’s no doubt that talking about things can be helpful. Unfortunately, and as we’ve seen with each other, debate can turn into a battle that can get personal. But even when it remains cordial, the nature of debate is one of conflict. It is to set views against one another. It is to take sides and draw lines around concepts. This can be helpful and clarifying, but only up to a point.

What I meant was to take rebirth seriously on a personal level. There, it doesn’t have to be about showing “my” view is better than “your” view or proving one view is better than another. We don’t need to bring in “mine” and “yours” in the personal space of the mind. Removing those variables from the equation is clarifying in a way that goes beyond debate with others because it removes that added layer of complexity. I know that may be unclear, but I’m not eloquent enough to put it any better. I’m not sure what Bhante had in mind when he wrote what I quoted, but that’s my 2 cents on it.

[DKervick]

The way I’ve tried to do that in my own life, and find meaning in so many of the teachings in which accounts of rebirth seem to play a role, is to focus on the rebirth of human nature - and human cravings, desires and suffering - and not focus so much on whether a single individual human is being reborn.

For example, I’ve always been moved by the story of the Theri Ubbiri and her daughter Jiva. In Ubbiri’s gatha, we have:

"'Jiva, my daughter,'
you cry in the woods.
Come to your senses, Ubbiri.
84,000, all named Jiva
have been burned in that charnel ground.
For which of them do you grieve?"

Pulling out — completely out —
the arrow so hard to see,
embedded in my heart,
he expelled from me — overcome with grief —
the grief over my daughter.

Today — with arrow removed,
_without hunger, entirely Unbound — _
to the Buddha, Dhamma, & Sangha I go,
for refuge to the Sage.

A natural Buddhist reading of the verse would take it that the Buddha is implying that these 84,000 daughters are the same individual person, being reborn over and over. But suppose we don’t assume that, and take it to refer to 84,000 different individual Jivas. Isn’t the sentiment just as moving? 84,000 daughters, 84,000 grieving mothers, the same forlorn human pattern recurring again and again and again and again. Either way, the long trail of birth, sickness, suffering and death is pathetic and dreary, and contemplating it leads to an intense desire to break free of our fetters to this charnel ground of worldly human existence, and experience liberation from it - and to help others achieve liberation from it, now and in the future, whether those other people are Me or Other.

[Mkoll]

@DKervick

A natural Buddhist reading of the verse would take it that the Buddha is implying that these 84,000 daughters are the same individual person, being reborn over and over. But suppose we don’t assume that, and take it to refer to 84,000 different individual Jivas.

I read the passage in the latter way as well. I’d never considered the former interpretation before.

As for your greater point, the only thing that comes to mind is the beginning of the Preface to Ven. Nanavira’s Notes on Dhamma. Whatever one may think of him and his ideas, he really knocks it out of the park with what I’ve bolded below, IMO.

The principal aim of these Notes on Dhamma is to point out certain current misinterpretations, mostly traditional, of the Pali Suttas, and to offer in their place something certainly less easy but perhaps also less inadequate. These Notes assume, therefore, that the reader is (or is prepared to become) familiar with the original texts, and in Pali (for even the most competent translations sacrifice some essential accuracy to style, and the rest are seriously misleading). They assume, also, that the reader s sole interest in the Pali Suttas is a concern for his own welfare. The reader is presumed to be subjectively engaged with an anxious problem, the problem of his existence, which is also the problem of his suffering. There is therefore nothing in these pages to interest the professional scholar, for whom the question of personal existence does not arise; for the scholar s whole concern is to eliminate or ignore the individual point of view in an effort to establish the objective truth a would-be impersonal synthesis of public facts. The scholar’s essentially horizontal view of things, seeking connexions in space and time, and his historical approach to the texts, disqualify him from any possibility of understanding a Dhamma that the Buddha himself has called akalika, timeless. Only in a vertical view, straight down into the abyss of his own personal existence, is a man capable of apprehending the perilous insecurity of his situation; and only a man who does apprehend this is prepared to listen to the Buddha s Teaching. But human kind, it seems, cannot bear very much reality: men, for the most part, draw back in alarm and dismay from this vertiginous direct view of being and seek refuge in distractions.

[DKervick]

I like that passage. To me, it suggests that the spiritual problem for each of us lies in the anguish we feel in the present, which is always the only time of which we have direct experience. If I feel lost or bewildered or grief stricken or terrified, I necessarily feel it right now. And even if my painful emotions are sometimes based on attitudes I hold toward the future or the past, I can only eliminate that pain by changing the qualities of my evolving Now.

[Sujith]

@DKervick

But what I was trying to address here the question of spiritual motivation and aspiration, and the charge, frequently leveled against secular Buddhists and other kinds of modernists and rebirth skeptics, that the Buddhist path only makes sense for people who have a prior belief in rebirth, and who form the intention to escape from the round of rebirth.

The fundamental premise of the Sangha that the Buddha established is that lay people can benefit from the act of dana.

If only a select few can take up the life of asceticism and by giving up all worldly attachments purify their minds in solitude, without being troubled by thousands of mundane lay activities, then do the people who support them gain much ? They still have to struggle with all the wearisome quarrels, greed, diseases and attachments in their lives. The act of giving can cleanse the mind to some extent and reduce anxiety and excessive distress, but I don’t think we can easily find masses of people who are so altruistic that they would support wandering recluses regularly, providing them with food every day. People would still seek some personal benefit when they toil and work every day and are asked to feed strangers for their entire lives, who on the surface seem to be freeloaders.

There’s lots of degeneration now and both sides act from various selfish motives, but the Buddha established his ministry because he gave the lay donors hope that their generosity will have rewards - in this life, the ennobling knowledge that virtuous seekers are being supported and the merit thus gained may result in a possibility that one may be able to emulate the life of renunciates and attain liberation too.

Sure, people can become selfish and the system can get tainted by greedy motives, but the Buddha was no stranger to this - we have suttas in which he addresses this subject.

[Polarbear]

“Lord, what is the cause, what is the reason, why a person gives a gift of a certain sort and it does not bear great fruit or great benefit, whereas another person gives a gift of the same sort and it bears great fruit and great benefit?”

“Sariputta, there is the case where a person gives a gift seeking his own profit, with a mind attached [to the reward], seeking to store up for himself [with the thought], ‘I’ll enjoy this after death.’ He gives his gift — food, drink, clothing, a vehicle; a garland, perfume, & ointment; bedding, shelter, & a lamp — to a brahman or a contemplative. What do you think, Sariputta? Might a person give such a gift as this?”

“Yes, lord.”

"Having given this gift seeking his own profit — with a mind attached [to the reward], seeking to store up for himself, [with the thought], ‘I’ll enjoy this after death’ — on the break-up of the body, after death, he reappears in the company of the Four Great Kings. Then, having exhausted that action, that power, that status, that sovereignty, he is a returner, coming back to this world.

“Then there is the case of a person who gives a gift not seeking his own profit, not with a mind attached [to the reward], not seeking to store up for himself, nor [with the thought], ‘I’ll enjoy this after death.’ Instead, he gives a gift with the thought, ‘Giving is good.’ He gives his gift — food, drink, clothing, a vehicle; a garland, perfume, & ointment; bedding, shelter, & a lamp — to a brahman or a contemplative. What do you think, Sariputta? Might a person give such a gift as this?”

“Yes, lord.”

"Having given this gift with the thought, ‘Giving is good,’ on the break-up of the body, after death, he reappears in the company of the Devas of the Thirty-three. Then, having exhausted that action, that power, that status, that sovereignty, he is a returner, coming back to this world. Dana Sutta

The sutta is still dealing with rebirth due to giving but it still shows that in early buddhism it is considered better to give without any regard for storing up merit. Other great reasons to give from that sutta include:

"Or, instead… he gives a gift with the thought, ‘I am well-off. These are not well-off. It would not be right for me, being well-off, not to give a gift to those who are not well-off’…

"Or, instead… he gives a gift with the thought, ‘When this gift of mine is given, it makes the mind serene. Gratification & joy arise’…

"Or, instead of thinking, ‘When this gift of mine is given, it makes the mind serene. Gratification & joy arise,’ he gives a gift with the thought, ‘This is an ornament for the mind, a support for the mind.’ Dana Sutta

[Mat]

Just wanted to say that insight into rebirth arises at stream entry- with the understanding of the Dependent origination.

The three knowledges (tevijja) might only arise in some arahanths.

with metta

[Polarbear]

@Mat

I’d like to see an explicit reference from the suttas regarding the idea that insight into rebirth arises at stream entry. I have never seen such a sutta. I’m pretty sure that is an idea from the commentaries.

[Mat]

@Polarbear

idea from the commentaries.

Stream entrant understand the DO- DO includes rebirth (jati) and how the ‘whole mass of suffering’ arises. It is disputed of course by those who say this is not literal rebirth.

with metta

[Pasanna]

There are people who are not stream enterers who can verify their past lives. So seeing past lives can happen independently of SE. It is clearly not enough to cause SE.

[Pasanna]

Dear Ajahn,
I would like to express my appreciation for your ‘not-so-diplomatic’ way of talking on rebirth. It is wonderful to not see the Buddha’s words watered down and to see them elucidated so well.

As a rational Westerner I initially found your talks quite confronting, but as I have deepened my understanding of the Dhamma they have been of great benefit.

Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu!

[Polarbear]

That is not a reference. And in any event, insight into the 12-step DO is only rarely related to stream entry. I also don’t see that insight into DO necessitates knowledge of rebirth. Furthermore, it seems that many stream enterers entered the stream via the aggregates, or the sense-spheres, or in various other ways. I don’t think it is a tenable position to assert that all stream-enterers have knowledge of DO in its full exposition, although I think all may have the more general knowledge of idappaccayatā, which is related to the dhamma-eye.

@Brahmali @sujato - Can you weigh in on whether stream-enterers have verified knowledge of rebirth? Especially with reference to the suttas?

I know a stream-enterer has aveccapasāda- complete confidence- in the dhamma, but this still seems clearly short of knowledge of rebirth and in my mind has more to do with their clear understanding that the cessation of craving is the cessation of dukkha and that the 8-fold path is the way to the cessation of craving/dukkha.

I don’t see how someone could claim to know rebirth without having recollected their past lives, particularly given how empirical the Buddha is, in that when he makes claims about rebirth, he often asserts that it is because he has seen it himself. He never proposed questionable inference as a means to knowledge of past lives or kamma and vipaka. I think the stream-enterer might have full-faith in the teaching on rebirth as a result of deeply seeing the efficacy of dhamma practice, but not knowledge.

[Mat]

@Polarbear

I think the stream-enterer might have full-faith in the teaching on rebirth as a result of deeply seeing the efficacy of dhamma practice, but not knowledge.

If a person was taught how to engineer a car and was shown all the parts that go into it, you are saying they will still doubt that cars exist.

With metta

[dzt]

Please let me put in my 5 cents, as I have a first-hand experience with science, as well as with buddhism.
Venerable bhante, I would agree with most of what is said in your original post, but still I would question the thesis that anything that does not fit into a scientific picture of the world should be rejected. Science and buddhism do have different approaches on definition of verifiable truth. In science, the “truth” must be independently verifiable, objectively. In buddhism, the “truth” is first of all personally verifiable, subjectively. Nibbana is not verifiable by not any means but subjectively, so is the flow of an individual being across many worlds.
Also I would still argue that the science and buddhism indeed do have different areas of application, because they initially have different purposes. Science is for learning and understanding the world around us, to construct working models of observed universe and predict yet unknown phenomena. Buddhism is not so much concerned about the mechanisms of Samsara in general, it mostly concerns the laws that drive the arising and cessation of samsaric being and suffering as an imminent result of such a being. Do you think why science has such enormous troubles with describing mental phenomena? They are the essence of subjectiveness and cannot be penetrated by scientific means, it just does not have this capacity, both philosophically and instrumentally (currently at least).

[Javier]

I just wanted to thank you for your insightful posts on this issue. The view you have outlined definitely resonates with my experience much more than the perspective which just says “Buddha taught literal rebirth, take it or leave it, and if you leave it you’re leaving Buddhism”. That black and white view has always seemed to me to be quite unskillful in this case.

Honestly the idea of rebirth always seemed quite abstract to me and ultimately it has never been helpful to me in practice. The immediacy and pragmatic nature of the Dhamma has always drawn me but the teaching of rebirth has never done so. So my general overview has been to “set it aside” and keep an open mind about it, as teachers like Ajahn Thanissaro advice us to do. This also resonates with the skeptical elements of the Buddha’s teachings which can be seen in his rejection of certain ontological questions as avyakata and acitenyya, unanswerable and incomprehensible. I generally accept that the Buddha taught rebirth but I don’t necessarily think that he taught it in a kind of dogmatic sense as an ontological view to be held. Just like the workings of kamma are seen as ultimately impossible to fully comprehend, I believe the same applies to rebirth. As such any scientific proof of rebirth seems to miss the mark.
Rather as you say it seems to have been a kind of pragmatic maxim by which to frame our current experience. It is similar in a sense to a kind of existential thought experiment, somewhat like Nietzsche’s exposition of ‘eternal return’. It really doesn’t matter that much what ones ontological position on this is in my opinion, what matters is how is leads one to act and how this view motivates you in your practice.

That is in a sense what is important about all forms of right view. They aren’t magical ingredients to the attainment of nibbana, rather in my opinion, the role of right view is quite clear, that is, to lead to right intention and thus it is in a sense pragmatic in the Jamesian sense. At least that is how I currently see it with my limited understanding at the moment. And if this is correct then the ontological and philosophical details of how one interprets rebirth begin to seem less important because what really matters is how that view affects your intentions.

[Sujith]

@Polarbear

The sutta is still dealing with rebirth due to giving but it still shows that in early buddhism it is considered better to give without any regard for storing up merit.

Yes, it certainly does. Thanks for posting it.

But, thinking about one’s own welfare when doing charitable acts is not that selfish if one wants to attain liberation from suffering too and it can lead to a better birth, as that sutta shows.