I agree. I have posted about this.
But “secular buddhism is false” on this board. So virtually no one else here agrees. Rebirth means “real buddhist” here.
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I’ve been posting here for about two years now. For most of that time, I believe, I was very deferential and respectful toward the beliefs of people who differed from me on rebirth. Basically, I treated the subject as a kind of no-go area, and avoided it, and tried to stick to the many areas of common ground.
But it increasingly occurred to me that these tacit ground rules were very much a one-way street. While the more orthodox and fundamentalist felt quite free to lambaste heterodox Buddhist belief systems, and express contemptuous attitudes about the spiritual or moral condition of heterodox practitioners, or spread all manners of irrationality and silliness, the heterodox seemed to be expected to refrain from injecting critical thinking about the intellectual foundations of these more orthodox belief systems, so as not to stir up controversy or give offense or be disrespectful.
My impression now is that there are a large number of people who visit this site, who are very interested in the EBTs and their interpretation, and would like to participate more, but who merely lurk and express an occasional “like” because they have received the message that they are persona non grata, and their participation will not be appreciated.
I confess I respond with strong aversion to all forms of cultishness: indications that people have surrendered their intellects and capacity for independent critical judgment over to authority figures in order to win the approval of a teacher or a master, and have succumbed to passive-aggressive, and deceptively coercive, mind manipulation. “Oh look, I’m finally a Good Buddhist because I have figured out how to interpret all the mental imagery swirling through my head as a narrative of past lives. The Teacher approves of me!”
I believe frankk’s post appeared after mine? Perhaps he was the one who was responding.
The first paragraph of my post first appeared as a reply in Kay’s thread about rebirth experiences. It was a response to a new participant in that thread who bravely reported that she had experienced a lot violence as a child and a teenager, and as a way of coming to peace with that violence had concluded that she might have done harm to those people in her previous lives and was suffering the results of her own karma. And yet she still finds rebirth terrifying, and now lives in dread that she may have to relive similar events over and over.
I was moved to comment, because the responses to her comment all seemed to validate the conclusions she had drawn, and accept that both her attribution of personal responsibility for her own suffering, and her dread of further lives filled with more such terrible suffering, were rational and appropriate.
I was reminded by Kay in a private message that she had set certain ground rules for her thread, and that it was to be used exclusively for believers in rebirth to share their personal experiences in connection with rebirth. So I relocated that paragraph here in a separate thread, along with a few other comments.
I think it will be very unfortunate if that visitor to Kay’s thread is never offered the solace of considering that maybe she did absolutely nothing wrong at all and is not the perpetrator of her own abuse, and that maybe there is no reason to think that there are many more lifetimes of hells, rape rooms or beatings awaiting her.
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Mat, on the whole, I believe what you say is true. But the beliefs people have don’t just impact their own lives. The things we say to other people can significantly affect those other people, for good or for ill, and so in those cases I think we have a responsibility to critically examine the beliefs on which our statements are based, in order to help figure out whether the things we are telling others are helping or harming them.
I don’t believe my initial post in this thread used needlessly contentious language. But it does presuppose willingness to critically confront and discuss, and perhaps challenge, orthodox belief traditions.
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This is the kind of ignorance Dan is talking about, I think. You’d endanger another’s ability to learn facts about anthropogenic climate change and the now almost irreversible catastrophes which lie in store for the planet and all life on it, because maybe happier ghosts will show up.
This is immoral; it is a decision to endanger others because one’s own views about ghosts pair up with one’s lack of understanding of climate science in order to prevent any sense of urgency about it.
This sort of willful disregard of the future suffering of billions of humans, and yet also believing in rebirth, strikes me as a double standard of the worst kind, causing demonstrable harm now for the sake of speculative future non-humans.
Wow. Just, wow.
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I suppose that is a possibility, Nadine. But how is that sorting out process to move forward if only one perspective is permitted?
This is not the first time that nearly this exact same issue has come up here. I find it very difficult to accept that people are being helped in any way when they are encouraged to blame themselves for the aggressions being visited upon them by others, or to view the future beyond death as a dreadful theater of pain.
Imagine some poor Thai teenager, trafficked into Bangkok as prostitute. There she lies, wondering, “Why is this ugly, smelly and abusive drunk on top of me, using my body like a toy? What did I do to deserve this? I must be a very bad girl, who did something terrible to this man in a past life. I hope my other lives aren’t this awful. But it looks like they will be, because clearly I am a very bad girl!”
That’s appalling. Not only is such an attitude not helping that girl come to peace with her suffering. It is actually redoubling her suffering by training her to take up the very club of violence that is being used against her, and to then hit herself with it over and over for good measure.
This is not a doctrine of liberation. It is a tool for psychological oppression and domination. It makes the work of the thugs and the exploiters that much easier, by teaching fear and self-abuse.
I believe the Buddha meant to teach the liberation of forgiveness and renunciation, not the pain of self-mortification and dread.
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Two things of note.
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SN 36.21 demonstrates that kamma is not in fact responsible for everything in life, and that things can happen to people without any kamma being in play at all.
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Consider Thanissaro’s take on this sutta:
Translator’s note: Some people have interpreted this sutta as stating that there are many experiences that cannot be explained by the principle of kamma. A casual glance of the alternative factors here — drawn from the various causes for pain that were recognized in the medical treatises of his time — would seem to support this conclusion. However, if we compare this list with his definition of old kamma in SN 35.145, we see that many of the alternative causes are actually the result of past actions. Those that aren’t are the result of new kamma.
But the summary to the sutta says:
Bile, phlegm, and also wind,
Imbalance and climate too,
Carelessness and assault,
With kamma result as the eighth.
The eighth. One of eight.
But, Thanissaro et al prefer other ideas, heavy and aggressive ideas. Consider:
But according to some people they do not agree with this, because one should pay or experience what one has sown, anti depressant doesn’t solve this.
Once again, rebirth as an idea is shown to support harm to people here and now, in this case affecting how those suffering from mental illness are treated by others.
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well said. Its time to come out of the darkness and hell-fire into the daylight of reason and fruitful practice.
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Of course that is correct. But there will always be those who don’t understand kamma or rebirth correctly and misinterpret what it means. That to me is the true tragedy, having the great fortune of being exposed to the dhamma in this lifetime and not being able to capitalize on it because of misinterpretation, cynicism, navel-gazing, or whatever other delusion or affliction.
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Bhante Sujato has often vigorously opposed the view that kamma is responsible for everything that happens to people. But he seems to be fighting uphill against a massively heavy army of conservative tradition and cultural resistance that doesn’t want to hear it.
There is a strong need in many people to believe that everything that happens in the world doesn’t just have a cause, but also has a moral reason. In the Christian tradition, such thinking leads to theodicy: theories of God’s plan that strive to make moral and providential sense out of everything. Buddhists have their kamma theories which strive to do the same.
But sometimes the complex causal patterns of nature just come together to produce suffering. There is no purpose, no justice, no reason, no balance in it. It just happens. Ship + sailor + ocean + storm yields anguish, drowning and death. No purpose, no invisible hand of kammic retribution. It just happens.
The Buddha taught a path of liberation from the painful travails of this purposeless world of jostling causal conditions that we can neither fully understand nor control.
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It seems to me there are at least these three responses to the experience of violence and aggression at the hands of others:
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“That bastard. I’m going to get him, and do to him what he did to me.”
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“There is no point in adding the painful toxin of my own anger and hatred to the toxicity of the anger and hatred that have already come my way. Hatred is not defeated by hatred.”
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“I deserve this somehow.”
It seems to me that the second response is the most skillful. The first grasps the burning sword of dosa and wields it outward. The second grasps the same burning sword and points it inward. Only the second lets it go.
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Focusing on one perspective may not be the best long-term strategy, but on a case-by-case basis, as we get to know someone, we can begin to offer others.
It is a fine line, I think, between acknowledging that a practitioner has concerns regarding their perspective on rebirth and kamma, and reinforcing a mindset that views abuse as unavoidable and deserved. Hopefully, when we respond to that person, we are keeping that in mind.
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Those are 3 views, but there are many, many more than that. If it were simple for people to discern what was the best view and which is healthiest, there would be much less suffering in the world. Therapists would be out of a job and Sutta central would be as big as Facebook. 
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So we get down to: ‘is everything due to kamma?’
Probably a less provocative and more open question where nuanced views could be aired. Who knows, we might find that one-lifers and multi-lifers have more common ground than this thread leads us to believe.
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I’m going to assume from the silence that the EBT’s say nothing specifically directed to validating fears.
IMO the ethics of right speech may be implicated.
I assume the problem with validating fears has to do with a judgement that the validation is incorrect or misleading.
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Regarding the Reflecting on Rebirth: An Understanding That Can Go Beyond Faith and Theory thread. I shared a critical view based on my experience about rebirth and it was welcomed. I did so in the spirit of sn36.21; of what “one can know for oneself”.
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Yes, ultimately the issue comes down to what is actually true, and what isn’t. And given that certainty about what is true is rarely attainable, we are then led to the question, “What is actually probable, and what isn’t?”
Another issue is how much of a “faith pass” should be granted to the propagation of extraordinary beliefs, when they can produce pain. If a child came to her parent and said, “I can’t sleep! There is a monster under my bed!”, I doubt most of us would think very highly of the parent who said, “You’e right. There is a monster under your bed. So pray very hard because other wise he might drag you down to hell.”
Is that parent’s case strengthened if they say, “Well, this is our faith. It is our religion that there are demon monsters under everyone’s bed?”
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EBTs (ie the Buddha), says from his experience of the world, that it is valid that somethings should be feared and that even if you don’t have direct experience of them, belief in them is still very valuable. When the tiger is ready to pounce- the correct response includes fear. It motivates action. In this situation it motivates practice and is therefore valuable.
Whether you accept rebirth or not is up to you. If you don’t, you just continue to practice. It is counterproductive to try to force yourself to believe in something you don’t believe in.
Those who experience rebirth for themselves find it awe-inspiring, fearful, if not life changing. It is a constant reminder in the back of one’s mind, that there is only one problem, and only one solution - the noble eightfold path.
From another perspective, it gives those people who want to enjoy life many opportunities to do so- it also provides many chances for the ardent Buddhist practitioner to escape the cycle of rebirth, if they cannot become enlightened in one lifetime. I suppose in that sense, it is much better than annihilation after one lifetime.
with metta
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I entirely agree. This is a better way of discussing the issue which could involve the suttas, or our own experience-based understanding of kamma/rebirth.
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But it’s the same discussion. It swaps one way of talking about rebirth for another.
Instead of “we are born again”, it is “we are ethically liable after we die”.
Back to square one.
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MN 95 seems to be relevant (excerpt):
“There are five things, Bhāradvāja, that may turn out in two different ways here and now. What five? Faith, approval, oral tradition, reasoned cogitation, and reflective acceptance of a view. These five things may turn out in two different ways here and now. Now something may be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be empty, hollow, and false; but something else may not be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be factual, true, and unmistaken. Again, something may be fully approved of…well transmitted…well cogitated…well reflected upon, yet it may be empty, hollow, and false; but something else may not be well reflected upon, yet it may be factual, true, and unmistaken. Under these conditions it is not proper for a wise man who preserves truth to come to the definite conclusion: ‘Only this is true, anything else is wrong.’”
“But, Master Gotama, in what way is there the preservation of truth? How does one preserve truth? We ask Master Gotama about the preservation of truth.”
“If a person has faith, Bhāradvāja, he preserves truth when he says: ‘My faith is thus’; but he does not yet come to the definite conclusion: ‘Only this is true, anything else is wrong.’ In this way, Bhāradvāja, there is the preservation of truth; in this way he preserves truth; in this way we describe the preservation of truth. But as yet there is no discovery of truth.
“If a person approves of something…if he receives an oral tradition…if he reaches a conclusion based on reasoned cogitation…if he gains a reflective acceptance of a view, he preserves truth when he says: ‘My reflective acceptance of a view is thus’; but he does not yet come to the definite conclusion: ‘Only this is true, anything else is wrong.’ In this way too, Bhāradvāja, there is the preservation of truth; in this way he preserves truth; in this way we describe the preservation of truth. But as yet there is no discovery of truth.”
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Is it too much to ask that people try to think for themselves about important moral issues, and don’t turn every question into a subject dueling text-proofing from the EBTs? In order to know that it is bad and hurtful to walk up to someone and punch them in the face, one doesn’t need to find an EBT text in which the Buddha says, “Monks, there is the case where a bhikkhu walks up to someone and punches him in the face. This should not be done by that bhikkhu.”
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