Yes, I’ve modified my original essay to include agnosticism.
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I think that agnosticism on rebirth has shades to it too. As there could be many factors to this view. The ones which were my experience are:
- I don’t understand HOW it works, but the Buddha is ‘onto something’.
- a false understanding of the Buddhist concept of kamma as fate. Yet knowing life was more than fatalistic.
To move from an agnostic view to confidence in rebirth I read suttas like DN15 and also used my practice to examine aspects of causation/impermanence.
One of my last sticking points was the layers upon layers of realms and the timescales of those realms. I actually just don’t think it’s so important. At least not important enough to limit right view. Maybe others have different perspectives. If so I’d love to hear them.
As far as I can see my kamma and attachments will determine where I end up in the next life. Just like I don’t need to know every detail about Sri Lanka before I visit for the first time I probably don’t need to know the characteristics of all the planes of existance.
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Oh, sure. I mean, really, suttas like MN 27 are really blueprints for productive agnosticism. The only problem with agnosticism is when it becomes an excuse for laziness and not engaging in the pursuit of knowledge.
This is one of my favorite bits! Long before Einstein, the Buddha was already talking about the relativity of time, how time flows differently in different contexts.
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I think this is really the point, is skepticism or uncertainty is not a problem. Deciding some aspect of Dhamma doesn’t exist is much more difficult to work with on the path than simply saying “I don’t know about that and I am not sure I need to know at this time”. If you close the door that really limits things.
I know I wasn’t very sold on kamma or rebirth until a few years into my practice. I was open to the idea though. I’m a slow learner! 
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What still blows me away is how the community of people that have really taken onboard what the Buddha taught, and are making efforts to really understand what the Buddha taught, with all of its beauty and nuance, are such a relatively small number. The Secular Buddhists are packing the house, and hosting costly online courses.
Pick up a recent Lion’s Roar magazine, and if you’re like me, you’ll vomit in your mouth a little bit. It’s a good magazine, with many good articles about mindfulness, and something from Chogyam Trungpa’s ghostwriters, but the magnificence of the Buddha’s historical teachings are really very difficult to find in these tracts. But, this is modern western Buddhism, to a great degree.
Maybe this does go back to
There’s just quite a bit of laziness, or lack of intellectual curiosity, in Buddhism these days. Maybe people feel that these dusty tomes of the Nikayas are just too much to cut through. Maybe there’s some attractiveness to the narcissism of the west when teachers promote instant enlightenment, or “Buddha nature.”
Rebirth is just such a powerful and beautiful expression of the Buddha’s heartwood teachings. It’s a shame that the magnificent and integral understanding of kamma and rebirth has become a metaphysical tennis ball that just keeps getting swatted back and forth over the western dharma net.
Not long ago, I came back from a trip to Thailand, and time in a good wat that was very grounding for me. Upon arrival, in the heart of Billy Graham country (Wheaton, Illinois) I drove past a Xian megachurch and saw what must have been 3000 cars in the parking lot on a Monday night. I think I vomited in my mouth again just a little.
The Dhamma Path can be a lonely path. What the Buddha discovered and then taught so exquisitely has been diluted and confused. The loneliness of this path was only amplified when I saw so many of my neighbors packed into a megachurch listening to ‘g-d knows what.’
Sorry for the rant. Rebirth is just such a powerful and majestic aspect of the Buddha’s Dhamma, and it ends up relegated to debate, much the way Einstein was challenged and abused on his theories concerning general and special relativity.
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Well, this is exactly the problem right here. In the EBTs, they used to vomit hot blood and die. Now that’s dedication!
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Interesting, I still struggle with the time scale in suttas like DN17. How do you interpret this? The whole sutta’s extravagance cannot be taken literally, surely? There are other suttas set in ancient India in DN which also have life spans of thousands of years. In this realm I just can’t fathom human existence in this way. I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks Bhante!
That’s a story I don’t know…now for the SC search function…
But, Nāgasena, if the Tathāgata had not delivered that discourse, then would they have vomited up hot blood?’
‘No. When they took wrongly what he said, then was there a burning kindled within them, and hot blood was ejected from their mouths.’
If I understand this correctly, there may be a correlation between secular Buddhists and projectile vomiting. This should make for some entertaining online video lessons.
Rebirth has been covered here (a tiny bit) but no one has commented on what this is all about or why they are important or relevant. To me, these are some of the puzzling parts of the suttas.
Sure, these are myths and should be read accordingly. Indian mythology always invokes vast time frames, derived ultimately from astronomy. This is in stark contrast with the shrunken context of Greek and Hebrew myth; almost all Greek mythology takes place within a few generations.
Obviously humans never lived such long periods. But in DN 23 it talks specifically about the relativity of time. I would say that in Buddhism, time is a concept derived from memory of changes in consciousness. When memory is honed and enhanced, it reveals a vast span stretching into the past, and a similarly vast span into the future can be inferred. But how do we talk about it?
The language of deep time is the language of astronomy, where observation of cyclic changes leads to inferences of vast spans of time. This language of astronomy is mapped onto the mythology; or more to the point, one of the functions of mythology was to express both the vastness of time and our human place in it.
Telling stories makes the scale vivid and creates a connection. These stories tell a recognizably human story, of aspirations, family, love, and loss, but place them within a cosmic context; just like Star Wars uses light sabers and FTL and galactic empire, but grounds the story in the tale of a young farm boy.
So the Buddha had the experience of the vastness of time from his own mental development, and used story-telling to bring the message home. Or to be more precise, the EBTs do this: I’m not convinced DN 17 is an authentic sutta.
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Obviously it’s a complex matter, but in brief, I would say that the main point is: since rebirth is shaped by our deeds, and our deeds are many and varied, the forms that rebirth takes are also many and varied.
As far as text criticism goes, note that in the central doctrinal contexts, in the EBTs the Buddha usually speaks of rebirth in general and philosophical terms. The cosmology is mostly reserved for narrative, which is of course a later addition, not spoken by the Buddha. Obviously the story-telling details of the cosmology are shaped by Indian culture. But for understanding the issue, these are best treated as illustrative; the important things are the core teachings.
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Well - multiple planes of existence matters because one of those realms is where you get reborn. And they aren’t all the same, some are much more desirable than others (heavens/human vs hells/animal/ghost/demon). “Supernatural beings”- technically they wouldn’t be supernatural because rebirth (according to EBTs) into multiple realms is in fact natural - I’m assuming this just refers to beings who are born into realms other than human and/or animal.
Ahh, yes, exactly, an important point! This is another case of how our western dualistic thinking is embodied in language. Not only Buddhism, but no Indian philosophy ever had a concept of the “supernatural” or the “supernormal”. Even in Hinduism, the gods are a perfectly natural part of the world.
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Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.
One more (at least). Open to anyone here, of course.
Is it possible for a materialist/secular Buddhist to maintain their stance and become a sotapana, let alone arahant?
To me it seems impossible as there would be too much clinging to views. Thoughts?
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Which humans are you talking about? Darwin?
Buddha is talking about the human when we were looked like bacteria or virus.
Obviously they lived tens of thousand of years.
Sorry, but I’m a little fuzzy. Within this thread some things are referred to as mythic, some natural fact. I don’t really feel a need to know answers about realms of heavens and hells, devas, real or symbolic Maras and the like in order to practice. The dhamma is super important to me because I know dukkha. I know what it feels like, I see it arise, I see it pass away and I’m cultivating a path to see and feel more clearly the subtleties of dukkha, how it arises, how it passes away and ever more skillful ways of cultivating a path.
I am on this website because I’m almost 60 years old and the dhamma that the Buddha taught has been the only path in my life that has stood the tests of personal application over time. I am deeply grateful that I have these teachings. But I’m no scholar. I don’t debate these things out of intellectual curiosity, there is much more at stake for me. I can’t say I do all that I can to fully awaken, I know I have hinderances and latent tendencies that impede my way. I make tiny steps, drops in the bucket but the bucket is filling.
If I disregard rebirth, heavens and hells, devas, celestial beings, what am I missing? I have been married for 20 years, have two businesses and can’t walk away from this householder life without some serious dukkha to others. Even if I did, my beat up body would burden any Buddhist monastery!
Seriously, I’m open to all of this. So far, the Buddha has been worthy of my trust in what he said. And yet some is said here as fact, some is myth, some things matter, some don’t. This thread is about how, to the secular Buddhist, karma and rebirth is old baggage and to “True Buddhists” it’s essential. What’s essential to me is following what the Buddha taught, deciphering that is the tricky part. I can perfectly understand karma without rebirth. Then when I add in rebirth it takes extrapolated ramifications. I can deal with that to a large degree, as it doesn’t seem to affect my practice much. Threat of hell is tired old Christian BS that long ago stopped scaring me but I practice 24/7 as best I can I think for noble reasons, not to escape rebirth. Isn’t craving for non-existence just another form of craving? Please help me out here.
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Desire to end Dukkha is not craving.
Hi, thanks for that, and what can I say? Sounds reasonable to me!
I might say that I don’t advocate, nor do I practice, shoving rebirth down peoples throats. Believe what you want! But I am a student of early Buddhist texts, and when I hear them being misrepresented, I try to clear it up.
Just one point that I’d make: when I speak of things as “myth”, I do not mean that they aren’t true. I am using myth in the proper sense, as a sacred story. The historical truth of a story is interesting in its own right, but that is a matter for history, not mythology. In myth, what matters is not whether it is true, but what it means. Myths are stories of the sacred that connect a people with something larger than themselves. As the saying goes, myth tells of “what never was, but always is.”
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This really shows just how invaluable it might be if some fully accomplished Arahant could say: The three kinds of knowledge have been attained and realized, I rightfully keep the Wheel of Dhamma turning. Those pesky Vinaya rules… 
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I feel I’ve confused things somewhat by introducing the myth factor. Reading a sutta like DN17 it’s hard to see it in a non-myth way. 84k wives, 84k golden palm trees, 84k years. It’s whole format is lavish. It doesn’t surprise me that @sujato has doubts to its authenticity!
In comparison DN15 is straight down the line. Diagnosis, symptoms, cause and effect. This is the format over and over in the suttas. This is what is awesome about the EBTs. As we chant the qualities of the Dhamma it is so. It’s timeless, incouraging investigation, leading towards big and small liberations.
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