Buddhism is not Hinduism: rebirth

Finally, scientists accept Hinduism's reincarnation! Not to be believed

(Curious Plus) Nov. 24, 2024: There is no reincarnation in Buddhism. But there is a whole lotta rebirth (patisandhi, reappearance, rearising), that is, the relinking or reunion of consciousness from one life to the next. There is a lot of reincarnation in Hinduism. So what is the difference? It's a minor detail, one that cannot be comprehended by ordinary people without insight or purified vision (vipassana). It's just that in Buddhism there is no self (no soul, no ego, no eternal being). If there were, as there is in Hinduism, Christianity, and many religions, that soul could go into flesh again and be re-incarnated.

• The science of Prof. of Psychology Ian Stevenson
• The curious case of Shanti Devi

But since this is not what is really happening, Buddhism says no to reincarnation. (Mahayana Buddhism is almost exactly Hinduism in different terms, so that it should use the terms "reincarnation" and "rebirth" interchangeably is not a surprise). Not only is there not a "soul" (atman) to merge with God (Brahma) or GOD (Brahman, the Godhead, the reality behind all illusion/maya).

I know, I know, of course there's a "self." How could there not be? Look here, it's talking. Look there, it's reading. The Buddha does not deny the obvious. He talks about the subtle and totally unobvious: that ALL things, in an ultimate sense, are impersonal.

And this is very hard to see and almost to accept until it is known-and-seen. But why would anyone want to know-and-see such an ultimate truth? It is the key to what the Buddha called enlightenment and liberation. What Hinduism and other post-Vedic teachers taught about a soul endlessly wandering on through samsara.

Fast forward through all the commonplace questions that people ask when they learn of this (anatta principle) and we are left with just one important question: "Well, if there isn't a self, what is there? What is all this?" The answer is Dependent Origination. If one saw that, understood that, there would be no confusion. There would be no question what all this is. ALL that comes to be comes to be through Dependent Origination. It all originates dependent on causes and condition. It co-arises with them. They are not there and then the thing; they are the thing. When this is, that comes to be; when this arises, that arises. When it is not, that is not.

The Hindu question is often this: "But isn't consciousness (the stream or bhavanga) the thing that carries on and therefore the soul, the self, the atman?" The answer is no, because consciousness does not "carry on." It is constantly broken. At death it breaks again, as before, but now is met with a new substrate (created by karma), and the impersonal process continues. It is not right to say that things are what they seem, that consciousness goes from life to life as if it were the same consciousness going.

This is the way it SEEMS, but it is not ultimately true. What is true, what can be seen with the development of mental purity (visuddhi) through samadhi then vipassana (the development of mindfulness-based "insight" or "clear seeing"). The Buddha did not teach this directly to laypeople, nor even to new monastics, because not only can they not see it, not accept it, they can't even fathom it ever being true. But when they see directly, when they understand, it becomes self-evident and they are freed from ignorance. Until then, we may as well talk about an invisible soul going from life to life, changing suits, doing all these things, bearing all of these results, suffering, and dying, and being reincarnated again (or reappearing in fleshless light bodies, kaya, a lot of the time). So never mind.

A famous enlightened Buddhist monk (Venerable Nagasena) of the past tried to explain it to ancient Greek King Menander I (King Milinda in Buddhist records known as the Pali canon):

• "Now, Ven. Nāgasena, the one who is reborn, is he the same as the one who has died, or is he another?"
• "Neither the same, nor another" (na ca so na ca añño).
• "Give me an example."
• "What do you think, O king: Are you now, as a grown-up person, the same that you had been as a young, little, and tender babe?"
• "No, venerable sir. Another person was the young, little, and tender babe, but quite a different person am I now as a grown-up man.". . .
• "...Is perhaps, in the first part of the night, one lamp burning, another one in the middle part, and again another one in the last part?"
• "No, venerable sir. The light during the whole night depends on one and the same lamp.''
• "Just so, O king, is the chain of phenomena (causation) linked together. One phenomenon arises, another vanishes, yet all are linked together, one after the other, without interruption. In this way one reaches the final state of consciousness neither as the same person nor as another person.''

Here the great German Theravada Buddhist monk Ven. Nyanatiloka explains the unacceptable sentence "All things are impersonal" in a rational and direct way by defining anatta as "not-self," "non-ego," "egolessness [soullessness]," "impersonality." It is the last of the Three Characteristics of Existence.

The anattā doctrine teaches that neither within the bodily and mental phenomena of existence, nor outside of them, can be found anything that in the ultimate sense could be regarded as a self-existing real ego-entity, soul, or any other abiding substance. More.

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• Alan Watts (alanwatts.org); CuriousPlus, 11/24/24; Ven. Nyantiloka, Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly