Does rebirth make sense? (BPS)

Bhikkhu Bodhi (Buddhist Publication Society, BPS.lk); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Newcomers to Buddhism are invariably impressed by the clarity, directness, and earthy practicality of the Dharma (Pali Dhamma) as embodied in such basic teachings as the

• Four Noble Truths
• Noble Eightfold Path
• Threefold Training.

These teachings, as clear as daylight, are accessible to any serious spiritual seeker looking for a way beyond suffering.

However, when new Dharma students encounter the doctrine of rebirth, they often feel it just doesn’t make sense.

At this point, they suspect, the Teaching has swerved off course, floundering in pointless speculation and fantasy.

Even modern interpreters of Buddhism seem to have trouble taking the rebirth teachings seriously. Some dismiss it out of hand as mere cultural baggage, “ancient Indian metaphysics,” that the Buddha retained in deference to the worldview of his age.

Others interpret rebirth as a metaphor for changing mental states, with the many realms of rebirth (within the 31 Planes of Existence) seen as symbols for different moods and emotions.

A few critics have even questioned the very authenticity of the texts on rebirth, arguing that they must be interpolations inserted sometimes after the Buddha.

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A quick glance at the Pali language sutras will show that none of these claims has much substance. The teaching of rebirth crops up almost everywhere in the texts and is so closely bound to a host of other doctrines that to remove it would virtually reduce the Dhamma to shreds.

We find, for example, that the Buddha explains his own enlightenment as the realization of the Three Higher Knowledges — the first two involving direct cognition of other lives — and also instructs his disciples on how to attain these knowledges directly for themselves.

When the texts speak about rebirth into the five realms — the hells, the animal world, the ghost realm, the human world, and the heavens of the devas — they never hint that these terms are intended symbolically.

On the contrary, they even say that rebirth occurs “with the breakup of the body, after death,” which clearly implies they mean the idea of rebirth to be taken quite literally. But this essay is not an attempt to argue for rebirth. More

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