The Question of Rebirth: Yay or Nay?

Alison Page (thetattooedbuddha.com) edited by Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Author and Buddhist Alison Page

As Buddhism moves from East to West, there is a debate between traditional Buddhists, on the one hand, and secular Buddhists on the other.

Traditional Buddhists believe that karma and rebirth manifest over many lifetimes, and they’re fighting to preserve traditional Dharma.

Secular Buddhists usually don’t believe in rebirth or karma over many lives -- or they don’t consider them necessary to understand Buddhism [or to consider themselves Buddhists].

Secularists tend to rely on materialism and strict logic, which ignores rebirth since it cannot be objectively demonstrated or scientifically tested [as long as we ignore all the scientific research by Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Raymond Moody, William Peters, and others like the mainstream media does].

Secular Buddhists often replace the concept of rebirth over various lifetimes with rebirth from moment to moment [with the self or ego dying every moment then being reborn in the same life].

Major Buddhist concepts on the traditional view of rebirth over countless lifetimes.

As a traditional Buddhist, I have found that it’s necessary to understand rebirth from life to life, or realm to realm, in order to comprehend the Buddha’s Teaching, which is called the Dharma.

Major concepts in Buddhism rely on rebirth over many lives. For instance, there’s Samsara, which is defined as:

Karma, Rebirth, & Saṃsāra (bps.lk)

The beginningless cycle of repeated births, mundane existence, followed by dying again. Samsara is considered dukkha, unsatisfactory and painful. It is perpetuated by desire and ignorance (tanha and avidya) and ever-fresh karma (new deeds that lead to more and more rebirths).

The Buddha talked repeatedly and in detail about a cosmology containing 31 different planes of existence and countless realms. These include the formless realms, which are reached through the attainment of profound meditative absorptions, which later Buddhism reduced to the six common realms of existence:

1. Deva Realm (heavenly realm),
2. Human Realm,
3. Titan Realm (asura, fighting demigod),
4. Beastly Realm
5. Hungry Ghost Realm
6. Hell Realm

According to this Teaching, depending on the karmic imprints we accrued in previous lives, we would be reborn in a more or less fortunate and desirable realm. Below is a sutra in which the Buddha describes how volitional acts (intentional actions or deeds) result in karma, which can fruit and decide a living being’s rebirth:

“Here, Brahmin youth, a certain woman or man is a killer of living beings, cruel, bloody handed, established in killing. Due to this karma, on the breakup of the body after death, he or she arises in a state of woe, in an unfortunate destination, even in a hell. If not reborn in a hell but in the human realm, he or she will be short-lived. Brahmin youth, this is one result of killing living beings.

“However, Brahmin youth, a certain woman or man abstains from killing living beings, having abandoned weapons, is scrupulous (lajjī) and dwells showing compassion toward all living beings.

“Due to this karma, on the breakup of the body after death, he or she arises in a heaven, in a fortunate destination. If not reborn in a heaven but in the human realm, he or she will be long-lived. This, Brahmin youth, is the result of abstaining from killing living beings” (Cūḷa-kamma-vibhaṅga Sutta, “The Lesser Analysis of Karma,” MN 135).

Dependent Arising, which explains the 12 causal links, is also a central concept in Buddhism. The 12 links are:

1. ignorance
2. volitional formations
3. consciousness
4. name-and-form (mind-and-body)
5. six sense bases
6. contact
7. sensation
8. craving
9. clinging
10. becoming
11. rebirth
12. decay-and-death.

It explains rebirth over many lifetimes. According to the historical Buddha, ignorance causes the mind to cling to ideas of a self and its craving for continued existence. This results in actions, more karma, rooted in ignorance and endlessly pursuing pleasure and rebirth.

Birth, decay, and death are central to properly conceptualizing these 12 causal links that lead to our present suffering or disappointment and unsatisfactoriness.

Why practice?

A question I have for secular Buddhists is, Why study the Four Noble Truths or follow the moral code laid out in the Eightfold Path if you do not believe in rebirth from life to life and realm to realm?

If there is no re-existence (rearising, again becoming) after this life, and our actions — both skillful and unskillful — are meaningless and hold no karmic force to produce results after this life, so wouldn’t life be far better lived just indulging in sense pleasures and enjoying ourselves as much as possible instead of studying and practicing the Dharma?

If the Buddha teaches that all things are impersonal (selfless), then what is the “I” that we assume is reborn? The Buddha did not teach eternalism (that there is a permanent self) nor annihilationism (the destruction of a self). But he does speak of the mind’s ignorance, craving, aversion, and karmic imprints that produce tendencies over many lives. More