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June 2009 
Reincarnation nation-canard
Posted on Oct 12th, 2007
by 
Chris
Chris
What's the more absurd fact from this story... that "China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission"... that "according to a 2005 Gallup poll, 20 percent of all U.S. adults believe in reincarnation"... or that "a non-Tibetan Dalai Lama, experts say, is probably out of the question."
The correct answer: the first is the least, and the last is the most.
According to 'experts' on transcendental metaphysics (as in transcendent of science and reality), the 'bodhisattva of compassion' is a nationalist... But that's not yet the absurd part. It's that a publication like Newsweek makes such statements at all, validating mythical claims -- or at least, thru poor copy-editing, appears to.
But there are greater causes to trumpet against. Like for instance one in five of your neighbors believe that you can re-exist within a completely different physical structure and brain/mind altogether.
Sorry, but use your sense here, if not your common sense. The simple fact is that without those exact physical brain/mind structures, you couldn't feel like you. You are your feelings/sensations at this moment, and those remembered from the past. And what holds that collection? Your brain. Without your particular brain, you won't feel much at all... nothing in fact.
You are your brain. And this particular one - not even with a quark-by-quark reproduction of your brain will you exist out of your current contiguous space (because what is the alternative, that you exist in two brains at once? that your current brain would be distracted by another?)
Sorry to say, just as you exist separately from all 10+ billion other brains that operate during your lifetime, you'll also exist separately from those that ever were and ever will be...
So carpe diem!
The correct answer: the first is the least, and the last is the most.
According to 'experts' on transcendental metaphysics (as in transcendent of science and reality), the 'bodhisattva of compassion' is a nationalist... But that's not yet the absurd part. It's that a publication like Newsweek makes such statements at all, validating mythical claims -- or at least, thru poor copy-editing, appears to.
But there are greater causes to trumpet against. Like for instance one in five of your neighbors believe that you can re-exist within a completely different physical structure and brain/mind altogether.
Sorry, but use your sense here, if not your common sense. The simple fact is that without those exact physical brain/mind structures, you couldn't feel like you. You are your feelings/sensations at this moment, and those remembered from the past. And what holds that collection? Your brain. Without your particular brain, you won't feel much at all... nothing in fact.
You are your brain. And this particular one - not even with a quark-by-quark reproduction of your brain will you exist out of your current contiguous space (because what is the alternative, that you exist in two brains at once? that your current brain would be distracted by another?)
Sorry to say, just as you exist separately from all 10+ billion other brains that operate during your lifetime, you'll also exist separately from those that ever were and ever will be...
So carpe diem!
Access: Public
Hmm.
I think the larger issue is what reincarnation means. As i've studied and practiced Buddhism, reincarnation was always one of my biggest sticking points, especially combined with the rich mythology of Tibetan Buddhism. But as I continued to read, and ponder, and practice, I began to realize the usefulness of seeing Buddhist cosmology/mythology as a description of psychological practices.
Karma becomes the accumulation of habitual responses through repeated thoughts and actions - the more we act out of greed, the faster we become 'hungry ghosts' - not in some future lifetime, but right now, in this one. We 'reincarnate' from moment to moment - and the being that existed in the last moment no longer exists in the next. Something subtle has changed, yet you still feel like you. (I'm feeling an urge to write about this in more detail soon..)
It took maybe a year after that before I accepted the concept of reincarnation between lives, and I don't remember it being a conscious decision; rather the idea slowly found a home in my beliefs. But the idea I hold is not of personal reincarnation, of a 'me' that exists through time and space, although I don't find it impossible. On the simplest level, when I die and decompose my atoms will find their way into other living things. What I am changes, is reused and reincarnated. My form never stops transforming.
At the next level, I believe our thought patterns, habits, emotions, *karma*, affect the energy fields our bodies produce, and as radioactive material can make other materials radioactive, or electromagnetic currents magnetize certain metals, I believe our energy imprints itself on our atoms and on the things around us (a reason for ghosts?). Is it so implausible to think that matter that has been exposed to certain energy for a period of time will be affected by it? As a result, it's not impossible to think that the things formed partially out of my atoms will be affected by their presence.
And on the third level, 'you' is the main issue. 'You' is a mixture of physical and genetic form, environment, time, place, experience, and personal exploration. 'You' is a product of nature, culture, habituation, a container for rules and concepts and methods. What you call you is something else PLUS *this* you. For some, the something else is soul. Others, atman, and for still others, just energy floating around.
For me, it's not this particular expression of ME that reincarnates, but that something else - I don't expect to wake up feeling like Jake 200 years from now in another body; I don't even expect to know I was ever Jake, or even know what that would mean. But perhaps, just perhaps, something survives and finds new form and new expression in some other being.
And I believe this because it happens moment by moment on a psychological level.
So, with all that, I agree, AND I disagree!
Jake, bro, thanks for stopping by :)
On being reincarnated moment to moment, that's golden. It does indeed happen that way, within the bounds of a lifetime.
On the idea of reincarnation from life to life, I have to say that the concept feels more like 'recycling' than 'reincarnation'. Now, yes, that is a form of existence post-consciousness - but not quite an incarnation to the level of (human) reincarnation.
For full reincarnation, the idea of complexity is useful. For lack of a richer term, it feels like I am a sort of “complexity manager” for this present being (and past & future). Traditional reincarnation implies that 'I' will be asked to do that job further, at some other 'station', at roughly the same level of complexity.
But the reality of that notion starts to fall apart with the realization that 'I' is just a shorthand for an entire local system effect… that I'm not just a manager of the complexity of my body, I exist as a result of the complexity of my body. And once my complexity is broken down, which will happen in just a few decades, it doesn't seem like there's much left to think or talk about. C'est la vie, so it goes…
But maybe it's just a limit of conceptualization and discussion. And science. Because as Arthur C. Clarke points out, soon there'll be enough storage space where at least the informational aspects of our complex being can be stored (15 petabytes, give or take, per body). Whether that translates to any kind of comparable life will certainly be tested in the next century.
“The simple fact is that without those exact physical brain/mind structures, you couldn't feel like you.”
It's something I've been re-considering lately - not in terms of reincarnation, but of the physical limits of consciousness.
If you can replace an arm with a mechanical one… If you can replace a hand with a biological one… if you can replace a heart - and its heartbeat… if you can replace skin and its sensations… and have these integrated into a working consciousness, can brain parts be replaced and integrated as well?
If memory is redundant, and a section containing a redundancy is replaced with a new piece of hardware that can also serve as a redundancy… and if the parts of the brain that start thoughts (the “muscles”, if you will) can be replaced, can consciousness ever be rebuilt - gradually, of course - with non-organic or non-biologically-you parts?
What would it feel like? What if it felt mostly the same? What if “your gut” and “your heart” and “your sense of things” still operated from an artificial frame?
What if senses could be “tricked out”? So that even if you don't have skin, you can feel the breeze? And even for days there isn't any wind at all? What if your mechanical heart had no beat, but you could “still felt things in your heart”?
Get where I'm going here? What if one day your consciousness could be reintegrated (enticed, lured…) onto something that wasn't a body at all?
i remain agnostic when it comes to reincarnation. maybe my opinion will change when i get to experience higher states of consciousness, or when researchers uncover evidence supporting this hypothesis. but i'm cool either way. reincarnation is not a central part of my current worldview. it's a fascinating hypothesis though. but i'm more interested on finding out more about the nature of consciousness (e.g. answering the hard and soft problems of consciousness). i think that the more we know about the nature of consciousness, the reincarnation hypothesis will be proven/disproven along the way.
as to your original question. i think it's absurd to ban reincarnation because it presupposes that reincarnation is a fact in the first place. i think it's more of a political assault on the Tibetan culture than an acceptance of the reincarnation hypothesis.
my two cents.
~C
…we are all composed of atoms…electrons protons and neutrons…not any different than trees and rocks…what makes us different is our sentience…our awareness of ourselves…wherein lies our sentience?…what animates us to make us different than a tree?…this is the YOU…our bodies are like clothes that we put on in the morning and take off dirty at night…we are not our clothes…you are not your shirt…for most on this world,this will be the last life that they carry the forgetfulness between *lives*…the *rules* of the game will change after this level…
…thank you for helping here at gaia…
…Love Light and Life…
…Will…