what reason is there to believe we exist in other lives reincarnation
Fenanov/Flickr
In this postal service, I'd like to consider seriously the issue of reincarnation. Or perhaps I should say, the problem with reincarnation. Though I practice Buddhism, I don't actually believe in reincarnation. I suspect that my saying this volition irk many of my Buddhist friends, who rightly consider the tenet of reincarnation central to Buddhism, besides as the indifference of anyone who doesn't believe in reincarnation and therefore has lilliputian interest in an essay that points out the problems with a theory they already discount. Though I therefore risk having an audience of no one, I think the discussion will be an interesting one, because the real question at the eye of reincarnation is one of identity.
Co-ordinate to Wikipedia, the percentage of people who believe in reincarnation ranges from 12% to 44% depending on the country being surveyed (in the U.S., information technology's 20%). And, I freely admit, such a conventionalities may non be wrong: psychiatrist Ian Stevenson has conducted more than than 2,500 case studies over a menstruation of 40 years of children who supposedly remembered by lives. He methodically documented each child'due south statements so identified the deceased person the child identified with, and verified the facts of the deceased person's life that matched the child'due south memory. He likewise matched birthmarks and birth defects to wounds and scars on the deceased, verified by medical records such every bit dissection photographs. While skeptics have argued his reports provide just anecdotal evidence, his data does seem to need caption.
The trouble with reincarnation is that explanation, however, is twofold: 1) we have, as of yet, no manner to verify it prospectively in an objective manner; and 2) we have no machinery to explain how reincarnation might occur. Though reincarnation is indeed a central tenet of all sects of Buddhism, no sect of Buddhism posits the existence of a not-corporeal "soul"—an eternal, unchanging version of ourselves that's capable of living independently of a encephalon and a body. Rather, in Buddhism, the self is viewed equally something that has no "absolute" existence, as something that changes constantly from moment to moment, likewise as something that's capable of existing merely within the confines of a physical encephalon.
Yet something of us, Buddhism argues, continues from life to life, something that makes us uniquely us. The sect of Buddhism I practise argues this "something" is our karma: the sum of all the furnishings nosotros ourselves have created within our lives (similar unexploded mousetraps that volition exist triggered at some point in the hereafter) every bit a outcome of all the things we've ever idea, said, and done—not just in the by of our current life, but in all the pasts of all our previous lives.
And here is where I have a third trouble with the Buddhist notion of reincarnation: how does the sum of all the effects I myself have created in the past add up to "me"? I tin can have that all the things I've ever thought, said, and washed (at least in this lifetime) have indeed, in some sense, created the person I am now. But do all my thoughts, words, and deportment create my cadre essence—or arise from it?
Which leads me to ask what I recall, in one sense, is a more than interesting question than the question of reincarnation: namely, what is my core essence? The sense of self I feel and accept e'er felt has seemed constant throughout my life, which is why I feel every bit if I even have a core essence. But a moment's reflection reveals that what's actually remained constant is the feeling of the sense of self itself, not the content of that sense. Am I fifty-fifty remotely the same person I was at 5? At 15? Last week? A moment ago?
In one sense, obviously, yes. Something links the "me" that I am right at present to the "me" that I was at five (and non, for case, to my wife as she was at v). Only what is that something? My memory? I've long ago forgotten well-nigh of what happened to me at 5. I remember existence 5, but not the entirety of fifty-fifty ane day from that year (in fact, I don't recollect the entirety of fifty-fifty one day from concluding week). If whatever content in my life remains constant, it'south not due to my remembering it, to my consciously holding it fast in my working retentivity and so as not to forget it and thus myself. It's because some things remain constant without my having to remember them or fifty-fifty call up nearly them: substantially, my habits (which, are past definition, unconscious) and my beliefs (which, though they must be expressed in language, needn't be consciously apprehended to influence behavior).
Given what we at present know virtually the enormous size and power of the unconscious—well-nigh just how much of "us" lies below the surface of our conscious minds—we accept to admit that the defining core of who we are may, in fact, exist located mostly, if not entirely, below our awareness (our witting minds being mostly spectators and interpreters of our unconscious selves).
Only what does even this mean? That our unconscious beliefs and habits ascertain who we are? Does our conscious sensation, the values we're able to articulate to ourselves, have cipher to practice with our identity? And what about our memories of who we've been? Without those, would not some essential part of the cocky exist lost?
Many Buddhists would contend the sense that we fifty-fifty have a cocky is an illusion, that despite our feeling that a unique something lies at the core of what we are, such a something doesn't, in fact, exist. And though I can't respond whatever of the questions above, I find myself sympathetic to this point of view. I suspect the only affair constant about u.s.a. is our sense that something about us remains constant, and that who we are is comprised both of stable parts (personality, beliefs, attitudes, and so on) and unstable parts (retrievable memories, moods, interests, and so on)—and that to alter any ane of them (whether in the realm of the conscious or unconscious) is to change who we are in proportion to their relative stability (changing a belief, for case—similar a belief in God—would represent a major alter; changing a mood, on the other hand, but a minor i).
Certainly, those of us who've gone through major upheaval in our lives or experienced an abrupt and enormous jump in maturity at some signal often pause to look back and imagine ourselves as a fundamentally different person from who we once were. Simply perhaps our inclination to label ourselves as "inverse" only when nosotros notice a large enough deviation between who we are and who we used to be ignores the truth that we're never not changing. Our lives are in constant motion, and to imagine that we could take a snapshot of them at any one betoken in time and somehow capture that which represents our essential selves strikes me as arguing that an actual snapshot of a flowing river represents its one truthful shape. So when people tell me they believe in reincarnation, the first question that comes to my mind isn't well-nigh what testify they recall argues for the possibility. Rather, information technology'due south this: just exactly what do they think gets reincarnated?
Dr. Lickerman's new book The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self volition be published on November 6. Read the sample chapter and visit Amazon or Barnes & Noble to order a copy.
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-in-world/201210/the-problem-reincarnation
0 Response to "what reason is there to believe we exist in other lives reincarnation"
Post a Comment