Many seem warm and accepting to the idea of reincarnation. Some, like myself, tend to reject the notion, regarding it as somewhat pessimistic, even hopeless.
I still hope for an informed and orthodox Hindu or Buddhist to make the case for reincarnation, but that hasn’t happened yet, so I don't understand the attraction of it, and I still have massive reservations about what I have been led to believe.
So I thought I might air a few of them here, in case I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
1: Is reincarnation progressive?
There seems to be a popular notion that reincarnation is progressive, that each successive life, to a greater or lesser degree, perfects the last, on a linear journey towards one’s goal, whatever that is perceived to be.
Is it, though? I’m not so sure Hindu or Buddhist doctrine asserts that as the case. The idea of a linear ‘progress’ I rather think is a western one, and relatively recent. Old cultures, including those that gave rise to the doctrine under discussion, tend to see the world as cyclic.
But even if recent, is the idea of progress wrong?
I rather think it is. To be authentically progressive would require the conscious reflection on prior existences. I would have to be able to see myself making progress.
Such is not the case. So I think the assumption of ‘progress’ is in fact one made in blind faith, and indeed is rather optimistic. Dare I say, it’s false?
But then, the idea that I enter this life burdened with a debt derived from prior existences, a debt the nature of which I am completely unaware, seems unjust in the extreme. In effect I am being punished for something I didn’t do, or at least have no memory of ... in which case the punishment is doubly unjust, because without that memory, I have no way of learning the lesson. The punishment holds not value for me. It’s a punitive punishment with no pedagogic value. It cannot be said to be 'good' and, indeed, if we conducted ourselves the same way, we would be described as 'bad', if not 'evil'.
I am told bad karma has to be burned off. Why? Who's keeping the score? Who benefits? Not the victim of our past wrong actions, and not ourselves, being ignorant now of them? So where is the good?
Karma is presented in cold, mechanistic terms, but the balance is determined not by our actions, but by our reasons, which introduce a moral dimension. So we are punished, or rewarded, for moral decisions but a mechanism that is, apparently, amoral?
I'm sorry ... it just doesn't make sense to me.
Say I am born with good health, good looks, a bright mind, into a wealthy family ... I haven't a care in the world ... do I assume this is karma's reward for previous good behaviour?
And yet the priests of this doctrine shun 'the good things' and seem to embrace poverty, dirt, isolation, hunger, self-denial ... why?
So this incarnation is not a means by which I learn from past mistakes. How can I, when I don't know what they are. It’s just a place where I get punished.
Traditional doctrines refer to this round of reincarnation as ‘the wheel’. Not progressive at all then, but cyclic.
In effect, reincarnation lands you back in the place you were before, but no wiser, no better, perhaps nearer your goal, perhaps further ... you have no way of knowing.
And even if you’re a cat’s whisker away from that goal, you can still lose it all, and bump yourself back to square one. Remember the kiddie’s game, ‘Snakes and Ladders’? That was a ‘game’ to teach a moral lesson, that one can get to the penultimate step, and then blow it, and find oneself back at the start.
This, of course, can happen within a life. We make our fortune, and then lose it; we have our faith, and then lose it; we have a family, and then lose it. Life is full of ‘ups and downs’ — life is not progressive, it is not ‘up and up’ or ‘down and down’ ... only physically do we get older.
Do we get wiser? Not necessarily. Do we become more enlightened with age? Not necessarily.
So does reincarnation promise another chance, a better hope?
Not necessarily. Indeed, the odds are against it.
The solution to that dilemma, if there is one, lies perhaps in the answer to this question: What is it that reincarnates?
But that’s a whole other can of worms.
), Typography (my professional practice), and the history of Japan in the Sengoku era — 16th century — the history of the samurai, and specifically the development of swordsmanship, being a hobby. I was a member of the Hagakure dojo (named after the book of that name which 'defined' the samurai ethos), have three black belts in Muso Shinden Ryu iaido (the art of drawing the sword) and really got into the history of its evolution. I collect the few English translations of historical novels concerning the samurai, as well as factual monographs dealing with the topic... and a whole load of DVDs of that era.
