Can you believe in reincarnation & still be a monotheist?

Found this:
In his book What the Buddha Taught (1959), Theravada scholar Walpola Rahula:
"If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or Soul behind them after the non-functioning of the body?
"When this physical body is no more capable of functioning, energies do not die with it, but continue to take some other shape or form, which we call another life. ... Physical and mental energies which constitute the so-called being have within themselves the power to take a new form, and grow gradually and gather force to the full."
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And this:
And Zen teacher John Daido Loori said:
... the Buddha’s experience was that when you go beyond the skandhas, beyond the aggregates, what remains is nothing. The self is an idea, a mental construct. That is not only the Buddha’s experience, but the experience of each realized Buddhist man and woman from 2,500 years ago to the present day. That being the case, what is it that dies? There is no question that when this physical body is no longer capable of functioning, the energies within it, the atoms and molecules it is made up of, don’t die with it. They take on another form, another shape. You can call that another life, but as there is no permanent, unchanging substance, nothing passes from one moment to the next. Quite obviously, nothing permanent or unchanging can pass or transmigrate from one life to the next. Being born and dying continues unbroken but changes every moment.
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So, quite simply —

Buddhists do not believe in reincarnation. Rather, they believe is that the skandhas, or aggregates, remains ... or as I see it, that we make the world and the next generation inherits that world, what they have to live with is what we bequeath to them, and so on ... 'the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the sons for generations' ... what passes from one to the next, according to Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche, is our neurosis – our habits of suffering and dissatisfaction.
 
Thomas said:
What really makes me laugh is that the essential message: "don't worry about that, it's beyond your understanding. Just do this ... " is fine when it's Buddhism, but it's 'blind faith' when it's Abrahamic, and one of the constant sources of the criticism of western religion! :D
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. How is that blind faith?

They are saying they don't know (no faith required) and then saying this is our postulate, and here is our understanding and proof. Here is our method....that is all fairly self evident.

In other religions we have that theism gap...this is what you can't see or prove...but other folks wrote about it a couple hundred generations before you....so believe it...there is the required blind faith.

I think in reincarnation falls into that realm of the unknowable that we argue about.

Sort of like choosing between rebuilding in a flood zone, starting over someplace else, or arguing whether Chinese tech or Harp caused the hurricane to go thru your town while saying climate change is a myth.
 
Who believe in reincarnation?
It is a central tenet of all major Indian religions, namely Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The idea of reincarnation is found in many ancient cultures, and a belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato.
 
So it appears...bottom line theism (mono, poly or atheism) and reincarnation have no correlation... Certain people, religions or beliefs within each heading have their own understanding, which differs from others.
 
First half of this discusses reincarnation in Islam. http://www.adishakti.org/_/reincarnation_in_islam.htm

Second half is quotes...

.
ire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals... and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some strange new disguise."





General George S. Patton

"So as through a glass and darkly, the age long strife I see, Where I fought in many guises, many names, but always me."




Albert Schweitzer

"Reincarnation contains a most comforting explanation of reality by means of which Indian thought surmounts difficulties which baffle the thinkers of Europe."




Walt Whitman

"I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time."




William Wordsworth

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting. And cometh from afar."




Jalalu Rumi (Islamic Poet of the 13th century)

"I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?"




Carl Jung

"My life often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was an historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had been born again because I had not fulfilled the task given to me."




Henry David Thoreau

"Why should we be startled by death? Life is a constant putting off of the mortal coil - coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes."




Socrates

"I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence."




Jesus Christ in Gnostic Gospels: Pistis Sophia

"Souls are poured from one into another of different kinds of bodies of the world."




Voltaire

"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection."




Josephus (most well known Jewish historian from the time of Jesus)

"All pure and holy spirits live on in heavenly places, and in course of time they are again sent down to inhabit righteous bodies."




Honore Balzac (French writer)

"All human beings go through a previous life... Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude of spiritual worlds?"




Arthur Schopenhauer (Philosopher)

"Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life."




Paul Gauguin (French post-impressionist painter)

"When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body."




George Harrison

"Friends are all souls that we've known in other lives. We're drawn to each other. Even if I have only known them a day., it doesn't matter. I'm not going to wait till I have known them for two years, because anyway, we must have met somewhere before, you know."
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Thomas said:
Buddhists do not believe in reincarnation.
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Poor Thomas.

There is repeated reincarnation until nirvana is achieved.

... or as I see it, that we are imprisoned until liberation is achieve, and good behavior assists one in shortening their incarceration time;
and bad behavior got us imprisoned and keeps us imprisoned.


Who thinks that our Father in Heaven created sons that are only figments?
 
wil said:
How is that blind faith?
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Without proof, how is it not?

wil said:
They are saying they don't know (no faith required) ...
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Then what do they know?

wil said:
... and then saying this is our postulate, and here is our understanding and proof.
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Postulate, yes, understanding, yes, but proof ... no ... where is the proof?

wil said:
Here is our method....that is all fairly self evident.
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Not really. Again, the method is a means of achieving an end, and the end is not proven, and has to be accepted on faith.

wil said:
In other religions we have that theism gap...
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And in Buddhism we have the 'Nirvana' gap ...

wil said:
this is what you can't see or prove...
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The Four Noble Truths can neither be seen nor proved, according to their presentation. And they are what Buddhism stands on.
1: All existence is suffering. Not in my experience. Suffering is rare, and mostly caused by poverty.

2. The cause of suffering is craving. Not really, there's far more suffering in the world caused by hunger, disease, accidents, illness, etc., etc.

3. The cessation of suffering comes with the cessation of craving. See 1 and 2.

4. There is a path that leads from suffering. Most people would say that's money.

I'm not disputing the Noble Truths, by the way, I'm just saying they are neither self-evident nor proven. They are if one believes them, but really it's a reasoned faith, but it's blind in that the believer cannot point to an empirical fact and say 'there'.

wil said:
but other folks wrote about it a couple hundred generations before you....so believe it...there is the required blind faith.
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LOL. Buddhist texts are older than the New Testament, and were written down at least 400 years later ... that's some serious blind faith!

Again, I'm not arguing the principles of Buddhism, I'm suggesting that the 'blind faith' argument applies to all religions.
 
Bhaktajan II said:
There is repeated reincarnation until nirvana is achieved.
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Sorry — don't believe it. Not at the level of the individual.

Bhaktajan II said:
... or as I see it, that we are imprisoned until liberation is achieve, and good behavior assists one in shortening their incarceration time; and bad behavior got us imprisoned and keeps us imprisoned.
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We create our own prisons, they are not there ... they are all part of the delusion ...

Bhaktajan II said:
Who thinks that our Father in Heaven created sons that are only figments?
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I don't.
 
wil said:
Who believe in reincarnation? ...
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But in Buddhism, everything we think of as 'I' is ephemeral and illusory, so there is nothing really there to pass on into another life.

This is my whole point — what we think is not necessarily what they are saying.

Check this out
 
Christians used the bible in the US as the reason to keep slaves, to keep laws on integrated marriage, all of which today (some of them admit were specious...while they trot it out again to rally against homosexuals and marriage.
 
LOL, I am well versed in your issues, Wil, but can we please stick to the point?
 
Offerings to the Ancestors

"Most of the historically known practices of ancestor worship in Japan are adaptations of Chinese customs.

"Japanese rites, like those of China, consist of elaborate funerals and many commemorative rites at home, temple, and gravesites. A Butsudan (family altar to ancestors), which displays tablets with inscribed ancestors' names, is present in many Japanese households.

The association of Hinduism with reincarnation is well-known, but this connection obscures a long tradition of ancestor worship. The ritual texts of the Vedic traditions describe in detail the procedure for several forms of ancestral rite."

"Shraddha" is the ritual offering of Vishnu Temple Prasadam [pre-sanctified food] to the departed soul yearly on the date of death ---such food is prayed upon to reach the departed [in pergatory] and in the offering the departed will 'continue' to take the benefits of eating the Prasadam.
This would be akin to taking communion, after death has occurred.

The Sanskrit word for the entrusted steward to perform this rite is called:
Putra
[the vernacular word for, 'Son'. Literally, 'one that delivers their father from the planet 'Put'.]

These term, 'Putra' is the source of the tradition to have at least one son that will enter the holy path of life; or alternatively, a son the achieves moksha at the end of their life. For the tradition further holds that such a successful son delivers 10+ generations of his own family line. This is the idea of a Perfect Son (Putra).
So the good son will at minimum send Vishnu-prasadam to the departed ancestors, via mantra, so they the departed can be purified, even before the son achieves moksha; or as a back-up plan if the son does not reach moksha.
But done yearly to keep the departed ancestors receiving grace via a third party.

This is called the "Shraddha" ceremony.
 
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Bhaktajan II said:
There is repeated reincarnation until nirvana is achieved.

Thomas said:
Sorry — don't believe it. Not at the level of the individual.
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Thomas the real issue is that man & science cannot produce Life in a laboratory.
Science cannot produce Life-force for chemicals.

Soul = the Life-force. And Life-force's character is consciousness.

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I agree in that re-incarnate is to bring all the trappings of the past life along with you to the next life ---This is a myth. Except for God.

Here is my comparison:

A Soul is a fresh Battery. If the Battery is in a techno-fancy flashlight that fell and broke ---the battery will be removed and placed in a 99 cent plastic flash light ---and viola! The Battery is born again ---with no memory of the old broke fancy flashlight it once inhabitated.
A footnote is the the battery case has energy that was put into it from an outside engineer. The battery is a limited small mechanism and needs to be inserted into a body-frame to act out is purpose. Even after some good service it can later leave the body-frame and its energy transmigrates [inserted into] to another body.

All body-frames are lifeless unless a battery is inserted. The battery needs a body to act ...and the battery likes the chance to shine.
 
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