Some thoughts on the subject of Reincarnation
Hi Folks,
In our Sunday discussion at our last quarterly meditation retreat we had an open discussion on death, dying, and then of course reincarnation. As we all know in much of the Buddhist world reincarnation is a firmly held belief. It is integral to the beliefs of Hinduism, from which Buddhism arose, and it may seem integral to some versions of Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism. Yet the historic Buddha seemed to have mostly avoided the subject of reincarnation and his doctrine of no-self (an-atman) seems in contradiction to the idea of reincarnation. If there is no self or soul what is there to reincarnate? Since the early days of Buddhism this has been a point of confusion and controversy. Some schools of Buddhism like Zen don't really pay any attention to reincarnation. While in Tibetan Buddhism Reincarnation is of central importance. In this essay I will try to sort out some of what I think about reincarnation.
Because of the Buddha's explicit rejection of the atman a Tibetan may answer that it is not a self that reincarnates but karma that reincarnates. This of course begs the question what is karma? Is karma something substantial that can pass from one body to another? Is it a store of merits and demerits based upon good and bad actions and thoughts? A Zen Buddhist might bring up the ancient Zen Master Dogen who wrote in his essay Actualizing the Fundamental Point that an essential feature of the Buddha Dharma is that ash does not turn back into wood.
When Isaac and I initially chose this subject for the discussion I was initially skeptical but then relented. When I look back on the discussion I feel my skepticism confirmed. Whenever talking about the subject of reincarnation it is very easy to enter the realm of speculation and attachment to ideas without foundation in experience. The Buddha Dharma in it's essence is not to blindly accept any doctrine but that understanding arises through the foundational practice of meditation. Reason is still involved but only when it arises from experience found in meditation. As you enter the gate of Eiheiji, the home temple of Soto Zen, you pass under a calligraphy which states “Only Don't Know”. Sage advice!
So now, not following the above advice I am going to give you some of my thoughts on reincarnation and karma which you should not blindly accept but I hope makes sense to you. I have been practicing meditation for a long time and put untold hours into this practice and the more I have searched for some inner essence the less I find, thoughts disappear, emotions disappear, and even a sense of I disappears. Sometimes my meditation gets really quiet and there is an experience of what seems to be only a reflective consciousness, and then all of a sudden the bell rings for the end of the meditation period and then there is the realization that both time and consciousness have disappeared. So, what then could reincarnate from body to body?
Most of us have not had this type of experience. Thoughts, emotions and memories, run through our heads in a continuous stream, I have come to think of this continuous stream as karma. It is just energy. Some of it manifests as habitual thought and emotional patterns we have developed in this life. Some of these patterns may be from some deeper inherited place. And some of these thoughts and emotions may be less habitual and more playful and creative. I think of all this as karma and sitting is the place I go to let all this energy go. Oh yes, I have forgotten to mention that all these thoughts and emotions hold together our sense of I and our view of the world, the world of duality, of this and that,right and wrong.
Again I ask what is reincarnation? The world is a complex and mysterious place. Is it possible that some of this energy of thought emotion and memory upon death of an individual may some how be received by the newly forming mind of a baby. Maybe? But this creates a lot of questions like can multiple young minds receive this energy from a single dying person? Or can a single young mind receive this energy from multiple dying or dead individuals. This is all speculation.
From the perspective of the Buddha Dharma it does not matter whether or not there is some factual truth to individual reincarnation. From the perspective of the Buddha Dharma the individual perspective, the world of duality, in which this type of reincarnation may exist is samsara, the realm of suffering delusion and ignorance.
Religions all need to deal with the issue of death, We all fear death and religion serves to comfort us in the face of this fear. Christianity postulated an internal essence called the soul which goes to heaven or hell. We have nothing to fear about death if we have been a good person because our soul will go to heaven. Hinduism tells us that our atman/soul lives on through almost endless reincarnations until it is purified and eventually merges with the Universal Soul Brahamin. But Buddhism tells us we have no atman, and experience in meditation can confirm this. Experience in meditation opens us up to a different way of understanding the world. Though there are many flavors to explain this understanding, emptiness, oneness. the ever changing interdependent origination of all things, etc. I am going to call it a non-dual universal perspective, which is the essence of the Buddha Dharma. How does Buddhism deal with the suffering caused by our fear of death. Buddhism redefines who we are. Instead of just being individually created beings with individual souls our individuality is seen as a sort of illusion held together by thought, memory and emotion. Instead, though as seeming individuals, we are ever changing, deeply embedded in the ever changing infinitely complex Universe where everything is connected and interdependent.
In the Zen world students are constantly asked questions like “What is your true self?” From this perspective the essence of the Buddha Dharma is this Universal perspective cultivated through meditation. Through meditation we learn to let go of the small self, the individual self, again and again, with each breath. What emerges from this practice is an understanding of the the large self, the Universal Self.
In Hinduism it is thought that the individual atman/soul goes through many many rebirths until it merges with the universal soul/ Brahaman. But, in Buddhism it is sometimes said that we all have Buddha Nature and that we are all Enlightened but we don't know it because of ignorance. In Buddhism there is no atman, we are already merged with the Universal Self but we live with the illusion of an individual self. Yet to see through the lens of the Universal Self is to see all this ignorance, delusion, and suffering as the activity of the Universal Self.
A few thoughts on language before I move on. Language by it's very nature has difficulty portraying Buddhist experience and understanding. Language is dualistic dividing the world. It assumes a world of individuals and things. It cannot clearly explain non-dual experience and understanding. Though, as we say in Zen, words can point to the way, don't confuse the words for the way. A long time ago my teacher Harada Roshi asked me a question about my understanding of Zen. I gave a poetic like response creating an image of my experience. Harada said “Very good. Only poetry can properly express the Dharma.” Language can only give us an incomplete understanding of non-duality. Individual words cannot clearly signify anything in a non-dual Universe. We must liberate words from their fixed meanings. Words are metaphors. If we are to approach the Dharma with words we must do so from multiple complimentary directions of understanding and a poetic sensibility.
How can we understand reincarnation through the lens of the Buddha Dharma. First I think, we must drop the idea that there is some un-dying individual essence that moves from one individual life to another. Yet I don't think that it is impossible that memories and other energies may transfer from a dying individual to a new born individual. I think it possible, maybe even likely that some energies may be shared among living individuals in ways that cannot be easily explained. Such is my experience. In a Universe where every seeming individual thing is deeply interconnected in ways we may never know, maybe some sort of transfer from death to birth is possible. Yet as I wrote earlier this is speculation and for most of us who have no memories of a previous life the idea of this type of reincarnation is a distraction, and not at all necessary in our Buddhist practice. But there are ways to think about reincarnation which might illuminate the Buddha Dharma.
The Buddha famously said very little about reincarnation. Yet he did talk about it in two ways. The first in is his obscure doctrine of the Twelve Fold Chain of Interdependent Origination. I leave it up to you to look it up. In a short explanation it starts with Ignorance then Contact and ends with Birth and Rebirth. In between are a series of steps involving sensations desires thoughts which lead to the idea of a self which leads to further ideas of a self being reborn. This Twelve Fold Chain is often seen as something involving a whole life but I see it as something more practical, as an internal series of steps which over and over again create an idea of a self. This is something that the Buddha saw happening over and over again in his own practice of meditation. And in laying this out we can see how it functions in our own minds, but more importantly it give us an opportunity to cut the chain so that we are not constantly reinforcing the idea of a self. By being mindful of the links we can see our mind going from a stimulus through a whole series of thoughts to an idea of an “I” and egoistic thinking. If we are really mindful during meditation we might actually watch thoughts arise from stimulation. I remember once sitting and listening, as listening was my meditation that time, the random noise of the outside world transform into words and words followed words. As a practiced meditator I could cut the chain right then and return to silence But sometimes these thoughts can take us away into a whole chain of thoughts and emotions which only reinforce our delusion filled idea of self. The Buddha gave us a practical tool for meditation.
One understanding of reincarnation that aligns with the Buddha Dharma is moment to moment reincarnation as the self can disappear in all sorts of ways and then inevitably it is reborn in our thought. The self can disappear in a breath as we sit in meditation, or it might disappear as we listen to music or play music. Sports are a common activity in which the self is forgotten. Many of us find activities which naturally allow us to forget the self. Whenever we are in that place where we are completely un-selfconscious a sense of joy seems to naturally rise. We become the activity of the Universe. In activity this place is called active samadhi. When we sit in meditation and the mind quiets and the self is forgotten we enter meditative samadhi. Again a feeling of joy arises and we sit with the Universe or should I say we become the Universe sitting. In this view we are only alive as an individual person when there is a thought of an individual person. When there is the thought of a person there is an individual. When thought is gone there is death. This is a very different way of understanding birth and death but it aligns with the Buddha Dharma. In this seemingly single life time we are actually dying and reincarnating over and over again. We momentarily forget the self in even the simplest activity like putting on our shoes and then we are reborn again as another thought of self emerges. Though from the Universal perspective there never was an individual self and such an idea is just an illusion/delusion.
Another understanding of reincarnation which aligns with the Buddha Dharma is to see how karma works on the larger scale of human beings as individuals. Karma is a complex concept but also a generalized concept. I believe that in Sanskrit the word karma refers to cause and effect. In the Hindu and for some Buddhists the idea of karma refers to a sort of moral cause and effect. But Buddhism with it's understanding of non-duality as well as the deeply causal interdependence of all seeming independent things points to another view of karma. From this perspective karma as a general term can mean the whole universal process of causes and effects. But to be more practical we can think of personal karma as a whole variety of process that create the person we come to be. And as Buddhists we are most interested in the karma that creates the delusion of an individual self and the suffering this causes. I think karma exists on several levels. There is biologically inherited karma. The biologic imperative/instinct to survive that all individual life forms seem to posses, even if not self conscious, creates a sort of primitive functional self with fears and desires. This might be called beginning-less karma and as conscious beings we still have it. We have inherited the fears and desires of the whole evolutionary development of life leading to us humans. Then there is social karma. Each of us is embedded in a family and a larger society which makes certain assumptions that creates a certain way of viewing the world. In India a belief in the Hindu idea of reincarnation is a strong societal assumption. There are strong societal assumptions that come with Christianity and Judaism as well as science. And in all of these societal assumptions there is the assumption of an individual self as something not to be doubted in it's reality. This societal karma deeply influences the developing mind of the young child, There is of course the karma we as seeming individuals develop by experience, action and thought through an individual life. And then lastly there might be some sort of karma that is transmitted in some less obvious way from one individual life to another individual life, All of this karma comes together in the seeming individual to create thought, memory, emotion, personality, and delusion.
The Buddha in one of his few references to reincarnation said that reincarnation was like the lighting of one candle by another candle. Each candle is distinct and the burning of the candle is more influenced by the nature of it's wax and the wind that blows by it, then how it was initially lit. In accordance with the non-individual understanding of the Buddha Dharma we can see how each of us is influenced by an almost infinitely web of karmic influences. Like a pond or a puddle of water or even a single drop the whole Universe is reflected in it's water. We as individuals reflect the influence of the whole Universe. Though appearing to be individuals we exist in a never ending web of karmic influences. In this way each of us is a reflection and incarnation of all other individuals as well as the whole Universe We might think of this as Universal reincarnation or non-dual reincarnation.
In my practice as a meditator I think of karma as the swirl of internal thoughts and emotions. Of course karma is much more then that but from the perspective of practice this is a useful way of thinking about karma. It is through meditation and other practices that we work through our internal karma and eventually quiet our minds. This is the path of purification. Our internal karma deeply effects the world around us through our actions speech and possibly in other ways and thus our karma is being reborn in others. Our delusions are being reborn. Our ignorance is being reborn. And in some sense we are being reborn. But most importantly for us practitioners if we purify our minds we are adding less karma, ignorance, and delusion to the world. And if we have a truly quiet mind and function out of that quiet mind, which is naturally clear, compassionate, and not self-conscious, then our influence is to quiet and calm other minds. A Mahayana Buddhist might call this “saving sentient beings.” This is the path of the Bodhisattva. And one understanding is that with the quiet and clear mind we are reborn as the undivided Universe.
At the dharma discussion at the last Moonwater Dojo retreat, which compelled me to write this essay I read Dai E Zenji's Vow for Awakening.
Our only prayer is to be firm in our determination to give ourselves completely to the Buddha’s Way so that no doubts arise however long the road seems to be. To be light and easy in the four parts of the body, to be strong and undismayed in body and in mind, to be free from illness and drive out both depressed feelings and distractions, to be free from calamity, misfortune, harmful influences and obstructions, not to seek the truth outside of ourselves so we may instantly enter the right way, to be unattached to all thoughts, that we may reach the perfectly clear, bright mind of prajna and have immediate enlightenment on the Great Matter, thereby we receive the transmission of the deep wisdom of the Buddhas to save all sentient beings who suffer in the round of birth and death. In this way we offer our gratitude for the compassion of the Buddha and the patriarchs.
Our further prayer is not to be extremely ill or to be suffering at the time of departure, to know its coming seven days ahead so we can quiet the mind to abandon the body and be unattached to all things at the last moment wherein we return to the original Mind in the realm of no birth and no death and merge infinitely into the whole universe to manifest as all things in their true nature and with the great wisdom of the Buddhas to awaken all beings to the Buddha Mind. We offer this to all Buddhas and bodhisattva-mahasattvas of the past, present and future in the ten quarters and to the maha prajna paramita.
Whenever I give a talk I try to connect whatever say to the practice and experience of meditation. In the last case of the Mumonkan the 48 koans that form the established curriculum of Rinzai Zen the student does not pass unless he has come to a deep understanding of what happens when he dies. Is this the death that happens on the cushion (or chair) which we can all experience through deep practice, or is this the physical death at the end of a life, or are they different? Dai E Zenji seems to give us an answer which is about the death of the physical body for an individual in the deepest of samadhi. A cursory reading may give us the impression that Dai E Zenji is giving a sort of Hindu answer in which only the Enlightened merge into the Universe and for the rest of us something different, but in the Budddha Dharma we say that all people are already Enlightened and only because of ignorance and delusion we don't understand this. My reading of Dai E Zenji is that he is telling us how to experience death on the cushion.
Quiet the mind to abandon the body and be unattached to all things
This is a formula for meditation. It is not really different from the many other descriptions of meditation. I always talk about letting everything go in meditation. We let go of our thoughts which is just a stream of internal attachment and we even let go of the body which personifies our individuality. When we sit in deep meditation the body seems to disappear. We forget about it because we are so engaged in our practice of mindfulness and concentration. But when we open our eyes in meditation and look out and feel the world something else might happen. What we see and feel has no separation from the I composed of body and thought. Thus we
merge infinitely into the whole universe to manifest as all things in their true nature.
Suzuki Roshi in his book Zen Mind Beginners Mind tells a story of going to see one of the amazing waterfalls at Yosemite and watch this river drop over a cliff hundreds of feet tall. First as it starts to drop it is a solid sheet of water but then as it falls further it separates into individual drops as gravity pulls apart the sheet of water. He watches the individual drops in their fall and he sees the analogy with humans. Separated into individual drops the fall seems to be long and slow and painful eventually to merge back into a solid river. Is this not like us humans? We seem to emerge as individuals from this one river of life and live a painful individual life when in truth we never are separated from the the river in which there is no birth and death.
Humans born as seemingly separate individuals take for granted this separateness and live a life that is often filled with the fear of death and all the attending suffering. But when an individual quiets his or her mind, drops all attachment, and experiences their true nature as the undivided universe in that moment all suffering is dropped and the seeming individual is in the state we call Nirvana. But as one of the foundational tenets of Buddhism tells us nothing is permanent, even the experience of Nirvana. As a friend once told me our minds are naturally sticky, and the individual in Nirvana in time is reborn as a human being and returns to the world of duality and suffering. But something is different. Having deeply experienced non-duality, he or she is a vastly different individual. The attachment to our dualistic delusions is gone. Fear of death is gone and all the attending suffering is gone. Priorities in life are vastly different. One has been reborn a Bodhisattva. This does not mean that all suffering is gone and the individual lives in perpetual bliss but that he or she sees suffering as delusion. And ones priorities now have much more to do with love and compassion then in their previous life. Remember life is always changing. We are always being reborn, and without continuing practice we might find ourselves a deeply suffering individual again. Though we hold up Buddha Shakyamuni as our example of complete perfect enlightenment he was a human like us. One of his most important examples is that he never stopped practicing, and when he found the pressures of leading the sangha were diminishing his realization he went into solitary retreat for a year. While in this life Nirvana, the conscious realm of non-duality, is only temporarily accessible for us humans, we say that upon the Buddha's death he entered Paranirvana, Complete Final Nirvana, because upon physical death, he dissolved into the river of life as we all will. And yet with the birth of a single individual each of us is reborn as well as the whole Universe.
Some thoughts on the subject of Reincarnation
Hi Folks,
In our Sunday discussion at our last quarterly meditation retreat we had an open discussion on death, dying, and then of course reincarnation. As we all know in much of the Buddhist world reincarnation is a firmly held belief. It is integral to the beliefs of Hinduism, from which Buddhism arose, and it may seem integral to some versions of Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism. Yet the historic Buddha seemed to have mostly avoided the subject of reincarnation and his doctrine of no-self (an-atman) seems in contradiction to the idea of reincarnation. If there is no self or soul what is there to reincarnate? Since the early days of Buddhism this has been a point of confusion and controversy. Some schools of Buddhism like Zen don't really pay any attention to reincarnation. While in Tibetan Buddhism Reincarnation is of central importance. In this essay I will try to sort out some of what I think about reincarnation.
Because of the Buddha's explicit rejection of the atman a Tibetan may answer that it is not a self that reincarnates but karma that reincarnates. This of course begs the question what is karma? Is karma something substantial that can pass from one body to another? Is it a store of merits and demerits based upon good and bad actions and thoughts? A Zen Buddhist might bring up the ancient Zen Master Dogen who wrote in his essay Actualizing the Fundamental Point that an essential feature of the Buddha Dharma is that ash does not turn back into wood.
When Isaac and I initially chose this subject for the discussion I was initially skeptical but then relented. When I look back on the discussion I feel my skepticism confirmed. Whenever talking about the subject of reincarnation it is very easy to enter the realm of speculation and attachment to ideas without foundation in experience. The Buddha Dharma in it's essence is not to blindly accept any doctrine but that understanding arises through the foundational practice of meditation. Reason is still involved but only when it arises from experience found in meditation. As you enter the gate of Eiheiji, the home temple of Soto Zen, you pass under a calligraphy which states “Only Don't Know”. Sage advice!
So now, not following the above advice I am going to give you some of my thoughts on reincarnation and karma which you should not blindly accept but I hope makes sense to you. I have been practicing meditation for a long time and put untold hours into this practice and the more I have searched for some inner essence the less I find, thoughts disappear, emotions disappear, and even a sense of I disappears. Sometimes my meditation gets really quiet and there is an experience of what seems to be only a reflective consciousness, and then all of a sudden the bell rings for the end of the meditation period and then there is the realization that both time and consciousness have disappeared. So, what then could reincarnate from body to body?
Most of us have not had this type of experience. Thoughts, emotions and memories, run through our heads in a continuous stream, I have come to think of this continuous stream as karma. It is just energy. Some of it manifests as habitual thought and emotional patterns we have developed in this life. Some of these patterns may be from some deeper inherited place. And some of these thoughts and emotions may be less habitual and more playful and creative. I think of all this as karma and sitting is the place I go to let all this energy go. Oh yes, I have forgotten to mention that all these thoughts and emotions hold together our sense of I and our view of the world, the world of duality, of this and that,right and wrong.
Again I ask what is reincarnation? The world is a complex and mysterious place. Is it possible that some of this energy of thought emotion and memory upon death of an individual may some how be received by the newly forming mind of a baby. Maybe? But this creates a lot of questions like can multiple young minds receive this energy from a single dying person? Or can a single young mind receive this energy from multiple dying or dead individuals. This is all speculation.
From the perspective of the Buddha Dharma it does not matter whether or not there is some factual truth to individual reincarnation. From the perspective of the Buddha Dharma the individual perspective, the world of duality, in which this type of reincarnation may exist is samsara, the realm of suffering delusion and ignorance.
Religions all need to deal with the issue of death, We all fear death and religion serves to comfort us in the face of this fear. Christianity postulated an internal essence called the soul which goes to heaven or hell. We have nothing to fear about death if we have been a good person because our soul will go to heaven. Hinduism tells us that our atman/soul lives on through almost endless reincarnations until it is purified and eventually merges with the Universal Soul Brahamin. But Buddhism tells us we have no atman, and experience in meditation can confirm this. Experience in meditation opens us up to a different way of understanding the world. Though there are many flavors to explain this understanding, emptiness, oneness. the ever changing interdependent origination of all things, etc. I am going to call it a non-dual universal perspective, which is the essence of the Buddha Dharma. How does Buddhism deal with the suffering caused by our fear of death. Buddhism redefines who we are. Instead of just being individually created beings with individual souls our individuality is seen as a sort of illusion held together by thought, memory and emotion. Instead, though as seeming individuals, we are ever changing, deeply embedded in the ever changing infinitely complex Universe where everything is connected and interdependent.
In the Zen world students are constantly asked questions like “What is your true self?” From this perspective the essence of the Buddha Dharma is this Universal perspective cultivated through meditation. Through meditation we learn to let go of the small self, the individual self, again and again, with each breath. What emerges from this practice is an understanding of the the large self, the Universal Self.
In Hinduism it is thought that the individual atman/soul goes through many many rebirths until it merges with the universal soul/ Brahaman. But, in Buddhism it is sometimes said that we all have Buddha Nature and that we are all Enlightened but we don't know it because of ignorance. In Buddhism there is no atman, we are already merged with the Universal Self but we live with the illusion of an individual self. Yet to see through the lens of the Universal Self is to see all this ignorance, delusion, and suffering as the activity of the Universal Self.
A few thoughts on language before I move on. Language by it's very nature has difficulty portraying Buddhist experience and understanding. Language is dualistic dividing the world. It assumes a world of individuals and things. It cannot clearly explain non-dual experience and understanding. Though, as we say in Zen, words can point to the way, don't confuse the words for the way. A long time ago my teacher Harada Roshi asked me a question about my understanding of Zen. I gave a poetic like response creating an image of my experience. Harada said “Very good. Only poetry can properly express the Dharma.” Language can only give us an incomplete understanding of non-duality. Individual words cannot clearly signify anything in a non-dual Universe. We must liberate words from their fixed meanings. Words are metaphors. If we are to approach the Dharma with words we must do so from multiple complimentary directions of understanding and a poetic sensibility.
How can we understand reincarnation through the lens of the Buddha Dharma. First I think, we must drop the idea that there is some un-dying individual essence that moves from one individual life to another. Yet I don't think that it is impossible that memories and other energies may transfer from a dying individual to a new born individual. I think it possible, maybe even likely that some energies may be shared among living individuals in ways that cannot be easily explained. Such is my experience. In a Universe where every seeming individual thing is deeply interconnected in ways we may never know, maybe some sort of transfer from death to birth is possible. Yet as I wrote earlier this is speculation and for most of us who have no memories of a previous life the idea of this type of reincarnation is a distraction, and not at all necessary in our Buddhist practice. But there are ways to think about reincarnation which might illuminate the Buddha Dharma.
The Buddha famously said very little about reincarnation. Yet he did talk about it in two ways. The first in is his obscure doctrine of the Twelve Fold Chain of Interdependent Origination. I leave it up to you to look it up. In a short explanation it starts with Ignorance then Contact and ends with Birth and Rebirth. In between are a series of steps involving sensations desires thoughts which lead to the idea of a self which leads to further ideas of a self being reborn. This Twelve Fold Chain is often seen as something involving a whole life but I see it as something more practical, as an internal series of steps which over and over again create an idea of a self. This is something that the Buddha saw happening over and over again in his own practice of meditation. And in laying this out we can see how it functions in our own minds, but more importantly it give us an opportunity to cut the chain so that we are not constantly reinforcing the idea of a self. By being mindful of the links we can see our mind going from a stimulus through a whole series of thoughts to an idea of an “I” and egoistic thinking. If we are really mindful during meditation we might actually watch thoughts arise from stimulation. I remember once sitting and listening, as listening was my meditation that time, the random noise of the outside world transform into words and words followed words. As a practiced meditator I could cut the chain right then and return to silence But sometimes these thoughts can take us away into a whole chain of thoughts and emotions which only reinforce our delusion filled idea of self. The Buddha gave us a practical tool for meditation.
One understanding of reincarnation that aligns with the Buddha Dharma is moment to moment reincarnation as the self can disappear in all sorts of ways and then inevitably it is reborn in our thought. The self can disappear in a breath as we sit in meditation, or it might disappear as we listen to music or play music. Sports are a common activity in which the self is forgotten. Many of us find activities which naturally allow us to forget the self. Whenever we are in that place where we are completely un-selfconscious a sense of joy seems to naturally rise. We become the activity of the Universe. In activity this place is called active samadhi. When we sit in meditation and the mind quiets and the self is forgotten we enter meditative samadhi. Again a feeling of joy arises and we sit with the Universe or should I say we become the Universe sitting. In this view we are only alive as an individual person when there is a thought of an individual person. When there is the thought of a person there is an individual. When thought is gone there is death. This is a very different way of understanding birth and death but it aligns with the Buddha Dharma. In this seemingly single life time we are actually dying and reincarnating over and over again. We momentarily forget the self in even the simplest activity like putting on our shoes and then we are reborn again as another thought of self emerges. Though from the Universal perspective there never was an individual self and such an idea is just an illusion/delusion.
Another understanding of reincarnation which aligns with the Buddha Dharma is to see how karma works on the larger scale of human beings as individuals. Karma is a complex concept but also a generalized concept. I believe that in Sanskrit the word karma refers to cause and effect. In the Hindu and for some Buddhists the idea of karma refers to a sort of moral cause and effect. But Buddhism with it's understanding of non-duality as well as the deeply causal interdependence of all seeming independent things points to another view of karma. From this perspective karma as a general term can mean the whole universal process of causes and effects. But to be more practical we can think of personal karma as a whole variety of process that create the person we come to be. And as Buddhists we are most interested in the karma that creates the delusion of an individual self and the suffering this causes. I think karma exists on several levels. There is biologically inherited karma. The biologic imperative/instinct to survive that all individual life forms seem to posses, even if not self conscious, creates a sort of primitive functional self with fears and desires. This might be called beginning-less karma and as conscious beings we still have it. We have inherited the fears and desires of the whole evolutionary development of life leading to us humans. Then there is social karma. Each of us is embedded in a family and a larger society which makes certain assumptions that creates a certain way of viewing the world. In India a belief in the Hindu idea of reincarnation is a strong societal assumption. There are strong societal assumptions that come with Christianity and Judaism as well as science. And in all of these societal assumptions there is the assumption of an individual self as something not to be doubted in it's reality. This societal karma deeply influences the developing mind of the young child, There is of course the karma we as seeming individuals develop by experience, action and thought through an individual life. And then lastly there might be some sort of karma that is transmitted in some less obvious way from one individual life to another individual life, All of this karma comes together in the seeming individual to create thought, memory, emotion, personality, and delusion.
The Buddha in one of his few references to reincarnation said that reincarnation was like the lighting of one candle by another candle. Each candle is distinct and the burning of the candle is more influenced by the nature of it's wax and the wind that blows by it, then how it was initially lit. In accordance with the non-individual understanding of the Buddha Dharma we can see how each of us is influenced by an almost infinitely web of karmic influences. Like a pond or a puddle of water or even a single drop the whole Universe is reflected in it's water. We as individuals reflect the influence of the whole Universe. Though appearing to be individuals we exist in a never ending web of karmic influences. In this way each of us is a reflection and incarnation of all other individuals as well as the whole Universe We might think of this as Universal reincarnation or non-dual reincarnation.
In my practice as a meditator I think of karma as the swirl of internal thoughts and emotions. Of course karma is much more then that but from the perspective of practice this is a useful way of thinking about karma. It is through meditation and other practices that we work through our internal karma and eventually quiet our minds. This is the path of purification. Our internal karma deeply effects the world around us through our actions speech and possibly in other ways and thus our karma is being reborn in others. Our delusions are being reborn. Our ignorance is being reborn. And in some sense we are being reborn. But most importantly for us practitioners if we purify our minds we are adding less karma, ignorance, and delusion to the world. And if we have a truly quiet mind and function out of that quiet mind, which is naturally clear, compassionate, and not self-conscious, then our influence is to quiet and calm other minds. A Mahayana Buddhist might call this “saving sentient beings.” This is the path of the Bodhisattva. And one understanding is that with the quiet and clear mind we are reborn as the undivided Universe.
At the dharma discussion at the last Moonwater Dojo retreat, which compelled me to write this essay I read Dai E Zenji's Vow for Awakening.
Our only prayer is to be firm in our determination to give ourselves completely to the Buddha’s Way so that no doubts arise however long the road seems to be. To be light and easy in the four parts of the body, to be strong and undismayed in body and in mind, to be free from illness and drive out both depressed feelings and distractions, to be free from calamity, misfortune, harmful influences and obstructions, not to seek the truth outside of ourselves so we may instantly enter the right way, to be unattached to all thoughts, that we may reach the perfectly clear, bright mind of prajna and have immediate enlightenment on the Great Matter, thereby we receive the transmission of the deep wisdom of the Buddhas to save all sentient beings who suffer in the round of birth and death. In this way we offer our gratitude for the compassion of the Buddha and the patriarchs.
Our further prayer is not to be extremely ill or to be suffering at the time of departure, to know its coming seven days ahead so we can quiet the mind to abandon the body and be unattached to all things at the last moment wherein we return to the original Mind in the realm of no birth and no death and merge infinitely into the whole universe to manifest as all things in their true nature and with the great wisdom of the Buddhas to awaken all beings to the Buddha Mind. We offer this to all Buddhas and bodhisattva-mahasattvas of the past, present and future in the ten quarters and to the maha prajna paramita.
Whenever I give a talk I try to connect whatever say to the practice and experience of meditation. In the last case of the Mumonkan the 48 koans that form the established curriculum of Rinzai Zen the student does not pass unless he has come to a deep understanding of what happens when he dies. Is this the death that happens on the cushion (or chair) which we can all experience through deep practice, or is this the physical death at the end of a life, or are they different? Dai E Zenji seems to give us an answer which is about the death of the physical body for an individual in the deepest of samadhi. A cursory reading may give us the impression that Dai E Zenji is giving a sort of Hindu answer in which only the Enlightened merge into the Universe and for the rest of us something different, but in the Budddha Dharma we say that all people are already Enlightened and only because of ignorance and delusion we don't understand this. My reading of Dai E Zenji is that he is telling us how to experience death on the cushion.
Quiet the mind to abandon the body and be unattached to all things
This is a formula for meditation. It is not really different from the many other descriptions of meditation. I always talk about letting everything go in meditation. We let go of our thoughts which is just a stream of internal attachment and we even let go of the body which personifies our individuality. When we sit in deep meditation the body seems to disappear. We forget about it because we are so engaged in our practice of mindfulness and concentration. But when we open our eyes in meditation and look out and feel the world something else might happen. What we see and feel has no separation from the I composed of body and thought. Thus we
merge infinitely into the whole universe to manifest as all things in their true nature.
Suzuki Roshi in his book Zen Mind Beginners Mind tells a story of going to see one of the amazing waterfalls at Yosemite and watch this river drop over a cliff hundreds of feet tall. First as it starts to drop it is a solid sheet of water but then as it falls further it separates into individual drops as gravity pulls apart the sheet of water. He watches the individual drops in their fall and he sees the analogy with humans. Separated into individual drops the fall seems to be long and slow and painful eventually to merge back into a solid river. Is this not like us humans? We seem to emerge as individuals from this one river of life and live a painful individual life when in truth we never are separated from the the river in which there is no birth and death.
Humans born as seemingly separate individuals take for granted this separateness and live a life that is often filled with the fear of death and all the attending suffering. But when an individual quiets his or her mind, drops all attachment, and experiences their true nature as the undivided universe in that moment all suffering is dropped and the seeming individual is in the state we call Nirvana. But as one of the foundational tenets of Buddhism tells us nothing is permanent, even the experience of Nirvana. As a friend once told me our minds are naturally sticky, and the individual in Nirvana in time is reborn as a human being and returns to the world of duality and suffering. But something is different. Having deeply experienced non-duality, he or she is a vastly different individual. The attachment to our dualistic delusions is gone. Fear of death is gone and all the attending suffering is gone. Priorities in life are vastly different. One has been reborn a Bodhisattva. This does not mean that all suffering is gone and the individual lives in perpetual bliss but that he or she sees suffering as delusion. And ones priorities now have much more to do with love and compassion then in their previous life. Remember life is always changing. We are always being reborn, and without continuing practice we might find ourselves a deeply suffering individual again. Though we hold up Buddha Shakyamuni as our example of complete perfect enlightenment he was a human like us. One of his most important examples is that he never stopped practicing, and when he found the pressures of leading the sangha were diminishing his realization he went into solitary retreat for a year. While in this life Nirvana, the conscious realm of non-duality, is only temporarily accessible for us humans, we say that upon the Buddha's death he entered Paranirvana, Complete Final Nirvana, because upon physical death, he dissolved into the river of life as we all will. And yet with the birth of a single individual each of us is reborn as well as the whole Universe.
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