Buddhist question?

Question

Since souls do not exist then what really happens when you get reincarnated? Is there some floating DNA of ours out there or what? because since you can get reincarnated hundreds of times, then there must be SOMETHING of ours somewhere, a spirit or something right? I've read a lot about this, but i just can't really find an answer. Don't tell me what you think, tell me what Buddhism teaches, not Hinduism, christianity or any others. I hope you know what I'm trying to say.

wow, thank you guys. I'm going to do my own research and pick the best answer.

Answer 1

The Buddha talks of mindfulness rather than spirits in the sense that we in the west perceive them and it is the individual consciousness that survives to reincarnate but not the ego and personality.

Answer 2

These links have a good description of Buddhist belief in this area. As I understand it Buddhism differs from Hinduism in that there is not the belief in a distinct soul. In Buddhism it is the karmic energy called bhavanga-sota or subconscious life-stream that transcends the end of the physical body. I should add that I am not Buddhist just someone who admires Buddhist philosophy and is incorporating what I find useful into my life. As such I may be mistaken in my understanding.


http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/reincarnation.htm

http://www.buddhanet.net/nutshell09.htm

Answer 3

We believe that the MIND goes on. We believe the mind works in tandem with the body's sensate organs, but is separate from it. For example, when some people die and are brought back (similar to lamas who have the ability to "practice" journeying death and what we call the "bardo" or intermediate state between death and rebirth) they speak of various lights, people they see, hells, heavens... etc. The mind attaches and clings to things we perceive as "good" (albeit incorrectly most of the time) and we're rabidly against anything we perceive as "bad". This attachment and aversion can also affect our self-concept, depending on where we're born and affect our lives.

Through the Dharma we learn how to "middle way" let go of clinging, attachments and aversions (note I did NOT say, "get rid of", more like "SUBDUE") and find happiness via altruism and so on.

HOW this applies to rebirth is when you're going through the bardo... your self-concept, what you have aversions to, if you're angry, upset all the time, cling to certain concepts... THIS will affect what "rebirth" you wind up in.

IF this doesn't help please clarify and I'll try to explain further.

_()_

Answer 4

Actually, Buddhism is about realising that there isn't anything that is actually you and letting go of the attachment to the idea that there is. That realisation is enlightenment and freedom from the cycles of karma and rebirth.

It's like desire and attachment are weights or a container that keep this 'emptiness' tied down and returning. But there isn't actually anything inside it.

Don't mistake it for nihilism. It's far more subtle than that.

If you want to understand it better, meditate for ten years or so. It actually makes a lot of sense, eventually.

Answer 5

Our body and mind are said to be bundles of karma (which simply means activity). This activity plays out in one form, until it's continuation requires another form. A loose analogy would be hitting a pool ball. When it strikes another pool ball, the motion is transferred to the second ball. This does not require that either ball have a "soul".

Answer 6

The answer to that question is Dependent Origination. Paticca-samuppada shows the empty process, empty of a soul that is, which flows within a life and overflows into another life. It also shows the forces at work in the process, which drive it this way and that, even exercising sway in a subsequent life. Dependent Origination also reveals the answer to how kamma done in a previous life can affect a person in this life.

Dependent Origination presents two sequences that generate rebirth:

delusion (avijja) + kamma the stream of consciousness beginning at rebirth (vina).
craving (tanh) + fuel (updna) existence (bhava) + rebirth into that existence (jti).
These are parallel processes. They describe the same operation viewed from two different angles. I will now combine them:

Deluded kamma and craving produce the fuel which generates existence and rebirth (into that existence), thereby giving rise to the start of the stream of consciousness that is at the heart of the new life.

It is kamma and craving, both under the sway of delusion, that is the force propelling the stream of consciousness into a new life.

I will now offer some similes to illustrate this operation. These similes are only approximations and, therefore, will never perfectly match Paticca-samuppda. This is because Dependent Origination is mainly a process describing the flow of the mental consciousness, whilst the similes at my disposal are from the more well known material world. Still, they should help to clarify one's understanding.

Someone goes to an airport to fly to another country. If they have enough money for the fare and they have a desire to go to a new country, then they may arrive in that land. If they have the fare but not the desire, or the desire but not the fare, or they lack both, then they will not arrive in the new country. In this simile: the person stands for the stream of consciousness; the airport stands for death; the new country stands for the next life; the fare stands for the person's accumulated kamma; and their desire to go there stands for craving. With much good kamma and a craving for happiness, or just the craving to be, the stream of consciousness that one thinks of as `me' is propelled into one's chosen next life. With much bad kamma and a craving for happiness, one cannot reach the happiness one wants, and thus one is propelled into an unsatisfactory next life. With much bad kamma and a craving for punishment, what we recognize in this life as the guilt complex, one falls into a next life of suffering. Then with much good kamma and no craving at all, one goes nowhere. Like the traveller at the airport, they have enough money to go wherever they want first-class, but the delusion has been shattered and the desire that generated all this coming-and-going is no more. They cease at the airport.

How does one seed produce a new seed? Suppose a seed is planted in a good field, it is fed by moisture carrying essential nutrients, and it grows to maturity producing another seed at its death. There is no soul or self in the seed, yet one seed has evolved into another seed following a process of cause and effect. The original seed and the new seed are completely different. Almost certainly, there isn't even one molecule of the original seed to be found in the new seed. Even the DNA, though similar, is not the same. It is an example of a well known process which spans a life, but with nothing that one can identify as an essence passing unaltered from the original seed to the new seed. Rebirth, as it were, has happened with no `seed-soul' going across. I mention this example because it is similar to a metaphor of The Buddha:

Kamma is like the field, craving like the moisture, and the stream of consciousness like the seed. When beings are blinded by delusion and fettered with craving, the stream of consciousness becomes established, and rebirth of a new seed (consciousness) takes place in the future." (paraphrased from AN 3, 76)

It is interesting to describe how a recent, real instance of kamma and craving worked together to change bhava, the kind of one's existence. In the late 1970's in Britain, many uneconomical coalmines were permanently closed. One particular disused mine was close to a heavily populated area in South Wales. When some of the poor of that area had unwanted kittens, they would cheaply dispose of them by cruelly throwing them down into the abandoned mineshaft. Several years later, some engineers entered that mine to check on its safety. They found a remarkable discovery. Some of the kittens had survived the fall and, in the space of only a few generations, had evolved into a completely new species of cat, blind in their eyes but with enormous ears. Craving and behavioural conditioning (kamma) had been the obvious driving forces that produced the mutation.

The above examples only begin to give an indication of the process that is Paticca-samuppda. Dependent Origination, after all, is mainly a process that describes the flow of mental consciousness, and this is fundamentally different from material processes. If one can imagine a beach of white sand, then the stretch looks continuous. On closer examination, though, one finds that the beach is made up of an uncountable number of small grains, each close to the next. If one looks even closer, one discovers that the grains aren't even touching, that each grain is alone. Similarly, when one's mindfulness has been empowered by jhana meditation, one may see the stream of consciousness in much the same way. Before, it looked like a continuous stretch of unbroken cognition. But now it is revealed as granular, tiny moments of consciousness, uncountable in number, close together but not touching, and each one alone. Having seen the true nature of consciousness, only then can one see how one moment of consciousness influences what follows. Kamma, like a discrete particle of behavioural conditioning, together with craving combine to make the impersonal forces that steer the journey of consciousness, like an aircraft on an automatic super-pilot. Furthermore, when the insight comes, based uniquely on the data of jhana, that the mental consciousness is independent of the body and must clearly survive the death of the body, then one sees with absolute certainty that the forces of kamma and craving that drive mental consciousness now, will continue to drive the mind through and beyond death. Rebirth and its process are seen. Paticca-samuppda is understood.

The Buddha said to Venerable Ananda at the opening of the Mahnidna Sutta (DN 15):

This Dependent Origination, Ananda, is deep and it appears deep.

In my opinion, one needs the experience of jhana to see it clearly. Nevertheless, I hope that the explanation and similes that I have given will help throw some light onto the true nature and purpose of this impersonal process that drives the mind from life to life. At least you can know that when Paticca-samuppda is fully understood, it is also clearly seen how rebirth happens without any soul.

Ajahn Brahm:http://www.bswa.org