[Buddha-l] Which Buddhists believe in rebirth?

[Jo]

Your Japanese comparisons are interesting. A Japanese woman friend has a tiny altar for her mother's spirit in her house, and she puts bits of food and flowers there daily.  

It has seemed to me that a lot of SE Asian cultures--the Thai, say--demonstrate belief in rebirth by making merit so as to acquire a better birth in the next life. This is often a stated aim. The future aim seems to be a rich birth--big wealth in the next life. People don't aim to be reborn as a woman (if a man), or animal, needless to say. Whether this material focus is a fairly recent phenomenon is a matter for historians, some of whom may have already published on it. I'm way behind on the literature.

The Vietnamese, no matter what their religion is (besides Buddhism mixed with Confucianism there's a large number of Roman Catholics in VN) practice ancestor veneration with a belief similar to what you say of Japan--that dead family spirits stick around and help out. The belief in spirits of the dead is so important culturally that after the American War there, some people went about finding the remains of dead soldiers--any soldiers--and reburied them correctly, so that their spirits would find peace and not bother anybody. Shamanism also helps to identify spirits who are bothering someone --and not necessarily family spirits. 
I have no idea whether Laotians or Cambodians are moved by thoughts of rebirth and what it might entail. Same for Sri Lankan Buddhists. There must be a literature on rebirth practices and beliefs in SE Asia, but I've not come across it.

Joanna
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Hello-- a class recently began discussing rebirth in the context of "secular Buddhism," and we read some of the contemporary Western flames on the topic--Batchelor, Alan Wallace's response, the Thurman and Bhikkhu Bodhi articles, etc. In that context, I said that the Japanese also don't really believe in rebirth. Certainly the "spirits" (tamashii 魂, reikon 霊魂,
etc.) that they are concerned with after death are neither permanent nor independent in the way of a soul or atman. Still, except in some sophisticated thinkers, it is quite clear that in contemporary Japan there is no functional or operational notion of rebirth-- you die, and your spirit hangs out in the spirit world. Hmmmm-- I wonder if the Japanese
*ever* really believed in rebirth the way, say, the Tibetans do? In spite of, for example, lots of rhetoric (a la the stuff LaFleur wrote about in Karma of Words--"In and Out of the Rokudo"), I wonder if the average Heian woman believed that her dead mother was now re-born in one of the destinations somewhere? My sense is that they always retained their belief in the continued presence of the dead in the spirit world. Am I wrong?

In big broad terms, what do folks know about other areas/cultures? Who really *demonstrates* (whatever that might mean, and I am curious about that as well in terms of practice/ritual) a belief in rebirth?

Jamie Hubbard
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