[Buddha-l] Which Buddhists believe in rebirth?

[Jo]

Eisel

This message did indeed get posted.

Joanna

-----Original Message-----
From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com [mailto:buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com] On Behalf Of Eisel Mazard
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 5:39 PM
To: Buddhist discussion forum
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Which Buddhists believe in rebirth?

[I sent the message below to the list once, and I did not receive the "bounce" message; I infer from this and other technical difficulties that the message was not posted at that time.  I am here sending it a second time.]

Hmm…

I'm unable to log in and view the history of the discussion at the moment (for some unknown technical reason) so I hope I'm neither being rude nor repetitive in contributing a comment, but…

In the 21st century, I've encountered a fourfold typology, in all schools of Buddhism:

(1) Those who believe that the Buddha taught reincarnation, and who believe in it.
(2) Those who believe that the Buddha taught reincarnation, but who do not believe in it themselves (i.e., while remaining Buddhists by their own definition).
(3) Those who refuse to believe that the Buddha taught reincarnation, and who also do not believe in it.
(4) Those who do not believe that the Buddha taught reincarnation, but who do believe in it.

I think that anyone who has done a few years of fieldwork (in a living Buddhist culture) will have encountered at least three of the four.
The last category mentioned may raise some eyebrows, but consider
(e.g.) someone who is willing to presume that reincarnation is an inheritance from Hinduism (and who may stridently insist that the Buddha didn't teach it as his own doctrine) but who does nevertheless accept and believe in reincarnation.

It is needless to say that the vast majority of people in all four categories are not scholars who work on primary sources, and, accordingly, there's plenty of uncertainty in every camp as to what the Buddha taught or didn't teach (and which texts should be regarded as definitive).

I was given a detailed (verbal) account of a lecture that A.K. Warder delivered to a Sinhalese Buddhist Temple (in Toronto), at the end of which the organizer asked him, simply enough, "After studying Buddhism for so many years, and becoming an expert, why have you never accepted it as your religion?"

Reportedly, Warder sat silently for a moment, and then shrugged and said that he could never really believe in the stuff about reincarnation.

The man who told me this (himself being the organizer who had asked the question) had gotten it into his head that he should start promoting a version of Buddhism that excluded reincarnation in order to appeal more to western intellectuals (such as A.K. Warder, apparently).  However, my impression was that he was actually a member of camp #1 (believing in reincarnation), and yet he also thought it was morally acceptable to masquerade as a member of the three other camps, in order to convert westerners.  I tried to get him to consider what the actual effect of this might be in the longer term: if you actually entice someone to join a religion on the basis of a lie, or by misrepresenting doctrines that they will eventually encounter in primary sources, won't they subsequently resent the deception, or regard your religion as discredited.  These considerations were, for him, quite unthinkable, and he was vaguely offended that I would ask.

In Southeast Asia, the belief in reincarnation is very much in flux, but I've never met a westerner capable of studying it, because most of them were so uncomfortable with the reality of Buddhism themselves.
One anthropologist (working on Cambodia) interrupted me and forcibly changed the subject when I pointed out the direct salience of local beliefs in hell (i.e., reincarnation in hell) to her research; the dialogue seemed to demonstrate her own extreme discomfort with the existence of hell in Buddhism, and, perhaps, her discomfort in discussing the Buddhist aspect of her own research with someone who knew more about Buddhism than she did (she insisted to me that she had no expertise in Buddhism at all, although her research was inextricably bound up in Buddhism in every way).  In this manner, questions don't get asked, and answers aren't discovered, in terms of how the current generation is either adapting the cosmology to suit itself, and/or is adapting its outlook to reflect that cosmology.

Certainly, it was scarcely a generation ago that Isan (N.E. Thailand) had many famous examples of temples preaching that the poor should donate their riches (to the temple) so that they could be reborn as wealthy in the next incarnation.  Within half a generation, the style and substance of that preaching has changed (and no, I can't say that it has gotten more profound, but…).  There are doubtless very meaningful research questions that could be answered in terms of the
(real) belief in reincarnation, and transitions within the last 50 years.  Many other things changed in Isan within the same
half-generation: the entire area was deforested, covered with a web of intersecting highways and air-force bases, and those bases engaged in the bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.  The entire "custodian class" of local manuscript literature disappeared, and the omnipresent chain of 7-11 stores stretched across the countryside.  However the current generation regards reincarnation will be radically different from any generation before.

Of course, on the other side of those same borders, the people who lived through the bombing, and then lived through Communism thereafter, have their own reasons to re-evaluate Buddhist cosmology; but, as is always the case with cultural change, the vast majority of people engaged in the reinvention of tradition do not think of what they are doing as a re-evaluation, nor as an intentional alteration.

E.M.

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