Ridiculous rebirth

I ask myself if this heading is a little too strong. Is the appeal all in the alliteration? Belief in rebirth may be mistaken, but is it really ridiculous? Unfortunately, I can only conclude that the answer is yes. Consider: here is a doctrine which is frequently presented in conflicting ways by the religion that produced it, but which even in its best-explained forms is incapable of playing the moral role it is traditionally believed to play. Nevertheless, Buddhists often continue to consider it central, and continue to seek evidence to support it, despite the fact that a little clear thinking would show that no evidence for it is possible. Perhaps even then, one might understand Buddhists adhering to such a teaching if it was of the slightest use, even if it was a convenient fiction. But no such usefulness can be attributed to believing in the doctrine of rebirth. Unlike any of the other doctrines I shall discuss in this book, there is really nothing positive at all to be said for it. Thus to call rebirth “ridiculous” is not an overstatement: it is better to laugh at it, simply because most Western Buddhists (even those who say they are “agnostic” about it, but would still prefer to believe in it if they could) take it far too seriously.

Let me begin with the first of these assertions. Buddhism presents rebirth in conflicting ways because it apparently cannot make up its mind whether or not rebirth consists of a person being reborn. One of the first things Buddhists are likely to say when the subject comes up is that rebirth should be distinguished from reincarnation, in which a soul passes from one body to another. In Buddhism, according to the official teaching, rebirth consists of a process of karmic conditioning, with each life causing the next, in a similar fashion to a flame passing along a fuse. If we take this seriously then the doctrine of rebirth does not state that “I” am reborn, only that my actions set up patterns which may influence other people, who may in some respects resemble me, in the future.

At the same time, however, Buddhist scriptures are riddled with references to individual past rebirths, especially those of the Buddha, which he is said to have remembered at the time of his enlightenment. The Jataka stories, which are canonical Buddhist scriptures, give stories (many of them adapted folk tales) purporting to be those of the Buddha’s previous lives, and precisely identifying not only who the Buddha was, but also often some of his leading disciples. Not only is this precise individuation of rebirth found in scripture and popular belief, but also in the official doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism, where tulkus or reincarnate lamas (such as the Dalai Lama) are said to continue, as the same individuals, in different bodies.

The only way out of this is to say that individuals should not really be identified in rebirth. Let us grant that the significant section of the Buddhist tradition which does this should not have done so, and that the official doctrine of the flame travelling along a fuse is what Buddhists should really believe. This doctrine may make rebirth compatible with anatta, but it still leaves us with a huge problem in attributing any moral continuity to a causal process. Why should a person in a new body who has inherited some habits from an old one “deserve” the effects of the habits of the previous person?

The Questions of King Milinda (a non-canonical early Buddhist text which attempts to tackle some tricky questions in Buddhist doctrine) explains this desert by making an analogy with a mango tree. It explains that a person who planted a mango deserves to eat the fruit off the ensuing mango tree, and a mango-thief would deserve punishment, even though the mango tree is not the same as the mango that was planted[1]. In the same way, it is claimed, a person who planted a karmic seed deserves to eat the fruit from it. The text appears to assume that the question is conclusively settled by this analogy, but there are many unjustifiable assumptions in it: it is not necessarily clear at all that I “deserve” the consequences of an action done long ago, especially when many other conditions contributed to it, and I myself may have changed a good deal in the meantime. I may have planted the mango on someone else’s land, for example, and let them feed and water it. If I am reborn in the meantime, “I” will probably not even be able to remember planting the mango. Would I still deserve to eat the ensuing mangoes in such circumstances?

Once again, the model seems to be a closely controlled earthly justice system, but one applied in bizarre ways. Supposing I was a schoolchild who entered a new classroom and took over a desk belonging to another pupil the previous year: by inheriting the desk, however, for some reason I also inherit this person’s house points. When I exclaim that this is irrational, it is explained to me that by sitting at the desk I will also be obliged to adopt some of this person’s character: I will be near the front, so am likely to be more interested in gaining the teacher’s attention, and the desk is covered in graffiti, so I am unlikely to take much pride in it. The fact that many other aspects of my character will not have been moulded by the desk appears to have eluded notice, just as the many other influences on a birth than karmic formations apparently count for nothing when it is considered what this new person deserves.

In short, rebirth cannot play the moral role it is believed to play by extending the payback time for karmic effects. If there are problems with the justice of any karmic payback system (as noted in the first section of this chapter), these problems redouble when the person being paid back is not in the same body, is not in any sense the same person, does not in most cases even remember the occasions for which he/she is supposedly being rewarded or punished, and has merely inherited some indeterminate karmic habits or patterns from a previous person. If Buddhists really believe all this, they should certainly no longer scoff at the promise of God in the book of Exodus, to punish those who break his commandments “up to the third or fourth generation”. There is much more justification for paying the moral debts of one’s great-grandfather than there is for being rewarded or punished on behalf of someone whose indeterminate habits have caused some of ours.

Despite all this, many Buddhists apparently continue to desire a belief in rebirth, and apparently wish they could have one if they haven’t got one. To try to bolster this belief they look for evidence of rebirth. Various pieces of evidence have been offered, such as child memories of previous lives, adult memories gained under hypnosis, the remarkable abilities of child prodigies, or the predictions and tests of authenticity used for the identification of reborn tulkus (reincarnate lamas) in the Tibetan tradition.

I am not going to enter into any discussion of the strength of any of this supposed evidence, as it can be confidently stated on the basis of reasoning alone that it is a complete waste of time – at least as far as evidence for rebirth is concerned. These pieces of evidence may well provide intriguing indications of other unexplained phenomena, but their relationship to rebirth is completely contingent. Alternative explanations may be offered (including, but not limited to, reductive scientific explanations) for all these phenomena. One of the least frequently considered alternative explanations is that there are alternative ways in which elements of consciousness or habits may be floating around the universe in a random fashion. Even if it is correct that memories, consciousness, or karmic formations can in some fashion exist independently of the brain (a problematic enough assumption) there is no reason whatsoever to assume that they do so in accordance with a just karmic order in the universe, or that the karmic formations of one individual neatly cause those of another individual.

Just to give a few possibilities that are neither more nor less likely than rebirth as traditionally described: creatures on another planet may be sending thought waves which influence particular children, giving them unusual memories and abilities. Hypnosis may, by some unexplained mechanism, trigger someone else’s past memories without the person under hypnosis being them in any respect. There may be a particular psychic power gained by certain Tibetan lamas which enables them to transfer their memories accurately to a child about to be born, again, without requiring them to in any sense be the child.

We are in pretty wacky territory here, but this is only to show that rebirth is one wacky theory out of many possible wacky theories, all of which explain the “evidence” available. The only reason to prefer rebirth to the other possible wacky theories is the sanction of tradition. The “evidence” in no way stands by itself, but is seized upon to help prop up faith in a pre-formed metaphysical system which has already been accepted  as the desirable model before the discussion begins.

This takes us to the final point about whether belief in rebirth is desirable. In the end, those Western Buddhists who believe in it appear to do so because they want to believe in it, because they believe it will help them on their spiritual path if they believe in it. They are in a different situation to those traditional ethnic Buddhists who believe in rebirth unreflectively just because it is part of their cultural background. The Western Buddhist position is more similar to those post-Christians who really want to believe in God, even though they can’t quite manage it. The idea that it is clearly helpful or desirable to believe in rebirth, however, is greatly mistaken.

The assumption that it is beneficial to believe in rebirth depends on the belief in karma, and the idea that believing in a complete law of karma, where all actions are paid back with equivalent consequences, motivates one in taking those consequences seriously. To be sufficiently concerned about my mental states and the actions they lead me into, it is thought, I need to be concerned about the effects that those states and actions will have on me in the future. To believe this fully I must also believe that even actions that are not paid back in this life will still affect me in a future life.

As a motivation, this is an extremely narrow one, of a kind that other Buddhist doctrines contradict. If I develop the Buddhist virtue of compassion, for example, I am likely to be concerned for others besides myself, not just my own future fate. If I take anatta seriously I should also not think of myself as continuing in a fixed form or gaining the rewards of karma. So, at one and the same time Buddhism apparently urges me to be concerned for my future fate, and also not to be concerned for my fate but to broaden my concerns. This is another example of the karma motivation conflicting with the nirvana motivation.

As a belief, the belief in rebirth also takes a lot of effort to hold and defend in a Western context. Most other people in Western society do not hold it, so I am likely to have to spend a lot of time defending it. Not only is this likely to create defensiveness and conflict, but the more strongly I hold it purely on the basis of faith, the more defensive I am likely to become. As with other metaphysical doctrines, the effects of holding this belief can often be negative, because they require a constriction of the ego to be held onto against the weight of argument and evidence.

So, far from being spiritually helpful, belief in rebirth seems much more likely to have the unhelpful effect of narrowing one’s sympathies and rigidifying one’s beliefs. In the face of all the contradictions and all the grounds for doubt, what is the point in hanging on to such a belief? It certainly has nothing to do with the central insights of Buddhism expressed in the Middle Way. The Middle Way requires the decisive rejection of metaphysics of the kind which the belief in rebirth exemplifies par excellence.