Reincarnation and Indra's Net

The notion of reincarnation first appeared in Hindu scriptures in the Upanishads, a series of moral and philosophical texts which came into existence about 800BC. (Hindu’s oldest religious texts, the Vedas, are curiously devoid of any mention of the concept.) This was some 300 years before the historical Buddha walked the earth and indeed the concept of reincarnation predates both Buddhism and Hinduism. The principal difference between the Hindu and Buddhist conceptualizations of reincarnation is that the Hindus believe in the immortality of the soul and the ability of this soul to move between physical bodies after death, while the Buddhists believe that there is no irreducible "self" tying these lives together; for the Buddhist all things are subject to dissolution, including all the components of the human person and personality. In Hinduism, the concept of reincaration is closely tied in with the idea that one’s karma determines the type of reincarnation. For Buddhists, since there is no permanent and unchanging (identify) there can be no transmigration of the self to a new life. Nevertheless, something must cross into a new life or else it would be pointless for a Buddhist to believe in reincarnation at all.

From Wikipedia: “Buddhism teaches that what is reborn is not the person but that one moment gives rise to another and that that momentum continues, even after death. It is a more subtle concept than the usual notion of reincarnation, reflecting the sophisticated Buddhist concept of personality existing (even within one's lifetime) without a "soul".

Both Buddhists and Hindus believe in the concept of samsara. Samsara is most easily understood in Hinduism as an ignorance of the self and a belief that happiness can be found in the pursuit of temporal pleasures. The pursuit of such pleasures creates desire for more existence in the individual thereby leading to the soul being trapped in the cycle of death and rebirth. Buddhists have a more nuanced view and see Samsara less as a place than a problem of perception. The worlds of Samsara and Nirvana are not two but are actually different sides of the same reality. It isn’t the world of temporal pleasures that locks us onto the karmic wheel, rather, it is our attachment to the self and the elaborate constructs we create to order our world which cause desire and subsequent rebirth.

Of course as interesting as this stuff is, all spiritual or philosophical systems are ultimately useless unless they lead the aspirant to some sort of self-realization. Westerners are fairly lazy in their approach to their spiritual traditions. After all, unlike some Buddhist sects, faith based systems do not require of their followers much in the way of exhaustive effort and grinding discipline. We may think we understand the teachings of our Christian religion but believing in the central teachings of Christ, going to church once a week and repeting rote prayers merely scratches the surface. To be sure there is a rich Christian mystical tradition, but it is veiled from the average churchgoer and rarely engaged by the faith’s adherents. I have always felt more comfortable within the ideological frameworks of the East because they simply make more sense to me. The universe is ordered and perfect as it is without me being required to believe in an engaged diety who has a master plan which we cannot hope to understand. Every time someone tells me that “God has his reasons” I want to scream. I’d rather embrace the metaphor of Indra’s Net; envision a vast net where at each juncture there lies a jewel which reflects all the other jewels in the cosmic matrix. Every jewel represents an individual life form, atom, cell or unit of consciousness. Each jewel, in turn, is intrinsically and intimately connected to all the others; thus, a change in one gem is reflected in all the others. The true meaning of Indra's net is that you cannot damage one strand of the universal web without damaging the others or setting off a cascade effect of destruction. By the same token the compassionate and the constructive interventions a person makes or does can also produce a ripple effect of beneficial action. Thus we are brought back to our karma and our actions. Ok, enough of this for today.