Rebirth

A great deal of intellectual energy in Buddhism these days is being poured into the twin doctrines of karma and rebirth. What do they mean? What are their personal, ethical, and social implications? Can we abandon them and still have Buddhism?

These are just some of the questions being thrown around lately. Another quote from that same book review:

On another page he suggests we need to get beyond thinking only in terms of causal relationships, “and it is perhaps by only moving to a different level of experience that we can really begin to understand what rebirth may be getting at” (90). And, indeed, by this time I had grown thirsty for the injection of a little poetic imagination. A few pages later I became hopeful at the further speculation that “at death it is possible that we will just flow out into a great karmic ocean, our identity lost forever” (128). This recalled the same metaphor in the Lankavatara Sutra, and I assumed it would lead into some discussion of the very relevant Yogacara doctrine of store consciousness (alayavijnana). Instead the button moulder in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt was invoked; an inspired reference but still no substitute for the awesome sweep of the Buddhist collective unconscious (Williams, 1990, 90-93).

Buddhism is replete with stories indicating a somewhat ‘personal’ nature to rebirth or reincarnation. They range from the Buddha, stories of his previous lives, all the way up to our current Dalai Lama and contemporary concerns about whether he will choose to be reborn or not. Are these mere fairy tales? Is there, as Ken Jones indicates, a deeper, poetic value to the stories? Is there perhaps even a social or moral value to them, even if they are not literally true?