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<\/a>\u201cReligions are united not by belief in God but by belief in life after death.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Stephen Batchelor<\/p>\n
One of Gautama Siddhartha\u2019s great contributions to the spiritual quest is how he challenged the idea of some part to a person that continues past that person\u2019s death. He denied there was some essence, a \u201csoul\u201d occupying our bodies like a passenger on a bus eventually departing for a new ride. At the same time, as Stephen Batchelor points out, Gautama Siddhartha wasn\u2019t able to completely shake the concept. He denied the existence of a \u201csoul\u201d but also spoke of his past lives. While denying any continuing essence to a person, he did posit a way in which the intentions and actions of a person led to specific rebirths for many, many lifetimes.<\/p>\n
As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, \u201ca foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.\u201d Wise counsel. And, who knows? There really is more to heaven and earth than can be encompassed by our ideas of what should be. At the same time I have to admit I find the lack of any obvious mechanism to facilitate one life leading to another a daunting obstacle. And while the Buddha counseled us to listen to the elders, he also advised in the last analysis we not put someone else\u2019s head atop our own.<\/p>\n
Frankly, I find I take the twelve-fold chain<\/a> as a startlingly useful metaphor for how consciousness arises and how it feeds itself and how it causes constant new births \u2013 without feeling a need to believe the rather unlikely possibility that this all results in the birth of a new body.<\/p>\n Here I gather I\u2019m in a minority position. The idea of post-mortem existence, is, it seems, a near universal desire. Today most all religions promise one form of life after death or another. And I\u2019m fascinated to notice, whether religious or not in a conventional sense, and whether they believe in God or not; how many people are nonetheless quite happy to believe they personally will live forever. Personally I enjoy irony, so this seems almost charming. Except for the ferocity with which people will defend this belief in their personal immortality.<\/p>\n So, in addition to what one finds in religions, all sorts of different people have reflected on the possibilities of a post-mortem existence. For the most part the writers in this area are believers of one stripe or another. Two areas in particular have been the subject of close examination, the phenomenon of near death experiences and the possibilities of reincarnation.<\/p>\n Susan Blackmore has critically investigated the near-death phenomenon. And I highly recommend her study Dying to Live<\/span><\/a>. Here\u2019s a sympathetic review<\/a> and here\u2019s a critical review<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of course near death experiences are not the only ways people hope to establish the validity of continuing existence. There are also those numerous accounts of reincarnation. An essay I\u2019ve found particularly useful is Leonard Angel\u2019s examination of Ian Stevenson\u2019s famous Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation<\/span>, \u201cEmpirical Evidence for Reincarnation?<\/a>.\u201d Here\u2019s Stevenson\u2019s response together with Angel\u2019s rejoinder<\/a>.<\/p>\n