Reincarnation

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Reincarnation

The religious doctrine of reincarnation (literally, "back in the flesh," from caro, "flesh") was formulated by the ancient Indian sages. It is variously known as rebirth, transmigration, metempsychosis ("transfer of the soul from one body into another"), and palingenesis (literally, "again birth"). The term transmigration, moving from one state to another, is closer to the original Sanskrit word, sam??ra, "what turns around forever." Reincarnation is the central doctrine for the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh religions, but the idea is prevalent in a myriad of other world religions and has even become popular in the modern West. Statistics claim that two-thirds of the world's population believes in some form of reincarnation.

Essentially, reincarnation is the belief that life does not begin with birth or end with death, rather, the individual self (or nonself, as in Buddhism) is eternal and journeys from life to life taking on a series of births including human, animal, angelic, demonic, vegetative, divine, and astrological. The present existence is but a natural sequence of former life, and all physical, psychological, and social characteristics are determined by the moral law of cause and effect (Karma). Since what a person does automatically bears fruit in life—be it this one or the next—the idea of reincarnation practically motivates people to live ethically and morally, in accordance with their dharma (duty).

The concept of reincarnation evolved in the post-Vedic Aranyaka literature and was developed more fully in the Upanishads. The Bhagavad G?t? synthesizes the views of the Vedas, Upanishads, and several of the philosophical schools and presents the fundamental Hindu understanding. In this revered text, Lord Krishna explains that the individual is intrinsically immortal and that the body is only a garment worn externally by the self:

As leaving aside worn-out garments
A man takes other, new ones,
So leaving aside worn-out bodies
To other, new ones goes the embodied one.
Bhagavad G?t?, II:22

Cremation at death is the norm, and the Upanishadic view of the eternal self taking on one of the two paths at the funeral pyre is reiterated in the Bhagavad G?t?. Through the path of devayana (that of the gods), the self or breath (Atman) goes through light and merges with the infinite light of lights (Brahman) and never returns. But through pitriyana (the path of the fathers), the self merges with the dark smoke and returns into the womb again:

These are the two paths, light and dark,
Thought to be eternal for the world;
By one, he goes to non-return;
By the other he returns again.
Bhagavad G?t?, VIII:26

Although Buddhists reject the idea of an absolute self, reincarnation is equally vital to their ethical and ideological world. The twelve-link Chain of Causation explains the process by which life, birth, death, rebirth, and redeath continue. The root cause is ignorance, the basic illusion that individuality and permanence exist. Buddha's first Noble Truth states that there is nothing absolute, all is flux and motion, simply dukha-dukha (suffering). Hence without a substance, without any entity, the phenomenal individual migrates from one body to another—just as one lamp lights from another. Actions and psychic dispositions of a "me" keep echoing back. The wheel of sam??ra can be broken by following Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path and attaining nirv??a (literally, "blowing out").

In Jainism, the living entity is called Jiva, and as long as it is enmeshed in Karma (meaning both action and the fruit of action), Jiva takes on birth and rebirth. Liberation can be attained by the Jina (conqueror), who stops the accretion of new Karma and sheds all that is of the past. Jain monks and nuns cover their mouths lest they breathe in and destroy any microscopic creatures. The whole universe, including stone and vegetation, pulsates with life and must not be harmed in any way.

In Sikhism, the body that we are in is a result of our past deeds, but love for and by the Divine can free us from the wheel of transmigration. According to Sikh scripture,

karmi avai kapra nadari mokha duar

Through actions we get our clothing
But the divine gaze opens the door of liberation.

Redeath—not rebirth—disturbed these thinkers, and the goal of all the Indian religions is to break the cycle of transmigration and attain liberation (Moksha). Without a confining body, one aspires to the spaceless and timeless infinity. The Upanishadic prayer recited at funerals touchingly sums up the Indian ideal:

From untruth, lead me to truth
From darkness, lead me to light.
From death, lead me to immortality.

The West has also been familiar with the idea of reincarnation. Pythagoras is frequently cited for exclaiming, "Stop beating that dog—I recognize him by his voice as a friend of mine." Reincarnation is central to Plato's epistemology and is pervasive in his works, especially the Phaedo, the Republic, and the Phaedrus. Although Aristotle rejected the notion of reincarnation, Plotinus revived it in his Neoplatonism, which then influenced Western (i.e., Judaic, Christian, and Islamic) esotericism. For two thousand years Virgil's Aeneid was the standard text for Western education, and his account of reincarnation in book six kept the idea alive.

In North America many Native American tribes, like the Tlingits of Alaska, have believed in reincarnation as a glorious continuation of personal identity. The New Age movement and the immigration of Asians have further popularized reincarnation on the North American continent. The denial of the decisiveness of death is itself attractive to our society, which desperately clings to youth and life. Scholars in comparative philosophy, history of religions, and psychology have brought the subject of reincarnation to the academic forefront. Diana Eck, a distinguished scholar of religious pluralism, compares reincarnation with resurrection. Although resurrection focuses on life itself and life now, both the Indian and the Christian phenomena "address the mystery of the ongoing irrepressible life that cannot be done in by death" (p. 115). Reincarnation is also being assimilated in various schools of psychotherapy and parapsychology. For example, past-life therapy (PLT) traces the cause of present physical and psychological problems to past life traumas and death experiences and has been claimed effective in treating phobias, fears, sexual dysfunctions, anger, insomnia, chronic headaches, and other disorders. Regarded at some point as foreign and absurd, reincarnation is becoming recognized as an important part of the American soil and psyche.