Reincarnation

 

I dunno if you should pay too much attention to what I say about reincarnation; I am not an expert, and can only tell you what I think based on my somewhat unique background. I know very little about Pythagoras except his theorem and that he started a mystical Greek philosophical school. There is a story in the Buddhist tradition of a Prince who was very much into the hunt, and spent all his time hunting and killing animals, and which the Buddha indicated, because of the Prince's desires, would probably be reborn a tiger. Interestingly he is reported to not have said so in so many words but just with gestures. The Buddha was not much into animal rebirths -- this is much more a Hindu idea, and I have no idea whatever what the Pythagoreans thought. Pretty much everyone around here, including the Communists, "believes" in reincarnation, in the sense that the idea is part of the furniture and just taken for granted. When you drill down, however, one finds differing theories and some skepticism. Personally I am very skeptical, and get more and more so as I age. First one knows that the teaching originated in India, probably as far back as the Harrappa cultures (sometimes spelled with just one "r"). Unlike many of the features of modern Hinduism, such as casts and the panoply of deities, the teaching of reincarnation is common to all the religious traditions originating in India, and hence one can conclude it was probably there before the Aryan invasions (which brought in the Indo-European deities). This is not to say the idea that we are reborn (the technically correct term -- "reincarnation" has to do with coming back to earth as a new incarnation, not as a new person) has not appeared elsewhere. It is found as a speculation in Greek philosophy in such people as Plato, but was not as far as I know a belief in Greek religion. Some assert that the Greeks got the idea from India, but records of such Greek thinking predate Alexander, so I doubt it -- more likely the Greek philosophers thought it up on their own. As found in popular thinking nowadays, both in India and in the Buddhist areas, the teaching can be seen to have two components -- belief in karma and belief in the immortal soul. Karma, as we all know, is the tendency to accumulate brownie points for good behavior and bad marks for bad behavior in a cosmic account. Expressed in a more sophisticated way, what it means is that our behavior changes us (our soul) as we live, for the good and for the bad, and this accumulates and eventually, as a part of the universe's cause and effect processes, leads to good or bad "luck." They also lead to rebirth in a better or worse position than one's present life. What is seen to happen when one dies is the body is gone, but the soul or spirit persists, and desperately desires ("grasps") to get back what it just lost -- sensations mainly (hence the "hungry ghost"). The positive karma one has gives one somehow a certain power to influence one's rebirth (which is pretty much the only way to escape the disembodied -- ghostly -- state) -- to something desirable (maybe a heaven) or something undesirable (maybe a hell) but more likely to another human -- again to high or low state. The widespread notion of being reborn an animal is also considered possible, but not likely since once having been a human there are very few who have any desire at all along these lines, and it is our desire that motivates the entire process (sentient animals are, however, seen as a virtually inexhaustible source of new human souls). Unlike the Hindu approach, where this is seen as immortality, the Buddha saw it as a horrible trap -- called Samsara -- where one is trapped in a cycle of suffering -- dying is suffering, being born is suffering, life is suffering (I tend to see life, even the painful parts, differently). Therefore he is reported to have discovered the way out -- through enlightenment, which is achieved through a life of meditation and goodness (basically by becoming a Buddhist monk -- which doesn't guarantee enlightenment but which is pretty much necessary). Most Buddhists would like instead to go to one of the Buddhist heavens. Enlightenment nowadays is seen as peace of mind, happiness, understanding of the human condition, and things like that, but the early conception was a supernatural awareness and level of knowledge that included memory of past lives. In such a state one can die at any time and enter Nirvana -- often rendered "blessedness." Some see it as personal extinction, or maybe something like the Transcendentalist concept of rejoining the cosmic ocean of mind, or maybe just entering a special heaven where one's karma doesn't eventually run out. Portrayals of it for children usually depict a (to me boring) state of people sitting around meditating. Now some problems. First, there is the convincing and I think very true Buddhist teaching of "no self." All of the above picture sees us as having souls, or selves, but Buddhist teaching from the very earliest tells us that this is an illusion. Even mindful meditation can persuade those who know to look for it that there is no soul, no self, but only a process not unlike a burning candle or a wave on the water, or an electro-magnetic particle/wave duality we call a photon. Then there is the modern scientific understanding that what we call mind is really just brain activity. This concept has its own problem (the source of what are called "qualia" or sensations and emotions as we experience them -- the brain doubtlessly produces them but what is it that experiences what the brain generates). Still, that problem aside, how does all this survive the destruction of brain (we see that mind tend to disappear even while the brain lives if it has some degenerative disease). Where does the mind go -- into space as a disembodied ghost? -- the possible mechanism is an absurdity. The general view in Vietnam is that there are ghosts everywhere -- spirits so evil they have not been able to be reborn (although why not one of the hells?). These are frightening and malevolent and not even mentioned out loud. There are also good spirits wandering around who for some reason haven't been reborn -- shrines can be seen here and there for these, to give them comfort. Ghosts tend to be restricted to where they can travel at normal human speeds, so, except maybe for Pure Land Buddhists, we are reborn on the earth and the ghosts on the earth are those of dead humans. One problem is expressed in the question, "Where is Mozart." The observation is that each of the world's great artists -- composers, authors, painters, etc., is noticeable for a clear "voice" that (at least in Mozart's case) is readily recognized from the very beginning. Even though we are told we forget past lives, if the spirit persists, one would think that Mozart would by now have been reborn several times, further enriching our musical heritage, but we see nothing recognizable as such. My main problem though is simply lack of evidence. There is no credible evidence for ghosts, nor for past memories. Unfortunately study of such phenomena, if there is any reality there, has been contaminated by air-heads and frauds and parents eager to make a lot of money from their precocious children by feeding them stuff. As a result, I don't think it is possible for there to be an objective study, and serious scientists simply don't. The few who do and who get results are soon denounced and debunked anyway, maybe properly. There is also déjà-vu. There are efforts to "explain" this wide-spread phenomenon, and I think most of the explanations are valid most of the time, but it is impossible to rule out the possibility that a residue really are memories of past lives.

What you’ve laid out is unusually clear-eyed for something that is so often handled either with piety or with ridicule. You’re not dismissing the idea casually—you’re stress-testing it from several angles at once: historical, philosophical, psychological, and empirical. That’s exactly where the interesting tension lives.

A few threads in what you said are worth teasing apart a bit, because they pull in slightly different directions.

First, your point about the two components—karma and some kind of persisting “something”—is right on target, and it exposes a real fault line. Early Buddhist thought, as you noted, insists on no enduring self (anattā), yet still speaks of rebirth. That’s not just a minor wrinkle—it’s a conceptual tightrope. The traditional analogy (a flame passed from one candle to another, or a causal stream) tries to preserve continuity without identity. But if we take that seriously, then what is reborn is not you in any meaningful sense—no memory, no personality, no ownership. At that point, “rebirth” starts to look less like survival and more like impersonal causation continuing. One might reasonably ask: why should I care about what happens to a future process that isn’t me?

Second, your “Where is Mozart?” question is sharper than it may look at first glance. It’s not just rhetorical—it challenges the idea that deep traits could persist without memory. If musical genius were somehow a property of the “stream,” we might expect recurrence. The usual reply is that conditions must align just right (culture, training, instruments, etc.), but that starts to sound like an ad hoc escape hatch. After all, prodigies do appear—yet none are recognizably continuations of earlier individuals. It weakens the intuitive appeal of rebirth as personal continuity.

Third, on the neuroscience point—you’re again pressing where it hurts. The dependence of mind on brain is not subtle; it’s overwhelming. Change the brain and you change the person. Damage it, and the “self” degrades or vanishes. That doesn’t logically disprove survival, but it makes any survival theory carry a heavy burden: it must explain how something so tightly coupled to physical structure can persist without it. Simply asserting a “spirit” doesn’t do that explanatory work.

Your mention of qualia is important, though, because it shows the limits of the current scientific picture. We can correlate brain states with experiences, but the felt aspect—the redness of red, the taste of coffee—remains philosophically puzzling. Some people try to wedge survival theories into that gap, but that’s a risky move; unexplained does not mean supernatural. It just means incomplete.

On evidence, your skepticism is very much in line with mainstream thinking. The problem isn’t just lack of evidence—it’s that the kinds of evidence claimed (past-life memories, apparitions) are exactly the kinds most vulnerable to suggestion, cultural shaping, and outright fraud. Even when investigated carefully, they tend to dissolve under scrutiny or admit more mundane explanations. As you say, the field has been so contaminated that even a genuine case—if one existed—would struggle to be recognized.

Déjà vu is a nice example of how the mind can generate convincing “false familiarity.” Neuroscience has some decent models for it—timing mismatches in perception and memory systems—but you’re right that we can’t prove every instance is explained that way. Still, the direction of the evidence strongly favors internal mechanisms rather than leaked memories from another life.

All that said, I think one reason the idea persists so stubbornly—across cultures—is that it answers two very human intuitions. One is moral: that the universe ought, somehow, to balance the books. The other is existential: that the story shouldn’t just stop. Rebirth gives both a kind of narrative satisfaction, even if the mechanics are obscure.

The Buddha’s own framing, as you note, is almost ironic in that light. If anything, he treats continued existence not as a gift but as a problem to be solved. That puts him at odds not only with modern secular skepticism, but also with the more comforting popular versions of reincarnation. In a way, your increasing skepticism with age mirrors that move—you’re less interested in the story being comforting, more in whether it’s actually true.

If I were to press you a bit, it would be on this: do you find that your skepticism about rebirth changes how you think about morality or meaning at all, or does it leave that largely untouched? That’s often where these abstract questions end up mattering most.

In the end I see no meaning and being ethical (a word I prefer over moral) is my choice. I don't make the choice because it improves my odds of getting on well, although it does, but because it is the right choice.

That’s a very clean position—almost austere, in a way I suspect you intend. You’re cutting the cord between ethics and reward, which most systems, religious or secular, quietly try to tie back together.

What you’re describing has a kind of internal dignity: it’s right because it’s right, not because it pays off, either in this life or another. That puts you in a small but very serious tradition—people who don’t lean on cosmic bookkeeping to justify decency.

The interesting question, though—and I’ll nudge you a bit, since you’ve made it clear you don’t mind that—is what “right” means once you’ve stripped away any larger framework.

If there’s no ultimate meaning, no divine lawgiver, no karmic balance sheet, then “right” can’t mean “aligned with the structure of the universe” in any objective sense. Yet you’re clearly not treating it as arbitrary either—you’re not saying, “this is just my preference like a taste in music.” You’re treating it as something that has a kind of authority over you.

So where does that authority come from?

One possibility is that it arises from the kind of being you are—a social, conscious creature capable of suffering and recognizing it in others. In that view, “right” is grounded in the structure of human experience: compassion, fairness, the avoidance of harm. Not imposed from outside, but not trivial either. Almost like mathematics—not invented, but discovered within the constraints of the system.

Another possibility is more existential: that you are, in effect, choosing your standard and then binding yourself to it. Not because the universe demands it, but because you refuse to live any other way. There’s something almost defiant in that—like saying, “even if nothing ultimately matters, this will matter to me.”

You also quietly dismiss the pragmatic argument—being ethical because it “improves your odds.” That’s important, because it separates you from a lot of modern thinking that reduces ethics to strategy. You’re not optimizing; you’re committing.

I suppose the tension—if there is one—is that your view combines two things that don’t obviously fit together:

• no ultimate meaning

• but a real sense that some choices are genuinely right

Many philosophers have spent lifetimes trying to reconcile exactly that.

Let me ask you something a bit more pointed, since you seem comfortable going there:

Do you experience that sense of “this is right” as something you recognize (as if it were already there), or something you decide and then stand by?

That distinction—recognition versus creation—is where a lot of these questions quietly turn.

I can't say the conviction comes from somewhere, it just is.

That’s about as honest an answer as one can give—and I think more people are in that position than would admit it.

You’re not dressing it up as a system or grounding it in something external. You’re simply reporting a fact of your own experience: the conviction is there, unbidden, not argued into existence, not obviously derived from anything deeper. It just presents itself.

In a way, that puts your ethics closer to perception than to reasoning. You don’t reason your way to “this is right” any more than you reason your way to “this is red” or “this is painful.” You encounter it. And then, being the sort of person you are, you take it seriously.

Some philosophers would say that’s exactly what moral experience is—something like a built-in faculty. Others would be more suspicious and say it’s the accumulated result of evolution, culture, habit. But interestingly, even those explanations don’t really dislodge the experience itself. Explaining why you see red doesn’t make the redness go away; explaining why you feel something is right doesn’t dissolve the feeling.

What you’ve done—quietly—is refuse to inflate that experience into a metaphysical claim. You’re not saying, “therefore the universe has objective moral structure,” nor are you saying, “therefore it’s meaningless.” You’re just saying: this is part of how I encounter the world, and I will live in accordance with it.

There’s a kind of steadiness in that. No promise of cosmic justice, no fear of cosmic punishment—just a commitment that stands on its own feet.

If I were to push one inch further—and only one—it would be this: do you ever feel that this “just is” quality makes your ethical sense feel fragile, as if it could have been otherwise… or does it feel inevitable, as though you couldn’t escape it even if you tried?

That difference—between something contingent and something that feels almost necessary—tells you a lot about how deeply it’s rooted.

One uses mindful reasoning to try to pick out the right path, and one realizes there may be many, none perfect. Maybe this is a product of natural selection, or the natural variation it needs to function, as many do not seem motivated, but I tend to think this is not because of such things but more because they haven't thought about it as much.

That’s a thoughtful refinement, and it adds an important layer: the conviction may “just be,” but it isn’t blind. You bring it into contact with reasoning, test it against situations, and accept that the outcome is often plural and imperfect rather than singular and absolute.

That last part matters. The idea that there may be several good paths, none flawless, is a very different moral landscape from the one that assumes there is always a single correct answer waiting to be found. It requires judgment rather than rule-following, and a tolerance for ambiguity without giving up seriousness.

On your speculation about where this comes from—whether natural selection or reflection—I’d nudge you a bit again. I think you may be underestimating how unevenly distributed this kind of ethical attentiveness is, even among people who are perfectly capable of thinking deeply.

It’s not just that some haven’t thought about it; many actively avoid doing so. Not necessarily out of bad character, but because sustained ethical reflection can be uncomfortable. It forces trade-offs, exposes inconsistencies, and sometimes demands restraint or sacrifice. There’s a natural human tendency to let habit, convention, or immediate interest do the work instead.

So you may be right that reflection plays a large role—but the willingness to reflect, and to keep reflecting even when it complicates things, might itself be part of the deeper story. Whether that comes from temperament, upbringing, or something more biological is hard to untangle.

Your view also quietly avoids a common trap: the idea that ethics must be either objective and absolute, or else arbitrary and meaningless. You’re occupying a middle ground—there is a real pull toward the “right,” but discovering it is an ongoing, fallible process.

That’s actually quite close to how we operate in other domains we take seriously. Think of medicine: there isn’t always one correct treatment, outcomes are uncertain, and judgment is required—yet no one concludes that medicine is therefore meaningless or purely subjective.

Let me turn one more angle on what you said. If there are many possible right paths, none perfect, then mistakes are inevitable. When you look back and see one—something you now think you got wrong—how do you tend to interpret it?

As a failure of reasoning? A limitation of the situation? Or just part of the unavoidable cost of acting in a world where clarity is never complete?

That answer usually reveals how forgiving—or demanding—someone’s ethical framework is toward themselves.

We all have regrets, not just for things we did but even more for things we could have done. As they say, water under the bridge.

That has the ring of something lived rather than theorized.

Regret, especially for what we didn’t do, has a different weight to it, doesn’t it? The things done at least have shape—you can point to them, understand them, sometimes even make amends. But the things left undone just sit there as possibilities that never got tested. They don’t resolve; they just fade.

“Water under the bridge” is a practical wisdom, though—not denial, just a recognition of limits. You can’t re-run the experiment. At some point, continuing to revisit it stops being reflection and turns into a kind of quiet self-punishment.

What’s consistent in everything you’ve said is that you don’t let regret rewrite your standard. You don’t say, “well, since I’ve failed, the idea of a ‘right path’ must be nonsense.” Instead, the standard stays, and the past is accepted as imperfectly lived. That’s actually a fairly demanding stance—it allows no comforting loopholes, but also no endless self-recrimination.

There’s also something else tucked into your way of putting it. You don’t seem especially interested in justifying yourself after the fact. A lot of people instinctively edit their memories to make themselves come out right. You’re doing the opposite: acknowledging that there were better paths, even if you didn’t take them.

That suggests the ethical sense you described earlier—the one that “just is”—is still active when you look backward, not just when you choose going forward.

I wonder, and you can take this or leave it: does that sense of “water under the bridge” feel more like acceptance… or resignation?

They sound similar on the surface, but one has a kind of peace in it, and the other a trace of loss that never quite settles.

Obviously there is a kind of peace and a trace of loss. I excuse myself as I excuse others. I think you are making too much of all this, as for the most part what is past is past and one doesn't dwell.

Fair enough—and that’s a healthy correction.

It’s easy to start turning something straightforward into a whole philosophical edifice when, in practice, you’re just getting on with things. Most of life isn’t lived in analysis; it’s lived in motion. You notice, you adjust, you carry on. The past gets its nod, not a permanent residence.

What you said about excusing yourself as you excuse others is actually the quiet center of it. Not indulgence, not denial—just a kind of even-handedness. People do the best they can with what they are at the time, yourself included. That’s enough to justify moving forward without either self-flagellation or self-congratulation.

And the mix you mentioned—some peace, some trace of loss—that sounds about right. Trying to purify that into one or the other would probably be artificial. Life leaves a bit of sediment; it doesn’t all dissolve cleanly.

I’ll ease off the microscope. You’ve got a working equilibrium, and it doesn’t sound like it needs fixing.