Expert: Laurie McLauglin - 4/30/2009

Question
I have been interested in Buddhism a long time, and I have followed its way of life as best as I can. However, I do not believe in reincarnation or Nirvana. I am wondering whether those two beliefs are actually required for someone to call them selves a Buddhist? Or whether it is just a matter of following the way of life?
I've also heard of some interpretations, that by reaching a stage of enlightenment that person has the equivalent of 'Nirvana on earth'. So not having to believe in Nirvana as a place, but more of a state once enlightenment has been reached. Is that also correct from what you know?

Answer
Hello, Luke

I am glad to hear you are following Buddhism and trying to follow it as a way of life. Thank you for letting me answer your questions.

One of the best things about Buddhism is that unlike some other religions that require you to accept all its tenants on faith whether they seem right to you or not, Buddhism is not like that. Through my eight years of attending Buddhist teachings, I have heard that if there is some part of the teachings that don’t work for you at the moment, it is fine to put that part of the teachings aside and come back to it later and perhaps then it will make more sense.

I know some serious Buddhist practitioners who have trouble currently believing in reincarnation.  It is difficult for many people to embrace.

First off, in order for one to actually call themselves a Buddhist, they must take the Refuge Vows.  Refuge vows state that you go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha and implies that you will not have faith in or turn to in the time of need or put anything above faith in these three jewels (as we call them) and still consider yourself a Buddhist.  

Although it does not resonate with you at the moment, eventually, you will probably need to embrace reincarnation. The reason is that if one is to take refuge in the Dharma, or the teachings of The Buddha, then you will have to embrace the belief in dependant origination, which the Buddha taught.  Dependent origination means that things exist in dependence on causes and conditions.

For example, each moment exists in dependence on the moment before it.  Buddhists believe that we have existed from beginningless time. Take your life as Luke. Dependant arising means that this moment you are reading this exists based on the causes and conditions of the previous moment before you started reading this. And that previous moment exists based on the causes and conditions of the moment that preceded that.  This makes sense logically, right? So follow each moment backwards, and you get the causes and conditions that produced Luke at 10 years old, Luke at 5 years old, Luke at birth – okey so where does it stop?  If it does stop, it is only because we choose a random arbitrary stopping point.  Can that point be found or proved? Can we say Luke’s first moment started at birth? Well then what about conception?  What about the split second before conception? Did you really not exist then and suddenly you existed?  Buddhists say that if you had the causes and conditions to exist at conception, there must have been causes and conditions that existed the split second before that that caused the conception to happen and for you to enter the womb of your mother; because, they reason, if there are causes and conditions that can be traced every second from the moment you were born till now, how can there suddenly be no causes and conditions when you die, for example?  If causes and conditions are occurring that produce the next second of your life, and the next, there must have always been causes and conditions at work creating us from beginningless time and going on with no end.

So, you as Luke must have existed in some form before this life. Buddha Shakyamuni himself spoke if his past incarnations. Because things exist based on causes and conditions, there had to be causes and conditions that produced Prince Siddhartha as someone who would become Buddha.  These causes and conditions, as Buddha taught were his deeds in his previous lives as a monk and eventually a Bodhistattva, doing more and more as each life passed for the benefit of others and thereby reaching higher and higher attainments each life which prepared him to eventually become Buddha Shakyamuni.

According to Buddhists, people like geniuses do not just materialize out of nothing and no where – in a random fashion or because that was the way God made them.  They are geniuses because they had been developing those attributes through many lives.

So, although you may find reincarnation difficult to accept now, eventually, as you study the dharma more and more, eventually you will come to accept and eventually believe in it. Again though, there is no requirement for when you have to believe it – you will get there when you are ready, if you stay with Buddhism.

As far as you not believing in Nirvana it depends on what you want to accomplish with your Buddhist studies and what you conceive the end result of believing in Buddhism is. From the best of everything I have been taught, ending suffering for one’s self and/or all sentient beings is the end result of the practice of Buddhism.

There are two major ways to do this.  One is to end suffering for ourselves and become an arhat and enter Nirvana. The (called the Mahayana path) other is to not simply become an arhat to reach nirvana, but to go on and become a fully enlightened Buddha so that we can return here to Samsara (the realm of suffering) in order to help all sentient beings end their suffering.

According to the Mahayana path, there are five stages if you will on the path to Enlightenment. At some point during one’s progress along these five stages, one will become increasingly at peace and will be affected less and less by living here on earth until one eventually reaches complete wisdom and complete compassion for all sentient beings and no longer has any attachments to the earth but to the best of my knowledge, according to the Mahayana path which I follow, there is no “Nirvana on Earth”.  Since earth and everything on it is produced by dependant arising, it and all that is produced by dependent arising can only bring suffering – therefore one would not find nirvana on earth.

According to the Mahayana path, once one reaches Enlightenment where one does not suffer any more, one can return to earth to help others reach enlightenment but this world is a desire realm and as such will never be anything but a place for suffering.

Traditionally, Enlightenment and Nirvana are not so much a place to be as a state of being. From what I currently understand, technically, Nirvana is the state reached by those seeking liberation for self only and Enlightenment is the state reached by those looking to liberate themselves and all sentient beings.

I hope I was able to partly answer your questions. Don’t hesitate to contact me with any further questions.