Expert: Joe McSorley - 9/6/2007

Question
In Tibetan Buddhism(a.o) one believes in rebirth in a non-personal sense (karmic forces leading to a rebirth in one of the 6 realms) and also that one can stop this cycle.
How can one reconcile this with recognizing for instance reincarnated high lama's?? (There was NOTHING personal to transmigrate?!) How can I understand stopping the cycle in modern scientific terms i.e. not via those karmic forces which come to an end. Consciousness dies with the death of the brain(like powering of your computer and that particular version of Windows)

I personally believe all thoze stories on reincarnation or rebirth are stories to guide/control people and/or give them hope in an existence which is in fact without any goal or meaning but is just happening.
If we perceive ourself outside in,that is as part of the grand cosmic pattern(just energy-fluctuations and information) instead of inside out(as separate pattern agains a cosmic background) than the total pattern will always exist but will change forever.
One could call the outside-in view "enlightenment" which also could be stimulated via certain parts of the brain(parietal lobes)
On an objec-scale one can talk of birth and death of those objects but on the grand scale onle of tranformation or continuous being

So I think all the rebirth stuff is nonsense and has to do with politics/religion to control the masses

I'd like your opinion

Answer
Dear Ruud,
 Sorry for the delay on this, I actually sent you an answer last week but AE has no record of it.

 I have never defended or supported the idea of reincarnation because it is very problematic.  Zen does not teach reincarnation and admonishes that if it is true then it is of the utmost importance that you awaken in this life due to the fact that you might not be human again.  If the self is truly empty then there must be no soul in Buddhism for if there is a soul, then the self is not empty.  What then reincarnates?  Yet, there are Buddhists who will argue this point and not see their self-contradiction. There are evidently Pali writings ascribed to the historical Buddha that seem to imply ‘atta’ as soul. I am not familiar with them but some present day Buddhists argue this is a fact even though it flies in the face of the self being empty.  It seems very odd to me the historical Buddha would miss such a major point in the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path.  Zen does not deal with or care about the history of Buddhism but works on the problem of the self that percieves all of this in the present.  We can become completely bogged down by all the nuances of ancient writings or we can work towards our own awakening.  Whether there is or is not a soul or thing that reincarnates does nothing to alleviate suffering in this lifetime.  It’s been postulated by the Tibetans that we start from perfection, fall, and then strive to regain it.  I was in a lecture with a well-known Tibetan Buddhist author who postulated this.  My teacher replied, “ How does one fall from perfection?”  This fellow would not address the problem but I took another tack.  I agreed with him that this happened and then asked how one regains perfection.  He told me and when he was finished I said, “ So when one does all of this they regain perfection identical with original perfection?”  He said, “Yes”. And then I said, “ So then you fall again and start over” He exclaimed, “ NO, you can’t fall from it”.  I said,” But you already said we did and it’s identical with original perfection, this is contradictory and problematic”.  He was very upset for he had no answer.  So this type of reasoning can go on forever but it does not help personal awakening.
  This idea of the aggregates somehow reincarnating in another person, in part or whole is also problematic.  There is a Tibetan concept that some people are the composite reincarnation of different lamas. Who then was this lama if they are now pieced meal as someone else?  I don’t see where there can be any comfort in this plus it leaves the idea of personal identity as utterly confused.
 In terms of self-identity there is a famous Buddhist story that goes like this: a man comes to study with the historical Buddha and is having a difficult time understanding its ideas.  The Buddha welcomes him but does not face his questions rather he asks him about his journey to meet him.  The Buddha asks ‘how did you get here’ and the man replies ‘ on a chariot’, the Buddha then says ‘I’m sorry but I don’t know what a chariot is, can you describe it to me?’ The fellow proceeds to tell him how a chariot is constructed and its layout from axel, wheels, buckboard, shroud to harness and horses.  The Buddha takes this in and says ‘ so all of these things together make a chariot?  When is it no longer a chariot?  When you take away the wheels is it no longer a chariot or the buckboard or the axel?  At what point does it become or not become a chariot?  This is a conglomeration of things you call a chariot but what really is the chariot?’  The man is puzzled by this and ponders it but the Buddha says ‘who are you, your thoughts, desires, senses, memories?  Remove what and you are no longer you?  When do you become you or not you by this composite of aggregates?’  Now this plunges the man into a deep inquiry of who the self really is.  Any particular aggregate that reincarnates somewhere else is not the true self, when you break down the components of self, who are you?  This might be analogous with your energy fluctuations and energy idea.


  As a result of all of these problems I can’t find any strong rational base for reincarnation.  If you want to go under the idea that matter can neither be created or destroyed then you can see we are somehow, in part, reconstructed as something else, perhaps as fertilizer for flora we have become alive again but I don’t see any self-identity here.  
   But all of this begs the most important question; who are you that either looks from outside or inside?  If you perceive a self or an “I” doesn’t that mean you cannot be that which you perceive because you are standing outside of it to be able to perceive it? Who is it that perceives this  ‘I’, was born, fears death and contemplates all these things?  You are writing to me because you separate yourself from me and the rest of the Universe to be able to be a ‘self’ even though this self doesn’t know who it is.  This act of separation is the creation of the self, I, yet there is no substance to this self.  To stop this process in a thoroughgoing manner is to see that which it is that created the separation and have it dissolve.  If you know the source of this I then you know the root of all being and are free from the constraints of birth and death or stops the cycle. This is to face the problem in the moment and not as any theoretical idea.  All the attributes of self-identity come after the act of being able to be separate to be an ego or self.  After that history, taste, culture and all the aggregates of self arise.  If you face the moment truly you realize that you only exist as a separate self by being able to maintain this act of separation or saying “ I am I and not other”.  This dualistic thought process is what creates the illusion of a separate self that can never know itself in the present and thus will ever be in angst.  It is the ending of this process that allows you to be in the present without that antinomy of self and other.
 I hope this helps you.  Take care,
         Joe