Rebirth
Spiritual Concepts Series, Part 3
Read the other articles in this series:
Spiritual Concepts Series, Part One — Karma
Spiritual Concepts Series, Part Two — Mushin, Wu Wei, and Sahaja
Spiritual Concepts Series, Part Four — Maya
Translation from language to language is never clean. Nuances, and sometimes complete meanings, can’t always be expressed from one language to another. This series of articles takes ‘spiritual’ terminology from various traditions and aids us in translating the concepts so that they help guide us toward Awakening. These translations are not intended to be more ‘correct’ than other translations — but they are designed to help us see how these ideas can guide us toward Awakening.
Ah, rebirth. Samsara. The idea comes packaged with so many implications that rebirth can become one of the most ‘darling’ of the spiritual ideas. You can read about all sorts of interpretations – from people who equate it with reincarnation of the soul, to people who insist that rebirth is something happening in each moment.
Just what is rebirth, and how can it act as a tool for Awakening?
Reincarnation
Perhaps the most basic and common translation of rebirth is as something we might better call ‘reincarnation’. This is the idea that we have a soul which, after death, moves into a new ‘incarnation’, or body. Maybe we’ll become a person in better or worse circumstances, or perhaps we’ll become a mealie worm. How we next incarnate is wrapped up in a very dualistic translation of karma.
The lowdown? If you search without delusion, you’ll find scanty evidence for reincarnation. Like any other belief we hold (from a belief in heaven or hell to a belief in Self to a belief in the world being composed of a host of different objects), these are just beliefs. We are welcome to hold them, but we had better be ready for the confusion they are going to cause us.
Candle-Flame Rebirth
Another popular idea is that rebirth is a transfer of karmic influences from one incarnation to another. Here, no soul makes the travel, but nevertheless, some effect is passed from incarnation to incarnation. Sometimes this is seen as happening without the necessity of a physical death. Though difficult to explain, this concept is often illustrated with the example of passing a candle’s flame from candle to candle. Something passes from wick to wick, but we can’t really say that the flame is the same or different from the others.
Though more sophisticated, this view depends on the concept of time (as I’ll speak more about below), and if you look carefully enough, you’ll see that what is passed from wick to wick is a concept, or idea, of what the flame is. The Now moment is totally overlooked with this model of rebirth, and replaced with ideas, however subtle, that pose as objects moving through the concepts of space and time.
Moment-To-Moment Rebirth
Finally, we come to the most subtle and profound idea of rebirth, which states that we are ‘reborn’ with each passing moment. This idea is often linked to the idea that emotions or thoughts should ‘leave no trace’. In other words, the idea here is that each moment is totally unique and arises and ends in an instant. We can’t put our foot into the same river twice, nor can we take the same breath. Even our thoughts and emotions are never the same from moment to moment. In this way we see that in each instant, everything (including ourselves) is born anew, and then, an instant later, evaporates. Rebirth, then, becomes a constant state, which we might better call ‘Birth-Death-Rebirth-Death, etc.’
But can you see what we’ve done with this idea? Again, it’s just an old re-hash of the same dualistic assumptions – that we move through time, from one state to another. We’ve merely re-defined the amount of time it takes (making it pretty esoteric by calling it an ‘instant’), and re-defined the nature of what makes a ‘state’ (again, getting esoteric by trying to make a ’state’ into a sort of no-state that is reborn before it can ever get a ‘handle’ on itself).
Rebirth as Suffering
Most of our ideas of rebirth don’t really do us any favors. In fact, they have the potential to lead us to more confusion and frustration! However subtle we make it, we’re just creating new versions of imagining that there is a ‘me’ who somehow moves from moment to moment. These moments might be infinitely tiny, or they might encompass our entire lifetimes, but in either case, the sensation of movement remains, never allowing us to experience the stillness of Now.
Rebirth Reborn
If all these ideas hinge on the element of time, then an idea of rebirth that is free of time can be the one version that points us toward Awakening. But remove time from the equation, and rebirth, which implies movement, loses its meaning. And this is the key to turning rebirth around!
Like the idea of karma, rebirth can best be used as a reminder that our usual way of life – carrying imaginary influences from moment to moment – is only an idea. Rebirth’s best gift is to remind us that there is a way of living outside the cycle of rebirth.
This involves looking carefully at Time, one of the most subtle and powerful of our delusions. The simple truth is that no matter where we look, we can only find the Now – totally lacking in any movement or change whatsoever. So it might be more apt to say that our life does not consist of millions of separate moments, each following the last, but rather to say that there is only one moment, and it never leaves. Not a moment that follows us along the line of time, but a moment that is right Now.
This is impossible to visualize or conceptualize. But if you play with it for a bit, you can come to experience it directly. The sensation is neither one of movement, nor one of stillness – indescribable, it is simply what we’re experiencing all the time. All of us.
Present in the Now, as we all are, we can begin imagining that there is this idea of before and after, and as we become more adept at those ideas, soon we find ourselves fooled by them, and the end result is that we come to dwell in an illusion. An illusion in which it is inconceivable that there is anything but the future or past. We become convinced that the Now is ever elusive, for as soon as we focus on it, it is past!
But this is only a trick we’ve become very good at playing on ourselves. If you sit down, right now, and really pay attention, you’ll find that there is nothing more than this Now. It’s all there ever is.
Even common ideas about reincarnation and rebirth speak of an end to the cycle of rebirth – an end in which the incarnate finally realizes its true nature and attains an ‘immortality’. Nirvana, heaven, moksha – these are words which have been used in an attempt to describe this timeless state. But things change if we realize that those ideas are asking us to be become reborn right Now — not after we accomplish more learning or go through more trials.
This ’state’ of Now does not consist of a very long time. Nor is it infinitely short. It’s also not the same moment being reborn over and over in an endless cycle.
It’s Now – that strange and magical place where we all are, and where we’re all pretending not to be.
Explore posts in the same categories: Time, Spiritual Concepts Series