monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
another take on reincarnation
say for a moment, that individuals do not inherently exist but are part of a fabric of existence - interdependent and interconnected. then describe ‘birth’ as simply the appearance of a new individual, but not really the creating of an individual. simply mere appearance. really the rearrangement of the fabric of existence, in such a way that portion of the fabric can look back upon itself and be self aware. but really is not independently existent. therefore, birth is not really occurring, just appearing to occur.
given that viewpoint, then the idea of death doesn’t make sense since birth never really occurred. it just appeared to.
my readings on buddhist philosophy, in particular discussions of interdependence, are causing these kinds of contemplations for me. but then how do you reconcile that philosophical question with the idea of reincarnation in the buddhist cannon - that we die and are born over and over again.
ok, new idea. from the point of view of a person (a piece of that fabric that looks back upon itself and sees a person, rather) there is the appearance of birth and death. but from the point of view of the fabric, is there rebirth? well, yes! because there are a myriad of beings forming out of the fabric and looking back upon themselves and seeing a “self”. so an individual might not have rebirth, because the individual was never really born, but the fabric is having countless rebirths constantly. and if “you” are really the fabric and not Joe Smith then “you” are having countless rebirths. all the time. They’re just not this illusionary “self” particularly that’s rebirthing. And your conscious awareness doesn’t include all the rebirths constantly occurring, since that conscious awareness is particular to your current arrangement that appears to be your “self”.
i realize there’s a slight problem with this metaphor, and it’s not a very sophisticated view as far as buddhist philosophy goes. probably most similar to the sautrantika school, or maybe even more of a hindu samkhya approach. and this can go nihilistic too, but i find it an interesting idea on how reincarnation could be presented at the same time as teachings on the self and no-self.
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6. June 2007 at 5:27 am :
Although this metaphor may be somewhat limited, as you acknowledged, I rather like how well it seems to co-exist with much of modern cosmology. Starting back around the early 20th century, Einstein postulated that energy and mass were the same thing, and could be neither created nor destroyed - they can merely be converted (”born”) from one state into the other. Modern cosmology - particularly string theory - has all kinds of theories on how elementary particles and even the interaction of fundamental forces as we experience them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_forces) might be the representation of a very few kinds of force - perhaps one force - as instantiated in the very particular set of dimensions we can perceive. As related to your “fabric” analogy, the physical rules that govern our perceptible universe (all the people we can see and experience, in your analogy) might actually be the representation (birth and death) of just one thing that is in constant fluctuation in a dimension or dimensions beyond our perception. The part that I have difficulty reconciling is the appearance that all the energy in the universe seems to be traceable back to a single event, and all the energy - by current accounts - will eventually dissipate. If birth and death (of individuals, or physical phenomena) are merely re-arranging of stuff, then wouldn’t that suggest the universe’s birth and death itself is another re-arrangement? Multi-verse theories abound, and suggest that re-arrangement might be the only true constant throughout the cosmos.
6. June 2007 at 12:19 pm :
O.o, thanks for the tie into cosmology. It does seem very strange that the universe would be born out of nothing and then disappear, seems to violate every basic pattern in physics. But that theory seems in alignment with modern theistic religious imagery, that we as people are born out of who knows where and then die. Perhaps the big bang theory is somewhat influenced by our religious or even subconscious cultural views! Because really we just see that there is an expansion and a echo of a big bang occurred, but why extrapolate from that that nothing predated it?