Reincarnation

Cycle of Births and Deaths

H. H. Dalai Lama speaking on Reincarnation, Consciousness, & the Vajrayana Buddhist doctrine of Soul or No Soul:

Q: ...what is the nature of the mindstream that reincarnates from lifetime to lifetime?

A: ...If one understands the term "soul" as a continuum of individuality from moment to moment, from lifetime to lifetime, then one can say that Buddhism also accepts a concept of soul; there is a kind of continuum of consciousness. From that point of view, the debate on whether or not there is a soul becomes strictly semantic. 

However, in the Buddhist doctrine of selflessness, or "no soul" theory, the understanding is that there is no eternal, unchanging, abiding, permanent self called "soul." That is what is being denied in Buddhism.

Buddhism does not deny the continuum of consciousness. 

Because of this, we find some Tibetan scholars, such as the Sakya master Ren-dawa, who accept that there is such a thing as self or soul, the "kangsak ki dak" (Tib. gang zag gi bdag). 

However, the same word, the "kangsak ki dak," the self, or person, or personal self, or identity, is at the same time denied by many other scholars.

We find diverse opinions, even among Buddhist scholars, as to what exactly the nature of self is, what exactly that thing or entity is that continues from one moment to the next moment, from one lifetime to the next lifetime. 

Some try to locate it within the aggregates, the composite of body and mind. Some explain it in terms of a designation based on the body and mind composite, and so on.... 

One of the divisions of [the "Mind-Only"] school maintains there is a special continuum of consciousness called alayavijnana which is the fundamental consciousness.

~~  H.H. Dalai Lama, Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a Buddhist Perspective. Geshe Thupten Jinpa (Trans.).  www.snowlionpub.com

Getting Out For Good:

"Only a Buddha has extinguished all faults and gained all attainments. Therefore, one should mentally go for refuge to a Buddha, praise him with speech, and respect him physically. One should enter the teaching of such a being.

A Buddha's abandonment of defects is of three types: good, complete, and irreversible. 

• Good abandonment involves overcoming obstructions through their antidotes, not just through withdrawing from those activities. 

• Complete abandonment is not trifling, forsaking only some afflictions or just the manifest afflictions, but forsaking all obstructions. 

• Irreversible abandonment overcomes the seeds of afflictions and other obstructions in such a way that defects will never arise again, even when conditions favourable to them are present."

~~  Tsong-ka-pa & H.H. Dalai Lama, Tantra in Tibet. Jeffrey Hopkins (Trans. & Ed.) www.snowlionpub.com

The Source

There in the fringe of trees between
the upper field and the edge of the one
below it that runs above the valley
one time I heard in the early
days of summer the clear ringing
six notes that I knew were the opening
of the Fingal's Cave Overture
I heard them again and again that year
and the next summer and the year
afterward those six descending
notes the same for all the changing
in my own life since the last time
I had heard them fall past me from
the bright air in the morning of a bird
and I believed that what I had heard
would always be there if I came again
to be overtaken by that season
in that place after the winter
and I would wonder again whether
Mendelssohn really had heard them somewhere
far to the north that many years ago
looking up from his youth to listen to
those six notes of an ancestor
spilling over from a presence neither
water nor human that led to the cave
in his mind the fluted cliffs and the wave
going out and the falling water
he thought those notes could be the music for
Mendelssohn is gone and Fingal is gone
all but his name for a cave and for one
piece of music and the black-capped warbler
as we called that bird that I remember
singing there those notes descending
from the age of the ice dripping
I have not heard again this year can it
be gone then will I not hear it
from now on will the overture begin
for a time and all those who listen
feel that falling in them but as always
without knowing what they recognize

~~ W.S. Merwin

True Knowledge

"The reason why we find so much discussion of epistemology, or how to define something as a valid cognition, in Buddhist writings is because all our problems, suffering and confusion derive from a misconceived way of perceiving things. 

This explains why it is so important for a practitioner to determine whether a cognitive event is a misconception or true knowledge. 

For it is only by generating insight which sees through delusion that we can become liberated.

Even in our own experience we can see how our state of mind passes through different stages, eventually leading to a state of true knowledge. 

For instance, our initial attitude or standpoint on any given topic might be a very hardened misconception, thinking and grasping at a totally mistaken notion. 

But when that strong grasping at the wrong notion is countered with reasoning, it can then turn into a kind of lingering doubt, an uncertainty where we wonder: "Maybe it is the case, but then again maybe it is not". That would represent a second stage. 

When further exposed to reason or evidence, this doubt of ours can turn into an assumption, tending towards the right decision. However, it is still just a presumption, just a belief. 

When that belief is yet further exposed to reason and reflection, eventually we could arrive at what is called 'inference generated through a reasoning process'. Yet that inference remains conceptual, and it is not a direct knowledge of the object. 

Finally, when we have developed this inference and constantly familiarized ourselves with it, it could turn into an intuitive and direct realization -- a direct experience of the event. 

So we can see through our own experience how our mind, as a result of being exposed to reason and reflection, goes through different stages, eventually leading to a direct experience of a phenomenon or event."

 ~~  H.H. Dalai Lama. (2004). Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection. Thupten Jinpa & Richard Barron  (Trans.), Patrick Gaffney (Ed.), fwd by Sogyal Rinpoche, 2nd ed. www.snowlionpub.com 

Buddhist Logical Basis for Reincarnation

"When this world initially formed, there seem to have been two types of events or entities, one sentient, the other insentient. Rocks, for instance, are examples of non-sentient entities. You see, we usually consider them to have no feelings: no pains and no pleasures. The other type, sentient beings, have awareness, consciousness, pains and pleasures.

But there needs to be a cause for that. If you posit there is no cause for consciousness, then this leads to all sorts of inconsistencies and logical problems. So, the cause is posited, established. It is considered certain.

The initial cause must be an independent consciousness. 

And on that basis is asserted the theory of continuation of life after death. 

It is during the interval when one's continuum of awareness departs from one's body at death that the subtle mind, the subtle consciousness, becomes manifest. 

That continuum connects one life with the next."

~~  H.H. Dalai Lama.(1999).   Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism. Zara Houshmand, R.B. Livingston, & B. A. Wallace (Eds.).  www.snowlionpub.com

What is the role that consciousness plays in the process of reincarnation?

In general, there are different levels of consciousness. 

The more rough, or gross, levels of consciousness are very heavily dependent upon the physical, or material, sphere. 

Since one's own physical aggregate (the body) changes from birth to birth, so too do these gross levels of consciousness.

The more subtle the level of consciousness, however, the more independent of the physical sphere, 

and hence the more likely that it will remain from one life to the next. 

But in general, whether more subtle or more gross, all levels of consciousness are of the same nature.

~~  H.H. Dalai Lama. (2001). Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists by the Dalai Lama. José Ignacio Cabezón (Ed.) www.snowlionpub.com