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Reincarnation: Mechanics, Narratives, and Implications

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Reincarnation: Mechanics, Narratives, and Implications religions Article Reincarnation: Mechanics, Narratives, and Implications Christopher Key Chapple ID Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA; [email protected] Received: 12 September 2017; Accepted: 24 October 2017; Published: 27 October 2017 Abstract: This essay explores the mechanics associated with rebirth, noting differences between Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain narratives. It examines the concept of subtle body and the lingam˙ in Sa¯m. khya. According to the Hindu tradition, the remains of the departed person, when cremated, merge with clouds in the upper atmosphere. As the monsoon rain clouds gather, the leftovers mingle with the clouds, returning to earth and eventually finding new life in complex biological cycles. According to Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, the remains of a person take a ghostly form for 49 days until taking a new birth. According to Jainism, the departed soul immediately travels to the new birth realm at the moment of death. According to Jain karma theory, in the last third of one’s life, a living being makes a fateful choice that determines his or her next embodiment. The 20th century Hindu Yoga teacher Paramahamsa Yogananda, in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, provides an alternate description of a twofold astral and causal body. One hallmark of the Buddha and of the 24 Jain T¯ırthankaras˙ was that they remembered all the lives they had lived and the lessons learned in those lives. The Buddha recalled 550 past lives and used these memories to fuel many of his lectures. Mahav¯ ¯ıra remembered his past lives and also the past lives of others. Patañjali’s Yoga Sutra¯ states that through the perfection of giving up all things, including psychological attachments, one spontaneously will remember past lives. In the Yogavasi¯ s..tha, a Hindu text, Pun. ya remembers the past lives of his grieving brother as well as his own prior experiences. Keywords: Buddhist rebirth; Jain karma theory; subtle body; astral body; reincarnation Reincarnation, or punar janma, means birth again. Its conceptual origins remain obscure, though early passages from the Br.hadara¯ n. yaka and Chandogya¯ Upanisads (ca. 800 B.C.E.) describe the sacrificial process through which the funeral fire allows a person’s remains to ascend into the clouds, return to earth with the rains, become food, and then the semen that begets new life (BU 6.2; CU 5, 3–10). The idea of rebirth eventually gained traction as an eschatological tool, an incentive to improve one’s moral standing. The Kaus.¯ıtaki Upanishad proclaims that those who do good deeds in the world will ascend to a heavenly realm; those who harm others will descend into animal births (KU I:2). This essay will explore some of the mechanics associated with rebirth, examining the concept of subtle body and the lingam˙ in Sa¯m. khya—the process through which one remembers past lives according to the Yoga Sutra¯ . After noting the varied ways in which one life is said to move from one body to the next, specific rebirth narratives in Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu literature will be considered. The essay will conclude with an exploratory typology of how past life narratives function to communicate templates for behavior. 1. Mechanics According to the Hindu tradition, an important task to be performed by the eldest son is to open the skull of his departed parent on the funeral pyre, releasing unresolved desires into the atmosphere, where they are carried by the smoke to linger in the upper atmosphere. As the monsoon rain clouds Religions 2017, 8, 236; doi:10.3390/rel8110236 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2017, 8, 236 2 of 15 gather, the leftovers mingle with King Soma until released by Indra’s thunderbolt. They sink with the rain deep into the soil, where they are gathered up into plants. These plants become food eaten by all manner of animals, including humans. The quintessence of food finds its way into the semen of men. By depositing this semen into the warmth of the womb, life continues, and the subtle material of the departed starts a new course within life. This process can take several seasons. On the death anniversary of a parent or teacher, Brahmins are paid to perform Sraddh´ a¯ rituals to guide the ancestor on his or her journey. According to the story of the life of the Buddha, when he attained awakening under the Bodhi Tree, he sat there for seven days, working through his system of past life recollection and his profound understanding of dependent origination or inter-being (pratitya samutpada). Then he got up and walked, and sat again for a total of seven days. This repeated an additional five times, totaling seven weeks or 49 days. At the end of this period of reflection, he took up the resolve to teach. He first invited a monk to hear his insights who monk declined the offer. He met up with his former companions, who also had arrived in the town of Sarnath or Deer Park. Just as the Buddha went through a liminal period of 49 days before committing to full life as a teacher that lasted an additional 45 years, so also, according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Chinese Buddhist traditions, it takes 49 days for unresolved karmas to find a new home. In Buddhist tradition, the remains of a person take a ghostly form during this period, traveling at will to pursue unfulfilled desires without a body before finding a moment of sexual allurement through which one re-enters the realm of samsara precisely at the moment of union between one’s new mother and father. Buddhist funerals, particularly in China and Tibet, last 49 days so that the family and well-wishers can guide their loved one to an auspicious new birth. According to Jainism, the departed soul immediately travels to the new birth realm at the moment of death. According to Jain karma theory, in the last third of one’s life, a living being makes a fateful choice that determines his or her next embodiment (Jaini 2000a). Extreme care to do no harm increases as one nears the golden years, reflected in more frequent fasting and the strengthening of an already vegetarian diet. Jains do not perform elaborate funeral ceremonies, due to their convincement that the soul determines its own path, and that the best preparation for death is a life well lived. Once one is dead, nothing more can be done, by oneself, for obvious reasons, or by others. According to Jainism, one is sole determiner of one’s own path (ibid., p. 136). The Buddhists, though they deny an enduring self, do posit that the nexus of human pain and suffering (duh. kha) resides in the residues of past karmas. The Jains similarly identify 148 karmic variations (prakr.tis) that define and constrain the condition of the soul. Buddhists seek to understand the origins of pain through meditation, and hence gain release from its group. Jains seek to live a life of utmost purity to undo the knots (grantha) of karma. Both assent to the basic premises laid out in one of the six schools of Hindu thought, the Sa¯m. khya Dar´sana.By examining the mechanics of rebirth as outlined in I´svarak¯ r.s.n. a’s Sa¯m. khya Karik¯ a¯, the template for this important concept in Indian traditions can be discerned within a general conceptual framework. 2. Sam¯ . khya: Emotions (bhava¯ ) and the Transmigrating Subtle Body (suks¯ . ma ´sar¯ıra, linga˙ ) Sa¯m. khya, one of the six foundational orthodox schools (dar´sana) recognized in Hinduism, sets forth a reciprocity between a seeing witness (purus.a) and an ever-changing realm of mental, emotional, and physical activity (prakr.ti) arrayed in a play of three factors: dullness, passion, and illumination (tamas, rajas, sattva gun. as). The word lingam˙ appears in the Sa¯m. khya Karik¯ a¯ (ca. 300 C.E.) several times to explain the basic constituents or marks of personality. Knowing a person’s general disposition allows one to make inferences about how they might respond in a particular situation (SK 5). Dispositions or emotions (bhavas¯ ) take many forms. In the aggregate, they determine one’s personality. All aspects of the manifest world are colored or marked through the constitution Religions 2017, 8, 236 3 of 15 of personality (SK10). The following sequence of verses explain the process of rebirth in largely psychological terms:1 39. Three distinct factors can be seen [in regard to life]: subtle, born of a mother and father, and acts of will. Subtle influences and acts of will in this life carry over to the next, even though the body born of a mother and father will pass away. 40. The personality (lingam˙ ), which is cloaked with bhavas¯ , has previously arisen but is not yet empowered. It endures within the mahat to the edge of the subtle. Because it has not experienced enjoyment, it transmigrates. The bhavas¯ are the emotional states that govern human behavior. They are described in two schematics, one eightfold (to be explained below) and the other fifty-fold, accounting for the various ways in which an individual can survive and thrive or fail and fall. The mahat, like the alaya-vijñana¯ in Yogac¯ ara¯ Buddhism, serves as the repository for all karmic impressions (sam. skaras¯ or vasan¯ as¯ ) contained within the realm of Prakr.ti in her avyakta, her potential but as yet unmanifested form. In other words, certain yearnings remain unfilled. These desires, which reside in what modern psychologists might call the unconscious, fester and gnaw in a subtle state, seeking to be experienced.
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