An inconvenient truth for a number of modern day Buddhists who are curious about Buddhism, the Buddha did not reject reincarnation/rebirth. Contrary to what they believe about Buddhism, in the canon we find passages like this:
At Sāvatthī. “Mendicants, transmigration has no known beginning. … It’s not easy to find a sentient being who in all this long time has not previously been your mother. Why is that? Transmigration has no known beginning. … This is quite enough to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released” (SN 15:14).
At Sāvatthī. “Mendicants, transmigration has no known beginning. … It’s not easy to find a sentient being who in all this long time has not previously been your father. … This is quite to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released” (SN 15:15)
It spite of solid proof that the Buddha taught reincarnation/rebirth, and that consciousness is the transmigrant, skeptical westerners still want some empirical evidence. Well there is some.
This evidence is to be found in the work of the late psychiatrist Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia who studied cases of children which strongly suggested reincarnation (one famous book of his is Children Who Remember Past Lives). While he has never claimed to have proven reincarnation beyond a shadow of a doubt, he does show that it is reasonable to believe in it. This is really the nub of the problem—not that rebirth or reincarnation is absolutely true or not.
Keep in mind that at one time it was unreasonable to believe that the earth is a sphere or that the earth orbited the sun. Not too long ago Lord Kelvin said that “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” And who was Lord Kelvin? He formulated the first and second laws of thermodynamics among other things. What Lord Kelvin should have said, “It is reasonable to believe that heavier-the-air flying machines will one day be a reality.”
I am never surprised at how narrow-minded people are these days who harbor what can be described as absolutist opinions about a range of things, one of them being reincarnation/rebirth. Ask then what they’ve read on the subject and they suddenly have nothing more to say. It is a knee-jerk reaction on their part showing the degree of their cultural brainwashing.
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