My Reincarnation - The Life of Yeshi Namkhai

Excellent film -I've included the first chapter of five below. You can watch the whole film until September 20 at the POV site from PBS.

Watch My Reincarnation on PBS. See more from POV.

My Reincarnation

My Reincarnation tells of the tireless work of exiled Tibetan Buddhist Master Namkhai Norbu to transmit the highest path of Tibetan Buddhism — called Dzogchen — around the world. Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche ("Rinpoche" is a Tibetan honorific title for Reincarnate Teachers meaning "precious one") feels enormous responsibility for keeping an ancient spiritual and cultural tradition alive in the face of a 50-year long diaspora that threatens Tibetan identity.

But Fox's film goes beyond reporting on the state of Tibetan Buddhism in exile. It enters Namkhai Norbu's story in unprecedented fashion. Filmed over 20 years, My Reincarnation follows a long, gentle, sometimes amusing, yet intense struggle between him and his Italian-born son, Yeshi. Namkhai Norbu, along with the Tibetan Buddhist community, is convinced Yeshi is the reincarnation of his own master and destined to take up Namkhai Norbu's work. Yeshi, however, was raised in Italy and feels and looks more like an up-and-coming young businessman than anybody's spiritual master. Yet he can't quite turn away from his father's legacy. There are physical proofs of his reincarnation according to Buddhist tradition and his own spiritual yearnings. And there is the quiet, implacable determination of his father.

Yeshi Namkhai being brought to the monastery of his previous reincarnation where he will be enthroned during a large ceremony. Credit: Luigi Ottaviani
Fox began filming Namkhai Norbu in 1988 when, as a filmmaker and student of the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, she took a four-year sabbatical from filmmaking and worked as his secretary. She started out recording his everyday life, including his work, family and travels, intent on documenting a spiritual life to which she'd been given unusual access. She returned 13 years later, and periodically after that, until 2009, amassing more than 1,000 hours of footage from Italy and the family's travels all over the world, including Venezuela, Russia and the United States (in Massachusetts and New York).

Using this footage plus archival material, My Reincarnation achieves a remarkably intimate and vivid account of Namkhai Norbu's life and work. Fleeing Tibet in 1959 in the wake of the Chinese takeover, along with thousands of other Tibetans including the H.H. the Dalai Lama, he settled in Italy, married an Italian woman, Rosa, had two children and began the work that brought him worldwide recognition as a Spiritual Master and Scholar. The film shows 20 years of constant travel as he lectures, counsels, leads ritual Buddhist observances and Tibetan gatherings and hosts the Dalai Lama. He ages, of course, but also appears to take on an extra burdens — not only the hopes, fears and challenges of spiritual seekers and Tibetans scattered in foreign lands, but also the survival of Tibetan Buddhism itself.

And so a movie-within-the-movie unfolds, because the struggle to preserve Tibetan Buddhism — to pass it on as a living legacy — extends to Namkhai Norbu's family. Tibetan Buddhism depends greatly on unbroken lines of reincarnated lamas, who continue to teach and interpret the scriptures. Namkhai Norbu is himself a reincarnate master, and Yeshi, his first-born son, was recognized from birth as the reincarnation of his great-uncle, another famous Buddhist master, who died imprisoned by the Chinese after their invasion of Tibet. Various traditional proofs of reincarnation, particularly involving a child's familiarity with the late lama's objects, convinced not only Namkhai Norbu but also other Tibetans that Yeshi is a reincarnate master. The only one who isn't convinced is Yeshi himself.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu in his favorite pastime, swimming in the water. Credit: Zohe Film Productions, Inc. 

Yeshi is first seen in My Reincarnation as an intense, intelligent 18-year-old (he ages to 39 and Namkhai Norbu ages from 49 to 70 in the film) listening to his father's teaching or helping with ceremonies, but hanging on the margins of events. Later, he's an intense, intelligent young man on a fast-track to business success and all the things this can bring in Western society. Alternately amused and awe-struck by his Tibetan status, he can't quite shake the overwhelming implications of it. He's drawn along in his father's wake but resists all the way. He doesn't want to take up Buddhist study or teaching or to go to Tibet, as his father urges. Yeshi is especially unnerved by the idea of visiting the very monastery where his great-uncle had been master and where students await Yeshi as their master's reincarnation.

One of the delights of My Reincarnation is sharing Yeshi's views of his father and thoughts about the spiritual legacy to which he is heir. Even more striking is witnessing Yeshi's spiritual evolution, the highlight of which is his visit to the Tibetan monastery of his great uncle, where the local monks and villagers greet him with ancient ceremony and respect as their reincarnate Master. Such a profound demonstration of faith and spiritual continuity cannot help but have a great impact on Yeshi, and begins to awaken the heir to Namkhai Norbu's great mission.  

My Reincarnation will be streaming in its entirety through September 20, 2012. It is only available in the United States.  

Meet the film's protagonist and Tibetan Buddhist Master — Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche — in-person during his 2012 U.S. Summer Teaching Tour! For more information: www.tsegyalgar.org.

Read more: The Crystal and the Way of Light by Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche (Shambhala Publications www.shambhala.com). 

Documentary - Unmistaken Child (2008)

This is an interesting documentary on the Tibetan Buddhist traditions around reincarnation. Depending on one's beliefs, it's possible to either see this as superstition or as enlightened understanding of trans-rational processes.

Unmistaken Child

The Buddhist concept of reincarnation, while both mysterious and enchanting, is hard for most westerners to grasp.

Unmistaken Child follows the 4-year search for the reincarnation of Lama Konchog, a world-renowned Tibetan master who passed away in 2001 at age 84.

The Dalai Lama charges the deceased monk’s devoted disciple, Tenzin Zopa (who had been in his service since the age of seven), to search for his master’s reincarnation.

Tenzin sets off on this unforgettable quest on foot, mule and even helicopter, through breathtaking landscapes and remote traditional Tibetan villages.

Along the way Tenzin listens to stories about young children with special characteristics, and performs rarely seen ritualistic tests designed to determine the likelihood of reincarnation. He eventually presents the child he believes to be his reincarnated master to the Dalai Lama so that he can make the final decision.

Stunningly shot, Unmistaken Child is a beguiling, surprising, touching, even humorous experience.

Watch the full documentary now. Buy the DVD at Amazon.com.

CBS News - Reincarnation alive and well in today's culture

Talk of reincarnation hits the mainstream. One in five people believes in reincarnation, which must include some Christians and Jews. I'm grateful for Stephen Prothero (God Is Not One) being in the segment.

The concept of reincarnation is some three thousand years old, but it's not simply a thing of the past. As Susan Spencer reports, the idea that we've lived before and that we'll live again is alive and well in American pop culture today.

Tags: Religion, reincarnation, Science, faith, CBS, Stephen Prothero, Brian Weiss, rebirth, soul, belief, America, poll

NPR - Is The Dalai Lama Playing A Dangerous Game?

Interesting perspective - I don't think it feels like a game to the Dalai Lama, or to the Tibetan people. China has already shown that it will imprison (or kill?) the chosen successor in the important Tibetan leadership roles (the Panchen Lama is the prime example) and install their own puppet, so there is no reason to think they would not do this for the successor to the Dalai Lama.

By separating his political role from his spiritual leadership role, while he's still alive, the Dalai Lama may be able to prevent the Chinese from co-opting the government in exile through appointing their own Dalai Lama - better the have the political leadership as a separate entity.

Is The Dalai Lama Playing A Dangerous Game?

by Corey Flintoff

Listen to the Story

All Things Considered

[4 min 52 sec]

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The Dalai Lama gives a religious talk at the Tsuglakhang temple in Dharmsala, India, on March 15. - Ashwini Bhatia/AP

Just last month, the Dalai Lama sent a shockwave through the world of Buddhism when he announced that he was giving up his political powers as head of the Tibetan government in exile.

For more than 50 years, the Nobel peace laureate has been the public face of resistance to Chinese control of Tibet.

Some analysts say the aging leader is playing the opening moves of a risky strategy to preserve the spiritual leadership of Tibetan Buddhism in the event of his death.

'It Is Something That Is Unthinkable'

The Dalai Lama's headquarters is in Dharamshala, India, where Buddhist temples and monasteries cling to slopes that rise to the snow-capped mountains of the Himalayas. Tibetan exiles come to this temple to pray and walk counterclockwise around the sanctuary, turning the big brass cylinders that are believed to release prayers and mantras.

The Indian government allowed the 14th Dalai Lama to establish himself here when he and many of his followers escaped from Tibet after a failed uprising against the Chinese in 1959.

Many more Tibetan refugees live in settlements in South India, or are scattered across the globe, including in the United States.

Now, the Tibetan refugee community is trying to come to terms with the news that Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, will pass his political powers to elected leaders of the Tibetan government in exile.

"From the point [of] view of his holiness, it is for the good of the Tibetans for the long haul," says Chhime Chhoekyapa, the Dalai Lama's secretary. "But from the Tibetan people's side, for many of them, it is something that is unthinkable."

Finding The Dalai Lama

Chhoekyapa says it's a hard development for people to digest when they have known no other political leader for more than 50 years.

Why do it now?

Tenzin Gyatso is 75 years old and, though he keeps a busy schedule of travel around the world, he has suffered bouts of ill health.

The choice of his successor is governed by the belief that when the Dalai Lama dies, he reincarnates himself in another body to continue his work.

"Reincarnation is a belief," says Thubten Samphel, secretary of international relations for the government in exile. "You either believe in it, or you laugh at it. We Tibetans believe human beings have the spiritual resources to reincarnate, especially [highly] realized beings, at a time and place of his choosing."

The tradition calls for senior Tibetan lamas to find the child who is determined to be the reincarnation of the leader who has died. That child is then brought up and educated to be the next Dalai Lama.

China, which claims Tibet as part of its territory, has intervened in the choosing of two other major Tibetan lamas.

The best-known case is that of the Panchen Lama.

The Threat Of An 'Impostor' Dalai Lama

In 1995, the Chinese government rejected a boy chosen by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan leaders. They supervised the selection of a Panchen Lama of their own, who has never been accepted by most Tibetans.

The boy who was selected by the Dalai Lama is said to be alive, in Chinese government custody, but his whereabouts are unknown.

Brahma Chellaney, an Indian expert on Tibetan issues, says that's a situation the Dalai Lama is trying to avert.

"If the same situation were to happen after the present Dalai Lama were to pass away, then we will have two dueling Dalai Lama," says Chellaney, a professor at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Chellaney thinks Tenzin Gyatso is trying to make the institution of the Dalai Lama less of a target by separating the political powers from the spiritual leadership while he's still alive.

"I think it's a smart move because once he passes away," Chellaney says, "there will be great opportunity for the Chinese to take advantage of the situation and impose their own impostor Dalai Lama on the world."

Choosing A Successor?

Officials of the Tibetan government in exile say there is precedent for the Dalai Lama to choose a successor while he is still alive — a person who would later become his reincarnation.

Editorial writers in the official Chinese media have already accused the Dalai Lama of trying to manipulate the reincarnation process to designate a successor during his lifetime.

A committee of Tibetan scholars and officials is working to change the charter of the government in exile to specify exactly how the Dalai Lama's powers will be handed over. The process of change will begin once a new government has been installed. The government in exile is about to announce the results of an election for a new parliament and chief minister.

In the meantime, life goes on for the exile community in Dharamshala known as Little Tibet.

People come to pray and turn the mantra wheels as they have done for 50 years.

Monks chant as they renew their vows.

Everyone here knows that change is coming, but no one is sure what that change will bring.

Tags: Tibet, China, Buddhism, reincarnation, politics, government, spiritual leadership, Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism, Dharmasala

The Dalai Lama - Consciousness or Mind is Beginningless

LIGHTING THE WAY
by the Dalai Lama,
translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa
more...

Dalai Lama Quote of the Week

The essential point about this condition of potentiality is that, although there is a causal relationship between the physical world and the world of mental phenomena, in terms of their own continuum one cannot be said to be the cause of the other. A mental phenomenon, such as a thought or an emotion, must come from a preceding mental phenomenon; likewise, a particle of matter must come from a preceding particle of matter.

Of course, there is an intimate relationship between the two. We know that mental states can influence material phenomena, such as the body; and, similarly, that material phenomena can act as contributory factors for certain subjective experiences. This is something that we can observe in our lives. Much of our gross level of consciousness is very closely connected to our body, and in fact we often use terminology and conventions which reflect this.

For example, when we say 'human mind' or 'human consciousness' we are using the human body as the basis to define a particular mind state. Likewise, at the gross levels of mind such as our sensory experiences, it is very obvious that these are heavily dependent upon our body and some physiological states. When a part of our body is hurt or damaged, for instance, we immediately experience the impact on our mental state. Nevertheless, the principle remains that mental phenomena must come from preceding phenomena of the same kind, and so on.

If we trace mental phenomena back far enough, as in the case of an individual's life, we come to the first instant of consciousness in this life. Once we have traced its continuum to this point of beginning, we then have three options: we can either say that the first instant of consciousness in this life must come from a preceding instant of consciousness which existed in the previous life. Or we can say that this first instant of consciousness came from nowhere--it just sort of 'popped up'. Or we can say that it came from a material cause.

From the Buddhist point of view, the last two alternatives are deeply problematic. The Buddhist understanding is that, in terms of its continuum, consciousness or mind is beginningless. Mental phenomena are beginningless. Therefore, the person or the being--which is essentially a designation based on the continuum of the mind--is also devoid of beginning.

--from Lighting the Way by the Dalai Lama, translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications

Lighting the Way • 5O% off • for this week only
(Good through September 10th).

Tags: Buddhism, consciousness, reincarnation, The Dalai Lama, Mind is Beginningless, Lighting the Way, Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Snow Lion Publications, continuum of mind, mental phenomena

Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic (Ñanamoli Thera Translation)

In this second teaching of Siddhattha Gotama (you know, The Buddha) following his enlightenment, he reveals the Not-Self (anatta) of all perceptions, all feelings, all determinations, all forms. In fact, he includes consciousness in this list of what is Not-Self, which would contradict any of the teachings on karma and reincarnation.

His point is not about the nature of the self, but rather that we suffer as a result of these attachments to things we think of as "me" or "mine."

Thanissaro Bhikkhu sort of responds to this apparent contradiction, without actually answering the question at all.

One of the first stumbling blocks that Westerners often encounter when they learn about Buddhism is the teaching on anatta, often translated as no-self. This teaching is a stumbling block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self doesn't fit well with other Buddhist teachings, such as the doctrine of kamma and rebirth: If there's no self, what experiences the results of kamma and takes rebirth? Second, it doesn't fit well with our own Judeo-Christian background, which assumes the existence of an eternal soul or self as a basic presupposition: If there's no self, what's the purpose of a spiritual life? Many books try to answer these questions, but if you look at the Pali canon — the earliest extant record of the Buddha's teachings — you won't find them addressed at all. In fact, the one place where the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible. Thus the question should be put aside.

He goes on to explain how the Buddha categorized questions to be answered, but does not address the contradiction that the Buddha himself apparently never addressed either.

Anyway, here is the Sutta (some more thought below).

Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic

SN 22.59, PTS: S iii 66, CDB i 901
translated from the Pali by Ñanamoli Thera

© 1993–2010

Thus I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Benares, in the Deer Park at Isipatana (the Resort of Seers). There he addressed the bhikkhus of the group of five: "Bhikkhus." — "Venerable sir," they replied. The Blessed One said this.

"Bhikkhus, form is not-self. Were form self, then this form would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of form: 'Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus.' And since form is not-self, so it leads to affliction, and none can have it of form: 'Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus.'

"Bhikkhus, feeling is not-self...

"Bhikkhus, perception is not-self...

"Bhikkhus, determinations are not-self...

"Bhikkhus, consciousness is not self. Were consciousness self, then this consciousness would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of consciousness: 'Let my consciousness be thus, let my consciousness be not thus.' And since consciousness is not-self, so it leads to affliction, and none can have it of consciousness: 'Let my consciousness be thus, let my consciousness be not thus.'

"Bhikkhus, how do you conceive it: is form permanent or impermanent?" — "Impermanent, venerable Sir." — "Now is what is impermanent painful or pleasant?" — "Painful, venerable Sir." — "Now is what is impermanent, what is painful since subject to change, fit to be regarded thus: 'This is mine, this is I, this is my self'"? — "No, venerable sir."

"Is feeling permanent or impermanent?...

"Is perception permanent or impermanent?...

"Are determinations permanent or impermanent?...

"Is consciousness permanent or impermanent?" — "Impermanent, venerable sir." — "Now is what is impermanent pleasant or painful?" — "Painful, venerable sir." — "Now is what is impermanent, what is painful since subject to change, fit to be regarded thus: 'This is mine, this is I, this is my self'"? — "No, venerable sir."

"So, bhikkhus any kind of form whatever, whether past, future or presently arisen, whether gross or subtle, whether in oneself or external, whether inferior or superior, whether far or near, must with right understanding how it is, be regarded thus: 'This is not mine, this is not I, this is not myself.'

"Any kind of feeling whatever...

"Any kind of perception whatever...

"Any kind of determination whatever...

"Any kind of consciousness whatever, whether past, future or presently arisen, whether gross or subtle, whether in oneself or external, whether inferior or superior, whether far or near must, with right understanding how it is, be regarded thus: 'This is not mine, this is not I, this is not my self.'

"Bhikkhus, when a noble follower who has heard (the truth) sees thus, he finds estrangement in form, he finds estrangement in feeling, he finds estrangement in perception, he finds estrangement in determinations, he finds estrangement in consciousness.

"When he finds estrangement, passion fades out. With the fading of passion, he is liberated. When liberated, there is knowledge that he is liberated. He understands: 'Birth is exhausted, the holy life has been lived out, what can be done is done, of this there is no more beyond.'"

That is what the Blessed One said. The bhikkhus were glad, and they approved his words.

Now during this utterance, the hearts of the bhikkhus of the group of five were liberated from taints through clinging no more.

Provenance:

©1981 Buddhist Publication Society.

From Three Cardinal Discourses of the Buddha (WH 17), translated from the Pali by Ñanamoli Thera (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1981). Copyright © 1981 Buddhist Publication Society. Used with permission. This Access to Insight edition is ©1993–2010 John T. Bullitt.

Terms of use: You may copy, reformat, reprint, republish, and redistribute this work in any medium whatsoever, provided that: (1) you only make such copies, etc. available free of charge and, in the case of reprinting, only in quantities of no more than 50 copies; (2) you clearly indicate that any derivatives of this work (including translations) are derived from this source document; and (3) you include the full text of this license in any copies or derivatives of this work. Otherwise, all rights reserved. For additional information about this license, see the FAQ.

How to cite this document (one suggested style): "Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic" (SN 22.59), translated from the Pali by Ñanamoli Thera. Access to Insight, June 7, 2009, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.nymo.html.

The phrase in this text, "Birth is exhausted," can be argued to suggest multiple rebirths. But my sense is that he is talking about this birth, right here, right now.

This passage expresses my sense of "rebirth," which requires no self and no karma:

With respect to consciousness, in every temporal moment there is birth and in every moment there is death. The arising of one thought-moment means the passing away of another thought-moment and vice versa. In the course of one life-time there is momentary rebirth without the need for a soul.

However, it should not be understood that consciousness is chopped up in bits and joined together like a train or a chain. On the contrary, consciousness flows like a river receiving sensory input from various tributary streams and dispensing to the world the thoughts produced along its course. Consciousness has birth as its source and death for its mouth. The rapidity of the thought flow is such that is there no standard whereby it can be even approximately measured. However, some Theravada Buddhist commentators say that the time duration of one thought-moment is even less than the time occupied by a flash of lightning.

To the Buddha, consciousness should be envisioned as a juxtaposition of these fleeting mental states as opposed to a superposition of such mental states as many religions such as Hinduism appear to believe. No mental state once gone ever recurs nor is identical with what goes before. Thus, most humans, veiled by the web of their own illusions, mistake this apparent continuity to be something eternal and go to the extent of introducing an unchanging soul, the supposed doer and receptacle of all actions to this ever-changing consciousness.

Our ordinary perception of human consciousness is similar to the perception of a flash of lightning containing a succession of sparks that follow upon one another with such rapidity that the human retina cannot perceive them separately. Likewise, an ordinary person, without proper instruction, cannot perceive this rapid succession of separate mental states. Ordinary human consciousness is in being or alive only for one thought-moment at a time. This consciousness is always in the present, but is ever slipping into the irrevocable past. What we shall become is determined by this present thought-moment.

The author of this piece goes on to suggest that, "When life ceases, the kammic energy re-materializes itself in another form." Maybe; maybe not. I remain agnostic.

My current sense of kamma, if there is such a thing, is that it is confined to this life, this very present moment, and this one, and this one.

The definition of kamma offered by The Insight Meditation Society does nothing to change my position on this:

Karma/Kamma (Sanskrit/Pali)

Action, deed; the law of cause and effect; intentional action, either wholesome or unwholesome that brings either pleasant or unpleasant results respectively.

Many have suggested I am not a Buddhist because I do not firmly believe in rebirth and kamma, so this is my argument (with as little as I know) for why I believe as I do.

Tags: Buddhism, Sutta, reincarnation, karma, Kamma, Pali, Anatta-lakkhana Sutta, The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic, Ñanamoli Thera, Translation, Siddhattha Gotama, anatta, self, not-self, Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Film - In Another Life: Reincarnation In America

I'm agnostic, but doubtful, about reincarnation. Still, this is an interesting look at how the idea is expressing itself in America.

In Another Life: Reincarnation In America

Release Year: 2003

Duration: 57 min

Availability:

Related: Science & Nature, Content Film

In Another Life is a five-year labor of love by a filmmaker who has studied reincarnation for over 30 years. Beautifully produced, it features top experts in the fields of reincarnation research, past-life therapy and Eastern spirituality, along with first-hand accounts by people who have had personal experiences.

Tags: Film, In Another Life, Reincarnation In America, reincarnation, beliefs, culture, death, reincarnation research, past-life therapy, Eastern spirituality

Does Biocentrism Allow for Immortality?

Or maybe some weird version of reincarnation? I'm not a big fan of my life continuing after this body rolls into the furnace, which makes me a bad Buddhist to some traditional thinkers. The idea of Heaven scared this sh!t out of me when I was a kid. Somehow, I find great comfort in knowing (thinking? believing?) that this is a one-shot effort, that there is no do-over, and that there is no immortality. Maybe I'm just weird that way.

Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'

Robert Lanza, M.D.

Posted: December 8, 2009 04:06 PM

Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.

One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the "many-worlds" interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse'). A new scientific theory - called biocentrism - refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling - the 'Who am I?'- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?

Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it's still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.

According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air - if you take everything away, what's left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can't see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.

Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, "Now Besso" (an old friend) "has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.

This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine's husband - Ed - started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time.

Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn't make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn't make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine's life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.

Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow.

"Ed," she said "I can't feel my leg."

She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum.

After the death of his son, Emerson wrote "Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature."

Whether it's flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it's the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister's dream house.

Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It's going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.

Robert Lanza, MD is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is the author of "Biocentrism," a book that lays out his theory of everything.

Tags: immortality, reincarnation, biocentrism, science, Does Death Exist?, New Theory Says No, Robert Lanza, death, multiverse

Two Older Articles by Alan B Wallace

I found these linked to by various friends on the web (Hokai and Nagrajuna, I believe) - these are older articles from B Alan Wallace, but they are both quite good. The second article is in response to critics of Wallace's views in the interview (the first article), so be sure to read it first.

Buddha on the brain

Ex-monk B. Alan Wallace explains what Buddhism can teach Western scientists, why reincarnation should be taken seriously and what it's like to study meditation with the Dalai Lama.

By Steve Paulson

Nov. 27, 2006 | The debate between science and religion typically gets stuck on the thorny question of God's existence. How do you reconcile an all-powerful God with the mechanistic slog of evolution? Can a rationalist do anything but sneer at the Bible's miracles? But what if another religion -- a nontheistic one -- offered a way out of this impasse? That's the promise that some people hold out for in Buddhism. The Dalai Lama himself is deeply invested in reconciling science and spirituality. He meets regularly with Western scientists, looking for links between Buddhism and the latest research in physics and neuroscience. In his book "The Universe in a Single Atom," he wrote, "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."

B. Alan Wallace may be the American Buddhist most committed to finding connections between Buddhism and science. An ex-Buddhist monk who went on to get a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford, he once studied under the Dalai Lama, and has acted as one of the Tibetan leader's translators. Wallace, now president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, has written and edited many books, often challenging the conventions of modern science. "The sacred object of its reverence, awe and devotion is not God or spiritual enlightenment but the material universe," he writes. He accuses prominent scientists like E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins of practicing "a modern kind of nature religion."

In his new book, "Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge," Wallace takes on the loaded subject of consciousness. He argues that the long tradition of Buddhist meditation, with its rigorous investigation of the mind, has in effect pioneered a science of consciousness, and that it has much to teach Western scientists. "Subjectivity is the central taboo of scientific materialism," he writes. He considers the Buddhist examination of interior mental states far preferable to what he calls the Western "idolatry of the brain." And he says the modern obsession with brain chemistry has created a false sense of well-being: "It is natural then to view psychopharmaceutical and psychotropic drugs as primary sources of happiness and relief from suffering." Wallace also chastises cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists for assuming the mind is merely the product of the physical mechanics of the brain. And he talks openly about ideas that most scientists would consider laughable, including reincarnation and a transcendent consciousness.

In conversation, Wallace is a fast talker who laughs easily and often gets carried away with his enthusiasm. I spoke with him by phone about the Buddhist theory of consciousness, his critique of both science and Christianity, and why he thinks reincarnation should be studied by scientists.

Why do you think Buddhism has an important perspective to add to the science and religion debate?

Buddhism has a lot to add for a number of reasons. Some are simply historical. Especially since the time of Galileo, there has been a sense of unease, if not outright hot war, between religion and science in the West. And Buddhism is coming in as a complete outsider. It's not theistic, as is Christianity. At the same time, it's not just science, as is physics or biology. And there's another reason why Buddhism may bring a fresh perspective. While there's no question that Buddhism has very religious elements to it -- with monks and temples, rituals and prayers -- it does have a broad range of empirical methods for investigating the nature of the mind, for raising hypotheses and putting them to the test.

There's a common assumption that science and religion are entirely separate domains. Science covers the empirical realm of facts and theories about the observable world, while religion deals with ultimate meaning and moral value. But you don't accept that dichotomy, do you?

Not at all. In fact, most religious people don't. This is a notion that's been brought up by Stephen Jay Gould with his whole notion of "non-overlapping magisteria." But it's never been true. All of the great pioneers of the scientific revolution -- Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and on into the 19th century with Gregor Mendel -- they were all Christians. And their whole approach to science was deeply influenced by Christianity. Religion, whether we like it or not, is making many truth claims about the natural world as well as the transcendent world. And now that science is honing in on the nature of the mind and questions of free will, it is definitely invading the turf that used to belong to religion and philosophy.

Many people would acknowledge that Buddhism has some profound insights into the human mind -- why we get depressed, what makes us happy and how we become slaves to our attachments. But what does this have to do with science?

In Buddhism, the very root of suffering and all our mental distress -- what Buddhists call mental afflictions -- is ignorance. The path to liberation, or enlightenment, is knowledge. It's knowing reality as it is. So despite many differences in methodology, both science and Buddhism are after knowledge of the natural world. But what defines the natural world? In modern science, the natural world is often equated with the physical world, and mental phenomena and subjective experiences are regarded as emergent phenomena or simply functions of the brain. But there are many other domains of reality that the physical instruments of science have not yet been able to detect.

But science is as much about method as anything. The scientific method posits hypotheses and theories that can be tested. Is that something Buddhism does as well?

Not in the same way. I wouldn't want to overplay the case that Buddhism has always been a science, with clear hypotheses and complete skepticism. It's too much of a religion, and so there's a lot of vested interest in the Buddhist community not to challenge the statements made by the Buddha and other great patriarchs in the Buddhist tradition. So there are some fundamental differences. At the same time, science is not just science. This very notion that the mind must simply be an emergent property of the brain -- consisting only of physical phenomena and nothing more -- is not a testable hypothesis. Science is based upon a very profound metaphysical foundation. Can you test the statement that there is nothing else going on apart from physical phenomena and their emergent properties? The answer is no.

You're saying we don't know for sure that the physical functions of the brain -- the neural circuits, the electrochemical surges -- are what produce our rich inner lives, what we call the mind?

Cognitive science has plenty of hypotheses that are testable. For instance, is Alzheimer's related to a particular malfunctioning of the brain? More and more, scientists are able to identify the parts and functions of the brain that are necessary to generate specific mental states. So these are scientific issues. But now let's tap into what the philosopher David Chalmers has called "the hard problem" -- the relationship between the physical brain and consciousness. What is it about the brain -- this mass of chemicals and electromagnetic fields -- that enables it to generate any state of subjective experience? If your sole access to the mind is by way of physical phenomena, then you have no way of testing whether all dimensions of the mind are necessarily contingent upon the brain.

Read the rest.

* * * * *

If you meet the Buddha in Salon

The author and Buddhist responds to readers who called him anti-science and challenged his belief in reincarnation.

By B. Alan Wallace

Dec. 9, 2006 | In November, I enjoyed a lively, cordial conversation with Steve Paulson based on my book, "Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge." After the interview, "Buddha on the Brain," appeared on Salon, quite a number of letter writers criticized me for things I never said or thought. They accused me of dismissing mathematics as "navel-gazing," suggested that I thought I was speaking for all Buddhists, and said I declared that scientists don't know how to study the neural correlates of mental processes. While I appreciated the dialogue, I wanted to respond to several of the critiques made in the letters.

I'd like to begin by expressing my deep respect for modern science, medicine and mathematics. My appreciation for these disciplines runs throughout all my written works, and it inspires my current collaboration on multiple research projects with cognitive scientists at five major universities. The scientific study of the mind began only around 1875, and scientific research into the neural correlates of consciousness began only about 15 years ago, so both are relatively new disciplines. But the way the cognitive sciences have evolved is markedly different than physics and biology.

Experimental physicists are trained for years to observe physical phenomena, and biologists are likewise trained to observe biological phenomena with the most sophisticated methods available. Cognitive scientists, in contrast, receive no formal training at all in directly observing mental phenomena. They do indeed excel at observing the neural causes and behavioral expressions of mental processes, but they have left introspection -- the only means by which mental events can be observed directly -- in the hands of untrained amateurs. Moreover, virtually all research on the mind has focused on the physical correlates of the mental processes of normal people, the mentally ill, and people with brain damage.

Buddhism, on the other hand, has no brain science or quantitative behavioral science, so it has much to learn from modern science. But it does have a 2,500-year history of developing and utilizing sophisticated means of observing the mind and developing highly refined states of consciousness by means of years of rigorous, sustained mental training. Such methods and refined states of consciousness have never been explored by science.

There is no question that specific neural events are necessary for the generation of specific mental processes in human beings and that states of consciousness influence the brain and behavior. This has been known for decades. But are mental phenomena themselves physical in nature? Those phenomena themselves (e.g., thoughts, mental images, dreams, etc.) cannot be detected by any of the instruments of technology, which are designed to measure all known types of physical entities. And when mental events are introspectively observed, they exhibit no physical properties such as mass, spatial location or spatial dimensions. Given all the scientific and introspective evidence to the contrary, why should we assume that they are physical? Even Christof Koch, who is on the cutting edge of research into the neural correlates of consciousness (which have not yet been identified), acknowledges, "The characters of brain states and of phenomenal states appear too different to be completely reducible to each other." So why not apply Occam's Razor and abandon all physicalist assumptions about the nature of mental phenomena and let our theories be based primarily on rigorous, direct observation of the broadest range of states of consciousness?

Are there dimensions of consciousness that are not dependent upon brain function? As long as the scientific study of consciousness is based entirely on neural activities and human behavior, that question cannot be answered. The scope of the physicalist methodologies guarantee that only physicalist conclusions can be drawn. But it's quite true that the burden of proof is on those who posit the existence of a brain-independent consciousness. Happily, reputable scientists at the University of Virginia, including Ian Stevenson, Jim Tucker and Bruce Greyson, are exploring evidence that may indicate the existence of such a dimension of consciousness. In so doing, they are living up to the ideal of scientific skepticism proposed by Richard Feynman: "Experimenters search most diligently, and with the greatest effort, in exactly those places where it seems most likely that we can prove our theories wrong. In other words we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress."

Buddhism brings to the question a discipline of mental training in samadhi, or highly focused, inwardly directed attention, that can allegedly enable the practitioner to accurately recall past-life memories. This may require years of intensive, continuous training, but it would be fascinating to make such training available to a large group of subjects and then examine any reports of past-life recall in accordance with the highest standards of scientific rigor. It is not anti-scientific to pose such hypotheses or put them to the test of experience, but it is anti-scientific to dismiss them on dogmatic grounds. Given that there is no consensual scientific definition of consciousness, no scientific means of detecting it, and an incomplete scientific understanding of the necessary and sufficient causes of consciousness, it is unscientific to ignore methods of inquiry, especially those based on direct observation, regarding the nature and origins of consciousness.

Many cognitive scientists refuse even to evaluate such evidence on the grounds that there is no mechanism for the nature of such consciousness or its interaction with the brain and behavior. It might be helpful if they recalled that it was 228 years from the time that Newton explained the law of gravity until Einstein proposed an explanation (by way of the warping of space-time) for gravity; and it was 100 years from the time that Darwin proposed his theory of evolution until Crick and Watson discovered DNA, providing the basis for a mechanical explanation for genetic mutations.

As I commented in my conversation with Steve, contemporary scientific theories of the mind and consciousness are based almost entirely on 19th century physics and 20th century evolutionary biology and neurobiology. To fully understand the antiquated nature of the current demand that mental phenomena be understood according to a mechanistic model, we don't even need to look to the spookiness of quantum physics, with its nonlocality, probability waves, quantum entanglement, and other mysterious processes.

My point can be illustrated with a brief review of electromagnetism. James Clerk Maxwell presented his four equations describing electromagnetic phenomena in 1864. At that time it was well known that electric currents could be carried by a material medium such as a copper wire. As late as 1884, Lord Kelvin expressed the view of virtually all physicists that electromagnetic fields required a physical medium in space, known as the luminiferous ether, by which they could manifest their wave properties. "One thing we are sure of," he commented, "and that is the reality and substantiality of the luminiferous ether." Just three years later, the Michelson-Morley experiment provided the first strong evidence against the theory of such an ether, and this effectively undermined all mechanical explanations of electromagnetic fields in space. Such fields are not "real stuff" out there, and they can be described only in terms of mathematical abstractions. But they still interact with matter. Einstein concluded in 1938: "All assumptions concerning ether led nowhere!"

I suspect that over the coming decades we shall recognize that all assumptions that fields of consciousness must invariably be carried by a material medium likewise lead nowhere. Be that as it may, given the principle of the conservation of energy, how can anything nonphysical influence the material world? For starters, we should recall Richard Feynman's comment: "It is important to realize that in physics today we have no knowledge of what energy is." And the Heisenberg energy-time uncertainty principle demonstrates that violations of this conservation principle do occur, and they may have macroscopic effects in the material world.

As I make clear in my book "Contemplative Science," I make no pretense of speaking for all schools of Buddhism. In fact, I don't know anyone who does, so I assumed that no one would think I am trying to do so. Traditional Theravada Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhists do generally believe in reincarnation, while some Chan and Zen Buddhists do and others don't. The earliest records of the Buddha's teachings make it perfectly clear that he claimed to have achieved "direct knowledge" of his own and others' past lives; and many later contemplatives have allegedly replicated his findings. This is one of the hallmarks of the contemplative science that is found in Buddhism.

Whatever our beliefs may be, questions pertaining to the nature of consciousness and its possible continuity beyond this life are not merely intellectual or metaphysical. They have an enormous bearing on our understanding of human existence and the parameters of Nature as a whole. I am not encouraging anyone to accept Buddhist hypotheses simply out of faith, nor did the Buddha himself encourage such blind belief. But I am convinced that collaborative research among psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, and contemplatives from multiple traditions may yield a much richer, more comprehensive understanding of consciousness than any one of those disciplines by itself.

Tags: Buddhism, Tibet, meditation, reincarnation, B Alan Wallace, Salon, Contemplative Science, If you meet the Buddha in Salon, Buddha on the brain, Steve Paulson, Dalai Lama

Waylon Lewis - I don’t believe in Reincarnation. Am I still a Buddhist?

Waylon Lewis at Elephant Journal has a great post on reincarnation and Buddhism - an issue of interest to me because I consider myself a Buddhist who does not believe in reincarnation.

I don’t believe in Reincarnation. Am I still a Buddhist?

by Waylon Lewis, elephantjournal.com on Jun 16, 2009

I grew up in a Buddhist family. As the Dalai Lama says of Buddhism,

Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned. - His Holiness the Dalai Lama

In fact, the Buddha himself said something along the lines of “Buddhism is what can be experienced, not what I say it is.” And so I’ve never believed in reincarnation—I’ve never experienced it, it strikes me as superstition, as a spiritual hangover from Buddhism’s origins with Hinduism (I also don’t particularly believe in eight-armed green deities).

Still, from a strict Buddhist p.o.v., reincarnation is part of our dogma. Wait, I thought we didn’t have dogma, we only “believed” what we could experience? Well, there’s the rub. If you ask my teacher, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the fact that I don’t believe in reincarnation means I’m not, strictly speaking, a proper Buddhist. I say, show me the evidence of it, and why it matters to my Bodhisattva Vow: to be of benefit.

Because that, after all, is the whole point of all this Buddhist stuff (at least as I was brought up to understand it in Chogyam Trungpa’s sangha community): to become sane (Hinayana), work for the benefit of others (Mahayana) and fully involve onself in this short, precious human existence (Vajrayana). And Trungpa Rinpoche himself never emphasized reincarnation, or the six realms (except as psychological analogies).

So call me a dis-believer. But given that Buddhism is a non-theistic tradition, I think that just makes me a…Buddhist. ~ elephant journal editor-in-chief, Waylon Lewis.

Via one of my favorite Buddhist e-newsletters, Upaya, which also has an elegant site that’s chock-ful of events and Dharma:

Shinshu Roberts was looking at Suzuki Roshi transcripts and ran across this....

Read more.

For me, as a Buddhist, my practice and beliefs center on the Bodhisattva Vows I have taken and following the Noble Eightfold Path - and that does not require a belief in reincarnation, only a devotion to helping others to the best of my ability.

The science of reincarnation, such as it is, does not convince me, simple as that.

Tags: Buddhism, reincarnation, beliefs, Dalai Lama, Suzuki Roshi, Waylon Lewis, elephant journal, death, rebirth

Carter Phipps - Death, Rebirth, and Everything in Between

I'm pretty agnostic about reincarnation, since there is no way I can know and there is no way (as yet) that science can prove or disprove it. It's a matter of faith, in my mind, I am not a man of faith. If there is anything I have ever seen that prevents me from rejecting it outright, it was this article from a couple of years back in Enlighten Next.

Death, Rebirth, and Everything in Between

A scientific and philosophical exploration
by Carter Phipps

Carter Phipps

Bio & resources

Introduction

James Leininger was born a normal healthy boy, but it became clear at an early age that he had an abnormal obsession—airplanes. He would play with nothing else. Around the time he reached his second birthday, however, the planes he loved so much had begun to disturb his sleep. He would wake up from nightmares screaming, telling his mother, “Airplane crash on fire; little man can’t get out.” Eventually, his mother began to wonder if there was more to James’s fascination with planes than just boyhood fancy. She remembers watching him go over one of his toy planes as if he were doing a flight check. She once bought him a model plane and pointed out the small bomb that was attached to its underside. “That’s not a bomb, Mama, that’s a drop tank,” James corrected her. His mother had never heard of a drop tank and was certain that this three-year-old boy never had either.

As time went by, James began to reveal more about his nightmares, and the outlines of a past life slowly came to light. James told his parents that he was once the pilot of a Corsair on a boat named the Natoma, and he even came up with the name of one of his friends on the boat: Jack Larson. James’s father, who had initially been skeptical of the idea of past lives, decided to do a little research. Soon, he hit pay dirt. The Natoma Bay had been an aircraft carrier stationed in the Pacific during World War II and Jack Larson (who was still alive and living in Arkansas) had been one of the pilots on board.

One day while looking through a book on World War II with his father, James pointed out the island of Iwo Jima, Japan, in a picture and indicated that it was where he had been shot down. He said that the plane had been hit directly in the engine. Curious to know more about his memories, his parents asked him what his name had been in his previous life, but James would only answer “James.” However, they noticed that he was signing all of his drawings with the name James 3. His father did some checking and found out that only one pilot on the Natoma had actually been shot down over Iwo Jima. His name: James M. Houston, Jr.

Krishna taught it; Plato believed in it; the Buddha revised it; Augustine considered it; Emerson wrote about it; Freud rejected it; Tolstoy was passionate about it; Sagan was curious about it. All of these great minds were fascinated, entranced, or troubled by one powerful idea: reincarnation. Of the many ways in which humans have tried to understand what happens after death, reincarnation is one of the most common and most enduring. Contrary to popular belief, it is not merely an Eastern notion but one that has flourished in cultures around the world, from indigenous tribes in Alaska to Islamic sects in the Middle East, from Christian cults of the Middle Ages to Nigerian tribes of today. Even some of the great founders of the Western worldview—Plato and Pythagoras, for example—believed that the soul would be reborn after death. And if you think that modernity’s forward march has managed to put an end to this ancient metaphysical idea, think again. Recent surveys have shown that twenty-seven percent of the American population believe in reincarnation. That’s over seventy-five million people who are convinced of the existence of past lives. While I doubt that many have stories that are as dramatic as James Leininger’s parents’, in a predominantly Judeo-Christian culture, seventy-five million should raise a few eyebrows.

And reincarnation is just one part of a larger story. Today, across the country, there is a broader transformation occurring in the way we look at life after death, a transformation that is perhaps most obvious in the extraordinary amount of cultural attention dedicated to the subject. From popular books (Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife) to hit TV shows (Crossing Over, Medium) to the scripts of Tinseltown (The Sixth Sense, Birth), there is a resurgence of interest in what some scholars call survival, a term that is short for “survival of bodily death.” Survival research explores whether or not any part of the human self is actually capable of surviving the death of the physical body. Some say there hasn’t been such an active interest in the issue since Spiritualism swept America in the late nineteenth century, back when table-rapping, trance-channeling mediums entertained the intelligentsia and Theosophy was a prominent new religious movement. But if you have somehow missed all of the excitement, don’t worry. Just head down to your local Barnes & Noble, where you can pick up a copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Reincarnation or check out the inevitable bestsellers by popular mediums before coming home to watch Ghost Whisperer on CBS.

Now what makes this resurgence of interest in survival all the more noteworthy is that it’s not happening just in pop culture or on the outer fringes of the New Age but in private institutes, academic research centers, and professional conferences that span a number of different disciplines. Esalen, the legendary human potential center, has been sponsoring a yearly private gathering of scholars from around the country, many from major universities, to explore the subject. In fact, a surprising number of scholars are working within the usually conservative confines of the academy. What is stirring the excitement of these researchers is a large and growing body of evidence that can be objectively and empirically analyzed, all of which is suggestive of the existence of an afterlife. Some data is coming from near-death experiences, some from out-of-body experiences, some from past-life memories, some from experiments with mediums, and some from visions of apparitions. None of these experiences are, in and of themselves, new to human culture. But never before in the history of knowledge has there been such a wealth of cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary data converging from so many different streams of experience, all of which is providing hints of what lies beyond the physical veil. It is leading us into territory that until recently was the sole province of mythology, esoteric philosophy, and religious tradition. In some cases, the data being uncovered correlates remarkably well with traditional religious conceptions of death and rebirth. In other cases, it radically diverges. All of it, however, is contributing to a potential new science of survival, rebirth, and the nonphysical dimensions of existence.

So when the idea to pursue a feature article on reincarnation was broached in an editorial meeting last year, I was intrigued. I knew that reincarnation was one of the most active areas of survival research and one of the most controversial. Indeed, if it were ever to be proved that reincarnation is a fact, that would immediately upset the apple cart of a great deal of accepted scientific thought and raise some provocative questions. Some of these have been debated by philosophers for millennia—questions regarding past and future lifetimes, the nature of the soul, theories of karma, and so on. But the question that really began to fascinate me as I considered the notions of survival and rebirth was not just philosophical but also quite practical. If reincarnation is true, I wondered, where do we actually go after death? What happens in between lives? That is not a small question. And as I embarked upon my research, I wasn’t entirely sure if it was even possible to look at it objectively. Maybe, in the end, it all comes down to subjective beliefs and personal opinions. Maybe all speculations about what happens after death are just that—speculations.

Well, maybe and maybe not. What I learned as I began to look into the evidence for rebirth, both empirical and anecdotal, is that what I thought I knew about the subject is just the tip of a very big iceberg. Reincarnation may be a premodern belief but for some it has become a postmodern obsession. And the contemporary evidence being gathered in support of this ancient notion is making a powerful case that may forever change the way we think about what happens after our corporeal form kicks the bucket.

Part I

Is Reincarnation Real?

“At the time of this writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study. . . . [One of these is] that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.”
- Carl Sagan

Seven hundred years ago, the Tibetan Buddhists gathered together all of their knowledge about reincarnation and the afterlife and recorded it for posterity in a one-of-a-kind manual, a guidebook to the bardos, or the states that exist between lives. Called TheTibetan Book of the Dead, it described exactly what the dying person could look forward to as he or she walked along that mysterious road that traverses the terrain between death and rebirth. In the last nine months, I’ve learned that a few radical and innovative researchers are in the early stages of gathering the data that may one day fill the pages (or web pages) of a contemporary version of this ancient guidebook. Indeed, we live in an age of great discovery, and the veil between this world and whatever lies beyond seems to be yielding its secrets as never before to the endless curiosity of the human mind. And like explorers setting foot on a new continent that was once only the subject of rumor, belief, and speculation, we are establishing beachheads on the subtle sands of the nonphysical realms and getting a sense of the initial landscape. Much to my surprise, I discovered that one of those beachheads is in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“At this point, we have registered over twenty-five hundred cases of children from all over the world who remember their past lives.” The man speaking to me was practicing child psychiatrist Dr. Jim Tucker, a researcher at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. With his warm southern accent and gentle demeanor, Tucker didn’t strike me as a nonconformist, but he has one of the most unusual academic jobs in the country—researching young children who spontaneously recall previous lives.

Tucker is part of the Division of Personality Studies, a branch of the university’s psychiatry department that is dedicated to survival research. In a nondescript two-story house that sits on the corner of the main campus, a staff of almost a dozen researchers and assistants is exploring the diverse aspects of survival: near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, visions of deathbed apparitions, after-death communication, and reincarnation. The department was founded in 1967 by Ian Stevenson, who has become a legend in the parapsychology community for his four decades of meticulous investigations of children who claim to remember previous lives. As philosopher and author David Ray Griffin writes, “Nowadays reincarnation research in the West is virtually synonymous with the work of Stevenson.” Stevenson himself is in his eighties and rarely makes an office appearance, but Tucker is probably the closest thing he has to a successor, and he has taken the research baton and run with it. Each case in the department’s voluminous files tells a unique and unconventional story.

For example, I came upon the case of William, a young boy who was born with a serious heart condition called pulmonary valve atresia—a birth defect in which the main pulmonary artery has not formed completely. When William was about three years old, he began to talk about his grandfather’s life in ways that shocked his parents. For example, one day when he was misbehaving, his mother exclaimed, “Sit down, or I’m going to spank you,” and William replied, “Mom, when you were a little girl and I was your daddy, you were bad lots of times, and I never hit you!” William seemed to know details of his grandfather’s life that often left his parents scratching their heads trying to figure out where he could possibly have come by the information. He surprised his mother by accurately remembering the names of long-dead pets that had belonged to her when she was a young girl. He also recalled the exact circumstances of his grandfather’s death, and even the day of the week on which it had occurred. William’s grandfather had been a New York City policeman killed while attempting to prevent a robbery, shot six times. The killing bullet had entered his back, cutting through his lung and slicing open a major artery—the main pulmonary artery.

Read the rest of this intriguing article.

Tags: reincarnation, faith, Science, Spirituality, Carter Phipps, Death, Rebirth, Everything in Between, Enlighten Next

Modern Buddhism - On the Reincarnation of Tulkus

The story of Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, now known by his birth name of Osel Hita Torres, has been making the rounds in the news of late. Here is a brief recap from Time, which has also pocked up the story:

Last month, however, the magazine Babylon confirmed that the shaggy-haired Hita had long-ago dropped out of his Tibetan University, and that he no longer even considers himself a Buddhist. He was quoted more pointedly in the newspaper El Mundo as saying, "I was taken away from my family and put in a medieval situation in which I suffered a lot. It was like living a lie."

Britain's Guardian then added the delicious factoid that at one point the only people Hita saw were Buddhist monks and Richard Gere. Last Monday, a statement attributed to Hita appeared on the FPMT website calling the press reports "sensationalized," and insisting "there is no separation between myself and FPMT." Still, his confirmation of his career change in the same posting in fact suggests a major rift.

Toward the end of the article, they quote Robert Thurman on the issue, who makes a crucial point that seems to have been ignored in all the other coverage I have seen.

Robert Thurman, a Buddhist scholar, former monk and friend of the Dalai Lama, recounts that when told years ago that Hita was to receive a traditional Buddhist education in India he expressed concern. Thurman's argument: "If he wanted Tibetan traditional [education] he could have reincarnated in a Tibetan family in exile." The result of the misplacement, he says, is that Hita "has broken away in a full-blown identity crisis." Thurman thinks that after some time in our "busy postmodern world," Hita may see the value of the Tibetan tradition, "which he will then be able to approach or not, of his own free choice." And, he adds, "More power to him!"

I don't know that I buy into the whole reincarnation thing to begin with, but Thurman's point stands nonetheless as a cogent statement about the process - it neglects the cultural component of the chosen children.

As Tibetan Buddhism spreads and becomes less Tibetan and more modern, it will have to take into account that when Western children are chosen as tulkus there will have to be some accommodations made for their cultural identity. Even the Dalia Lama has joked that he will incarnate as a Western woman.

Thurman's concerns about the young Osel went unheeded and now the young man has left the tradition he was chosen to lead. What might have happened if he had been raised within a more Westernized Buddhism, a more modern version of the traditions?

As Buddhism adapts to becoming a more global religion, as it must, it will have to become more sensitive to the cultural identity of its adherents. As more and more of its leaders are reincarnated in the West, as is sure to happen, the traditional approach of raising the young tulkus in a very strict and isolated environment is going to have to become more tolerant of modern and postmodern culture.

Tags: Buddhism, culture, reincarnation, tulkus, Time, Osel Hita Torres, Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, FPMT, Dalai Lama, Robert Thurman, Western Buddhism, modernism