Fists Full of Sand - Rebirth

He, refraining from such views, graspsat nothing in the world; and not grasping,he trembles not; and trembling not, he byhimself attains to perfect peace. And heknows that rebirth is at an end, that thehigher life has been fulfilled, that what hadto be done has been accomplished, and thatthere is no more becoming.

Digha Nikaya XV - 68

One of the things that attract educated people to Buddhism is that it seems free of what we might call “religious messiness”. They think of it as just a philosophy. Much of Buddhism does stand up fairly well to philosophical critique. Yet, still, in the background is this whole messy rebirth thing that is an embarrassment to some contemporary Buddhist teachers.

Many people are seriously interested in Buddhism but have concerns about “rebirth”.  Because translators have actually used the term “reincarnation” instead of “rebirth” the student might become wary of the teaching. The Suttas are a little hard for Westerners to understand as well. Because of the religious heritage of the West, we tend to take things very literally when they were meant to be taken metaphorically in Asia. The interested person may think that in Buddhism we teach things like this: because John had done some bad things in his life he will be reincarnated as a dog in his next life. The misunderstanding is that there is the belief that people have lived countless lives before this one. This notion of transmigration does not exist in the oldest Buddhist literature.

But did the Buddha teach any of this? It is certainly part of contemporary Buddhist lore but is it really what he meant? Did the Buddha teach a literal bodily rebirth? Really?

Very simply, yes he did. Any reading of the Suttas leaves little doubt that he really did teach a literal bodily rebirth.

There is nothing wrong with someone who does not believe in rebirth. Even some Buddhists do not believe in it. Reincarnation, as such, is not a foreign concept. It is found in most religions. In Christianity there is the belief that someone dies they reappear, are reborn, intact either in heaven or hell. What is that teaching if not reincarnation?

There are problems with Buddhist teachers who teach that the Buddha did not teach rebirth. They are either very unknowledgeable about their own subject matter, exceptionally self-deluded or just plain lying. In any of these cases it is probably a good idea to stay away from that teacher.

But do you have to believe in rebirth to be a Buddhist? Probably not, but this is a “not” with qualifications. The forerunner (pubbangama) of the whole path toward enlightenment is based on Right View (samma ditthi). Part of that view is rebirth. Without rebirth you are not totally embracing what the Buddha taught. You don’t have to perfectly follow the Eightfold Path all the time to be a Buddhist. If you had to completely and perfectly follow the Eightfold Path all the time then when you are not perfectly mindful then you could not be a Buddhist. If you had to be perfect 24/7 there would be damned few Buddhists in the world. Buddhism is a path and not all of us can be perfectly on the Path all the time.

It doesn’t do too much good to worry about the issue of rebirth. The Buddha only figured it out a few hours before his enlightenment. And he even said that the whole issue of rebirth was one the most difficult and subtle things he ever taught. It is not important to figure out where you stand on rebirth right now. Simply follow the Path lightly. See where it takes you. Just have faith that good actions lead to good results.

A simple way of looking at rebirth is by addressing some misconceptions about what rebirth is and is not. Rebirth is not reincarnation. It is not the dying of a body and then it coming back to life. That is the Christian concept but not the Buddha’s.

Rebirth is also not the dying of a body and then coming back to life as another body. This is the Vedic notion of reincarnation. There is no soul in Buddha's teachings. So, what is it that is reborn? The answer lies in the five khandhas. The khandhas are five elements or classes of phenomena that make up human experience. The khandhas are manifested into experience through desire.

The five khandhas are classified as:

          1.) Form – indications of line, color, movement, scent, sound, even thought.
          2.) Feelings – these are simply sensation, either physical or mental and sensed as pleasant, unpleasant, and neither pleasant or unpleasant.
          3.) Perceptions – essentially this is pattern recognition. “Ah! I’ve witnessed this before.”
          4.) Volition – by volition the Buddha meant kamma.
          5.) Consciousness – this is momentarily existing mental state, that which we are conscious of at any given time. It is consists of many mental factors; the Abhidhamma separates consciousness into fifty-two different mental factors.

Everything a living being will experience is consists of these five khandhas. In reality they are what you are and I actually am – a fistful of sand. The Buddha actually used five fists full of sand to describe the process. You and I are the five khandhas, and nothing more. Everything you feel, perceive, believe, remember, experience, it's all just the khandhas. You are your khandhas and this is really quite an amazing discovery. Once you appreciate this reality and learn how to work with it your life is never again the same. You discover how everything you have ever experienced, or thought you did, was just an illusion and there is a greater reality hidden in plan sight.

It is important to understand the khandhas actually come as a result of something else. The khandhas are the direct result of craving and those are propelled by your kamma. The Pali word that is translated as “craving” is tanha but the Sanskrit is pronounced something like dhirsht. It is related to the German word that came into the English language as “thirst”. Thirst is normal – everyone gets thirsty. What we do with is anything but normal. Tanha means “thirst”. The Buddha did not say tanha was bad or good, it just is.

The second khandha is sensation, feeling. You only get three: pleasant, unpleasant and neither nor pleasant and unpleasant. The Buddha did not mean emotion; it is our scheme to equate emotion with feeling. Feeling is the flavor of the emotion but the emotion is merely a swirling complex of thoughts. When you sense pleasure, it is the second khandha. The feeling of this pleasure it is the result of a craving to feel the pleasure. It is only because we are so blinded (avijja, literally “not seeing”) and diverted from reality that we cannot realize this fact. This is what we do in meditation, seeing past these illusions.

In meditation we watch the aggregates. Let’s say we are looking at volition. We can easily see the superficial motivations for our thoughts, words and deeds. We crave something, either to have something, experience it, or not to have something, to not experience it. What we usually do is stop there. We might think, “Oh yes, that was it. Now that problem is solved.” What we don’t usually see is the motivation within the motivation. Motivations are hidden within the overlay of the obvious. We can search further leading us to a more complete understanding. It’s like looking at a piece of sandstone and seeing that there are smaller pieces of stone within the larger one. They are all of different sizes. There more we look the more stones we find. Sandstone is an aggregate just as we are.

This is relevant to rebirth because it is the khandhas that are being reborn or better, “refabricated”, over and over. It is actually craving but it is not actually you but then again, it is not other than you either because that is what you are. You and not you all at once, wrap your mind around that for a moment. It is craving that generate the khandhas, and it is craving that our human experiences. The Buddha’s teaching of rebirth, he was actually telling us about the death of craving, and its rebirth and manifestation as a living being.

At the death of the physical body there is also the death of craving. Desire for sensation, for the various experiences, temporarily ceases. Unfortunately, the craving comes arises again, that is rebirth. The craving comes back and the desire to experience manifests once again as experience. The experiences must have a form and one is manifested out of the khandhas. That form manifests as a physical body, yet another collection of aggregates. Recognize that this craving has no physical bounds; it is illimitable, unfettered to the physical world. To experience the khandhas, there must be a link to the physical world.

When you die, your cravings end and then they come back, they are reborn. So the khandhas are reborn. Depending on the khandhas, they may be attached to a physical form - a body. This is what Buddha means when he talks of a person being reborn as another person. There is no “soul” or “self” moving, just the elements that result from the craving that was left behind when the body died.