RetroFed Forum
Your home away from modern life.
What are your views on rebirth?
Post Reply
AuthorMessage
Alas Poor Erinaceus lemmy.ml zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml
Joined: 2024-12-18
Quote

This usually seems to be the most difficult of the Buddhist doctrines (if that's the right word) for people to accept, myself included, although I do subscribe to what I guess could be called The Buddha's wager. How bout you?

7   Original
southsamurai (he/him/pronoun agnostic) sh.itjust.works southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2023-06-19
#2 · Quote Reply

Tbh, I'm only Buddhist by virtue of life philosophy at this point. I don't place any weight on the spiritual side, just the parts that work here and now to fucking survive.

That being said, I see that wager as a good one, and have tried to approach life that way before I ever encountered Buddhism, or any religion on a serious level.

To me, the reason to be a decent human being in my treatment of others isn't really moral, per se. It's that same pragmatic thing. See, in day to day life, the less misery a person spreads, the less likely they are to get caught knee deep in it themselves, in terms of human caused misery. Ain't a damn thing we can do about the other sorts.

I do believe that being decent is either the default, or the entire fucking planet drowns in the ugly. So I strive to suppress my ugly and do my version of right as best I can.

Reincarnation is meaningless in that paradigm. I would honestly prefer the oblivion of all things after death, but if any of the ideas that float around religions are real, then I'll take the possibility of escaping the cycle eventually via reincarnation.

4
Skeezix lemmy.world skeezix@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-01
#3 · Quote Reply

I think its a crock of shit

0
matelt feddit.uk matelt@feddit.uk
Joined: 2025-03-09
#4 · Quote Reply

One of my favourite Ajahns said, the Buddha was right about so many things, why would he be wrong about rebirth? I'm skeptical but the more I think about it, the more I think there might be some substance to the claim. I mean I do remember saying stuff when I was very little like 'when I was a grown up', and it seems it's a very widespread phenomenon. So yeah I try to keep an open mind and investigate rather than reject the idea because of conditioning or blindly embrace the concept without putting due diligence into it.

3
Malica lemmy.zip Malica@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2026-08-27
#5 · Quote Reply

It feels right and that's as close to faith as I can get

2
Kamuka thelemmy.club Kamuka@thelemmy.club
Joined: 2026-10-24
#6 · Quote Reply

It's a feature they need in Tibetan Buddhism to identify younglings to concentrate resources and teaching to create leaders. It's also something that was omnipresent in the Buddha's time, so he just went with it. I'm not feeling it personally, and I ask my friends about it. They say keep an open mind, and I've kept an open mind for 25 years, and still not feeling it. It's a feature of every tradition besides Secular Buddhism and it's hard to imagine that sangha continuing, as much as I like the writing of Stephen Batchelor, who gave me a copy of the book he was promoting when I met him. I feel it's a cultural legacy and not essential. I've read a lot about it, and never read anything that helped it to click for me. Ajahn Buddhadasa didn't believe it, and he was a famous Theravada monk. My Buddhist friends say, "you've got to do it in this one life?"

2
Post Reply
Back to top